Why does a democratic republic founded in opposition to monarchy tolerate billionaires?

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.editorialboard.com/why-does-a-democratic-republic-founded-in-opposition-to-monarchy-tolerate-billionaires/

*snip*

I am not suggesting some kind of malicious conspiracy. I am merely pointing out an obvious fact. Jeff Bezos is worth a reported $200 billion. (He is personally financing all those rockets to space.) It is not humanly possible for one man to work so hard so much so fast to earn $200 billion. (It’s been a little over two decades since he founded Amazon.) There has to be a system established in tandem with the government, or in tacit approval by the government, to make such a pile of cash.

Ten percent of the country owns 89 percent of stocks on Wall Street, according to new data from the Federal Reserve. “The top 1 percent gained over $6.5 trillion in corporate equities and mutual fund wealth during the pandemic,” CNBC reported this week. (The bottom 90 percent holds about 11 percent of stocks.) All that idle money is, moreover, taxed at lower rates than income you earn with your labor.

If it’s taxed at all. Lots of very obscenely rich people hide their wealth. (Gerard Ryle, head of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said of the global network of secretive and legal tax havens: “The people who could end the secrecy … are themselves benefitting from it. So there is no incentive for them to end it.”) Meanwhile, the US government’s ability to find wealth to tax has been hamstrung by decades of starving the IRS of resources. The result, according to the LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik, has been a “tax gap” that reached a stunning “$630 billion in 2019 — more than 2.5 percent of gross domestic product and about 17.5 percent of the more than $3.6 trillion owed.”

Let’s say that again, with feeling. The very obscenely rich owe more than $3.6 trillion. That dollar amount should sound familiar. It’s roughly the same one being haggled over by the Democrats and the White House. If passed, the legislation would be, along with another spending bill, the biggest investment in the American people since the 1960s. Spending so much is controversial, but it might not be if the very obscenely rich had not, as they have for years, created the impression that there’s not enough money to spend on public goods and works. There has always been enough money, but this idea keeps living, in part due to the inability of normal people to imagine an alternative.

*snip*

[onecaliberal]

1. Because we allowed them to purchase the government.

[Irish_Dem]

2. Because we are not really a democracy. We are ruled by the rich and powerful, an oligarchy.

This has been the case for some time now.

They just let us think we are a republic and throw us a few crumbs every now and then.
The majority of our leaders are bought and paid for.

[UTUSN]

6. Ya beat me to it, was going to say "opposition to monarchy" was the window dressing, but

the oligarchy was the impetus.

[Irish_Dem]

9. Good point, we're been an oligarchy from the beginning.

The "opposition to the monarchy" was the sales pitch.

[ShazamIam]

3. Taking control of the media put the operation in place and provided all the suppport needed.,

to keep the public from seeing the steps while cheering it on.

[RANDYWILDMAN]

4. We encourage Billionaires !

It is a god dam oligarchy that is running this country and it very much controlled by the people with the most money and the most access which according to the chief justice of the supreme court are basically the same people.

when money equals speech we were screwed.

[Baked Potato]

5. Because, like pushers, they give out little "tastes,"

Keeps everyone dreaming for a big score some day.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

7. That's class wafare! Only the rich are allowed

to do class warfare.

[unblock]

8. As if America was founded based on a peasant revolt

Americas rich and elite were key drivers behind the Revolution.

Democracy and "we the people" was the way they sold it to the masses because they knew "we rich people want a big tax cut" wouldn't play well back then (that was before foxnews) and they needed the masses to support them if there was going to be a war about it.


Ok yeah I'm really oversimplifying and being snarky about it, but America's rich aren't an afterthought or a recent aberration. America was created in part to make rich people richer and as many have noted, the constitution was designed to preserve wealth for the wealthy in a number of ways, notably including slavery originally.

[hunter]

10. Some of our "founding fathers" thought they'd be the New Lords of North America

These white male landowners saw the Constitution as a means of maintaining the rule of law, as determined by white male landowners, without the central authority of a monarch.

"Opportunity" only meant that they might accept certain white males who were not yet landed into their ranks.

To them white male supremacy was the natural order of human society.

Many of today's billionaires are beneficiaries of this culture.

The expansion of human rights to women and people who are not white or heterosexual has been hard won, and sadly, that struggle still continues.

[rickyhall]

13. Wasn't George Washington, "The Father of Our Country", the richest man in America at the time?

[JanMichael]

15. Yep. But he didn't want to be a king or ruler. He could have done that. nt

[moondust]

11. Tends to encourage the worst

of people to do the worst of things in striving to become one of them.

Welcome to predatory capitalism where a billionaire's warehouse workers and delivery drivers may have to pee in a bottle because they can't take bathroom breaks. Where Michele Bachmann and other Republicans have proposed getting rid of the minimum wage altogether. Where waiters and waitresses make less than minimum wage because they might possibly maybe sometimes get a tip or two and you sure wouldn't want them to make too much.

[brooklynite]

12. What did the American Revolution have to do with wealth?

It had to do with autocracy.

Wealthy people aren’t all bad, just like poor people aren’t all good.

[ck4829]

14. We need to start acting like our ideals that we were taught in school

[GoodRaisin]

16. Because their money runs government. Nt

[msfiddlestix]

17. I'm no history scholar, but one factoid sent a loud message to me, some years ago

and that factoid reminds me that the war against the monarchy was conducted by a small minority of anti-monarchists leading and fighting the revolutionary war against the crown.

And it was made abundantly clear to me that the majority of the Southern Colonialists were Loyalists and were not all that inclined to engage along side of the revolutionaries.

I always find it ironic that today's Confederate loving ass hats wave the American Flag as though it represented the Confederacy and even though their ancestors were not all that keen on cutting ties with the Brits in the first place.

The irony and the contradictions seems mostly lost in our current narrative.

Editing to Add: Let us not forget that the Southern Loyalists were Cotton Plantation and Slave Owners. Wealth and Prosperity on the backs of Slaves with free labor. Descendants bred Maggots.

[Poiuyt]

18. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with being a billionaire as long as they

behave in a civically responsible manner. That means they pay a decent share of the taxes and treat everyone with empathy.

[Klaralven]

19. The American Revolution was the bourgeoisie versus the nobility

It established the legitimacy of power based on ownership, and illegitimated power based on noble birth.