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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDo We Need a Billionaire Class?
from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:
Do We Need a Billionaire Class?
February 21, 2016
With worker-owned co-ops and other forms of democratic enterprise, veteran analyst Gar Alperovitz is helping America see, we can create wealth without creating a super wealthy.
In the struggle against economic inequality, historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz tends to take the long view. That may be at least partly because Alperovitz has been at that struggle for quite a long time.
In the 1960s, for instance, Alperovitz worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his aides to explore the potential of an alternate economic order built upon community-owned enterprise.
Alperovitz has always had a foot in both the activist camp of what could be and the political reality of what we can accomplish right now. His many books have linked those two camps and punctured the pretenses of those who defend Americas astoundingly unequal distribution of income and wealth.
.....(snip).....
Too Much: Weve become so unequal, youve also noted, that well never become significantly more equal unless we have a fundamental shift in who controls capital, in who owns wealth. A shift to what?
Alperovitz: Wealth brings power, political power, institutional power. Wealth on its own gives people the capacity, as a friend of mine likes to say, to rent politicians and control the political process. Wealth gives the wealthy access access to political levers that alter the way the economy works.
In all the advanced countries, labor organizations used to provide a counterbalance to this wealth. On the shop floor and in the political system, unions directly challenged capital on wages and the distribution of income.
But in the United States weve always had a much weaker labor movement than most other advanced capitalist nations, and today our labor counterweight is disappearing. Increasingly, we have no institutional counter to the political power of capital.
Many activists today think that building a movement will solve this problem. We obviously need a movement. But at the heart of the movement that helped make America more equal in the middle of the 20th century, we also had an institution, labor unions.
Unless you can build both institutions and a political movement, you wont have the power and wherewithal to really challenge capital. ..............(more)
- See more at: http://toomuchonline.org/do-we-really-need-a-billionaire-class/#sthash.UL8NpuoR.dpuf
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)marmar
(77,946 posts)In their minds at least.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)which ones become the billionaires?
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)It provides food and shelter. On the other hand some do not want to provide their food and shelter by working.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)but as you said it provides food and shelter. and if some have way too much if others go will w/o, even if they are willing to work for it.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)and do you always just dismiss the other participants point of view when having a conversation?
Only one of those is someone i have any real respect for anyway, assuming WJC is Bill Clinton. Gates is a cheat. his foundation may do some good, but it does plenty of crappy education reform.
i'm not a fan of mega foundations that take donations from corps and people who are busy making money destroying other people and the environment, while providing the same bad actors with tax write-offs, insider connections and sweetheart government deals.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)me falsely.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)Some of our local pretend billionaires are a real hoot to watch!
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)I'm not interested in the world being run as the battle of the billionaires.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)dchill
(40,085 posts)truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)the vast wealth they have accumulated by working hard from before sunrise to sunset!
.
.
.
.
.
.
Would that wealth was commensurate with contributions to society. Farmers would be rich, and trash collectors wealthier than hedge fund managers.
dchill
(40,085 posts)Bigmack
(8,020 posts)..."No, some rises before dawn, works well into the night and repeats the next day."
That would be farm laborers....laborers in general.
And they don't become billionaires that way.
Rex
(65,616 posts)talking to a child that has never held a job. Kinda.
Warpy
(113,032 posts)the three or four jobs they have all pay minimum wage with no benefits.
Honey, you've got one hell of a lot to learn about the world you live in.
Nobody works harder than poor folks.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)Their thoughts betray how little they know about real life.
Rex
(65,616 posts)And of course you didn't say anything about capitalism.
Jerry442
(1,265 posts)...but stop rewarding the sociopaths.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Tax the living shit out of them.
Marr
(20,317 posts)miners, farmers, construction workers, etc?
Fresh_Start
(11,339 posts)they are the most industrious...and they number in the millions.
They are the ones holding down two or more jobs to make ends meet.
And those who industriously make calls while they are chauffered to their next appointment and not the most industrious.
In many ways they are the most fortunate: fortunate at birth or fortunate at being in the right place at the right time or fortunate at having an idea which soared.
Capitalism does not reward the most industrious: it rewards those with the most capital.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)It is not class related on caring about others. Some are content to allow others to provide their needs, again not class related.
Fresh_Start
(11,339 posts)I'm just saying that if you were to look for the 1000,10000,100000, or 1000000 most industrious people in terms of hours of labor...those people would be among the poorest.
The work because they must. Even their children work from an early age because they must.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Fresh_Start
(11,339 posts)those with less give more., on average.
As a percent of income...which in the case of the poor means they actually sacrifice to help others.
The wealthy are not giving up a nice meal, a new toy for their child or a coffee at a cafe..in order to help others.
But the poor do that frequently.
Yes, there are caring people in every income category...but this was a thread about capitalism and industriousness.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Hold a dying one's hand in the last days, can lend a hand to a mother overwhelmed with child care, can transport the elderly, many more things which does not require money.
Rex
(65,616 posts)The silver spoon class sure does pretend to work hard for their money! The working class if far more industrious then the billionaire leech class that makes money off of interest.
Response to Thinkingabout (Reply #1)
Rex This message was self-deleted by its author.
tazkcmo
(7,419 posts)Of course we need billionaires! Who would create poverty wage jobs without them? Who could we depend on to buy our government so that we can enjoy watching our infrastructure decay? Who's homes would we get to see on TV that some of us watch through a store window where we're not allowed to enter because we don't have enough money or the wrong "look"? Who else will establish "charitable foundations" that are more a tool of influence peddling and income generation than an actual charity? Who else would the American under class (Middle class? What middle class?) support with their taxes while he billionaires enjoy their off shore tax havens? Who else would rig the Free Markets in their favor?
This kind of questioning of the Beautiful People by us Proles is putting in danger our American Way Of Life and I for one won't stand for it as my break isn't until Thursday and until then I'm chained into my chair at my work bench.
sarcasm
dchill
(40,085 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)Glassunion
(10,201 posts)Jerry442
(1,265 posts)Probably best if you decline.
Glassunion
(10,201 posts)Wait... No!
bemildred
(90,061 posts)hunter
(38,809 posts)Some of them should be in prison.
Most of them have not made, nor are they making, the world a better place.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)marmar
(77,946 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Social net, no grocery stores, no gas, no transportation. It would leave plenty of time for all to provide their shelter and food. Oh, no clean water or modern conveniences, no need, no homes.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)We would finance things the same way we do now, we would print the money, the only difference is the government would print it instead of the Fed, so we could pay ourselves the interest instead of Goldman-Sachs.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Svafa
(594 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Fend for themselves. Won't need money, no banks, no feds, nothing. It will be like living in one's personal commune.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)They seem to have this magical notion that you can offshore/automate every job except their own and still somehow have continued consumption-driven business.
RichGirl
(4,119 posts)The richest people made approx. 20 times more than poor. Today, its 300 times more.
In Reagan...GOP had the perfect candidate...formerly democratic governor of California, movie star that everyone loved. Early signs of Alzheimers that made him easy to manipulate. You think this nice man would have called ketchup a vegetable in relation to school lunches?
My very first job a month from graduating from high school:
Starting pay: double what minimum wage was back then. (Mostly only high school kids with after school jobs got minimum wage.)
Guaranteed annual raise.
FULL healthcare coverage. No co-pay
Time and a half pay for over-time, double pay on Sundays.
AND...NIXON WAS PRESIDENT!!!
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)robhalf4369
(31 posts)They should be taxed massively. No one needs that much money.
Orrex
(63,871 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Nothing but parasites.
moondust
(20,359 posts)joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)They don't actually put anything back into the system, all they do is leech off the working class.
valerief
(53,235 posts)hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Do some people need to make $150,000 a year?
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)It would cover topics such as philanthropy, investing in the community, paying a decent wage, and not buying politicians. Attendance would be mandatory for all billionaires.
forest444
(5,902 posts)That paying Fortune 500 CEOs up to $2 million (in today's dollars) has historically made at least some sense in that up tothat amount, pay and performance have historically been somewhat linked.
Anything above that figure, however, was shown to be a complete waste of money - with zero, even negative, correlation between pay and measurable performance.
In other words, anything above $2 million a year, no matter how big the company, is vanity pay and therefore has no place is a modern society.
Et Voilà.