In the US the term “informed electorate” is a joke. Big elections are advertising competitions. Or in the most recent case voting machine hacking.
“mainly selfmade wealth”
That doesn’t exist, let’s stop fucking pretending it does.
They mean as opposed to inherited, not in the way you mean it.
What they really mean is that they didn’t inherit their immense wealth, which means there was a time in their lives when they weren’t obscenely wealthy.
I get what they’re getting at, but selfmade has that connotation with it.
They could say not inherited vs inherited wealth
Not inherited is also wrong. Because more than 50% of americans live paycheck to paycheck, one can assume that private schools, elite universities, etc are also inherited wealth.
They dont spawn with billions but they started at the top and just built exploitation empires.
The is no such thing as self made wealth and an insane majprity of it is already being very comfortable and just going full bore.
I’m not saying financial success has nothing to do with capabilities and discipline but surprisingly little.
Or to quote jay gould, who said it before:
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Very true as well. Directly exploitative vs indirectly idk man, but self made ain’t it
To them, poor is probably like just a few dozen million USD.
they didn’t inherit their immense wealth
Except even that doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. A big component of the market cap of any Fortune 100 company stems from equity and debt held by the generationally wealthy, typically through family funds managed by private equity groups. Amazon and Tesla aren’t worth $1T without the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies and the Adelsons and the Waltons bidding up asset prices. Microsoft doesn’t exist today without Bill Gates’s mom sitting on the IBM board of directors and handing her son the contracts for their 1980s OS. Hell, Berkshire Hathaway is owned by the sons of a Congressman and a federal judge, respectively.
What’s more, the biggest source of market capital is inevitably government contracts. You can’t tell me that Michael Dell is “independently wealthy” when the bulk of his fortune came via the Texas public school system buying all his company’s computers. Particularly when the governors, legislators, and board members making these decisions are (a) big shareholders of the Dell corporation and (b) legacy scions of wealthy Texas families.
They get to play in a sandbox designed for them. They’re taught how to play in the sandbox, and are given the toys to play (roads, electricity, raw materials for example). We get to be the sand.
If only the sand realized how many people and weapons there are. We could figure this shit out in a day
Only the grains that are knocked out of the box don’t get played any more.
People that play with the sand too, tho
I made all my money myself. After I graduated from private school with my personal trainer and one on one tutoring and my car I didn’t have to work for and my apartment I didn’t have to pay for I definitely earned my first job myself. I mean, my dad didn’t interview with his good friend from the country club, I DID! Give me the credit I deserve! I am a self made man!
Only two super wealthy people come to mind: Oprah and Rowling. Both are bastards (Oprah mostly because of who she endorsed and her increasing lack of connection to the average American).
Who helped Taylor Swift? (I don’t know myself)
Didn’t think of her. Her parents did literally change their entire lives around her and sacrificed a lot to help her career, but I’d say that though most parents couldn’t afford or have the opportunity to that much, Taylor did build her empire from scratch. She didn’t come from poverty, but wasn’t wealthy from the start.
I’ve heard both of her parents work in finance.
We should eat them all
In the end, when Trump is certified as the modern day hitler, these families need to be held accountable…. Like the soldiers of the concentration camps.
There are only a few outcomes that would lead down that road, and while I hope for one of them, I am pretty convinced they’ll all die happy and rich in their warm beds of old age after getting lots of plastic surgery and riding on lots of jets and jetskis
And this article is 10 years old. It has gotten so much worse.
If my math is correct 158 families would be around .00005%. They have no clue what life is like for the average person yet they have so much influence. Gross.
theres a literal golf course behind these mansions lol
Golf is such a perfect rich person sport. It wastes a ton of space, destroys local wilflife, the hardest part is done by the caddy (i.e. not the rich person), and at the end you feel like you accomplished something, but you’ve done absolutely fuck all other than show off your expensive shit.
Plus it gives you a nice excuse to get drunk and ride around in a tiny car like a little boy
The only reason to do it. Lol
And they have to have complete silence! It’s not a sport at all, it’s just showing off your clothes/clubs. Such weak ass players can’t be heckled at all like any other real sport. LMAO.
Fuck scotus. John Roberts is the most damaging traitor in American history.
So another way to look at it is that by eliminating a few thousand parasites, we can reshape our political landscape…
Just 158 examples
Citizens United was the final straw in the downfall of America democracy.
It’s been inevitable since.
Unless it’s overturned it’s over, and I don’t think they can overturn it.
Citizens United
Corporations have been ‘people’ since the 1886 USSC decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.
Yet somehow, unlike most people, they’ve escaped having to go to jail when they commit crimes. I’d call that an unfair advantage.
I’ll believe a corporation is a “person” when Texas (or Alabama, Florida, South Carolina etc) executes one of them
The way to return democracy to the people is to limit the involvement of money. First step is to repeal “Citizens” United, the law that officially sold the US government to corporations and the wealthy under the guise of Freedom (as usual). Second, organizations (including but not limited to corporations) should be outright banned from political compaign contributions. Organizations aren’t citizens. They can’t vote. They shouldn’t be allowed to pour money into elections.
It’s not enough to reform campaign finance. We need to destroy the class of people behind this. We need to really wage class war, a class war of annihilation.
We need a national wealth cap. 1000x median household income. Anything more is taxed at 100%.
I agree with those ideas too.
Let’s start with stopping Billionaires. Once someone gets to $999,999,999 they are awarded a plaque that states something along the lines of “Yay, you won Capitalism (or, frankly, corporatism)” and force them to divest themselves from all companies and stocks etc and live on their ranch in Aspen and live off the almost Billion. Any income that ends up topping their financial worth over a Billion is taxed at 100%
Income isn’t how theyre taxed, but I get your point.
It’s going to take the boondocks saints taking these people out one by one like Luigi before anything meaningful happens. They only care about their life, let’s remove it from the equation.
People talk about the Harambe timeline, but Citizens United is when the shit started going sideways.
An oligarchy is what America has been for over a decade now officially. Every politician is bought and sold, told to vote on every bill by the companies lobbyists that line their pockets. Every vote is controlled by mass propaganda on every network and every corporate social media.
But we’re a democracy, right?
wasn’t there some billionaire that ran for president, spent hundreds of millions and got like <1% of the vote?
Yeah Michael Bloomberg bought his way through the rest of the primary debates then when it came time for the primary vote nobody wanted him.
That’s the one!
Bloomberg spent nearly $1 billion on his three-month presidential campaign
So my next question is:
Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House
Just how effective is advertising in the presidential race when you can spend a billion and go no where?
Conservatives vote out of fear. They lie awake at night terrified of their son having to play sports agains a trans boy. Advertising these moron fears is a lot easier than advertising a plan to make things better. But also Michael Bloomberg had no plan to make things better, at least for us lowly constituents.
He was just dumb. He spent unwisely. The best things in life are free. Like the support of moguls like Murdoch from Fox News.
Perot did pretty well on his runs iirc. But I don’t think he’s the one you were talking about.
Yep sorry it was Michael Bloomberg
158 families isn’t much to feed 300 million starving people. We need rules on who gets to eat the 0.01%
Fuck that. First come, first serve. Get it if and while you can.
THIS ARTICLE IS FROM 2015 A DECADE AGO IT HAS ONLY GOTTEN WORSE SINCE THEN
