Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
I hate stupid memes like this.
America was also damn near the only industrialized country that didn’t have its manufacturing capabilities blown to shit. That might have had a wee bit of effect.
While true, some might argue that–even more importantly–we didn’t let wealth concentrate like we do today. If we had let wealth concentrate, history might look just like today, where the only thing blown to shit is Trumps diaper and people are barely able to make ends meet.
Billionares are not leaders
You want a slightly larger slice of the pie? NO THAT’S COMMUNIST YOU COMMIE COMMS COME CUM MMMM CUM
Well there was also the war on and you were taking the rest of the Allies’ money but yes, I agree fully with the spirit of this statement.
Was that image painted by the cheese man??
After the war America continued to tax at those rates until Nixon dropped it to 70% and then Reagan cut it to 20%. W slashed it further and Trump has basically killed it. It’s all tied up by people who refuse to contribute to society.
Parasites.
Hm, I wonder what was going on before the 1940s and why this changed over the subsequent decades.
Seriously though, it’s important that people are criticizing the systemic inequality in this system, but it’s also important to remember this history. For the US, The New Deal era of welfare liberalism came after decades of popular movements against wealth inequalities and only gained real traction after the depression and the rise of socialism in the years following WWI. It was a concession, not a moment of clarity, and so it is crucial to recognize that this did not last.
The tensions between the US and USSR following WWII allowed for the cultural and political conditions to target any socialist rhetoric (which laborist and welfare liberal talking points were easily conflated with). Union power was slowly eroded through decentralization in the subsequent two decades, but resistance to sexism and racism grew gradually, culminating in the Civil Rights Era and Civil Rights Act of 1964; another concession forced by internal pressures.
The War on Drugs and neoliberal politics then defined the landscape in the late 20th century, and we are currently living in the aftermath. Taxation is necessary, but because the redistribution of wealth can be facilitated through it, not because this system will function to your benefit once we do tax billionaires. Do not make the mistake of believing that negotiation is an option, liberalism is a system that concentrates power and resources into a small group of people and privileges others to defend that group, which means any concession is a time-buying tactic. The mid-00s to early -10s is remembered as a more politically “progressive” moment already, and look at the benefits institutional recognition brought all of us.
Do not satisfy yourselves with taxing billionaires, this system will readily concede a marginal amount of power to extend its life.
So you are saying that because I didn’t build that guillotine yesterday already, I should start right now?
