Billionaire = Sociopath

The following post is by Lauren Elizabeth at Medium.com:

As bad as the pandemic has been, and the economic and public health crisis that ensued, there’s no denying there were many lessons to be learned from it as well. I along with countless others have argued that it exposed every flaw and crack in the foundation of the dying American empire, and the failure of the institutions theoretically in place to be there for the American people during times of crisis. Whether it be the necessity of Medicare for All or a more robust safety net to help people who have lost their jobs, perhaps one of the most significant lessons from this pandemic comes from the nation’s richest elite, and the drastic differences in the way it affected their bottom lines as opposed to virtually everyone else.

Yes, billionaires are sociopaths. All of them.

For decades while the wealthy tightened their grip on our government and the nation’s economy, we’ve been told by Republican politicians and outlets like FOX News that with a little hard work and determination, we can be as successful as they are. Why demonize, when we can learn from them and aspire to achieve their standing? We’ve been conditioned to view the billionaire class as heroes, as opposed to the villains. When looking for an example as to why that could not be further than the truth, one need only look as far as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the richest man on Earth.

For the sake of curiosity, I looked into Bezos’ net worth and did a little math just to get a sense of how much money that man is truly worth.

196.4 billion dollars. 

I took the year 2021, and multiplied it by 365, which came out to 737,665. I then took 196,400,000,000 and divided it by 737,665. From the day that Jesus was supposedly born up until now, Jeff Bezos would have to spend roughly $266,245.51 every. single. day. in order to spend his entire fortune. And that’s if he stopped earning today.

And we’re expected to believe he earned that kind of money just from a little extra hard work and picking himself up by the bootstraps?

Then of course, there’s Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla and one of the richest men on Earth, who literally pushed a coup attempt in Bolivia because he wanted the country’s Lithium.

It should go without saying that I and countless others no longer have the patience for the narrative that Billionaires got what they have because of some extra intelligence and a little hard work. It takes greed, a lack of conscience, exploitation of workers and resources, and an insatiable desire to have more at the expense of everyone else in order to attain that type of money. It is virtually impossible to spend a billion dollars in a lifetime, so that alone should leave people questioning why it is that the world’s richest are never satisfied with what they have.

Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, and yet his company spent millions to ensure his workers in Bessemer Alabama would vote against unionizing. His drivers defecate in bags, urinate in bottles, and are monitored for how much they yawn. It takes a unique, unfeeling, callous individual to willingly profit off of those types of conditions, and it will never cease to amaze me that the American people have been conditioned so heavily to celebrate someone like him instead.

Billionaires depend on that propaganda. They depend on the idea that we see them as “job creators” as exposed to thieves of labor, wages, and time. They depend on the idea that the American people won’t take that wealth back from them if they’re fed this notion, however ridiculous, that someday it will be them in their position. Someday, they can have that, too. Arguably among the many reasons why that’s not true is most people don’t have the complete and utter lack of conscience it requires to get there. The conscience to steal and cheat those who work for them, exploit resources, and pursue profits no matter the cost.

So no, we’re not all going to be billionaires, and we shouldn’t want to be.

Let’s tax them out of existence instead.

The Most Unequal Country In The Developed World

At the end of 2019, the United States had 788 billionaires (a 12% increase over 2018), and they controlled $3.4 trillion of the nation's wealth (14% more than was controlled by billionaires in 2018). There were more billionaires in the U.S. than the next 8 countries combined.

Republicans will tell you that is the mark of a successful economy. That is not true. At the same time, the U.S. has the largest percentage of people living in poverty in the developed world -- and that percentage is once again growing. And there are millions of workers out of a job -- a number that is also growing.

This has resulted in the largest income and wealth gap between the richest Americans and the rest of America since the Great Depression -- and that gap continues to grow larger. As the rich get richer, most other Americans struggle to stashed of inflation with their stagnant wages.

This was caused by Republican economic policies instituted about 1980 (when they seized enough power to alter the country's economic policies). They have tilted the economic playing field to favor the rich -- to the detriment of all other Americans. They want you to believe that giving more to the rich benefits everyone -- that the rich's extra wealth trickles down to everyone.

That is a lie. Money does not trickle down in a capitalist system. It flows upward. Giving more to the rich doesn't help everyone -- it just fattens the bank accounts of the rich. And the more wealth and income hogged by the rich just means there is less left for everyone else in the country.

It does not have to be this way. Prior to 1980, rising productivity was shared with workers and everyone benefitted. It can be that way again, but not until the Republicans are voted out of power.

Inequality In The United States Is Growing More Unequal

We already had a nation that was unequal before Donald Trump became president. It was due to the failed Republican "trickle-down" economic policy that has been in effect for the last forty years. That policy has tilted the economic playing field to benefit the rich (and corporations) at the expense of all other Americans.

That inequality was exacerbated by the Trump/Republican tax cuts in 2017. Now the Trump administration's delays in dealing with the Coronavirus epidemic has made the situation much worse. While most Americans suffer, the rich are getting richer (especially billionaires).

Consider this article by Jake Johnson at commondreams.org:

Statistics released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor show that with 2.1 million new unemployment claims filed last week, a staggering 40.7 million Americanshave lost their jobs over just the past 10 weeks as mass layoffs induced by the coronavirus pandemic continue.

During that same 10-week period, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the combined net worth of America's billionaires soared by nearly half a trillion dollars, bringing their total wealth to $3.4 trillion.

"Billionaire wealth is surging at the same time that millions face suffering, hardship, and loss of life," IPS, a progressive think tank, said Thursday, noting that more than 100,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the United States. "This is a grotesque indicator of the deep inequalities in U.S. society."

IPS, which has been publishing weekly updates on billionaire "pandemic profiteering," found that the combined net worth of U.S. billionaires grew by $485 billion between March 18 and May 28, an increase of 16.5%.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw their combined wealth soar by $63 billion over the last 10 weeks.

Meanwhile, as Common Dreams reported, a $2-an-hour hazard pay increase for Amazon warehouse workers is set to expire at the end of the day Sunday.

IPS found that there are currently 16 more billionaires than there were in mid-March, when many U.S. states began locking down their economies as Covid-19 spread rapidly across the country.

"This isn't just unsustainable," IPS tweeted of the surge in billionaire wealth. "It's unconscionable."

Pandemic Slides A Half-Billion People Into Poverty Worldwide (But Billionaires Are Doing Very Well)

(This image of rich and poor is by Rogelio Naranjo, and was found at Phawker.com.)

It would be a huge understatement to say the  billionaires are doing well. Between 1990 and 2020, the wealth of U.S. billionaires climbed by 1130%.

And they have not been hurt by the pandemic. Between March 18th and April 10th (as over 22 million workers lost their jobs), the wealth of U.S. billionaires increased by 10%.

But the same cannot be said of the middle and working classes. They are struggling just to maintain their economic state, and many are sliding into poverty because of lost jobs. And this is a worldwide phenomenon.

The pandemic may not be affecting the rich, but it is causing as many as a half-billion people to slide into poverty worldwide.

Consider this small part of an article in The New York Times by Maria Abi-Habib:

The World Bank says that for the first time since 1998, global poverty rates will rise. By the end of the year, 8 percent of the world’s population — half a billion people — could be pushed into destitution, largely because of the wave of unemployment brought by virus lockdowns, the United Nations estimates. . . .

While everyone will suffer, the developing world will be hardest hit. The World Bank estimates that sub-Saharan Africa will see its first recession in 25 years, with nearly half of all jobs lost across the continent. South Asia will likely experience its worst economic performance in 40 years.

Most at risk are people working in the informal sector, which employs two billion people who have no access to benefits like unemployment assistance or health care. . . .

The financial shock waves could linger even after the virus is gone, experts warn. Countries like Bangladesh, which spent heavily on programs to improve education and provide health care, which help lift families out of destitution, may now be too cash-strapped to fund them. . . .

The gains now at risk are a stark reminder of global inequality and how much more there is to be done. In 1990, 36 percent of the world’s population, or 1.9 billion people, lived on less than $1.90 a day. By 2016, that number had dropped to 734 million people, or 10 percent of the world’s population, largely because of progress in South Asia and China. . . .

But that progress may be reversed, experts worry, and funding for anti-poverty programs may be cut as governments struggle with stagnant growth rates or economic contractions as the world heads for a recession.

Billionaires Say They Are "Victims" - They Are NOT!

Did you get a 25% raise this year? If you make minimum wage, that would be a raise of $3770. If you make about the median wage in this country, that would be in the neighborhood of about $15,000.

I doubt any in the middle or working classes got a 25% raise in 2019. In fact, I'll bet that most American workers didn't even get the $3770 raise to give a minimum wage earner that 25%.

Most Americans, especially the bottom 90%, are just struggling to keep up with inflation. A 25% raise would be a dream come true, but it's really a dream with no chance of coming true with the Republicans in power.

But the super-rich, the people who didn't need to make more than they already do, got a 25% raise in 2019. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the richest 500 people now have $5.9 trillion -- an increase in 2019 of $1.2 trillion (or about 25%).

Inspire of the richest Americans doing exceptionally well (not just the top 500, but the top 1%), they will tell you that they are the "victims" in our economy. And they whine that Democratic efforts to make them pay their fair share in taxes is an example of that victimhood.

Here's part of how Helaine Olen describes this billionaire victimhood in The Washington Post:

The Great Recession was supposed to embarrass the wealthy into slinking away embarrassed, grateful they didn’t land in jail or worse. “There’s an angry mob with pitchforks assembling, and they want to see some heads on pikes,” Fortune opined in 2009. But as the stock and real estate markets recovered, so did the self-regard of the most moneyed among us. Shame? That was so Dow 7,550. It’s now over 28,000. . . .

Elite gatherings such as the Milken Institute’s Global Conference and the annual World Economic Forum in Davos have become all but encounter sessions for misunderstood multimillionaires and billionaires to agree with each other in the face of calls that they pay their fair share. There’s private equity mogul Leon Cooperman, who actually began to cry on CNBC when complaining about Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax on fortunes in excess of $50 million. “I don’t need Elizabeth Warren telling me that I’m a deadbeat and that billionaires are deadbeats,” he said.

The rich victims are all around us. Craig Hall, the real-estate tycoon owner of the now infamous ostentatious Northern California wine cave where Pete Buttigieg held a high-dollar fundraiser? He told the New York Timesabout the criticisms, “It’s just not fair.” Jacqueline Sackler, wife of a Purdue Pharma heir, the company in part responsible for the opioid epidemic that’s taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans? The Wall Street Journal got a hold of an email where she complained what she calls the “situation” is “destroying” the family’s reputation, and “dooms” her children.

And no one is more practiced at the art of billionaire self-pity than our president, Donald Trump. He’s the victim of a Democratic “witch hunt.” Impeachment? “More due process was accorded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.” Yet he signed into law a tax plan so favorable to billionaires in general, and real-estate interests in particular, it might as well have been tailored precisely for him.

But according to Republicans, the obscene gains of the wealthy aren’t the problem. In 2012, GOP presidential nominee and multimillionaire Mitt Romney, speaking to a group of big-money donors, referred to 47 percent of Americans who didn’t pay federal taxes and needed government benefits to get by as “takers,” adding, they believe “they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name it.” (Entitled to food! Imagine that.)

The Trump administration, which boasts the wealthiest presidential Cabinet ever assembled, has spent almost three years attempting to make it harder for people to receive Medicaid, food assistance and even a free lunch at school. They are aided by self-appointed watchdogs, too, such as Minnesota retiree Rob Undersander, who outed himself as a millionaire so he could publicize the supposedly pressing issue of people who have six- and seven-figure net worth receiving food stamps because their income is below eligibility thresholds. (In fact, survey research shows such households account for about 3 percent of households receiving assistance via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

Meantime, of course, the wealthy make out. Studies show, not surprisingly, that their opinions carry much more weight with politicians than those of more ordinary voters. But the claim of victimization is one way they seek to protect themselves from some popular anger and the financial consequences they might otherwise face, ensuring their power, wealth and privilege remains intact while they can continue to promote their self-perceived unique virtue and smarts.

The 5 Ways To Become A Billionaire Don't Include Capitalism

(This image of the super-rich is from Current Affairs.)

Some billionaires are starting to whine about the possibility of Senator Elizabeth Warren becoming president. They would like you to believe that she would destroy our capitalist system. That's a lie.

Warren is a capitalist. She just believes in a capitalism that is fair to all segments of the economy -- not just the rich and super rich.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (pictured) addresses this claim of the billionaires. He tells the truth -- that those billionaires didn't get their wealth from competing fairly in a capitalist system. Instead, he lists five ways to become a billionaire, and none of them involve free enterprise.

Mr. Reich writes:

Billionaires are wailing that Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’s wealth tax proposals are attacks on free market capitalism. 

Warren “vilifies successful people,” says Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. 

Rubbish. There are basically only five ways to accumulate a billion dollars, and none of them has to do with being successful in free market capitalism.    

The first way is to exploit a monopoly.

Jamie Dimon is worth $1.6 billion. That’s not because he succeeded in the free market. In 2008 the government bailed out JPMorgan and four other giant Wall Street banks because it considered them “too big to fail.” 

That bailout is a hidden insurance policy, still in effect, with an estimated value to the big banks of $83 billion a year. If JPMorgan weren’t so big and was therefore allowed to fail, Dimon would be worth far less than $1.6 billion. 

What about America’s much-vaulted entrepreneurs, such as Jeff Bezos, now worth $110 billion? You might say Bezos deserves this because he founded and built Amazon.

But Amazon is a monopolist with nearly 50 percent of all e-commerce retail sales in America, and e-commerce is one of the biggest sectors of retail sales. In addition, Amazon’s business is protected by a slew of patents granted by the U.S. government. 

If the government enforced anti-monopoly laws, and didn’t give Amazon such broad patents,Bezos would be worth far less than $110 billion. 

A second way to make a billion is to get insider information unavailable to other investors. 

Hedge-fund maven Steven A. Cohen, worth $12.8 billion, headed up a hedge fund firm in which, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department, insider trading was “substantial, pervasive, and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry.” Nine of Cohen’s present or former employees pleaded guilty or were convicted. Cohen got off with a fine, changed the name of his firm, and apparently is back at the game.  

Insider trading is endemic in C-suites, too. SEC researchers have found that corporate executives are twice as likely to sell their stock on the days following their own stock buyback announcements as they are in the days leading up to the  announcements. 

If government cracked down on insider-trading, hedge-fund mavens and top corporate executives wouldn’t be raking in so much money. 

A third way to make a billion is to buy off politicians. 

The Trump tax cut is estimated to save Charles and the late David Koch and their Koch Industries an estimated $1 to $1.4 billion a year, not even counting their tax savings on profits stored offshore and a shrunken estate tax. The Kochs and their affiliated groups spent some $20 million lobbying for the Trump tax cut, including political donations. Not a bad return on investment.

If we had tough anti-corruption laws preventing political payoffs, the Kochs and other high-rollers wouldn’t get the special tax breaks and other subsidies that have enlarged their fortunes.  

The fourth way to make a billion is to extort big investors.

Adam Neumann conned JP Morgan, SoftBank, and other investors to sink hundreds of millions into WeWork, an office-sharing startup. Neumann used some of the money to buy buildings he leased back to WeWork and to enjoy a lifestyle that included a $60 million private jet. WeWork never made a nickel of profit. 

A few months ago, after Neumann was forced to disclose his personal conflicts of interest, WeWork’s initial public offering fell apart and the company’s estimated value plummeted. To salvage what they could, investors paid him over $1 billion to exit the board and give up his voting rights. Most other WeWork employees were left holdingnear-worthless stock options. Thousands were set to be laid off. 

If we had tougher anti-fraud laws, Neumann and others like him wouldn’t be billionaires. 

The fifth way to be a billionaire is to get the money from rich parents or relatives.

About 60 percent of all the wealth in America today is inherited, according to estimates by economist Thomas Piketty and his colleagues. That’s because, under U.S. tax law – which is itself largely a product of lobbying by the wealthy – the capital gains of one generation are wiped out when those assets are transferred to the next, and the estate tax is so tiny that fewer than 0.2 percent of estates were subject to it last year.  

If unearned income were treated the same as earned income under the tax code, America’s non-working rich wouldn’t be billionaires. And if capital gains weren’t eliminated at death, many heirs wouldn’t be, either.

Capitalism doesn’t work well with monopolies, insider-trading, political payoffs, fraud, and large amounts of inherited wealth. Billionaires who don’t like Sanders’s and Warren’s wealth tax should at least support reforms that end these anti-capitalist advantages.