Tag: billionaires
Billionaires Have More Wealth Than 60% of the World’s Population, Report Finds
A new report found that the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people, underscoring the degree of global inequality.
The Oxfam International study, released Monday and dubbed “Time to Care,” shows that the number of billionaires has doubled in the past decade. The authors add that these fortunes have largely been amassed while everyday people, especially poor women, continue to struggle.
“The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these,” Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar said in a press statement. “Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist.” Continue reading.
Robert Reich: There are only 5 ways to become a billionaire — and none of them involve being successful in free market capitalism
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.
View the complete November 11 article by Robert Reich on the AlterNet website here.
Why does everybody suddenly hate billionaires? Because they’ve made it easy.
When did “billionaire” become a dirty word?
Maybe it was when former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz dismissed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for higher taxes on fortunes of $50 million or higher as “ridiculous.”
Or when an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, laughed out loud at the suggestion that the super-rich should contribute more.
View the complete March 13 article by Roxanne Roberts on The Washington Post website here.
Visitor Logs Reveal Trump’s Swamp Of Billionaires
The following article by Chris RIotta with Newsweek was posted on the National Memo website November 24, 2017:
Wall Street billionaires, corporate lobbyists and far right conservatives flooded the White House almost immediately after Donald Trump’s presidential victory, newly released White House visitor logs reveal.
The White House was forced to release the list of visitors to five federal offices after the Washington transparency group Property of the People sued under the Freedom of Information Act. The searchable logs, published Tuesday by ProPublica, provide a glimpse into the creation of the president’s political agenda, spearheaded almost entirely by business interests, with little input from consumer advocacy or humanitarian groups. Continue reading “Visitor Logs Reveal Trump’s Swamp Of Billionaires”
It’s Time to Take America’s Billionaire Class Head On
The following article by David Morris was posted on the AlterNet website February 2, 2017:
Combatting defeatism may be our single most important psychological objective in the wake of the election. We need to revive the spirit embodied in Barack Obama’s vague but hopeful campaign slogan in 2008, “Yes We Can.” At the federal level this is a time to expose, to educate and to resist. But at the state and local level we can act proactively to fashion strategies that both embrace progressive values and directly benefit those who mistakenly voted for Donald Trump as an economic savior. This is the first in a series of pieces focusing on what can be done.
The Giveaway
Over the next 6-12 months Congress will almost certainly give the richest 1 percent of the population an income tax gift totaling some $75-150 billion. The 1 percent, with annual incomes averaging $1.3 million, will capture 47 percent of the tax cuts for an average annual tax saving of $214,000 each, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates based on Trump’s proposal, which does not differ dramatically from that of the House Republicans. Continue reading “It’s Time to Take America’s Billionaire Class Head On”