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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.
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.
To them, poor is probably like just a few dozen million USD.
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!
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.
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).
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
THIS ARTICLE IS FROM 2015 A DECADE AGO IT HAS ONLY GOTTEN WORSE SINCE THEN
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.
So another way to look at it is that by eliminating a few thousand parasites, we can reshape our political landscape...
Just 158 examples
And this article is 10 years old. It has gotten so much worse.
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?
Whenever I see the 1% or 99% numbers when discussing wealth inequality, this fact is the first thing that comes to mind. We need to use decimal points to get to the real ones in power. 1% contains a lot of people who have money, but are still out of the loop as the rest of us, or as Carlin said, "not in the Club". They are millionaires, but like they say, the difference between a million and a billion is about a billion.
And that's US - many Americans are in the 1% in worldwide numbers, with rough income numbers being around half a million income. Again, they may or may not be comfortable depending on their expenses, but having money doesn't mean you have power. It's the .1 that is the beginning of that, and the .01 is moving the pieces for everyone.
(The numbers are just estimates, there's gray areas everywhere, the point is the top people want us to be yelling at the top middle and ignore what they do.)
Bingo. My entire circle is 1-5%ers, we are privileged and comfortable and not saying we're not part of the problem. But we're powerless. Start by eating the richest, by the time you get to me I'm going to guess there won't be a problem any more...
“Powerless”, but how many sets of guns/armor can your circle buy? 1000? 10,000? They’re still astonishingly poor and closer to homelessness or kidnapping to El Salvador than being rich. Better to pick a side in the class war, and doing nothing is picking oppression. Eating the rich also includes non-rich wealthy class-traitors.
Care to help payoff some of my medical debt?
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.
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
We should eat them all
They visit each others mansions so they can make sure they are still keeping up with the other billionaires.
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.
Should figure out where they live and protest on their street instead of burning down the local 7/11.
The only access to them is media in the backroom or private event held by rich asking what do you think of protests on main street because you can't get close to their property and if you can they are probably in another house
People snuck into a military airbase and spray painted an RAF plane the other day and got away with it.
Rich people get complacent. They're so proud of themselves, so fat and satisfied. They can't imagine that anyone like us would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food.
People snuck into a military airbase and spray painted an RAF plane the other day and got away with it.
They didn't get away with it (not yet anyway) - six people have been arrested:
BBC News
Two more arrests after break-in at RAF base
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjrln22e3w2o
The rich aren't accessible, but their property sure is awfully flammable.
Fuck scotus. John Roberts is the most damaging traitor in American history.
if the people went after the wealthy first, they could use the spoils to fund the revolution
Gotten worse since 2015.