As someone that could probably best be described as center-left (guillotine oligarchs yes, UBI yes, abolition of private property and free markets no), I do dare say that not a single common person on the right likes the billionaires either. It’s just that their side of the political isle has been co-opted by the billionaires even worse than the “left” side because being anti-tax and anti-regulation is more useful to billionaires than pro-tax and pro-regulation.
These one or three pet billionaires have done a lot of image building to achieve this. They’re trying to be the “common man’s billionaire” and “just like us”. Musk spent a decade trying to appear like a nerdy engineer and when people started realizing he’s a shitheel, he pivoted to the “the elites are after me, it’s time for us to stop them together” shtick.
In general, the right (and I mean individual people, NOT politicians) hates billionaires almost as much as we do, but wrongly associates them with the left - but while it’s true that some billionaires are left-wing socially, they’re damn near all right-wing economically, because no billionaire is going to want to have less money.
Yeah the big issue is as you said. Ask someone on the right to name a bad billionaire. They will mention musk, bezos, Tim Cook, but probably only hating cook for being woke and money grubbing. The ones who pull the strings hide themselves. Nobody knows who they are they’re just CEO of x y z. There’s 750+ billionaires in the US, 15 in every state on average (though most of them are in cali, Texas, and ny). And they’ve spent a boatload of money getting very smart people to convince everyone they can that the problem is Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris. Tribalism is strong, and unfortunately people just lap it up.
There’s a bit like this in Daredevil. They’ve been tracing some shadowy acts back to Wilson Fisk, a horrible rich man nobody’s heard of. A top journalist is preparing an article on his actions based on circumstantial evidence.
Fisk, reading the situation and retaliating, opens a press conference introducing himself and voluntarily makes his name known to get on people’s good side.
Liberals worship Gates, and Soros. Liberals are not actually left, they are the poor imitation we get in the states. Gates and Soros have spent permits for them rehabilitating their image and the liberals are lapping it up.
I’ve never seen anyone worship Soros nearly as much as conservatives like to pretend. Gates was looked up to by a lot more people for a while, sure, thanks to his charity work, but let’s be honest here, he only does that to make himself more palatable and less likely to be guillotined. He was trying to hide the fact that he’s a gigantic asshole like any other billionaire. Cherry on top, it turns out he was buddy-buddy with Epstein too.
Private property ≠ personal property. Private property is mostly owned by businesses and corporations, not a person.
As we can see in the US, housing should never be private property, since the number of units that have sat empty for at least 12 months outnumbers our homeless population by a factor of over 70:1 counting all residential types (apartments, condos, duplexes.) If you only count single family detached homes, those still outnumber the homeless population by a factor of 30:1
Or, when someone says “abolish private property” they’re not talking about your toothbrush.
In this context, private property is the stuff you can use to generate capital. Personal property is your toothbrush, your phone, clothes, furniture, bike, car, house etc.
If you own a second house for rental income, that’s private property. The house you just live in is personal property.
Not all second homes are private property necessarily. If you work out of it then it’s personal property, like if you’re using it as a vacation rental and doing all the cleaning and maintenance yourself. If you hire someone else to do the work for you then it becomes private property. My preferred way of explaining the distinction is that private property is akin to absentee ownership, while personal property is stuff that is in active use by you personally.
if you’re using it as a vacation rental and doing all the cleaning and maintenance yourself. If you hire someone else to do the work for you then it becomes private property
Do you guys even listen to yourself? This makes zero sense.
Yes, they are. Because by destroying the market, you also destroy the toothbrush making machines, and kill the toothbrush makers. Have fun eating the rich, but don’t complain when they end up stuck between your theeth.
Capitalists can’t be ousted by asking nicely, that happens with revolutionary pressure. Since you can’t do step 1, UBI would only come alongside austerity measures as a way to “simplify government” and erode social programs. You also can’t translate that to nationalizing key industries either, let alone worker coops. We have hundreds of years of history telling us this.
Secondly, revolution isn’t “flipping the gane board and starting again,” it’s a wresting of control from Capitalists and establishing a new state owned and run by the working class, in its interests. Industry must be preserved and carried forward, and that doesn’t include immediately siezing all industry but doing so with respect to the degree that sectors and entities have developed and established effective internal planning, making markets less efficient vectors for growth and public ownership and central planning superceding it.
You also can’t translate that to nationalizing key industries either, let alone worker coops. We have hundreds of years of history telling us this.
I don’t agree with this. Worker coops exists in many places in Europe, and in said continent, some key industries are heavily controlled by the government.
In my country, Canada, we socialized healthcare without any revolution.
Down south, they had the labour movement that gave us the 40 hour week, the weekend and labour laws all throughout unionization and putting pressure on the capitalist class without “revolutionary pressure”, unless unionization is what you mean by revolutionary pressure. If so, then I agree.
You’re ignoring that these advancements in labor movements came as concessions from the bourgeoisie in the context of trying to prevent what happened in Russia from happening in Canada and the US.
I’m saying there is no actual basis for it being possible within the system, though, unless there is revolutionary pressure, and even then this is only temporary and still requires revolution. That’s why FDR’s safety nets are vestigial at this point.
Revolution isn’t the goal, but it remains the only proven tool.
There’s a funny hodgepodge of ideology here… “Guillotine oligarchs” sounds pretty cool, invokes the French Revolution, which was radical left, at the time. But then the unwillingness to abolish private property is either an erroneous conflation of “private” and “personal” or an unwillingness to actually change the system that produces the oligarchs.
It’s like bailing out the boat but when someone says “patch the hole” your like “but we need the hole!”
No, it’s more like I know we are not ready to have the patch the hole conversation.
I rather bail out the boat and during that time, when people slowly realize that these solutions work and have merit, and when people stop being scared of the word socialism, then it would be pragmatic to talk about patching the hole.
Before that, talking about patching the hole might actually be counter productive as most people don’t have critical thinking and would be turned off by “radical” solutions.
The biggest issue with implementing socialism today imo is people not realizing the solutions can be beneficial. I rather focus on socialists solutions that are “low hanging fruit” so people warm up to the idea.
Yes you have to consider who you’re talking to but I think a lot of us are ready to talk about patching the hole.
As a radical leftist I’m certainly not against bailing the boat, I just acknowledge that this is a temporary solution. Like, minimum wage needs to be high enough that people can work a reasonable number of hours, afford rent, and still have time to read Marx.
The minimum wage hike is still important, it’s just not the end game. If you’re saying you’re not interested in patching the hole, that sounds like a problem. If you’re saying “this hole won’t be patched for a while, but some day we’ll get there. In the meantime, bail like hell.” then, we are comrades.
Here’s a small set of proposals, definitely well thought of and not made up specifically for this comment to make a point:
Start taxing them heavily on wealth INCLUDING unrealized gains once it hits a threshold, but no wealth tax for normal people. Force companies to become either co-ops or publicly traded when certain thresholds are met - and if the founder has too much stock, the taxes on unrealized gains will force them to sell. But if it’s a co-op, don’t count anyone’s share in it as wealth for taxation, only any profit actually paid out by the co-op. My prediction is that companies with high profit per employee (think Steam) will become worker-owned co-ops and companies with lower profit per employee will be publicly traded (think Walmart, except of course Walmart is already publicly traded)
Essentially, I want people to be able to own property, but not own so much that it negatively affects everyone else - everyone should be able to have a primary residence tax-free and I don’t think it’s bad for someone to own a second home either, except that shouldn’t be tax-free. Hoarding property isn’t OK though - that affects everyone else’s housing situation. I don’t like the idea of the state owning all homes - I want there to be strong rules protecting me from being evicted because the state needs a factory built right where my neighbourhood is - but there SHOULD also be state sponsored housing for those who can’t afford their own homes, and they should be easily attainable, and built to a good standard.
I’m okay with people making a plentiful living from passive income off ownership in some company they built, I’m just not okay with it being so much that they make more in a year than the rest of us do in a hundred thousand.
Ultra high taxes on unrealized gains. There are no taxes on unrealized gains presently, nor a wealth tax. Which is why if his wealth increases 2x, his taxation… just does not, unless Tesla pays him dividends or a salary.
If Elon had to live with a, say, 99% tax rate on anything above a billion dollars and it included his Tesla stock not just money he has for real, he’d be forced to sell, or go to jail for unpaid taxes.
We used t have “progressive” income taxes where higher income paid more, but tax breaks have largely gone to the wealthy over the last half century. While we still have tax brackets, they top off much lower than they used to. More importantly we have a really complex tax code, where some people are able to use loopholes and exceptions, such that many wealthy people pay at a lower rate. Were effectively a “regressive” tax code now
I mean… If they’re forced to game the system so they stay just below the “rich” threshold all that extra money has to go somewhere besides their pocket.
You don’t fuck with the tax man. They got Al Capone, they’ll get you, and they’ll get the billionaires, if the laws are right and there’s enough funding to investigate ownership structures of large companies, and the relationships between different major shareholders.
Plus I don’t think anyone has hundreds of family members to hide away hundreds of billions.
Besides, you’d have to divide it before the company gets large enough for it to matter. If your company is worth 800 mill and you’re the only shareholder, selling off half to anyone for anything significantly less than the perceived value of the company, would be investigated as potential tax evasion.
I think a lot of people forget that tax authorities are supposed to look for these cases of hiding wealth. In many civilized countries, they do it for real.
You don’t see the difference between Al Capone, an open criminal who was known for peddling alcohol during prohibition (and probably a murder or three), and billionaires who have enough capital so that they’re basically under the jurisdiction of no individual nation? I’m not even talking about criminality, let’s take that element out completely… You still don’t see the difference between these people?
Also, you understand that the “taxman” is the IRS, right? And that Trump is going to pretty much defund them (probably leave just enough for him to target his perceived enemies).
We’re talking about an imaginary society where shit works and laws are moderately sensible, not 2025 USA.
If said billionaires have assets in other countries, it can be tracked via global anti tax evasion agreements. Even opaque countries are getting more transparent under pressure.
Because the current tax code is designed for him, not drag. That’s what I would like to change if I was elected benevolent dictator for life with no risk of being deposed by the oligarchs. For the super wealthy, tax all assets, for the super poor, tax nothing and give UBI, and for the working and middle class, a fair progressive income tax, and property tax on homes you don’t live in year-round, but none on your primary residence. In terms of income tax, the tax brackets would go up slowly at first and then ramp up really high. Someone making 100k a year should pay roughly what they pay now, those making less should pay less, and those making 500k+ a year should pay a lot more than they pay now.
We’re talking about a hypothetical future anyway, whether it be guillotining oligarchs, full on communism with no private property, or my proposed middle ground between the current shitshow and a total “no private property” totalitarian state. IRS could be pretty competent, but they lack funding, and the tax code itself is riddled with loopholes.
Out of any place the US government could invest, IRS has one of the better returns. You invest a dollar and get several back. Mostly from rich tax evaders
I commented on a politics@lemmy.world post about a bunch of CEOs of publicly traded companies endorsing Kamala Harris saying that it hurts her campaign more than it helps and I got downvoted and had people replying to me saying “um, actually most people look up to CEOs, you’re the one out of touch.” I’m feeling pretty vindicated rn.
Same goes for the Cheney support thing. Felt pretty out of touch to me and I’m not even an American so idk how I get it and the presidential candidate who 1) is American and 2) has a truckload of money being used for voter research, did not.
As someone that could probably best be described as center-left (guillotine oligarchs yes, UBI yes, abolition of private property and free markets no), I do dare say that not a single common person on the right likes the billionaires either. It’s just that their side of the political isle has been co-opted by the billionaires even worse than the “left” side because being anti-tax and anti-regulation is more useful to billionaires than pro-tax and pro-regulation.
Nah the right has one or three pet billionaires they outright worship.
These one or three pet billionaires have done a lot of image building to achieve this. They’re trying to be the “common man’s billionaire” and “just like us”. Musk spent a decade trying to appear like a nerdy engineer and when people started realizing he’s a shitheel, he pivoted to the “the elites are after me, it’s time for us to stop them together” shtick.
In general, the right (and I mean individual people, NOT politicians) hates billionaires almost as much as we do, but wrongly associates them with the left - but while it’s true that some billionaires are left-wing socially, they’re damn near all right-wing economically, because no billionaire is going to want to have less money.
Yeah the big issue is as you said. Ask someone on the right to name a bad billionaire. They will mention musk, bezos, Tim Cook, but probably only hating cook for being woke and money grubbing. The ones who pull the strings hide themselves. Nobody knows who they are they’re just CEO of x y z. There’s 750+ billionaires in the US, 15 in every state on average (though most of them are in cali, Texas, and ny). And they’ve spent a boatload of money getting very smart people to convince everyone they can that the problem is Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris. Tribalism is strong, and unfortunately people just lap it up.
On average…
There’s a bit like this in Daredevil. They’ve been tracing some shadowy acts back to Wilson Fisk, a horrible rich man nobody’s heard of. A top journalist is preparing an article on his actions based on circumstantial evidence.
Fisk, reading the situation and retaliating, opens a press conference introducing himself and voluntarily makes his name known to get on people’s good side.
deleted by creator
You don’t know Elon musk or the Koch brothers? There’s three off the cuff
Liberals worship Gates, and Soros. Liberals are not actually left, they are the poor imitation we get in the states. Gates and Soros have spent permits for them rehabilitating their image and the liberals are lapping it up.
And the center loves Buffet and Bloomberg
Billionaires have the US political system fully in the pocket
I’ve never seen anyone worship Soros nearly as much as conservatives like to pretend. Gates was looked up to by a lot more people for a while, sure, thanks to his charity work, but let’s be honest here, he only does that to make himself more palatable and less likely to be guillotined. He was trying to hide the fact that he’s a gigantic asshole like any other billionaire. Cherry on top, it turns out he was buddy-buddy with Epstein too.
For real? On top of Musk and Kochs, how about Miriam Adelson?
Private property ≠ personal property. Private property is mostly owned by businesses and corporations, not a person.
As we can see in the US, housing should never be private property, since the number of units that have sat empty for at least 12 months outnumbers our homeless population by a factor of over 70:1 counting all residential types (apartments, condos, duplexes.) If you only count single family detached homes, those still outnumber the homeless population by a factor of 30:1
The left is not pro “all private property abolished”. Only " all private property of the means of production "
Or, when someone says “abolish private property” they’re not talking about your toothbrush.
In this context, private property is the stuff you can use to generate capital. Personal property is your toothbrush, your phone, clothes, furniture, bike, car, house etc.
If you own a second house for rental income, that’s private property. The house you just live in is personal property.
Not all second homes are private property necessarily. If you work out of it then it’s personal property, like if you’re using it as a vacation rental and doing all the cleaning and maintenance yourself. If you hire someone else to do the work for you then it becomes private property. My preferred way of explaining the distinction is that private property is akin to absentee ownership, while personal property is stuff that is in active use by you personally.
Do you guys even listen to yourself? This makes zero sense.
How can I better explain it to you in a way you will understand?
Yes, they are. Because by destroying the market, you also destroy the toothbrush making machines, and kill the toothbrush makers. Have fun eating the rich, but don’t complain when they end up stuck between your theeth.
When you have no idea what you’re talking about, you should simply say nothing.
That’s called center left now? I thought that was far left.
Center left is what we used to have after WWII.
Far left is what we worked for during the labour movement. Or so I thought.
If you aren’t working towards the establishment of Socialism, you can hardly be called “far left.”
Getting rid of the oligarchs and implementing UBI would be the first step before you nationalize key industries and introduce worker co-ops.
Imo both above is what I call far left without the whole flip the game board and starting again, in my experience saying that really scares people.
Capitalists can’t be ousted by asking nicely, that happens with revolutionary pressure. Since you can’t do step 1, UBI would only come alongside austerity measures as a way to “simplify government” and erode social programs. You also can’t translate that to nationalizing key industries either, let alone worker coops. We have hundreds of years of history telling us this.
Secondly, revolution isn’t “flipping the gane board and starting again,” it’s a wresting of control from Capitalists and establishing a new state owned and run by the working class, in its interests. Industry must be preserved and carried forward, and that doesn’t include immediately siezing all industry but doing so with respect to the degree that sectors and entities have developed and established effective internal planning, making markets less efficient vectors for growth and public ownership and central planning superceding it.
I don’t agree with this. Worker coops exists in many places in Europe, and in said continent, some key industries are heavily controlled by the government.
In my country, Canada, we socialized healthcare without any revolution.
Down south, they had the labour movement that gave us the 40 hour week, the weekend and labour laws all throughout unionization and putting pressure on the capitalist class without “revolutionary pressure”, unless unionization is what you mean by revolutionary pressure. If so, then I agree.
You’re ignoring that these advancements in labor movements came as concessions from the bourgeoisie in the context of trying to prevent what happened in Russia from happening in Canada and the US.
I think we are splitting hairs.
I’m saying it’s possible within the confines of the system. In the US and Canada it was done by the confides of the system.
I’m good with having a revolution as the last resort, just not the first resort.
I’m saying there is no actual basis for it being possible within the system, though, unless there is revolutionary pressure, and even then this is only temporary and still requires revolution. That’s why FDR’s safety nets are vestigial at this point.
Revolution isn’t the goal, but it remains the only proven tool.
You’re thinking eu not us. Overton window shifts in the us
There’s a funny hodgepodge of ideology here… “Guillotine oligarchs” sounds pretty cool, invokes the French Revolution, which was radical left, at the time. But then the unwillingness to abolish private property is either an erroneous conflation of “private” and “personal” or an unwillingness to actually change the system that produces the oligarchs.
It’s like bailing out the boat but when someone says “patch the hole” your like “but we need the hole!”
No, it’s more like I know we are not ready to have the patch the hole conversation.
I rather bail out the boat and during that time, when people slowly realize that these solutions work and have merit, and when people stop being scared of the word socialism, then it would be pragmatic to talk about patching the hole.
Before that, talking about patching the hole might actually be counter productive as most people don’t have critical thinking and would be turned off by “radical” solutions.
The biggest issue with implementing socialism today imo is people not realizing the solutions can be beneficial. I rather focus on socialists solutions that are “low hanging fruit” so people warm up to the idea.
Yes you have to consider who you’re talking to but I think a lot of us are ready to talk about patching the hole.
As a radical leftist I’m certainly not against bailing the boat, I just acknowledge that this is a temporary solution. Like, minimum wage needs to be high enough that people can work a reasonable number of hours, afford rent, and still have time to read Marx.
The minimum wage hike is still important, it’s just not the end game. If you’re saying you’re not interested in patching the hole, that sounds like a problem. If you’re saying “this hole won’t be patched for a while, but some day we’ll get there. In the meantime, bail like hell.” then, we are comrades.
How make no billionaires if capitalists allowed to keep owning means of production? Allow to get rich, and then kill?
Here’s a small set of proposals, definitely well thought of and not made up specifically for this comment to make a point:
Start taxing them heavily on wealth INCLUDING unrealized gains once it hits a threshold, but no wealth tax for normal people. Force companies to become either co-ops or publicly traded when certain thresholds are met - and if the founder has too much stock, the taxes on unrealized gains will force them to sell. But if it’s a co-op, don’t count anyone’s share in it as wealth for taxation, only any profit actually paid out by the co-op. My prediction is that companies with high profit per employee (think Steam) will become worker-owned co-ops and companies with lower profit per employee will be publicly traded (think Walmart, except of course Walmart is already publicly traded)
Essentially, I want people to be able to own property, but not own so much that it negatively affects everyone else - everyone should be able to have a primary residence tax-free and I don’t think it’s bad for someone to own a second home either, except that shouldn’t be tax-free. Hoarding property isn’t OK though - that affects everyone else’s housing situation. I don’t like the idea of the state owning all homes - I want there to be strong rules protecting me from being evicted because the state needs a factory built right where my neighbourhood is - but there SHOULD also be state sponsored housing for those who can’t afford their own homes, and they should be easily attainable, and built to a good standard.
I’m okay with people making a plentiful living from passive income off ownership in some company they built, I’m just not okay with it being so much that they make more in a year than the rest of us do in a hundred thousand.
How’s public trading supposed to reduce wealth accumulation? Tesla is publicly traded but Elon still had enough money to buy and ruin Twitter.
Ultra high taxes on unrealized gains. There are no taxes on unrealized gains presently, nor a wealth tax. Which is why if his wealth increases 2x, his taxation… just does not, unless Tesla pays him dividends or a salary.
If Elon had to live with a, say, 99% tax rate on anything above a billion dollars and it included his Tesla stock not just money he has for real, he’d be forced to sell, or go to jail for unpaid taxes.
Why 99% and not 100%? Just to mock them.
Taxes. Tax anything over one billion at 100%
We used t have “progressive” income taxes where higher income paid more, but tax breaks have largely gone to the wealthy over the last half century. While we still have tax brackets, they top off much lower than they used to. More importantly we have a really complex tax code, where some people are able to use loopholes and exceptions, such that many wealthy people pay at a lower rate. Were effectively a “regressive” tax code now
How stop 999 millionaire from buying government and changing tax law?
Limit personally donations by law. Block corporate donations completely. Force donations into a central pool for equal distribution to the parties.
Over one billion? Way too fucking high.
I mean… If they’re forced to game the system so they stay just below the “rich” threshold all that extra money has to go somewhere besides their pocket.
Yeah, it’ll go to their friends and family.
You don’t fuck with the tax man. They got Al Capone, they’ll get you, and they’ll get the billionaires, if the laws are right and there’s enough funding to investigate ownership structures of large companies, and the relationships between different major shareholders.
Plus I don’t think anyone has hundreds of family members to hide away hundreds of billions.
Besides, you’d have to divide it before the company gets large enough for it to matter. If your company is worth 800 mill and you’re the only shareholder, selling off half to anyone for anything significantly less than the perceived value of the company, would be investigated as potential tax evasion.
I think a lot of people forget that tax authorities are supposed to look for these cases of hiding wealth. In many civilized countries, they do it for real.
You don’t see the difference between Al Capone, an open criminal who was known for peddling alcohol during prohibition (and probably a murder or three), and billionaires who have enough capital so that they’re basically under the jurisdiction of no individual nation? I’m not even talking about criminality, let’s take that element out completely… You still don’t see the difference between these people?
Also, you understand that the “taxman” is the IRS, right? And that Trump is going to pretty much defund them (probably leave just enough for him to target his perceived enemies).
We’re talking about an imaginary society where shit works and laws are moderately sensible, not 2025 USA.
If said billionaires have assets in other countries, it can be tracked via global anti tax evasion agreements. Even opaque countries are getting more transparent under pressure.
So how come Jeff Bezos pays less tax than drag does?
Because the current tax code is designed for him, not drag. That’s what I would like to change if I was elected benevolent dictator for life with no risk of being deposed by the oligarchs. For the super wealthy, tax all assets, for the super poor, tax nothing and give UBI, and for the working and middle class, a fair progressive income tax, and property tax on homes you don’t live in year-round, but none on your primary residence. In terms of income tax, the tax brackets would go up slowly at first and then ramp up really high. Someone making 100k a year should pay roughly what they pay now, those making less should pay less, and those making 500k+ a year should pay a lot more than they pay now.
So you’re describing a theoretical version of the IRS that’s a hundred times more competent than the real one? Interesting.
We’re talking about a hypothetical future anyway, whether it be guillotining oligarchs, full on communism with no private property, or my proposed middle ground between the current shitshow and a total “no private property” totalitarian state. IRS could be pretty competent, but they lack funding, and the tax code itself is riddled with loopholes.
Out of any place the US government could invest, IRS has one of the better returns. You invest a dollar and get several back. Mostly from rich tax evaders
I commented on a politics@lemmy.world post about a bunch of CEOs of publicly traded companies endorsing Kamala Harris saying that it hurts her campaign more than it helps and I got downvoted and had people replying to me saying “um, actually most people look up to CEOs, you’re the one out of touch.” I’m feeling pretty vindicated rn.
Yeah, I’m inclined to agree with you.
Same goes for the Cheney support thing. Felt pretty out of touch to me and I’m not even an American so idk how I get it and the presidential candidate who 1) is American and 2) has a truckload of money being used for voter research, did not.