#tax billionaires feed the world build schools

[arctic-hands]

I wonder how many scientists and artists, both of whom make the world pretty, we'd have if we eliminated poverty so no one would be forced to work and everyone, child and adult, had access to education

#capitalism #tax billionaires feed the world build schools #universal basic income #free college #my socialist utopia

[robertreich]

Trickle-Down Economics Doesn’t Work but Build-Up Does  -- Is Biden Listening?

How should the huge financial costs of the pandemic be paid for, as well as the other deferred needs of society after this annus horribilis?

Politicians rarely want to raise taxes on the rich. Joe Biden promised to do so but a closely divided Congress is already balking.

That’s because they’ve bought into one of the most dangerous of all economic ideas: that economic growth requires the rich to become even richer. Rubbish.

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once dubbed it the “horse and sparrow” theory: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

We know it as trickle-down economics.

In a new study, David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London lay waste to the theory. They reviewed data over the last half-century in advanced economies and found that tax cuts for the rich widened inequality without having any significant effect on jobs or growth. Nothing trickled down.

Meanwhile, the rich have become far richer. Since the start of the pandemic, just 651 American billionaires have gained $1 trillion of wealth. With this windfall they could send a $3,000 check to every person in America and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. Don’t hold your breath.

Stock markets have been hitting record highs. More initial public stock offerings have been launched this year than in over two decades. A wave of hi-tech IPOs has delivered gushers of money to Silicon Valley investors, founders and employees.

Oh, and tax rates are historically low.

Yet at the same time, more than 20 million Americans are jobless, 8 million have fallen into poverty, 19 million are at risk of eviction and 26 million are going hungry. Mainstream economists are already talking about a “K-shaped” recovery – the better-off reaping most gains while the bottom half continue to slide.

You don’t need a doctorate in ethical philosophy to think that now might be a good time to tax and redistribute some of the top’s riches to the hard-hit below. The UK is already considering an emergency tax on wealth.

Biden has rejected a wealth tax, but maybe he should be even more ambitious and seek to change economic thinking altogether.

The practical alternative to trickle-down economics might be called build-up economics. Not only should the rich pay for today’s devastating crisis but they should also invest in the public’s long-term well-being. The rich themselves would benefit from doing so, as would everyone else.

At one time, America’s major political parties were on the way to embodying these two theories. Speaking to the Democratic National Convention in 1896, populist William Jennings Bryan noted: “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”

Build-up economics reached its zenith in the decades after the second world war, when the richest Americans paid a marginal income tax rate of between 70% and 90%. That revenue helped fund massive investment in infrastructure, education, health and basic research – creating the largest and most productive middle class the world had ever seen.

But starting in the 1980s, America retreated from public investment. The result is crumbling infrastructure, inadequate schools, wildly dysfunctional healthcare and public health systems and a shrinking core of basic research. Productivity has plummeted.

Yet we know public investment pays off. Studies show an average return on infrastructure investment of $1.92 for every public dollar invested, and a return on early childhood education of between 10% and 16% – with 80% of the benefits going to the general public.

The COVID vaccine reveals the importance of investments in public health, and the pandemic shows how everyone’s health affects everyone else’s. Yet 37 million Americans still have no health insurance. A study in the Lancet estimates Medicare for All would prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths each year, while saving money.

If we don’t launch something as bold as a Green New Deal, we’ll spend trillions coping with ever more damaging hurricanes, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels.

The returns from these and other public investments are huge. The costs of not making them are astronomical.

Trickle-down economics is a cruel hoax. The benefits of build-up economics are real. At this juncture, between a global pandemic and the promise of a post-pandemic world, and between the administrations of Trump and Biden, we would be well-served by changing the economic paradigm from trickle down to build up.

#trickle-down economics #Trickle Down Economics #bidenomics

[berniesrevolution]

Food coops, housing coops, credit unions, and other such institutions are sometimes referred to as the “solidarity economy.” How do these institutions relate to working-class power? Do they offer working-class people some shelter or respite from capitalism? Do they perhaps even “create the new world in the shell of the old”? Nick Driedger and Eric Dirnbach, two veteran members of many institutions of the solidarity economy, debate these points.

Eric: We all noticed this recent article about the campaign for “postal banking,” where United States Postal Service branches would offer much-needed banking services for folks who lack access to bank accounts.  The USPS actually used to do this up until the 1960s, and other countries still have it. This would obviously be helpful for many low-income people, who are forced to pay high fees at check cashing stores, and of course Wall Street banks hate the idea because they don’t want the competition. Unfortunately, according to the article, the national credit union association allied with the banks to lobby against it, which was news to me.

Now, I’m a member of a credit union and a fan of the concept. Financial institutions owned and run by their members are a great alternative to handing over our money to the standard, capitalist banks and increasing their power over us. Credit unions are in principle more accountable to their members and their communities, and have policies that are much more progressive than banks. And yet they took this bad stance against postal banking, deciding to protect their turf, just like the capitalists.

This reminded me of the recent Organizing Work exposé about bad labor practices and union-busting at a number of food cooperatives. I’m also a fan of food coops and have been a member of several, and those practices are extremely disappointing. Another problematic example is the Mondragon coop network in Spain, which I think is really impressive, but also incorporates a second-class tier of international workers who are not member-owners and who have even gone on strike against the coop.  

Overall, these are examples of “solidarity economy” organizations behaving like capitalist enterprises. The solidarity economy can be described as a network of organizations and practices like worker coops, housing coops, community land trusts, food coops, credit unions, time banks, community gardens and other entities that are alternatives to capitalist businesses. A segment of the left, and I would include myself here, believes one strategy (along with others like union organizing) to help transition beyond capitalism is to grow this economy in opposition to capitalist practices and prefigure the better socialist world that we want. A hundred years ago they called this idea the “Cooperative Commonwealth.” But these examples of bad, non-solidarity politics undermine that ideal.

Nick: In the article you mention, we see an example of an arm of the United States government being called on to provide a new public service. The City of Cleveland specifically called on the United States Postal Service to provide banking services through post office outlets. These calls are also coming from grassroots campaigns among postal workers’ unions in the USA and Canada, who want the government to expand services, better serve rural communities and undercut payday loan companies, which are often the only way for many working people to cash their paycheques, at exorbitant rates.

I am a member of four different consumer cooperative businesses, and had my first job at one of them. The United Farmers of Alberta is an institution where I live. At one time, it was a political party, and for a number of years, a long time ago, it was the government of the province. I am a member and buy feed for my chickens and ducks there, and when I was sixteen they gave me my first job. It had benefits and clear hours and a job description. It paid head and shoulders above what most businesses in rural Alberta will pay a teenager.

I am also a member of my small town’s credit union. The manager of this credit union is a big player in the local United Conservative Party.  I pay my insurance through The Cooperators Insurance. The manager of this coop was our New Democrat (social democratic party in Canada) representative in the provincial government that just fell in Alberta a couple of months ago. In the past, I have voted for left candidates for the board at Mountain Equipment Co-op (a camping supply consumer coop popular in Canada) who wanted to push for stronger ethical purchasing guidelines and support the cause of Palestinian rights.

Cooperatives in Western Canada are political and there is politics inside of them. They are often on their local chambers of commerce, and there is both a left wing inside the cooperative movement as well as a very strong right wing.

Where I live, coops are also a part of the local history. My family in a Saskatchewan farming community have worked for generations at a consumer cooperative simply called “The Co-op,” which provides groceries and fuel in many communities. In many rural communities in Western Canada, no one would have electricity if not for early rural cooperatives. Later, government services followed, like Alberta Government Telephones (which was privatized in the 1990s). Often coops would establish services that would be picked up as public services later. The words “Cooperative Commonwealth” have a deep resonance with people and a history here. Even a lot of conservatives consider the history of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party) a history working people and farmers can be proud of on the prairies.

Eric: That is a fascinating history and I’d love to learn more about coops in rural areas. Clearly coops were organized over the years to meet the needs of rural residents. Agricultural supply and electrical coops are great examples of this. More modern examples are the internet service coops.

I’m more familiar with coops in an urban setting.  I’ve lived in my housing coop in New York City for about ten years and was just elected to the board, so I’ve been thinking about this place a lot. Morningside Gardens, with almost 1,000 apartments in six buildings, was founded in 1957 and has a pretty rich history of cooperative activity, with many committees, clubs and other organizations formed. Folks started a cooperative workshop for woodworking and ceramics, a nursery school and a retirement service in the 1960s, which are all still running.  The retirement service allows senior residents to age in-place and not have to move to a nursing home.

Members here have also been involved in community-issue organizing for decades, such as supporting local libraries, fighting for good subway and sanitation services, and campaigning for better local zoning to restrict luxury condos. Residents have formed several babysitting coops over the years. A theatre group was formed in the 1980s which still exists. In the last few years, several buildings have started a “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” mutual aid program, which is like an informal timebank where folks help each other with household tasks.

We had a food coop for over 30 years; that closed in the 1990s. I spent some time reading our old newsletters to learn about it and write up a history. The food coop members advocated for better consumer protection and product labeling laws in the 1960s and 1970s when the entire grocery industry was against more regulations. The coop also supported the United Farm Workers grape boycott and the Nestle baby formula boycott. In the 1960s, it started a credit union, which lasted for 15 years, so low-income members could have access to loans they couldn’t get at a bank. The coop also helped start at least two other food coops nearby, with funding and technical assistance. It made a small profit in most of its years and often returned a rebate to the members, thus keeping money in the community and out of the hands of a billionaire grocery boss.  And it was a union shop. One of my neighbors worked as a bookkeeper there in the 1970s and 1980s and still gets the union pension today.

All this seems really positive to me and was enabled to a large extent by the cooperative setting. Of course, some of this activity could happen in a similarly-sized apartment complex of renters, owned and managed by a landlord, but a lot of it wouldn’t. Bosses and landlords monopolize power, decision-making and wealth. Workplace and tenant unions fight to expand worker and tenant power, of course, but ultimately the boss or landlord still owns the property and extracts the surplus value and rent. The process of people running their own key institutions requires a lot of volunteer work, but this cooperation I think builds skills and confidence and creates more opportunities and the desire to work together on other projects.

Now, I don’t want to overstate the situation here; this isn’t Full Communism. Of course there have always been folks who see it as just a nice place to live and are less engaged in its internal life and politics. And capitalism has intruded on our utopia. The coop was “limited-equity” for decades, meaning that apartments were priced at below market value to keep them affordable. This was because our coop originally received tax breaks and other assistance arising from the 1949 Housing Act, which was intended to create affordable housing (and has a complicated history).  Then there was a contentious, long-running debate starting in the 1990s where a majority of residents voted to shift to market-rate pricing over time.  

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #worker cooperatives #democratic socialism

[greatbritishhumour]

I’m a Conservative voter

I’m a Conservative voter, I know what I don’t want.

I don’t want a 100% publicly owned NHS

I want parts of it sold to U.S firms.

I don’t want my child to receive a real education where more schools will be built enabling smaller classroom sizes.

I don’t want my child to have free university as I want them to be riddled with debt!

I don’t want myself to ever be on the property ladder, I like it’s too expensive to buy a new home.

I don’t want a fairer society, I like big corporations having all the power over me.

I don’t want the trains to be publicly owned, I like paying their extortionate prices, and I love their massive price hikes year on year while their standard of service gets worse!

I don’t want publicly owned water, I like funding fat cat business men for me having the pleasure to drink water.

I don’t want a factual unbiased media, I like being made a fool of by the media treating me with disrespect, I like to choose to spread falsehoods about anyone who goes against what the media says, I love giving my money to billionaire propaganda typhoon Rupert Murdoch.

I don’t want big businesses to pay their fair share of Tax, in fact I don’t want many of them to pay any tax whatsoever! I like That I have to pay my tax but the billionaires don’t.

I don’t want the elderly to be treated with dignity, I like the fact Social care is under funded and I can’t wait for the day I’m treated with no respect and no dignity.

I don’t want to receive a real fair living wage, I love struggling or if I’m doing well I like to see others struggling.

I don’t want my children to grow up as I did with out of school clubs and youth clubs, I love that pretty much all have closed! It’s great watching my children turn to knife crime & breaking the law!

I don’t want to be treated with respect by today’s youth, it’s great they are growing up in cultures that are breading antisocial behaviour.

I don’t want a Prime minister who isn’t racist, I like that Boris thinks of people as Letter boxes etc..

I don’t want Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister as I like everything above, I would hate to have more money in my bank, I like having to use food banks, and the best bit is watching how cold my children are when I can’t afford to heat our home! Oh and let’s not forget how much I love my children only getting to eat once a day at school dinner time, as I can’t afford to feed them again!

I don’t want the person above to live like me, I’m lucky enough to be well off! I like knowing there are people out there struggling, and I love knowing children in this country are living in poverty, it’s great that people know their place.

I don’t want to have properly funded Police, I love that the Tories took away 11000 police over 9 years and now trying to sell that they are giving you 10000 more police officers, stating it’s more not less, I love being gullible.

I don’t want more firefighters, I like that we have lost thousands of firefighters through retirement and not replacing them, it’s great to be at the Mercy of our underfunded fire service. but most of all I love the fact I’m not intelligent enough to go against orders by the firemen! when I was on the top floor of my burning building, I liked being terrified and I liked the fact I and many others died, if only I was like Jacob Rees-Mogg to have his intelligence and as he said common sense.

I don’t want the public to know how cash strapped we are as a fire service, it’s great when the government blames us when things go wrong, I love it when I’ve risked my life saving someone’s else’s life to hear the next day by the government we should have done better.

I don’t want people to know how over worked I am as a teacher, I like that children are being neglected by me as I just can’t give every child the attention they need, I need to concentrate on the more academic children so it looks good come sats time! I love that we know when OFSTED are coming, as usually we get 2 days notice so we can all run around like crazy people getting the school ready to fake our way to an Outstanding rating, its so funny how we work 2 days straight making our classrooms look how they should look all year round, I also love how we are told what to say to OFSTED by the Head, it’s so funny how miserable I am as teaching isn’t so much about the children but more about results, it’s got even worse since we became academies because now it’s more about business and keeping to the tight budget, it’s great not giving the children the learning resources they need so that the academy boss gets his juicy bonus! And lastly I love having to ask parents for donations due to lack of funding it’s fantastic!

I don’t want to reduce my working week to 4 days and get the same pay as 5, I like working so many hours I never see my family, I like working so hard and still at the end of the month I can’t afford to feed my children, I love love love having to use food banks!! I love the Tories so much for doing this to me :)

I don’t want to receive real mental health support, I don’t want it when I need it! I like waiting months to get a face to face appointment, I love that when I get my appointment I will be cured after 6 sessions, because that’s how many sessions the government gives me :)

I don’t want to see my GP on the same day I call them, I like having to wait 2 weeks to get an appointment!

I don’t want to vote labour as I don’t want fair pay, free NHS prescriptions, free university, free adult education, free childcare, £10 an hour, to see my Dr the day I ring, real mental health care, more police, more firefighters, no need for food banks, lifting children and families out of poverty, publicly owned NHS-Rail-Mail and water, youth clubs with mental health support by youth workers, going green to save our world, real infrastructure investment, I don’t want billionaires to pay tax, in fact Labour offer so much more amazing plans to make my life better that there is too much to mention, why would anyone vote Labour?I don’t want the Austerity to end, I like that it’s killed thousands of people.

What I do want is Brexit, nothing else including my children matter to me, I love all the above so much it’s worth more to me than anything, but I can’t give you a valid reason why.

Vote Conservative, Vote to make your life even worse, For the Few not the many.

#poverty #jc4pm #jeremy corbyn #austerity #votelabour @ #boris johnson #tory government #uk politics #politics #politik #nhs scotland #save our nhs #nhs #police #firefighter #lgbtq #elections

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/business/why-indias-rich-dont-give-their-money-away/

Why India's rich don't give their money away

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Mr Premji is now one of the world’s biggest philanthropists

Indian IT billionaire Azim Premji recently became India’s top philanthropist, sealing his place among the world’s top givers. But his generosity has put philanthropy in the spotlight in a country where charity does not appear to match wealth. The BBC’s Aparna Alluri reports.

With his recent pledge of $7.5bn, Mr Premji’s total philanthropic contribution now stands at some $1.45tn rupees ($21bn; £15.8bn). This puts him in the same league of givers – as philanthropists are called – as Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffet.

What perhaps distinguishes him even more is that, unlike them, he is not one of the world’s five richest people – the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks him at 51.

But the philanthropic world was not surprised at his new status.

“This is not unusual for him because he’s been the largest contributor in India and, even the continent, for some time,” says Deval Sanghavi, co-founder of Dasra, a strategic philanthropy firm. It works with some of the biggest donors in India, directing their money to various causes and non-profits.

In their universe, Mr Premji is a magnanimous “outlier”.

The 73-year-old software tycoon has been giving his wealth away for a long time. In 2013, he became the first Indian billionaire to sign the Giving Pledge, an initiative by Mr Gates and Mr Buffet that encourages wealthy individuals to pledge half their fortunes to philanthropy.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption (L-R) Bill Gates, Azim Premji , Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet during a press conference in Delhi

He was just 21 when he dropped out of Stanford University to join Wipro, a company his father started in 1945. (He went back and finished school in 2000). Under him, Wipro, a refinery for vegetable oils, grew into one of India’s biggest and most successful IT services firms.

An intensely private man, Mr Premji rarely speaks in public or to the media. Yet, over the years, his unusually modest lifestyle and his generosity have earned him many admirers. Stories about how he still flies economy, or how he has, on occasion, hopped into a rickshaw, impress many in a country that values frugality, especially among the rich.

News of his pledge came in a dry press statement issued by the Azim Premji Foundation and included no personal statement. According to one newspaper, he even asked “what’s all the fuss about” when he was told that the pledge was generating headlines and buzz on social media.

Mr Premji is not entirely alone in his generosity. IT billionaires Nandan and Rohini Nilekani have pledged 50% of their wealth to philanthropy; Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw committed 75% of hers; and many other families fund hospitals, schools, community kitchens, the arts and scientific research. All of them, like Mr Premji, are pledging their personal wealth, largely earned in their own lifetimes.

The Tata Trusts, endowed by the personal wealth and profits of one of India’s biggest and oldest conglomerates, has been India’s biggest philanthropic outfit for decades. It is only now rivalled by Mr Premji’s foundation, which funds education, healthcare and independent media among other things.

If you take into account all the money given away by ultra-rich donors (anyone who has given more than $1.4m) in recent years, Mr Premji accounts for 80% of it, according to a recent philanthropy report co-authored by Dasra. Take his contributions away and that amount drops by 4%, the report says. (And this is not including his March pledge).

Philanthropy is growing, says Mr Sanghavi, but it’s not growing fast enough. Private philanthropy in India grew at a rate of 15% per year between 2014 and 2018.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption The Premji Foundation works with government schools like these in northern India

The Dasra report sees this as “particularly problematic” since ultra-rich households have grown at a rate of 12% over the past five years and are expected to double in both volume and wealth by 2022.

Compared to the percentage of net worth given away in the US every year, the report estimates that India’s rich could give $5bn to $8bn more each year.

What is stopping them?

“There is a great fear of the taxman,” says Ingrid Srinath, director of the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy at Delhi’s Ashoka University.

“They [the rich] don’t want to end up on any radar or become the subject of more appeals for money.”

She believes another reason could be that wealth in India is still only one generation old, and those who have it don’t feel secure enough to give it away.

But Ms Srinath also cautions against wholly relying on the data as it is incomplete, making it “hard to say anything definitive about philanthropy in India”.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption IT billionaire Nandan Nilekani has pledged half of his wealth

There is no centralised directory tracking philanthropy in India. Tax laws are complex and there aren’t many incentives for giving. So reports, such as the one by Dasra, rely on multiple sources, from the government to third-party trackers to individual declarations.

And many people give anonymously, which further complicates estimates of philanthropy.

“It’s not considered cool to talk about how much you are giving,” Ms Srinath says. Ashoka University, she adds, was partly funded by some 100 donors, each of whom gave more than $1.4m but refused to be acknowledged publicly.

But Anant Bhagwati, one of the authors of the Dasra report, says that no matter how weak the data collection, large pledges are unlikely to fall through the cracks.

“If you look at those who have the money, they are not giving it,” he says.

Ms Srinath agrees: “The overwhelming sentiment is that we [Indians] could do better.”

Charity vs philanthropy

Mr Bhagwati doesn’t discount donors who fund individual universities or hospitals, but what Indian philanthropy needs, he says, is people who commit to solving a problem. And not just any problem – preferably, one of the daunting sustainable development goals or SDGs. These range from ending poverty and hunger to giving people access to clean energy.

Strategic philanthropy – which Dasra advocates – makes a distinction between charity and philanthropy. While the former might involve feeding the poor on a single day, the latter would require investing in non-profits that work to decrease or end hunger altogether.

By this measure, rich Indians might be charitable, but not enough of them are philanthropists.

Read more stories from India

More importantly, Mr Bhagwati says, philanthropy needs donors who will invest in the fight itself. By this he means pledges that don’t specify how the money is to be spent.

So, for instance, a non-profit that works to improve sanitation could use donor funds to build toilets, hire more people or even buy a laptop or other equipment that might make them more efficient. But most donors, Mr Bhagwati says, will set conditions about how they want the money spent. In other words, they will insist on the toilets being built.

He calls this “restricted giving” and says it’s hard to coax people to give any other way.

But some of this is changing. “Earlier you gave as much as you could and hoped something came of it,” Ms Srinath says, adding that earlier, most people wanted to fund education.

“Education is to Indian philanthropy what cricket is to Indian sport,” she says, laughing.

But now, she adds, Indian philanthropy is finally diversifying into areas beyond education – sanitation, mental health and scientific research.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Ms Mazumdar-Shaw has pledged 75% of her wealth for philanthropy

The biggest challenge has been the gap between what Mr Sanghavi calls “action and intent”. Some billionaires are just more willing to give their wealth away than others.

He says he has heard several Indian philanthropists, including the Nilekanis, speak of how they see themselves as “trustees” of their wealth, which, according to them, rightfully belongs to the larger community. That is, they believe they owe the world their wealth.

In a note explaining his decision to sign the Giving Pledge, Mr Premji said his mother was the “most significant influence” in his life and that he was also “deeply influenced by Gandhi’s notion of holding one’s wealth in trusteeship”.

Ms Srinath says philanthropists could be influenced by many things, from parents to community to faith. But generosity as a trait, she adds, is inexorably linked to a way of seeing the world and your role in it.

“It certainly has nothing to do with how much money you have.”

[enolareven]

Stop the arguments. Read a dictionary. Read the bible. (A letter to Republicans.)

Everyone else may as well pass over, because you already agree. Please do send this post to any Republicans or Trump Trolls you know or come across, because I put everything I could in here all in one letter.

Republican? Trump supporter?

So you think poor people are ‘takers’ or ‘leeches’.

To accept help or a gift is called ‘recieving’. As your business recieves money in exchange for goods and services. Sometimes, when you sell something, people give you money for other reasons than wanting your product, especially if you are in the entertainment business. They gave you the money...Did you leech or take it?

You think people should all work for themselves.

Do you really work? Did someone help you get where you are? Do you just sit around and extort money from people by owning their basic needs and charging ridiculous prices for it? Maybe your parents gave you a job, gave you free advice and education, gave you money? Not everyone had parents or money or access to education to begin with. It doesn’t make them lazy.

You think everyone should be independent.

I have heard that a Republican value is ‘less taxes’, ‘don’t touch what I earned’.

Why do all Republican politicians want to either raise taxes, or redistribute taxes into the military? What are we protecting so fiercely? A country where the sick, old, non-white, unmarried women, and born-poor can die on the street alone while rich cis-het white men spit on them? A country where veterans starve to death after returning from war? A country where teenagers are murdered at school for holding hands with someone of the same sex or wearing whatever non-offensive clothing they want? A country where men still regularly get away with rape scott free? A country where women are harassed and put down and verbally abused and told that their proper place is as someone’s sandwich and baby making machine?

Do you think you are ever really independent? You run a business....You depend on people buying your goods and services.

All of these people could be consumers. If you own apartments, low income housing brings your tax money back to you and supports them. If you own a grocery store, food stamps gives your tax money back to you and supports them. If you own hospitals, medicaid pays all of their expenses and supports them. If you’re in entertainment, welfare probably comes back to you and enriches their lives. You own hotels or travel companies? Those traveling business owners and workers have companies that are partially supported by these government programs. If you own a factory which produces any kind of goods... guess what? That cycle still applies to you.

The only people our next president wants to give back to are oil companies and weapon makers...one of which will be very likely become obsolete within my lifetime. He wants to make America suffer the Great Depression again. The cabinet is full of sick people who just want everyone to be like them, do what they say, and die otherwise.

Everyone has a right to life and fair treatment. You don’t like helping other people? I say tough shit. It’s the way it ought to be. Think any differently, and you have murderous ideals.

Families are ok taking care of sick blood relatives. Couples are ok taking care of a person they selected to commit to. Why should we not treat all disabled people like our grandfathers, brothers or sisters? What is wrong with our taxes supporting them? There is more than enough to go around.

Republicans are mostly bible thumping Christians....so...

READ THE BIBLE.

“Look at the flowers of the field- they neither till nor toil, yet every one of their needs is taken care of.” - Jesus Christ

He was saying that this is how God is. God takes care of everyone and provides for their needs.

“Love one another, as I have loved you.” - Jesus Christ

He was saying that to do as he has done, to provide for the poor and heal for the sick without asking anything in return, is the way into heaven. Their color, name they call God, and sexual recreational activities matter not. He didn’t say “except the poor, black, female, gay ,and muslim.”

Can you point out where it says in the bible “FUCK HELPING PEOPLE. Be selfish, keep what you’ve got and kick starving poor people off your huge ass lawn cause you don’t like looking at the color of their skin.”

If Jesus is the lord, why do you selectively listen to all the really terrible shit other people in the bible claim that they heard God say to them? Surely, if anyone burns in hell, it’ll be you, not the gay couple down the street.

Stop using the bible to defend your hatred and violent sadistic nature.

Lastly, I want to address the holier-than-though “I’m so logical’ type of Republican.

You think everyone owning guns will stop violent crime? If guns were easier to get, this would only INCREASE the ease of access to really fucked up people, dumbass. More people owning guns means more chances for bad people to steal those guns or to acquire those guns.

Democrats don’t necessarily want to send us back to all fighting with swords...they want guns kept inaccessible to civilians so only police and military can use them to protect us. Tell me one other place in the world where all people having access to guns has made for a more peaceful and safe society. You’re just an neurotic, obsessed gun nut who doesn’t feel confident enough in fighting off attackers with his fists.

As for the welfare crap...Welfare isn't taking anything away from anyone who needs it. That’s the whole point! It gives to people who need it. What the crap are you crying about? HOW THE HELL IS WELFARE DESTROYING OUR ECONOMY??? YOU’LL HAVE ONE LESS MOVIE TICKET PER YEAR SO A POOR FAMILY CAN HAVE FOOD? OH, SOB. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT PAYING TAXES. TAXES ARE FAIR AND WELFARE TRIES TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE HAS ENOUGH TO LIVE. If you have no issue with giving your tax money to building more totally unnecessary rockets and bombs, but you do have an issue with it feeding a ‘gross family of disgusting lower class colored people’ or ‘providing health care for some loathesome sodomite’ or protecting the planet which you live on and depend upon, Then you are fucked up, & downright stupid.

I love that we have taxes that take care of people. I love that the government does this. I love that there are doctors, nurses, psychologists, Christlike pastors, elder caretakers, food and clothes closets, Planned Parenthood, LGBT centers, people who dedicate their lives to helping others. I love this because it makes my work easier. It makes my life easier. I don’t to take time to help individual people constantly, and with more toward the right things it would leave less panhandlers on the street, less odor of people who are mentally handicapped and have no place to bathe, less sad sights of violent hate crimes...more educated people all over the country, more happy people. More people with money to spend, and therefore more beautiful variety and diversity in art, music, fashion, and even food. I would have been so happy if Bernie Sanders had become president and increased the tax percentage, taking away one small luxury from those who have them. And I will happily pay my taxes and donate money to charities should I ever become a billionaire. Fuck Trump, I look up to REAL successful businessmen like Bill Gates...Mark Zuckerburg (who even though I thing said some very twatty things, has given millions away to San Francisco’s only low-income hospital and pledged 99% of his stock to be given towards scientific advancements of humanity), and Michael Bloomberg (Who gave millions to help wean people off of coal energy.) Guys who didn’t go bankrupt 6 times and have recognizable names to pretty much everyone in the world before 2016, and actually paid their taxes.

I am far from a billionaire, in fact, I am below poverty level. I still donate 1% of my yearly income to people even less fortunate than me. Whatever I can spare.

If you are a Christian, you should have heard about tithing.

This is the deplorable sack of shit you voted for:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/for-years-trumps-charity-gave-veterans-little-more-than-peanuts/article/2000776

#democrattorepublican #politics #socialist #socialism #republican #trump #republicans #makeamericagreatagain #berner #feelthebern #america #2016election #usadivided #political #economics #economy #weareone #united states #weareconnected #lesson #thisishowlifeworks #jesus #jesusislove #godislove #christian #christianity #bible #readthebible #belikechrist #whatwouldjesusdo

[thisdaynews]

Tech’s woke CEO takes the stage

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/techs-woke-ceo-takes-the-stage/

Tech’s woke CEO takes the stage

The mid-October appearance was some Washingtonians’ first introduction to Benioff, a man who’s taking up space on a lot of stages these days. And his message — lambasting his own industry’s hunger for growth at all costs, comparing Facebook to the tobacco companies, proclaiming the death of capitalism “as we know it” — is drawing notice among political leaders hungering for a Mark Zuckerberg alternative.

On Thursday, the onetime Republicaninterviewed former President Barack Obama on stage in San Francisco, where Benioff’s company lured an estimated 170,000-plus people to a four-day conference that shut down streets in part of the city. Benioff has also become a yearly fixture at the elite business-and-celeb confab in Davos, Switzerland, including an appearance last year where he called out Uber as an example of tech companies that sacrifice the trust of their employees and users at the altar of growth.

Other tech CEOs, like Facebook’s Zuckerberg, appear to shrink in the political spotlight. Benioff seems to expand — fedora-wearing, 6-foot-5, human, sometimes a little sweaty around the margins. (In his new book, he likens himself to a “giant.”) He’s a politically skilled chief executive in an industry whose leaders often appear diffident and tone-deaf during their forays to Congress or the White House.

But to hear him tell it, Benioff is still a stranger in the buttoned-down nation’s capital, with no political aspirations beyond trying to make the world a more equitable place. He says he’s more at home in Hawaii, where he has an estate. Or in his native San Francisco, where his 61-story Salesforce Tower looms over the city’s horizon, the second-tallest building west of the Mississippi.

“I feel like when I go to Washington, D.C., it’s like going to another planet,” he says by phone in the days leading up to the trip. This, even though he once held a tech advisory post in the George W. Bush administration and co-owns Time magazine with his wife, Lynne.

“I’m not a Republican or a Democrat,” says Benioff, who indeed gave more than $1.2 million to both parties in the past two decades before swearing off all campaign contributions earlier this year. (Donations to Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Jay Inslee, as well as House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, made it in under the wire.)

He adds, “I view myself very much just as an American” — one committed to using whatever platform he can to imprint the social-justice values that have, for two decades, powered Salesforce to enormous success.

“That’s what I’m doing every day,” Benioff says. “Leading with those values.”

What drives Benioff? To hear him tell it, as a young, disillusioned Oracle executive on an obligatory trip to an Indian ashram, he came to see that success in the business world was worthwhile only if married to improving the world, and he’s since dedicated his enormous fortune — some $6.9 billion by one recent count — to proving the point.

Others say that as the fourth generation of his family to grow up in San Francisco, he’s become angry over what he’s witnessed the tech industry do to his city.

Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from Silicon Valley who has received Benioff’s backing, describes him as the rare tech executive who sees his worldly success not simply as the product his own creativity but of a system that deemed him a winner while leaving scores of other behind. That, says Khanna, has made Benioff an “iconoclast” among the billionaire class. It has also made him the target of quiet ire in the tech industry, often organized along the lines of,well, it’s easy for Marc Benioff to say.

Plenty of tech executives talk about making the world a better place; few throw their whole bodies into it. Asked if religion is motivating him, he responds: “No, this is just modern values. And, you know, I’m trying to improve the world using my platform. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

The short version of Benioff’s modern values: People should have a place to live, a good education in a safe school, good health care and a clean environment, and not face discrimination for their sexual orientation or gender. And one way to get there, he argues, is for corporations to do right by not just their shareholders but their customers, their employees and the whole planet.

Perhaps no slice of the corporate world needs to hear that more, he suggests, than Silicon Valley, even if that kind of talk alarms his fellow business elites. (CNBC accused him of delivering a “tirade” after he criticized Uber’s corporate leadership last year in Davos.)

Capitalism, argues Benioff, should hurt capitalists a bit. It should cost something. Salesforce has since its founding given 1 percent of its products, equity, and employee time to philanthropy. “From Day One he’s recognized that business has a broader purpose,” says Steve Case, the AOL co-founder turned East Coast venture capitalist who has known Benioff for decades.

Benioff is willing to chip more than just cash and time into nailing that purpose. Take, for example, his Twitter feed and its 1 million followers, which Benioff tapped in 2015 to point out that Salesforce is a major employer in Indiana, a state which at the time was adopting a so-called religious freedom law widely judged to be anti-LGBT. Benioff threatened to pull business from the state, and former Gov. Mike Pence relented, arguing that the statute was misunderstood. Pence pushed through changes to blunt the law’s impact. “I was very appreciative,” Benioff says of Pence’s change of heart.

Benioff has had his vision for a new kind of capitalism for decades — he’s been tech’s “woke” CEO since before “woke” was a thing. But admirers now see him becoming Silicon Valley’s seer, offering a clear view of how the industry that made him rich is heading off a cliff.

Take equal pay. Back in 2015, in the early days of the debate over gender differences in Silicon Valley compensation, Benioff ordered a review of Salesforce salaries. “I had always thought I was more progressive on gender equality than most male technology executives,” Benioff writes in his new business-tome-slash-memoir “Trailblazer.” “Now I was about to get the chance to prove it.” He spent $6 million to close the gap it found.

Or online privacy. In the spring of 2018, Benioff began praising California’s move to adopt a law reining in companies’ use of data, then turned around and called, in the pages of POLITICO, for Silicon Valley to get behind a drive for a federal privacy bill. The industry would eventually rally for national legislation of the sort Benioff was pushing — in large part to defang the California law.

Or homelessness.Last year, Benioff poured millions of his and Salesforce’s money into a fight to tax San Francisco’s biggest companies to fund programs for the homeless. Other tech leaders opposed the ballot measure, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who said he worried it would hurt innovation and noted that prominent local leaders didn’t back the plan. Benioff shot back a sassy note — “Hi Jack. Thanks for the feedback. Which homeless programs in our city are you supporting?” — and was on the winning side when the measure passed.

Benioff’s politics are winning him an intriguing collection of admirers, including Ed Norton, the actor and tech investor who, completely unprompted, praised Benioff on a recent podcast. It’s “very impressive [for] a major corporate leader to be in the world saying, ‘We cannot have capitalism that continues to be defined by shareholder value,’” the “Motherless Brooklyn” filmmaker said of Benioff.

Tech skeptics are also taking note.

Benioff’s shining light on policy debates “changes the conversation and puts a little wind in the sails of people who are fighting every day for these things, but don’t nearly have the power or platform that he does,” says Catherine Bracy, executive director of the advocacy group TechEquity Collaborative, which is attempting to rally tech workers to address the Bay Area’s economic woes.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican of Tennessee and one of the tech industry’s most outspoken critics on Capitol Hill, called Benioff’s pitch for federal privacy legislation “spot on.”

Jim Steyer, CEO of the nonprofit Common Sense Media — which co-runs a “Truth About Tech” campaign to warn of the dangers of social media — says, “This is the time when, on the impact of tech on society, we’re asking, ‘Which side are you on,’ and Marc is on the correct side.” (Benioff has helped fund Steyer’s group. Says Steyer, “I don’t shill for anyone.”)

And Benioff’s call to split up Facebook — “It’s addictive, it’s not good for you, they’re trying to hook your kids” — wins him praise from David Segal, executive director of the civil liberties group Demand Progress: “I’m happy to praise just about anybody for coming to the conclusion that Facebook needs to be broken up.” Matt Stoller, one of Silicon Valley’s most relentless adversaries in Washington and a fellow at the Open Markets Institute, said of Benioff that his “arguments of late seem to be correct.”

Of course, Benioff also has his critics who, while largely insisting on speaking off the record, say he’s operating from his own place of privilege: With monthly user fees turning Salesforce into a cash-generating behemoth, it’s easy for him to beat the drum for higher taxes or beat up on the data-driven advertising that fuels a Facebook or Twitter. Also, they say, he talks about cultural respect, but he makes use of native Hawaiian imagery — he calls Salesforce employees collectively “ohana,” a Hawaiian word that roughly translates to “kin.”

What’s more, they grumble, when push comes to shove, Benioff’s insistence that Salesforce be used for “ethical” purposes can be situational. Last year, about 650 of Salesforce’s own employees asked Benioff to “re-examine” a contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Benioff reported back that the agency was, acceptably, using the software for recruitment — not enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, which he called immoral. Asked about the relationship with Customs, Benioff says little beyond noting that “they are a Salesforce customer.”

Benioff says he’s on a lifelong journey of cultivating shoshin, or the Zen Buddhist concept of “beginner’s mind” — learning as he’s going along, in politics as in all else.

Benioff says he’s hardly a politician, and won’t become one, but that he frequently has reason to mix it up with the likes of them.

“We’re working to move the world towards our position,” says Benioff. “They’re working on moving the world to theirs.” Coming out of the mouth of another tech CEO, that might sound like a complaint. Coming from Marc Benioff, it sounds like a perfectly happy place to be.

Read More

#Foreign #Politics #stage #takes

[coin-news-blog]

Government Hates Crypto Because It Empowers the People, Not Because It’s Used for Crime

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/government-hates-crypto-because-it-empowers-the-people-not-because-it-s-used-for-crime

Government Hates Crypto Because It Empowers the People, Not Because It’s Used for Crime

Government Hates Crypto Because It Empowers the People, Not Because It’s Used for Crime

A recent article from MIT Technology Review has leveraged a somewhat sensationalist headline to stir up fear about bitcoin and crypto. The article, written about a “hidden” government weapon to be deployed against Bitcoin, references September 3 senate subcommittee testimony by Washington D.C. consulting firm Financial Integrity Network. In the testimony, Vice President of the firm David Murray calls for the Bank Secrecy Act to be expanded to include regulating bitcoin miners as traditional financial institutions. With the U.S. dollar already backing most crime worldwide, one is left to wonder why so much focus is directed at crypto, and so little at the largest perpetrators of violence on earth — governments.

Sordid Affairs at MIT

While the MIT publication drums up fear of unfeasible regulation of bitcoin miners via an almost 50-years-old “hidden weapon,” things at the crypto-involved Massachusetts Institute of Technology aren’t looking so regulated, either. Last week’s resignation of head of the MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, follows the revelation that he had been secretly accepting huge donations from then-convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested for additional charges of sex trafficking of minors in July, and reportedly killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell on August 10.

MIT is conducting an internal review of the Epstein matter, which could be connected to donations from such influential tech-savvy billionaires as Bill Gates. The school has a history of taking underhanded jabs at disruptive and subversive tech like Bitcoin, and remaining tellingly silent when human rights activists are put on the spit of government persecution, or when ties with brutal, U.S.-supported dictatorial regimes like Saudi Arabia are concerned. In a joint-authored MIT Media Lab-connected piece published to The Atlantic in 2016, the writers state:

The [bitcoin] cryptocurrency is a powerful tool for early adopters and middle-class entrepreneurs, but it may not provide the opportunities in the developing world that its advocates claim.

That’s fair enough, and at face value a pretty innocuous and possibly substantial claim. But the Bitcoin critical hint-drops continue throughout the piece, suggesting to readers that they “dig into the ways mobile money is embedded in new, networked systems of control and value enclosure, as opposed to being a purely grassroots phenomenon for social inclusion.”

Tellingly, the url for the piece includes the word “hype” and the original title, prior to being edited, was “The New Bitcoin Myth.” For anyone that can read between the lines here, The Atlantic piece is an attempted attack on the utility of crypto and its revolutionary potential, coming from a massively government-funded university. According to a 2017 letter from MIT president L. Rafael Reif:

Congress will shape the final terms. But because we rely on federal funding for 66% of our campus research support, we must take this “blueprint” seriously, for both what it says and what it signals.

The Atlantic has since changed the title of the 2016 MIT-penned crypto hit piece to “Can Bitcoin Be Used for Good?”

Indeed, the block size limitation critiques made in the article are valid, but that was 2016, prior to the BCH fork remedying this issue. Even the sometimes lagging transactions of that time didn’t make legacy services truly better, anyway, and for someone looking to escape the anvil-heavy shackles of the fiat banking racket, BTC still held great utility. The MIT/Atlantic piece promotes fiat transfer services over crypto alternatives, and takes aim at so-called “Bitcoin do-gooders.” At the end of the day, it reads a lot like any other crypto faux intelligentsia screed.

True Power Through P2P

In the crypto space, seeing which altruist can shout the loudest about adoption and inclusion is the norm. But prattling on about government regulation helping to mainstream crypto, or stablecoins like USDC helping to “bank the unbanked” is largely fruitless when it comes to real world application. One voice is noticeably underrepresented here: that of the simple peer-to-peer trader.

What the aforementioned MIT secret weapon piece fails to note is that crypto can indeed already help anyone. If the banks would get out of the way, and with them, the state. Thanks to ever-increasing regulations designed by global groups like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), tax agencies like the IRS, and government talking heads or financial regulators, the “unbanked” still cannot access these revolutionary technologies freely.

News.Bitcoin.com pointed out in a recent article on stablecoins that even access to the services supposedly tailor-made for the unbanked can require bank account information. A simple wallet, internet connection, and willing market is all that is truly required. So why do governments seek to complicate crypto? Maybe they’re not so much concerned with human trafficking and terrorism, after all, but more with maintaining control of the global money supply.

The Crypto Revolution Is Now

If politicians and lawmakers of the world truly want to help abused children, impoverished people, and victims of all sorts of other crimes and violations of humanity, they should turn the camera — and the handcuffs — back on themselves. Demanding that the unbanked and financially struggling of the world first pass through impossible KYC drawbridges, treating everyday P2P traders of crypto as criminals, and gaslighting an entire movement based on actions the government itself is more guilty of than anyone else — like murder, sex abuse, trafficking, and terrorism — perhaps it’s time to let the free market and local communities regulate themselves. This can be, and is currently being done in spite of the prevailing evil paradigm, via the understanding of individual self-ownership and economic sovereignty.

Eat BCH is a bitcoin cash initiative helping to feed people in Venezuela and Africa.

Wonderful charities and aid initiatives for helping the underprivileged of the world directly, already exist. Eatbch, for example, is a “Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash-to-Food System” that collects BCH donations to feed hungry people in economically struggling regions of the world. A member of the South Sudanese team reported to Bitcoinafrica.io:

We started the charity part-time on weekends in the capital, Juba, in our neighbourhood and then expanded to some of the most affected areas by the conflict, such as the town of Yei or Bor. There, we were able to feed over 500 internally displaced people, mostly elderly and children. We were able to do that through our colleagues whom we trained after coming back from the blockchain conference.

Other notable crypto-friendly initiatives include Airdropvenezuela, Coins 4 Clothes, and EFF. Beyond organized efforts, though, the real revolution of peer-to-peer electronic cash is individual financial sovereignty. The more wealth everyday individuals can build, the better they can help themselves, their communities, and grow their visions for making the world a better, more free and humane place. This is something no centralized government can ever do, as the intimate, one-on-one relationships and knowledge held by private individuals in community with one another can not be “processed” or formalized by monolithic, inefficient, violence-based institutions like the state.

The reason that so many crypto regulations are being introduced while governments evade scrutiny for the very same crimes is simple: their money is not sound. Not even conceptually. Bitcoin is. If critical mass is reached, and everyday folks realize that economic sovereignty is possible, it’s game over. The Monopoly board will have to be folded up, and the sulking bullies sent home. It’s highly unlikely they’ll go without a fight.

Source: news.bitcoin

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

Billionaire Harald McPike Wanted To Orbit Moon, But Ended Up In Court

http://tinyurl.com/y52yynkl McPike had bought not a seat but “an opportunity” to be part of a potential mission, said lawyers. Harald McPike had been to the North Pole. The South Pole. Climbed the tallest peak in Africa, the volcano that is the highest point on Earth and the mountain that’s not Everest but gives you a great view of its deadly face. What was left? He wanted to hit the moon with a tennis ball. So when the northern Virginia company Space Adventures told McPike he could get into lunar orbit for $150 million, the Bahamas-based, Austrian-born billionaire trader put down a $7 million deposit. Five years later, McPike has settled a lawsuit against entrepreneur Eric Anderson’s company after spending two years in litigation trying to get his deposit back. McPike’s not going around the moon. When any private traveler might do so is unclear. The lawsuit in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, shows how precarious the world of commercial space travel is, in which customers hoping for the ultimate exclusive vacation fund technological projects both uncertain and extremely expensive. In litigation, lawyers for the company said McPike had bought not a seat but “an opportunity” to be part of a potential mission. “It is an undeniable fact that the Russians have never sent a man around the Moon and that the U.S. had not done so in forty years,” they wrote in one filing. Space Adventures declined to comment for this story. In one court hearing, an attorney for the company said it is “not in the business of litigating, they’re in the business of getting people to space.” Unlike Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures is not trying to build its own tourist rockets. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The company contracts with the Russian government, which uses investments from tourists to modernize. NASA also buys seats on Russian rockets. But Anderson, the co-founder and chairman, is the first and only entrepreneur to successfully send tourists – seven of them – to the International Space Station. He set out to be the first to get them to the moon. Anderson has founded several other companies, with mixed success. Planetary Resources, an asteroid-mining project, floundered before being bought last year by a blockchain company. Planetary Power, which aimed to bring hybrid generators to places off the electric grid, folded. Former board members of Space Adventures – now part of a company called Zero-Gravity Holdings – have complained that Anderson kept investors in the dark. One shared with McPike emails airing concerns about lack of access to contracts and other information. In one 2013 email, highlighted by McPike, a Space Adventures attorney said he couldn’t provide the company’s contract with Russia for the “lunar voyage” because it did not yet exist. In court filings, Space Adventures went after McPike’s character, suggesting McPike was no naive adventurer but a gambler trying to weasel his way out of a binding contract. In the words of McPike’s own lawyers, they painted him as “a fashion model-chasing, tax-evading billionaire.” McPike acknowledged under questioning by Anderson’s attorneys that he had been kicked out of 20 to 50 casinos for card-counting at blackjack, which is how he made his first few hundred thousand dollars. He disputed assertions by Anderson’s attorneys that he had moved to the Bahamas to avoid taxes. In one court filing, Space Adventures called “cringe-worthy” McPike’s “record of personally conducting ‘casting calls’ for aspiring Eastern European models,” while promising it was not likely to come up at trial. McPike’s lawyers countered in their filings that Space Adventures spent an “embarrassing amount of time” focusing on his “irrelevant interactions with fashion models.” McPike himself thinks Space Adventures should be cringing. “I’m not embarrassed that I live in the Bahamas, that I counted cards when I was a young man, or for anything else,” he said in a statement. “I would be embarrassed if I ran a business that misled its customers and then tried to publicly humiliate them to distract from what’s really going on.” He filed a flurry of motions to keep his personal life out of the trial that nearly took place this spring. The relationship between McPike and Space Adventures didn’t start like this. In 2012, he contacted the company through its website and set up a meeting in the Bahamas. He signed up. They began talking logistics. “There was a proposal that he hit a tennis ball to the moon which was ridiculous and rejected, I think, immediately,” Space Adventures employee Andrew Mart said in one deposition. “But Mr. McPike is – is an avid tennis player and, so, I thought if it was possible, it would be interesting. . . . I believe we – we discussed some rocket propelled devices but anything that was flammable was – was a concern.” Peter Wirth, a fellow Bahamas-based financier, has traveled the world with McPike. His friend climbed Lhakpa Ri in the Himalayas with a knee injury, calmly huddled in a tent for 48 hours during an Arctic storm and slept on top of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. McPike and his ex-wife started the world’s “first traveling high school” so their son could see the world. (Tuition: $85,500 a year, though there are scholarships.) “He just wanted to go to into untested waters – it was always a dream of his,” Wirth said. “There’s not many places where no one has been before.” McPike met with representatives of the Russian space agency in southern Kazakhstan, where the rocket would launch. But he started having doubts and asked that he keep making multimillion-dollar payments only if certain targets were met. An attorney for Space Adventures said in court that McPike was “not the first space flight billionaire who’s thought of that.” But in space, he said, “You have to pay as you go, you don’t get your money back, and nothing is guaranteed.” The contract did say that if the Russians didn’t launch, McPike would get most of his money back – just not his initial deposit. McPike started questioning the terms of the agreement, especially after a 2014 Moscow Times article in which an official from Russian space agency Roscosmos expressed unawareness of the circumlunar project and disputed the agency’s involvement. “This was an incredibly tumultuous time within the Russian space industry,” Anderson said in a deposition. But, he said, he was confident that “we had the relationships.” McPike was unconvinced by Space Adventures’ reassurances, particularly because he had been told he could get to the moon in six to eight years. A diabetic in his 60s, he worried that if it took any longer, he wouldn’t be healthy enough for space travel. He stopped making payments, and Space Adventures canceled his contract. Starting in 2017, two high-priced legal teams fought over the deposit. “There’s $7 million at stake,” Judge T.S. Ellis pointed out in one hearing. “I don’t know about you all personally, but big-time lawyers, and you guys are, all of you, would not take long to rack up at least half of that amount or more. Now, Mr. McPike is alleged to be a billionaire, but he didn’t get there because he’s stupid. . . . People who care about making a lot of money typically don’t want to throw it away.” What the two sides ultimately decided is unclear. The settlement finalized in April is sealed; each side agreed to pay its own legal costs but would not comment further on whether money changed hands. Space Adventures is still pursuing its planned moon trip. On its website, the company promises that “if you chose to join this Circumlunar mission you will see the illuminated far side of the Moon, and then witness the amazing sight of the Earth rising above the surface of the Moon.”  (This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) 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[solaris444]

a conspiracy

There has been a conspiracy by the elites (the wealthy, the owners of industry, the bourgeoise.) through the GOP to control the government to their own interests rather than the interests of the masses. 

“The general population doesn’t know whats happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know” -Noam Chomsky

This is not a partisan issue, that is a distraction. The parties are irrelevant, but the GOP maintains its voter base not through doing better for their constituents or listening to them, but by appealing to their fear and nostalgia, and lying to them. If you grow up in America you are fed lies and propaganda, taught to memorize half truths or misleading facts for Standardized Tests pushed for by the GOP, while they simultaneously make cuts to Education in the federal budget. Republicans have been anti-education since the counter-culture movement of the 1960s after they realized the Public Education system of the 1940s-1960s which, at the time was one of the best in the world, was creating incredibly intelligent individuals who were motivated to see change they wanted and questioned the system and the things around them. 

American policies throughout the 20th century began with progressivism attempting to do things right and fix the negative effects of industrialization, to conserve the environment, reform prisons and education, open up rights and fix the corruption so rampant in Gilded Age America. This progressiveness continued with the massive amount of socialist policies implemented during the new deal, along with Eisenhower dedicating around 6.8 Billion dollars to the development of schools across the country. This was all then undone beginning in the 1970s as a new Republican party emerged, the party of the common man, really just Billionaires lying to the uneducated in order to take advantage of them. Then you have the Reagans, two actors desperate to be famous in anyway possible, funded by business interests to prey on “Better times” after a turbulent decade since the Vietnam war and Nixon’s resignation and the failure of Jimmy Carter to handle the Lebanon hostage crisis. However, once in office Reagan cut education, gave tax cuts to the wealthy (There has never been any proof that Reagonics/Trickle down is feasible or even actually a thing that happens), and expanded the military industrial complex and bailed out banks. The Reagan administration completely undid any socialist progress from the early 20th century responsible for ending the gilded age and bringing the country out of the great depression, so now we find ourselves in another gilded age. 

Do not think to yourself “well what about obama and blah blah and hillary ” I think Obama was an okay president at best, but he definitely had failures. I’m not writing this as part of a democrat propaganda movement, i’m writing this as someone who has spent their entire life learning about everything around him and has seen the writing on the wall. I’m writing this as a compassionate and empathetic person and i am pleading, begging you, to do your own research and read peer reviewed journals and news articles and books and read conflicting views. I’m begging you to investigate things for yourself because you just might find that I’m right. I don’t want you to take my word for it, I want everyone to find on their own the proof that the entire war on drugs has been a ploy to disenfranchise and enslave minorities and liberals and young people or that the deregulation of the 1980s lead to a modern gilded age, or that quite simply, party politics is all bullshit and a distraction from the fact that the people in power should be doing better, we’re fucking paying them to do better. But why aren’t they doing better? Why do we have 2.2 million people in incarceration? Why is there still no clean water in flint? Why do teachers need to work 3 jobs just to survive? Why are drug addicts treated like violent criminals and locked in cages when they should be given empathy and helped, and cured. Isn’t that what Jesus or Buddha or any sense of morality derived from a positive source would want? We should be doing good because then we’re DOING GOOD. We have the power to choose to care about trivial wants and material goods and he said she said and drama but it’s all a big distraction to stop you from realizing that at any moment you could start educating yourself and everyone else could around them, and we’d be able to build a better future. One where we don’t have criminals because society or the system hasn’t failed them. One where we all are happy and get along. If someone is feeding you a divisive narrative stop to question their motivation, do they care for you? are they looking out for your good, I mean, are they really honestly? Not what they say, what are their actions as Actions speak a million times louder than words. 

[porchenclose10019]

New Survey Shows Bernie Is Right: Young Americans Want To Reverse Runaway Inequality

A new survey conducted by the Runawayinequality.org Educational Network shows that younger Americans (ages 18-40) overwhelmingly support bold proposals to reverse inequality―- Sanders-type policies such as Medicare for all, free higher education, ending mass incarceration, wealth taxes on multi-millionaires, financial speculation taxes on Wall Street, public banks, immigrants rights, worker rights, a guaranteed job at a living wage, campaign finance reform, and a sustainable environment.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is accelerating inequality. The billionaire appointees, the Goldman Sachs economic advisors, the hollow healthcare and tax proposals all are designed to move more money into the hands of the few.

Unfortunately, the mainstream Democrats are hardly better when in comes to runaway inequality.

Over the last 37 years, America’s top 10 percent saw their incomes rise by 115 percent and the top 1 percent saw an incredible rise of 198 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom half of all American earners not only failed to see any gain at all, but their incomes actually declined by 1 percent from 1978 to 2015, according to research by Thomas Piketty.

During the Obama years “the top 1 percent of families captured 52 percent of total real income growth per family from 2009 to 2015 while the bottom 99 percent of families got only 48 percent of total real income growth,” reports inequality expert, Emanuel Saez

Most politicians and pundits throw their hands up in despair. They argue there is really nothing we can do about rising inequality because of the powerful impacts of global competition and automation. Those who are falling behind just don’t have the skills needed to prosper in the modern world. Life is unfair. Get used to it.

But these fatalists are dead wrong. There is ample evidence to show that many other nations have far less inequality but also deploy the most advanced technologies, and are even more open to foreign competition. (See here.)

Furthermore, the mainstream Democrats have convinced themselves, that despite the Sanders surge, most Americans do not support bold policies to reverse runaway inequality — too “socialistic.”

Does a social democratic program appeal to most Americans?

We decided to test the mainstream Democratic Party phobias by asking 200 randomly selected 18 to 40 year-olds to evaluate a strong platform aimed at reversing runaway inequality.

(The response choices were “Strongly Agree”, “Neutral,” “Disagree,” “Strongly Disagree.” The results below combine the “Strongly Agree/Agree” categories, and the “Strongly Disagree/Disagree” categories. Given the sample size the margin of error is a 7 percent. The survey was conducted April 20-22 via SurveyMonkey.)

The results clearly demonstrate that these younger people are more than willing to embrace bold proposals. (Please keep in mind that approximately 30 to 40 percent of these respondents were likely Trump voters.)

Money and Politics: The right to fair and equal representation, free from voter suppression and the influence of big money. For our democracy to endure, we must overturn Citizens United, enact public campaign financing and enforce the Voting Rights Act. Agree: 65.8%, Disagree: 5.0%

Medicare for All: The right to universal health care. Expand and improve Medicare (for All) to provide every American with access to quality, affordable healthcare. Agree: 75.6%, Disagree: 12.7%

Environmental Protection: To prevent catastrophic damage to our planet’s life support systems, we must accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy; protect our water and air from pollution; and prevent companies from moving to countries with weaker health, safety and environmental standards. Agree: 84.5%, Disagree: 4.0%

Job at a living wage: Everyone who is willing and able to work is entitled to a decent paying job in a safe and healthy workplace. If the private sector can’t provide such jobs, then the public sector should. Agree: 65.0%, Disagree: 20.5%

Free Public Education: The right to free public education from pre-K through college or trade school. Pre-K for 2- to 5-year olds should be available free of charge for all families. And everyone who qualifies for entrance to higher education should be able to attend tuition free. Agree: 72.0%, Disagree: 13.0%

Impartial criminal justice: Biased law enforcement in poor urban and rural communities must be ended, and we must stop using mass incarceration as a substitute for decent employment and educational opportunities. Agree: 75.1%, Disagree: 16.9%

Pathway to citizenship: Every resident of the US should have a comprehensive pathway to citizenship, and be afforded the rights to due process and a fair hearing that the Constitution guarantees to all. Agree: 68.2%, Disagree: 10.4%

Worker Rights: To protect and enhance worker rights and fairness on the job, the freedom to unionize, free from employer coercion, must be promoted. Agree: 58.6%, Disagree: 10.5%

Public Banks: As an alternative to Wall Street’s predatory lending, every state should charter a public bank, modeled on the Bank of North Dakota, whose first and only goal is to serve its people. Also, like many other developed nations, the US should charter a national postal bank to provide fair and accessible financial services in all our communities. Agree: 59.0%, Disagree: 9.5%

Taxing Wall Street: To move money to Main Street, a small sales tax should be imposed on stocks, bonds and derivatives. This also would discourage high frequency computer trades which make up the majority of all stock market activity. Agree: 49.0, Disagree: 10.7%

End Stock Manipulation: CEOs and their Wall Street partners should not be permitted to enrich themselves by using corporate funds to buy back their own shares in order to artificially raise share prices. This was illegal before 1982 and should be again. Agree: 71.5%, Disagree: 6.5%

Wealth Tax of 1% on those whose net worth is over $10 million: Those who have grown super-rich in our financialized economy must pay their fair share of taxes. A wealth tax, currently used by Spain, France, Switzerland and Norway, is an excellent way to recoup those losses. Agree: 72.1%, Disagree: 10.1%

What will it take to wake up the Corporate Democrats?

The Democratic Party is trying to move “economic issues” into their core message. That’s not good enough. As we see from our survey, younger Americans in particular are hungry for more than platitudes about economic opportunity, public-private partnerships, reduced tuition loans and other half measures.

What the Democrats are offering can be co-opted by Trump’s faux populism. But a strong agenda to reverse runaway inequality cannot.

Rather than embrace these proposals mainstream Democrats are likely to reject our survey because it doesn’t jive with the milquetoast questions posed by their high-priced pollsters, and because it challenges their cozy relationships with Wall Street and corporate elites.

But we can’t afford to sit around and moan this sorry state of affairs. Millions are in motion and eager to get more involved. We need to break through the false narratives and continue to prove that Americans want a much fairer society.

For starters, we could turn this agenda into a circulating petition, get 20 million or so to sign it, and then shove it in the face of every politician. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll see growing support for real policies to reverse runaway inequality.

If you’re interested in helping out, check out runawayinequality.org We need you. We need each other.

(In honor of Trump’s first 100 days, we’re having a week-long e-book sale for Runaway Inequality: An Activist Guide to Economic Justice. ― $4.99 on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple. All proceeds go to support these educational efforts.)

This article originally appeared on Alternet.org

Les Leopold, the director of the Labor Institute, is currently working with unions and community organizations to build the educational infrastructure of a new “reversing runaway inequality” movement. For more information, contact runawayinequality.org.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pcEufy

#DIYS

[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

New Survey Shows Bernie Is Right: Young Americans Want To Reverse Runaway Inequality

A new survey conducted by the Runawayinequality.org Educational Network shows that younger Americans (ages 18-40) overwhelmingly support bold proposals to reverse inequality―- Sanders-type policies such as Medicare for all, free higher education, ending mass incarceration, wealth taxes on multi-millionaires, financial speculation taxes on Wall Street, public banks, immigrants rights, worker rights, a guaranteed job at a living wage, campaign finance reform, and a sustainable environment.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is accelerating inequality. The billionaire appointees, the Goldman Sachs economic advisors, the hollow healthcare and tax proposals all are designed to move more money into the hands of the few.

Unfortunately, the mainstream Democrats are hardly better when in comes to runaway inequality.

Over the last 37 years, America’s top 10 percent saw their incomes rise by 115 percent and the top 1 percent saw an incredible rise of 198 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom half of all American earners not only failed to see any gain at all, but their incomes actually declined by 1 percent from 1978 to 2015, according to research by Thomas Piketty.

During the Obama years “the top 1 percent of families captured 52 percent of total real income growth per family from 2009 to 2015 while the bottom 99 percent of families got only 48 percent of total real income growth,” reports inequality expert, Emanuel Saez

Most politicians and pundits throw their hands up in despair. They argue there is really nothing we can do about rising inequality because of the powerful impacts of global competition and automation. Those who are falling behind just don’t have the skills needed to prosper in the modern world. Life is unfair. Get used to it.

But these fatalists are dead wrong. There is ample evidence to show that many other nations have far less inequality but also deploy the most advanced technologies, and are even more open to foreign competition. (See here.)

Furthermore, the mainstream Democrats have convinced themselves, that despite the Sanders surge, most Americans do not support bold policies to reverse runaway inequality — too “socialistic.”

Does a social democratic program appeal to most Americans?

We decided to test the mainstream Democratic Party phobias by asking 200 randomly selected 18 to 40 year-olds to evaluate a strong platform aimed at reversing runaway inequality.

(The response choices were “Strongly Agree”, “Neutral,” “Disagree,” “Strongly Disagree.” The results below combine the “Strongly Agree/Agree” categories, and the “Strongly Disagree/Disagree” categories. Given the sample size the margin of error is a 7 percent. The survey was conducted April 20-22 via SurveyMonkey.)

The results clearly demonstrate that these younger people are more than willing to embrace bold proposals. (Please keep in mind that approximately 30 to 40 percent of these respondents were likely Trump voters.)

Money and Politics: The right to fair and equal representation, free from voter suppression and the influence of big money. For our democracy to endure, we must overturn Citizens United, enact public campaign financing and enforce the Voting Rights Act. Agree: 65.8%, Disagree: 5.0%

Medicare for All: The right to universal health care. Expand and improve Medicare (for All) to provide every American with access to quality, affordable healthcare. Agree: 75.6%, Disagree: 12.7%

Environmental Protection: To prevent catastrophic damage to our planet’s life support systems, we must accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy; protect our water and air from pollution; and prevent companies from moving to countries with weaker health, safety and environmental standards. Agree: 84.5%, Disagree: 4.0%

Job at a living wage: Everyone who is willing and able to work is entitled to a decent paying job in a safe and healthy workplace. If the private sector can’t provide such jobs, then the public sector should. Agree: 65.0%, Disagree: 20.5%

Free Public Education: The right to free public education from pre-K through college or trade school. Pre-K for 2- to 5-year olds should be available free of charge for all families. And everyone who qualifies for entrance to higher education should be able to attend tuition free. Agree: 72.0%, Disagree: 13.0%

Impartial criminal justice: Biased law enforcement in poor urban and rural communities must be ended, and we must stop using mass incarceration as a substitute for decent employment and educational opportunities. Agree: 75.1%, Disagree: 16.9%

Pathway to citizenship: Every resident of the US should have a comprehensive pathway to citizenship, and be afforded the rights to due process and a fair hearing that the Constitution guarantees to all. Agree: 68.2%, Disagree: 10.4%

Worker Rights: To protect and enhance worker rights and fairness on the job, the freedom to unionize, free from employer coercion, must be promoted. Agree: 58.6%, Disagree: 10.5%

Public Banks: As an alternative to Wall Street’s predatory lending, every state should charter a public bank, modeled on the Bank of North Dakota, whose first and only goal is to serve its people. Also, like many other developed nations, the US should charter a national postal bank to provide fair and accessible financial services in all our communities. Agree: 59.0%, Disagree: 9.5%

Taxing Wall Street: To move money to Main Street, a small sales tax should be imposed on stocks, bonds and derivatives. This also would discourage high frequency computer trades which make up the majority of all stock market activity. Agree: 49.0, Disagree: 10.7%

End Stock Manipulation: CEOs and their Wall Street partners should not be permitted to enrich themselves by using corporate funds to buy back their own shares in order to artificially raise share prices. This was illegal before 1982 and should be again. Agree: 71.5%, Disagree: 6.5%

Wealth Tax of 1% on those whose net worth is over $10 million: Those who have grown super-rich in our financialized economy must pay their fair share of taxes. A wealth tax, currently used by Spain, France, Switzerland and Norway, is an excellent way to recoup those losses. Agree: 72.1%, Disagree: 10.1%

What will it take to wake up the Corporate Democrats?

The Democratic Party is trying to move “economic issues” into their core message. That’s not good enough. As we see from our survey, younger Americans in particular are hungry for more than platitudes about economic opportunity, public-private partnerships, reduced tuition loans and other half measures.

What the Democrats are offering can be co-opted by Trump’s faux populism. But a strong agenda to reverse runaway inequality cannot.

Rather than embrace these proposals mainstream Democrats are likely to reject our survey because it doesn’t jive with the milquetoast questions posed by their high-priced pollsters, and because it challenges their cozy relationships with Wall Street and corporate elites.

But we can’t afford to sit around and moan this sorry state of affairs. Millions are in motion and eager to get more involved. We need to break through the false narratives and continue to prove that Americans want a much fairer society.

For starters, we could turn this agenda into a circulating petition, get 20 million or so to sign it, and then shove it in the face of every politician. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll see growing support for real policies to reverse runaway inequality.

If you’re interested in helping out, check out runawayinequality.org We need you. We need each other.

(In honor of Trump’s first 100 days, we’re having a week-long e-book sale for Runaway Inequality: An Activist Guide to Economic Justice. ― $4.99 on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple. All proceeds go to support these educational efforts.)

This article originally appeared on Alternet.org

Les Leopold, the director of the Labor Institute, is currently working with unions and community organizations to build the educational infrastructure of a new “reversing runaway inequality” movement. For more information, contact runawayinequality.org.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pcEufy

#DIYS

[rtscrndr53704]

New Survey Shows Bernie Is Right: Young Americans Want To Reverse Runaway Inequality

A new survey conducted by the Runawayinequality.org Educational Network shows that younger Americans (ages 18-40) overwhelmingly support bold proposals to reverse inequality―- Sanders-type policies such as Medicare for all, free higher education, ending mass incarceration, wealth taxes on multi-millionaires, financial speculation taxes on Wall Street, public banks, immigrants rights, worker rights, a guaranteed job at a living wage, campaign finance reform, and a sustainable environment.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is accelerating inequality. The billionaire appointees, the Goldman Sachs economic advisors, the hollow healthcare and tax proposals all are designed to move more money into the hands of the few.

Unfortunately, the mainstream Democrats are hardly better when in comes to runaway inequality.

Over the last 37 years, America’s top 10 percent saw their incomes rise by 115 percent and the top 1 percent saw an incredible rise of 198 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom half of all American earners not only failed to see any gain at all, but their incomes actually declined by 1 percent from 1978 to 2015, according to research by Thomas Piketty.

During the Obama years “the top 1 percent of families captured 52 percent of total real income growth per family from 2009 to 2015 while the bottom 99 percent of families got only 48 percent of total real income growth,” reports inequality expert, Emanuel Saez

Most politicians and pundits throw their hands up in despair. They argue there is really nothing we can do about rising inequality because of the powerful impacts of global competition and automation. Those who are falling behind just don’t have the skills needed to prosper in the modern world. Life is unfair. Get used to it.

But these fatalists are dead wrong. There is ample evidence to show that many other nations have far less inequality but also deploy the most advanced technologies, and are even more open to foreign competition. (See here.)

Furthermore, the mainstream Democrats have convinced themselves, that despite the Sanders surge, most Americans do not support bold policies to reverse runaway inequality — too “socialistic.”

Does a social democratic program appeal to most Americans?

We decided to test the mainstream Democratic Party phobias by asking 200 randomly selected 18 to 40 year-olds to evaluate a strong platform aimed at reversing runaway inequality.

(The response choices were “Strongly Agree”, “Neutral,” “Disagree,” “Strongly Disagree.” The results below combine the “Strongly Agree/Agree” categories, and the “Strongly Disagree/Disagree” categories. Given the sample size the margin of error is a 7 percent. The survey was conducted April 20-22 via SurveyMonkey.)

The results clearly demonstrate that these younger people are more than willing to embrace bold proposals. (Please keep in mind that approximately 30 to 40 percent of these respondents were likely Trump voters.)

Money and Politics: The right to fair and equal representation, free from voter suppression and the influence of big money. For our democracy to endure, we must overturn Citizens United, enact public campaign financing and enforce the Voting Rights Act. Agree: 65.8%, Disagree: 5.0%

Medicare for All: The right to universal health care. Expand and improve Medicare (for All) to provide every American with access to quality, affordable healthcare. Agree: 75.6%, Disagree: 12.7%

Environmental Protection: To prevent catastrophic damage to our planet’s life support systems, we must accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy; protect our water and air from pollution; and prevent companies from moving to countries with weaker health, safety and environmental standards. Agree: 84.5%, Disagree: 4.0%

Job at a living wage: Everyone who is willing and able to work is entitled to a decent paying job in a safe and healthy workplace. If the private sector can’t provide such jobs, then the public sector should. Agree: 65.0%, Disagree: 20.5%

Free Public Education: The right to free public education from pre-K through college or trade school. Pre-K for 2- to 5-year olds should be available free of charge for all families. And everyone who qualifies for entrance to higher education should be able to attend tuition free. Agree: 72.0%, Disagree: 13.0%

Impartial criminal justice: Biased law enforcement in poor urban and rural communities must be ended, and we must stop using mass incarceration as a substitute for decent employment and educational opportunities. Agree: 75.1%, Disagree: 16.9%

Pathway to citizenship: Every resident of the US should have a comprehensive pathway to citizenship, and be afforded the rights to due process and a fair hearing that the Constitution guarantees to all. Agree: 68.2%, Disagree: 10.4%

Worker Rights: To protect and enhance worker rights and fairness on the job, the freedom to unionize, free from employer coercion, must be promoted. Agree: 58.6%, Disagree: 10.5%

Public Banks: As an alternative to Wall Street’s predatory lending, every state should charter a public bank, modeled on the Bank of North Dakota, whose first and only goal is to serve its people. Also, like many other developed nations, the US should charter a national postal bank to provide fair and accessible financial services in all our communities. Agree: 59.0%, Disagree: 9.5%

Taxing Wall Street: To move money to Main Street, a small sales tax should be imposed on stocks, bonds and derivatives. This also would discourage high frequency computer trades which make up the majority of all stock market activity. Agree: 49.0, Disagree: 10.7%

End Stock Manipulation: CEOs and their Wall Street partners should not be permitted to enrich themselves by using corporate funds to buy back their own shares in order to artificially raise share prices. This was illegal before 1982 and should be again. Agree: 71.5%, Disagree: 6.5%

Wealth Tax of 1% on those whose net worth is over $10 million: Those who have grown super-rich in our financialized economy must pay their fair share of taxes. A wealth tax, currently used by Spain, France, Switzerland and Norway, is an excellent way to recoup those losses. Agree: 72.1%, Disagree: 10.1%

What will it take to wake up the Corporate Democrats?

The Democratic Party is trying to move “economic issues” into their core message. That’s not good enough. As we see from our survey, younger Americans in particular are hungry for more than platitudes about economic opportunity, public-private partnerships, reduced tuition loans and other half measures.

What the Democrats are offering can be co-opted by Trump’s faux populism. But a strong agenda to reverse runaway inequality cannot.

Rather than embrace these proposals mainstream Democrats are likely to reject our survey because it doesn’t jive with the milquetoast questions posed by their high-priced pollsters, and because it challenges their cozy relationships with Wall Street and corporate elites.

But we can’t afford to sit around and moan this sorry state of affairs. Millions are in motion and eager to get more involved. We need to break through the false narratives and continue to prove that Americans want a much fairer society.

For starters, we could turn this agenda into a circulating petition, get 20 million or so to sign it, and then shove it in the face of every politician. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll see growing support for real policies to reverse runaway inequality.

If you’re interested in helping out, check out runawayinequality.org We need you. We need each other.

(In honor of Trump’s first 100 days, we’re having a week-long e-book sale for Runaway Inequality: An Activist Guide to Economic Justice. ― $4.99 on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple. All proceeds go to support these educational efforts.)

This article originally appeared on Alternet.org

Les Leopold, the director of the Labor Institute, is currently working with unions and community organizations to build the educational infrastructure of a new “reversing runaway inequality” movement. For more information, contact runawayinequality.org.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pcEufy

#DIYS