• Formfiller@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Confiscate all personal wealth over 100million. Break up any company worth over 50billion. Take all institutions of public service out of private equity: utilities, house, prisons, retirement, schools, postal, healthcare and public land management. Reform the legal system to not give the wealthy any advantage. Do not allow elected representatives. Do not allow politicians to take private money for political campaigns. Allowing people and corporations to acquire this type of power has been humanity’s whole problem for thousands of years

    • Manticore@lemmy.nz
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      1 hour ago

      Billionaires technically don’t have much personal wealth. They leverage their illiquid assets as collateral to take out massive loans. Which they can later cover with taking out even bigger loans.

      The liquid wealth of the wealthy is very low, technically in debt. This is another way they can avoid paying tax as they technically don’t have much of anything, and the reason why ‘declining to take a salary’ is typically meaningless.

    • Wilco@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      Get private equity out of hospitals and forbid them land ownership.

      The current private equity hospital grift:

      1. Buy a non profit hospital and ruthlessly expand it, putting all other competition out of business.
      2. Become the hospital’s own 3rd party billing center (same name)
      3. Become the hospitals own 3rd party collection service, a law firm.
      4. Collect millions per year from the government to pay off unpaid hospital bills.
      5. Collect those bills with the third party collections by any means, garnishment, denials of service. 6. 6. Get the local courts dependent upon the court fees involved.
      6. Collect legal fees on top of the actual medical bills, thus “triple dipping” and getting paid three times … all for services that were mostly paid for by insurance already.
  • exixx@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    The article nicely makes the case for defenestrating billionaires as well

  • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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    21 hours ago

    Zuck, Bezos Wife, Bezos, ???, Musk

    Is ??? Pinchai of Google?

  • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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    22 hours ago

    The billionaire fortunes pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars of unearned appreciation owned by regular home owners.

    It’s the unearned part that matters most, at least capital investment has some benefit to the economy. Real estate appreciation adds literally zero value to the economy.

      • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        By Purchasing up and holding the supply empty, artificially creating the housing crisis by lobbying against affordable housing construction and exploiting the rent economy of our cities. The rich are outcompeting us for resources.

        • entwine413@lemm.ee
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          20 hours ago

          What do regular home owners have to do with it? Most regular home owners only own one home.

          • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            No one mentioned regular home owners. Why are you making devisive comments not related to any point that were made?

            • entwine413@lemm.ee
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              11 hours ago

              The billionaire fortunes pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars of unearned appreciation owned by regular home owners.

              Yes they did.

              • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
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                8 hours ago

                You’ll notice it wasn’t me though, so why am I being asked what somebody I’m actively disagreeing with means by “regular homeowners”?

              • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
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                11 hours ago

                Bollocks, billionaire propaganda. Less that 3,000 people collectively control more than 90% of the World’s wealth. It doesn’t pale in comparison to anything. You’re just a bootlicker, or contrarian, makes no difference. You’re still wrong.

          • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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            17 hours ago

            I’ve made a million dollars in appreciation on my home in the last 15 years.

            Are you telling me just because I own one home, that I’m not part of the problem?

            • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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              11 hours ago

              No, you’re not the problem there. The problem in your scenario is the landlords buying up all available real estate and leasing it back. Not you.

              That million dollar gain has no actual value to you. You can’t get that money out of the house, because you’ll need to spend it to acquire new housing.

              And in the meantime, your tax payments are going to increase: you’re a victim of corporate investment in the housing market, not a perpetrator.

              • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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                7 hours ago

                Why do people keep saying that I can’t get that money out of the house?

                • I can use the equity as an asset to borrow money at low interest rates compared to unsecured loans.
                • I can sell the property and move to a lower cost of living location, or even just a smaller home if I wanted.
                • I can rent part of the property out at a rate commensurate with it’s current value.

                And, to top off your stupid assumptions, you say my tax payments will increase. That’s not how property tax is calculated at all. People see “Taxes per 100k” and assume that if your house price goes up, so do the taxes. Instead, municipalities set a total budget, and just divide it by the total value of all the homes in the area to come up with something called the “Mill rate.” If the municipal budget doesn’t change year to year, and all the house prices go up evenly, the mill rate simply goes down.

                • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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                  2 hours ago

                  Why do people keep saying that I can’t get that money out of the house?

                  I can use the equity as an asset to borrow money at low interest rates compared to unsecured loans.

                  In which case, you owe more than you borrowed. The net result of your borrowing is handing money to oligarchs. That makes them the problem, not you.

                  I can sell the property and move to a lower cost of living location, or even just a smaller home if I wanted.

                  Proportionally, you are not making any gains when you do that. That smaller home’s value increased at the same time your own home did.

                  I can rent part of the property out at a rate commensurate with it’s current value.

                  In which case, you would then be leveraging your wealth to strip others of wealth generated through labor. You would become part of the problem class with this approach.

                  Your ownership of an appreciating asset is not the problem.

                • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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                  4 hours ago

                  People see “Taxes per 100k” and assume that if your house price goes up, so do the taxes

                  Because they do. Not immediately, but they are periodically reassessed, based on prevailing market value.

                  Instead, municipalities set a total budget,

                  They set their total budget largely based on what they can collect in taxes.

                  If the municipal budget doesn’t change year to year

                  That possibility doesn’t merit consideration.

            • entwine413@lemm.ee
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              11 hours ago

              Correct. I’m telling you that individuals owning a single home aren’t part of the problem.

              • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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                8 hours ago

                Individuals voting to keep the value of their home from dropping down to reasonable levels ARE the problem. That’s almost all home owners.

    • zbyte64@awful.systems
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      19 hours ago

      You got me. My being in debt to a bank for rest of my life is worse than anything Bill Gates has ever done on Epstein’s plane. I’m doubly guilty because I have kids, can you imagine how much unrealized wealth they represent?

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      18 hours ago

      Capital investment strips wealth out of the worker/consumer economy (where it is traded for goods and services, and becomes someone’s paycheck) and transfers it to the securities market (where it is used to convert worker productivity into more capital)

      Capital investment is only beneficial to the economy when the working class holds the capital.

      • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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        17 hours ago

        That’s observablt false. Capitalism has lead to a massive improvement in living conditions for countries that have implemented it

        Yes it also has downsides, but pretending it doesn’t do anything good is rediculous.

        • zbyte64@awful.systems
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          9 hours ago

          You sound like Marx just before he recommends transitioning to socialism as the next logical stage of human development.

          • Aux@feddit.uk
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            3 hours ago

            Marx was a genocidal maniac. You shouldn’t read much into his lunacy.

          • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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            8 hours ago

            I still think that regulated capitalism works best for certain industries, and socialism works best for others.

            It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing choice.

            • zbyte64@awful.systems
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              7 hours ago

              And how do we know which industries would benefit most from capitalism or socialism? All industries experience diminishing returns of capital investment after a certain point, and that is how Marx made the distinction about which mode of production is “best” for which industry. It isn’t inherent that one industry should be socialist and another capitalist, it is relative to how big the industry is and whether there is room for continued expansion.

              • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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                6 hours ago

                One of the easiest ways is to determine which industries are most prone to the failures of the market.

                Things that are inherently monopolies like roads, or power lines or things that don’t allow reasonable consumer information/choice like healthcare, etc.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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          17 hours ago

          Your observation is only true where the working class controls the capital. Your point would be well taken if we all had significant shares providing passive income. Buy not even the wealthiest of the working class controls a share of capital proportionate to their productive output.

          The worst injustices injustices in history have been perpetrated by oligarchs of some shape or another. We are in the middle of such an era now.

          And the word is “ridiculous”.