I mean, it’s far more engaging and a bit more compassionate than most of my teachers…

Furthermore, $900 is still $900, I question if some random shareholder really cares about a stranger’s raise that much.

I’ll rephrase. The shareholder in question has the option of spending $10,000 on their business, or giving Uncle Sam $9,100 and pocketing $900.

The shareholder in question gets a lot more bang for their buck by figuring out how to spend it than paying the tax and trying to keep it.

Seems like a win/win for them.

Wait, whales are bees?

There were times between the robber baron era and Reagan when families lived comfortably on the income of a single blue collar worker. That fact tells me that we were once able to effectively suppress the robber barons.

Inheritance isn’t the root problem. The problem is that the only people with any money are people who were able to save it decades ago. And that problem is because labor has been devalued, wages stagnated, and cost of living soared.

And all of that is because for the past 40 years or so, there has been more benefit to taking profits out of business than spending money within the business.

When you reach the top-tier income tax bracket, and the IRS starts taking 91% of your income beyond that level, $10,000 of business income is only worth $900 to you.

When your best employee wants a $10,000 raise, that money comes straight out of your “excess” earnings. It is $10,000 of your earnings that are not subject to taxation. Paying that $10,000 raise only costs you $900 once you reach that tax bracket.

But we don’t have a 91% top-tier income tax bracket anymore. We had a punitively high top tier rate for most of the 20th century, but it got cut down in the 70’s and slashed in the early 80’s. Now, the top tier income tax bracket is just 37%. When you reach that bracket, giving your best employee a $10,000 raise takes $6700 out of your pocket, instead of just $900.

Reagan’s views on the Laffer curve were correct: raising the tax rate beyond a certain point will actually reduce tax revenue. But tax revenue is not why we need the high rates. The benefit of high marginal tax rates comes from what business does to avoid them. We need to restore the business incentives that come with a punitively high top-tier income tax rate. We need businesses to increase their labor expenses to avoid that tier. Businesses should benefit the whole economy, not just the ownership class.

For similar reasons, we need taxes on registered securities, payable in shares of those securities. The shares collected as taxes will be liquidated in small lots over time, comprising no more than 1% of total traded volume, to limit their effect on the market. Exempt the first $10 million held by a natural person; tax everything above.

It’s not genocide. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.

–JD Vance, probably.

“Protesting” isn’t what we need. We need them running for office, whether that is president, senator, congressperson, or even for the local school board: a lot of those lower officers will move up over time.

Just like the remnants of the Tea Party took over the GOP, we need a “Guillotine Party” to redirect the Democrats to focus on the robber baron billionaire class.

I’m hoping for a massive stroke on December 18th. Anything between December 17th and January 6th will have interesting results. We could theoretically get a Harris/Vance or Vance/Walz administration.

The Democrats won’t have absorbed the Guillotine Party by 2028.

Guillotine Party!

Universal healthcare, securities tax, punitive top-tier income tax. We can get rid of these parasites like we got rid of the robber barons, or we can do it like the French got rid of their first and second estate.

True, true. Today, there is entirely too much silicon in their circuitry. Copper was - and is - a far more reliable means of delivering power to compressor.

My mom’s deep freezer has been in her garage for 30+ years, reaching ambient temperatures as low as -30C.

Send it.

It’s not genocide if they aren’t people.

–Trump, Probably

The Onion buys rightwing conspiracy theory site Infowars with plans to make it ‘very funny, very stupid’

They’re halfway there already.

It’s 1/7th your age plus 2, right?

Certainly. Most of the 20th century, the top tier tax rate was set at a level that can only be described as “punitive”. It was higher than 90% to kill off the robber barons.

While I am not morally opposed to beheading rich people, we really need to go back to the tax rates we had in the 50’s. And add a securities tax, payable in shares of that security, that the IRS can liquidate slowly over time.

The Tea Party did not spoil a GOP election. The GOP caved and adopted their platform.

The Democratic Party will do the same thing with the Guillotine Party.

We have already seen a third party take over a major party. The current problem with the GOP is because it absorbed the Tea Party.

With the right symbol to rally behind, we can do the same thing to the Democratic party. We need to build the Guillotine Party.

Just like GOP refugees created the Tea Party, we need to rally around the greatest symbol of the French Revolution, and build a Guillotine Party.