'Take Our Money, Please': 400 Millionaires And Billionaires Say They Need To Be Taxed More
'It's time for us all to win,' they say.
A ragtag group of over 400 (and counting!) millionaires and billionaires from 24 countries across the globe have signed a letter to the world leaders gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos, asking them to please (pretty please!) tax them and their brethren more, so that everyone can live a better life.
Now, granted, I do not think billionaires should exist, but if they have to exist, I guess I’d prefer that they not want to be billionaires, either.
The letter — signed by the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Brian Eno, and Abigail Disney — is a project of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of rich folks with the goal of “taxing the rich, paying the people, and spreading the power.”
Today, we are more connected than ever—but at the same time, we have never been more divided. Decades of innovation have gone hand in hand with decades of inequality, environmental destruction, and wasted opportunity. The richest 1% now own more than 95% of the world’s population put together.
The gap between the super rich and everyone else grows larger every day, stretching across neighbourhoods, nations, and, perhaps most of all, generations. A handful of global oligarchs with extreme wealth have bought up our democracies; taken over our governments; gagged the freedom of our media; placed a stranglehold on technology and innovation; deepened poverty and social exclusion; and accelerated the breakdown of our planet. What we treasure, rich and poor alike, is being eaten away by those intent on growing the gulf between their vast power and everyone else.
We all know this. When even millionaires, like us, recognise that extreme wealth has cost everyone else everything else, there can be no doubt that society is dangerously teetering off the edge of a precipice.
We are worn out watching this happen. We want our democracies back. We want our communities back. We want our future back.
Millionaires! They’re just like us! At least in the way that we would like to have all of those things back as well. Not so much in the other ways, probably.
You’d think this would be an unpopular sentiment among the very wealthy, but it turns out that it’s a lot more common than you might think.
Via The Guardian:
The survey, of 3,900 people in G20 countries with more than $1m in assets, excluding their homes, also found that three-fifths think Trump has had a negative impact on global economic stability (the poll was conducted before the US president threatened new tariffs at the weekend against European countries if a deal to acquire Greenland was not reached).
More than 60% of those surveyed were concerned that extreme wealth was a threat to democracy. Two-thirds supported higher taxes on the super-rich to invest in public services, with only 17% opposed.
Public services are pretty great.
It’s not even entirely unselfish of them, frankly. The whole point, I suppose, of being wealthy is living a nice, pleasant life and the whole point of taxes is to make life more pleasant for everyone. Including them. This is at least one of the reasons why the crazy libertarian rich folks have never been able to make their Galt’s Gulch dreams come true.
Life also isn’t so pleasant when other people in your tax bracket are buying up politicians, buying up all the news media and producing their own, buying up social media sites and turning them into Nazi hellholes, when people around you are living in poverty.
The fact is, the wealthy rely on the non-wealthy to provide them with the standard of living to which they have become accustomed. If you live in an area where only rich people can afford to live, then you don’t have restaurants, you don’t have salons, you don’t have shops, you don’t have entertainment, you don’t have transportation beyond your own car, you don’t have childcare, you don’t have schools, you don’t really have anything to do … so what the hell are you going to do with all that money? Swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck? I mean, that’s pretty dangerous if you are not a cartoon.
Now, we’re not in this place yet, but if wealth inequality keeps going the way it’s going, it’s not going to be out of the question. It’s already becoming a problem in places like the Hamptons and New York City. Stores and restaurants are experiencing serious staffing shortages in these areas because restaurant workers and retail workers cannot afford to live there. This also obviously hurts business owners and the middle class. There’s a reason they say “a rising tide lifts all boats,” and that reason is that it is both literally and figuratively true.
Right now, in New York City, nurses are on strike because they’re not being paid enough, and because the hospitals where they work are understaffed and undersecured — and that means that people can’t get the care they need, regardless of how much money they have (unless they’re able to fly somewhere else to get it).
Obviously, extreme wealth inequality harms those on the bottom a hell of a lot more, and in more serious ways than not being able to get a nail appointment anywhere, but it’s not actually good for anyone. Everything is a whole lot more interconnected than Americans would like to believe.
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This is all very good — it’s certainly good news that there are 400 millionaires and billionaires out there who want to be taxed more. And that may have some impact on some world leaders … but probably not ours. Ours kind of sucks.
What would be really helpful is if they could also use some of their money to fund left-wing media (like us, obviously! but also other people and entities!) because it’s really not great that practically all media that isn’t right-leaning is paywalled and siloed. (Exception, as always, for Wonkette, which frankly could use more subscribers at the moment as many of our stalwarts have had to give us up recently for reasons of “so they don’t starve.” We will never have a paywall, because how can you educate The People from behind a block? Be the funder you want to see in the world! Only if you are able.)
Fund media, fund conferences and speaking tours and youth outreach and all of the intellectual infrastructure the Right has, or we have no chance at all of heading towards a more equitable society.
I mean, it’s just a suggestion, but if they could just get on that one sooner rather than later, I think we’d have a far better chance of making their dream of higher taxation a reality.
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A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and baby,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is is the long-distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo,
The way we look to us all.
The way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in the corner of the sky.
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
And don't cry, baby, don't cry, don't cry.
I just got this email from my congress person, Shontel M. Brown :
"Dear Constituent,
I'm just back from the House floor, where I voted No on legislation to fund the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
This is really simple to me.
We are seeing with our own eyes what is happening in this country. Every day, ICE and CBP under the Trump Administration are committing new abuses with no accountability, no respect for the law, and no regard for civil rights.
I voted No on this funding bill, and I will not support another cent for agencies that continue to terrorize our communities, commit abuses, and escalate violence.
Unfortunately, the bill passed the House because all but one Republican voted yes.
We have to keep demanding better. How are these massive "surges" into cities like Minneapolis possible? Because the Republican Reconciliation Bill passed last summer (which I voted against) gave ICE an additional $75 billion in funding.
I want that additional funding repealed. Because there are so many better uses for those funds than paying for violence and mayhem.
In addition to repealing this ICE slush fund, we need to impeach Secretary Noem, require ICE agents wear body cameras and proper identification, and bar ICE from churches and schools."