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#tax the 1%
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I hate it here
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Let this be a lesson against believing politicians lies.
Keeping wealth concentrated in the 1% is the end goal of capitalism.
They will do whatever is necessary to keep the working class desperate and dependent on the system that impoverishes them.
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sordidamok · 15 days
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kayas-kosmos · 9 months
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Because of what's happening on Twitter...
I've made a little diagram to demonstrate why billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are bad for society.
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"If we view society as a body, every sector is like a different organ within the body that serves a function and works in harmony with other organs to maintain balance. Every part of the body is important for the whole thing to function."
"The ultra-wealthy want you to believe they are the beating heart and thinking mind of the society – they are the innovators who create our jobs and their brilliance drives society forward. They deserve to be at the top of society because they have earned that. Without them, the body won’t function because they are the most important part."
"In reality, they are more like a malignant tumour, sucking all of the blood (resources) away from everything else (people and the planet) to fuel its own infinite growth, depriving the rest of the body and slowly killing it. Workers create all of the innovation and keep things running, the ultra-wealthy take all the credit."
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This is a public domain image so feel free to pinch it for whatever.
Elon Musk has put the careers of thousands of small business owners who depend on Twitter (myself included) in jeopardy by completely running it into the ground. Before this, Mark Zuckerberg had already been doing the same when he started pursuing Metaverse, making Instagram and Facebook much more unusable for artists. Do I really need to go into other examples of CEOs and very normalised practise of wage theft?
Meanwhile, the UK currently has the richest Prime Minister in its history. What is this man doing with this wealth? Continuing the Tory legacy of austerity in order to line his pockets and the pockets of his crony friends. This has resulted in a devastating cost of living crisis that continues to ravage the country as people's energy bills skyrocket out of control.
My diagram is pretty basic and lacks nuance, there's definitely more I could elaborate on with this comparison but I really don't have time. I just want people to get the basic point of how billionaires view themselves vs what function they actually serve. I'm also not here to debate whether some organs are more important than others since I'm not a doctor, that's not really the point here. And no, I don't care if people think I'm being harsh by comparing billionaires to a tumour. If they don't want to be compared to one they should stop acting like one. Jeff Bezos could end world hunger right now and chooses not to.
Also, I know a lot of people are going to come at me with the argument that billionaires give away massive amounts of money. First off, people like Jeff Bezos only give large sums of money to charity a.) for the sake of improving their public image and b.) because giving to charity allows them to write it off in their taxes. Also, charities in of themselves have a lot of problems, but that's a blog post for another day. Mutual Aid is a better way to help people directly. Really, the ultra wealthy need to be taxed, of course they do everything within their power to avoid taxes.
Also:
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"Earning a lot of money" and "holding onto a lot of money" are two different things. You cannot be a multi-millionaire unless you hold onto that money. If you give away massive chunks of it to enrich society, you cease to be a billionaire.
Oh and this is worth a watch, too.
Furthermore:
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Also before the inevitable great man comments:
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Being a billionaire is a moral failing. Nobody needs that much money.
[Slight edit here - I made the assertion that a billionaire could not spend all of their money in their lifetime, but as someone in the comments pointed out it's very easy for them to completely waste billions in no time. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have shown that].
Anyway, if you would like to see more anti-Capitalist art from me, I am currently working on a webcomic called "Flowerpunk" - a story about a group of anarchists who are trying to save the city of Wyrdon from a supernatural plague known as "the rot." The comic heavily discusses disaster Capitalism and how the rich will use mass death and destruction as an opportunity to further line their pockets.
I also like to do little anti-Capitalist doodles relating to this project, which I plan to make into posters at some point.
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Please consider donating a Ko-Fi also if you would like to help support this project. I am really struggling at the moment because I've basically lost a massive chunk of my client base due to this Twitter implosion and also because of the AI BS that has made it impossible for me to get any reach nowadays. The last year or so has been an absolute nightmare for my career because of all of this.
Thank you all for your continued support! Hopefully I can re-establish my audience here on Tumblr and wherever else I decide to go.
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queerism1969 · 9 months
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On Wednesday, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) reintroduced a proposal to make higher education free at public schools for most Americans — and pay for it by taxing Wall Street.
The College for All Act of 2023 would massively change the higher education landscape in the U.S., taking a step toward Sanders’s long-standing goal of making public college free for all. It would make community college and public vocational schools tuition-free for all students, while making any public college and university free for students from single-parent households making less than $125,000 or couples making less than $250,000 — or, the vast majority of families in the U.S.
The bill would increase federal funding to make tuition free for most students at universities that serve non-white groups, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). It would also double the maximum award to Pell Grant recipients at public or nonprofit private colleges from $7,395 to $14,790.
If passed, the lawmakers say their bill would be the biggest expansion of access to higher education since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act, a bill that would massively increase access to college in the ensuing decades. The proposal would not only increase college access, but also help to tackle the student debt crisis.
“Today, this country tells young people to get the best education they can, and then saddles them for decades with crushing student loan debt. To my mind, that does not make any sense whatsoever,” Sanders said. “In the 21st century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. The time is long overdue to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and debt-free for working families.”
Debt activists expressed support for the bill. “This is the only real solution to the student debt crisis: eliminate tuition and debt by fully funding public colleges and universities,” the Debt Collective wrote on Wednesday. “It’s time for your member of Congress to put up or shut up. Solve the root cause and eliminate tuition and debt.”
These initiatives would be paid for by several new taxes on Wall Street, found in a separate bill reintroduced by Sanders and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) on Wednesday. The Tax on Wall Street Speculation would enact a 0.5% tax on stock trades, a 0.1% tax on bonds and a 0.005% tax on trades on derivatives and other types of assets.
The tax would primarily affect the most frequent, and often the wealthiest, traders and would be less than a typical fee for pension management for working class investors, the lawmakers say. It would raise up to $220 billion in the first year of enactment, and over $2.4 trillion over a decade. The proposal has the support of dozens of progressive organizations as well as a large swath of economists.
“Let us never forget: Back in 2008, middle class taxpayers bailed out Wall Street speculators whose greed, recklessness and illegal behavior caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college,” said Sanders. “Now that giant financial institutions are back to making record-breaking profits while millions of Americans struggle to pay rent and feed their families, it is Wall Street’s turn to rebuild the middle class by paying a modest financial transactions tax.”
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aunti-christ-ine · 8 months
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butyoutoldmeiwasfunny · 3 months
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antidrumpfs · 1 year
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atlurbanist · 3 months
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Hyperloop One raised about $500mil in capital, now it's being shut down. Imagine if that money had built actual public-transit lines, or affordable homes near transit, which are desperately needed. We're obviously not taxing the rich enough.
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no-passaran · 1 year
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(...) The investment of 125 of the world's richest billionaires yield an annual average of three million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90 per cent of humanity, according to a new report by non-profit group Oxfam. These super rich people have a collective USD 2.4 trillion stake in 183 companies.
Their investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard and Poor group of 500 companies, said the report titled "Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world's richest people".
Cumulatively, these 125 billionaires fund 393 million tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per year, which is equal to the annual carbon emissions of France, a nation of 67 million people.
To put things into perspective, each of these billionaires would have to circumnavigate the world almost 16 million times in a private jet to create the same emissions, the report said.
(...) "The major and growing responsibility of wealthy people for overall emissions is rarely discussed or considered in climate policy making. This has to change. These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. They have escaped accountability for too long," said Amitabh Behar, CEO of Oxfam India.
(...) "They can't be allowed to hide or greenwash. We need governments to tackle this urgently by publishing emission figures for the richest people, regulating investors and corporates to slash carbon emissions and taxing wealth and polluting investments", said Nafkote Dabi, Climate Change Lead at Oxfam International.
Oxfam also estimated that a wealth tax on the world's super-rich could raise USD 1.4 trillion a year, vital resources that could help developing countries - those worst hit by the climate crisis - to adapt, address loss and damage and carry out a just transition to renewable energy. (...)
"The super-rich need to be taxed and regulated away from polluting investments that are destroying the planet. Governments must also put in place ambitious regulations and policies that compel corporations to be more accountable and transparent in reporting and radically reducing their emissions," said Behar. (...)
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Billionaires don’t fear for their lives enough. That’s a legit issue.
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sordidamok · 16 days
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How is this real? We've been paying into social security with every paycheck and now orange blowhole thinks he's gonna cut our benefits? The fuck you say.
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katkathleen · 5 months
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queerism1969 · 9 months
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Public-school students in Massachusetts are set to get free lunch and breakfast thanks to a new 4% tax on people's earnings above $1 million.
Massachusetts in 2022 voted for a constitutional amendment to tax high earners. It went into effect at the beginning of 2023.
State House News Service, an independent news wire, reported that $1 billion of the state's record $56.2 billion fiscal budget for 2024 will be funded by its new 4% tax.
Gov. Maura Healey signed the budget on Wednesday, making Massachusetts the eighth state to adopt a plan for free school lunch since the expiration of federal free school lunches that had emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The outlet reported that a portion of the $1 billion expected to be gathered from the new income tax would be used to provide all public-school students in Massachusetts with free breakfast and lunch, if they want it.
WCVB reported that state lawmakers agreed to allocate $523 million of anticipated revenue from the new tax on education and set aside $477 million for transportation.
In February, President Joe Biden urged lawmakers to pass his billionaires' tax proposal, which would impose a minimum 20% tax on households with a net worth of more than $100 million.
Unlike Massachusetts' new tax, which is on income, the proposed billionaire's tax is aimed at wealth.
Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC the proposal would target "big corporations and the wealthiest Americans," while protecting people who made less than $400,000 a year from tax increases.
Biden also signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in February, which included a 15% minimum tax on corporations earning more than $1 billion.
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