plutocrats

Tax Breaks for Oligarchs – The $100 Million Manhattan Apartment with a Property Tax Rate of 0.017%

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Screen Shot 2015-03-10 at 11.56.16 AMThe most disingenuous and sickening type of status quo defender is the person who blames the recent expansion in wealth inequality on a “lack of skilled workers.” Such a person is either a liar or an imbecile. There’s not much wiggle room there. Either this person doesn’t know that the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE) lifts asset prices while doing very little for the economy, or he or she is choosing to ignore it. Either this person doesn’t understand that the poor and lower middle class don’t own much in the way of stocks or bonds, or he or she is choosing to ignore it.

Since QE has been far and away the most important variable impacting the economy and markets since the crisis, ignoring its impact on wealth inequality is simply unforgivable. Yet, it’s more than that. Much more. Many of the polices existing in these United States not only encourage foreign oligarch money laundering into luxury skyscrapers that remain empty, but our society seems to go out of its way to ensure they have to pay as little in property tax as possible. Indeed, tax polices don’t benefit the rich, they benefit the super rich.

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The Pitchforks are Coming…– A Dire Warning from a Member of the 0.01%

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If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

From Nick Hanauer’s excellent Politico Op-Ed: The Pitchforks are Coming…For Us Plutocrats

Over the past several years, I have been extremely critical of the 0.01% as a socio-economic class, often referring to them as criminal oligarchs. This has nothing to do with the incredible sums of money they have amassed. I’m simply not interested in chasing that kind of wealth, nor am I an envious person. I don’t care how much money anyone has. What I do care about is the kind of power that such money can buy, and how that power is then abused to purchase politicians and run roughshod over entire societies. I have also been disgusted with the fact that the 0.01% as a class seem self-absorbed, apathetic and delusional when it comes to the catastrophe the current economic and financial system is reaping upon the planet. So busy are they patting themselves on the back and scrambling to acquire that next billion to see what is rapidly unfolding beyond their moats.

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A Vital Message from Venezuela – “They Talk Like Marx, Rule Like Stalin…”

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The following quote written on a piece of cardboard from the ongoing protests in Venezuela basically summarizes how the oligarchs, or the 0.01%, and their political henchmen rule in all countries around the world at the moment. Then they cry like little welfare babies when people criticize their behavior. Powerful stuff: They speak like Marx … Read more