are you ready to "cap wealth"?

[welshTerrier2]

if not, you better start getting ready ...

there are 3 methods i can see to take money out of our political process and out of our government ...

1. publically financed campaigns and other campaign finance spending limits
2. the immediate execution of any paid lobbyist who spends even a penny on any elected official ... oh, and also execute the official who took the bribe ...
3. capping wealth ...

well, the liberals don't often like option 3 ... it's draconian ... it's socialism ... it's communism ...

that's fine, i say ... just solve the problem ... i don't care how you do it but solve it!!

oh, they tell me, we have to fight for campaign finance reform and lobby reform ...

it never has worked i tell them ... never ... i'm willing to try anything you propose but you need to make a commitment to solving the problem ... yes, capping wealth is a draconian change ... but we cannot tolerate the continued poisoning of our democratic institutions with big money ...

i'll try your way FIRST i tell them; but you need to agree to capping wealth when your methods fail ... they don't, of course ...

the Supreme Court just struck down a Vermont law that had put modest restrictions on how much candidates could spend ... and whatever happened to all those lobbying reform bills ... haven't heard much about them lately ...

it seems to me the only way to take money out of the system, or at least most of it, is to confiscate it ... i can already hear the cries: but that's un-American ...

well friends, so is the totally corrupt system we currently have ... what's your solution?

source: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-06-26T143347Z_01_WAT005916_RTRUKOC_0_US-COURT-CAMPAIGN.xml

A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Vermont law that strictly limits how much money candidates for state office can raise and spend on their political campaigns.

The high court ruled that the restrictions on contributions and spending violated constitutional free-speech rights.

The law limits spending by candidates for governor to $300,000, for lieutenant governor to $100,000 and other statewide races to $45,000. It also limits spending on races for the state legislature. <skip>

[Fridays Child]

1. Would the Roberts court have come to the same conclusion if...

...it were the Dems who had a seemingly endless supply of corporate cash, instead of the repukes? Somehow, I doubt it. :mad:

[The Magistrate]

2. Option Two Sounds Good To Me, Sir

But my mood is particularly prickly today....

"Kill one, warn one hundred."

[leftofthedial]

3. yup

and not just because of the need to get money out of politics

Capitalism is destroying our planet and our species

[Just Me]

4. Limits shouldn't apply only to poverty and behavior.

That's all I have to say.

[redqueen]

8. Seems logical to me. n/t

[Taverner]

5. I like wealth caps to be on the table as a threat

Not to actually do them, but to threaten the wealthy in case they get out of line...

[AndyTiedye]

6. And You Don't Think The Process of Confiscating All Those Assets Will Be…

…political? Or the process of selling them off or buying them up at fire-sale prices?
Jack Abramoff would have a field day!

Of course all the real wealth would quickly migrate overseas.

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. Abso-fucking-lutely not.

But, in terms of campaign finance reform, I agree - we need to do something better than what we have now, and find a way to limit one person's influence on the election process.

But never, ever will I support a wealth cap. Sure, it's a solution to the problem of election influence, but it causes a lot of other problems, and it isn't worth the cost of doing, the loss of freedom, and the sheer unconstitutionality of it.

Far more draconian inheritance tax would at least solve the problem, or some of the problem, of wealth being stuck in one family for generations. Also we need some reform on corporations, trusts, and foundations - places that the wealthy like to hide their money to keep it out of the hands of the government, to avoid the inheritance taxes, and otherwise run around the few processes we have to help rich people eliminate much of their wealth upon their deaths.

But no, no wealth cap. Never.

[undergroundpanther]

9. capping wealth

Yes it's about time too..Our government has been bought from us..One way to avoid scrabbling hands,is you can cap wealth by progressive not regressive taxation,as in the more money you make the more you MUST give BACK to the little people that made you rich.. If the wealthy whining at you, give you that old saw they "earned it" themselves,remind them HOW MANY people work for them,no ceo does ALL the labor himself and is entitled to not share. A ceo outsources the WORK to other willing to be paid less for their labor people who have NOT..because for one to have another must be deprived,deprived people are desperate and will sell themselves cheap to survive,This is why rich people OPPOSE Progressive Taxation.. So,the less a company pays to it's employees to live on the more goes in an executive's pocket,and this makes this system prone to almost sociopathic accounting and desperate people willing to sell themselves cheap and cheaper to"compete"for scraps waiting for a ship that will NEVER come in.Never come in if the wealthy can do anything about it..

An owner who despite looking so busy really does not do all that much work,labor wise because he has 'help' for all that..and he basically is a busy looking parasite living off the labor of others,people who have not, desperate enough to sell themselves on the cheap because this whole system is founded on a BIG FUCKING LIE.. which is Summed up very nicely by Rousseau...

The first man having enclosed a piece of ground saying..
"this is mine"
and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of society.
From how many crimes,murders,wastes might anyone have saved now by pulling up the stakes and crying to his fellows....

"Beware of listening to this impostor!!"

You are undone if once you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to us all and of the Earth to nobody.

To protect private property men accepted laws and governments.They had too many disputes among themselves
to do without arbiters and avarice to go long without masters.All ran headlong into their chains in hopes of securing their liberty.

Discourse on the origins of inequality of mankind ~Rousseau..


Slavery was the legal fiction that a person was property.
Corporations are the legal fiction that property is a person.
And in order to be deemed sane under fascism,
you must believe both fictions simultaneously.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI - WORK MAKES ONE FREE - entrance to Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt, Germany .

Bwhahahaha...Yeah riiight.

[BayCityProgressive]

10. No to wealth caps

Yes to a Basic Income guarantee for all Americans. This has been supported by both left and right wing economists.

[undergroundpanther]

14. And I guarantee you

The wealthy will be who sets the numbers for everyone else..NOT the poor. The wealthy do not want poor people having enough money to demand to be treated like human beings..Because if the poor saw themselves as valuable as the elites do,income inequality would be a thing of the past... The wealthy will be the ones to set the numbers ,because they will do studies and trot out experts and rationalize how the poor need only a little bit to live on and the rest should be incentives to work..at a job no wealthy person would do,like swabbing toilets,picking fruit or Mc.Donalds...The wealthy will NEVER risk letting themselves be anywhere near poor,the wealthy are terrified of poverty and they would rather millions suffer than they be the slightest bit pinched.So they will make everyone else poor so they won't ever be. Don't trust a rich man to tell a poor man and dole out what a poor man needs or does not need because the rich man does not want to admit what a parasite pig he is on the bulk of humanity that does without..

[Warpy]

11. I am opposed to the death penalty

but kicking them out of Congress and then charging them with bribery would be sufficient. That would disqualify them from ever holding office again. Once out of prison, they'd have to find a way of making an honest living.

As for capping wealth, the old progressive taxation system did a fair job of that while allowing those of us who are working stiffs enough of the pie to have a decent lifestyle. The progressive tax was a wonderful disincentive to greed, although the obscenely wealthy did manage to get more so, albeit more slowly. A progressive inheritance tax is also a must to prevent the growth of a wealth based inherited aristocracy.

We already know how to do this. We just need the will in Washington to call an end to the dismal failure of supply side GOPonomics adn do it.

[undergroundpanther]

13. I am opposed

to the death penalty in the hands of the state.The state is a sociopath institution like the corporation.The state has no business executing people because the state is authoritarian.

That said I don't mind decapitation for the elite parasites so much by the people they victimized....Elites have a very good life at everyone else's expense.Turnabout is fair play in this case of revolt. Also I don't expect an elitist bully to change his corrupted ways after he has spent his whole life crafting ways to better exploit humanity..Sociopaths do not change they pretend to. An corrupt king louis is elite because he is obsessed with"winning" and getting wealthy and powerful by exploiting others in any way he can get away with doing..And some people like elitist snots you can NEVER trust them with freedom money or power ever..

[welshTerrier2]

15. "the old progressive taxation system did a fair job"

that's an interesting argument ... i, too, support a more steeply tiered system of tax rates ... nor do support the death penalty although the temptation remains strong to use it for those who defile our democracy in their greed ...

but to argue that progressive taxation "did a fair job", here, i'm not so sure ... did we not see massive abuses by the military-industrial complex during times of steeply graduated progressive tax rates? i believe we did ...

and have we not always seen an American foreign policy designed for the greedy? American imperialism, not for a national acquisition of power but rather to serve the interests of a powerful, narrow few, has sat at the core of American foreign policy for more than a hundred years ...

so, while i support progressive taxation, it's hard to see it solving the great corruptions that confront us ...

[undergroundpanther]

16. The military is bloated by Companies

It's not going to help people, it's going to fat Ceos of companies and that is why it's corrupt..

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/inequal/indexinq.htm
http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/8/richscum.htm
Is a Trickle up economy what we need?
ttp://www.bemidjistate.edu/SW_Journal/issue08/articles/2_Cond_Scarcity.htm

[Dr.Phool]

12. We need a Maximum Wage more than a Minimum Wage.

How many peoples healthcare would one asshole's $400 million pension pay for? And exactly what did he do to deserve it? Fucked the rest of the human race.