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babylonsister

(170,962 posts)
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 09:08 PM Aug 2015

Why conservative billionaires have started talking like Bernie Sanders...

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/11/why_conservatives_billionaires_have_started_talking_like_bernie_sanders_we_are_creating_a_caste_system_from_which_its_almost_impossible_to_escape/


Tuesday, Aug 11, 2015 07:59 AM EST
Why conservative billionaires have started talking like Bernie Sanders: “We are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape”
This is Kenneth Langone, the founder of Home Depot and a longtime GOP donor. His biggest fear? Income inequality

Matthew Pulver

snip//

Georgescu writes:

I’m scared. The billionaire hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones is scared. My friend Ken Langone, a founder of the Home Depot, is scared. So are many other chief executives. Not of Al Qaeda, or the vicious Islamic State or some other evolving radical group from the Middle East, Africa or Asia. We are afraid where income inequality will lead.


In June, Cartier chief Johann Rupert — worth an estimated $7.5 billion — delivered the same message to his wealthy colleagues, telling them that the intensifying inequality and what it portends “keeps me awake at night.” He told his fellow elites that “We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us.” Like Georgescu and Langone, Rupert feared unrest and asked, “How is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the envy, hatred and the social warfare?”

But while Rupert only mused about the prospects for continuing to hawk jewelry and the restfulness of his nights amid the tumult, Georgescu and Langone are being proactive. Georgescu writes that he and Langone “have been meeting with chief executives, trying to get action on inequality,” taking advantage of Langone’s tremendous access to business leaders. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a major CEO that wouldn’t take his call,” said a close associate of Rudy Giuliani of Langone in 2012. Georgescu and Langone are telling their patrician peers that if “inequality is not addressed, the income gap will most likely be resolved in one of two ways: by major social unrest or through oppressive taxes.” The word seems to be getting around at the global aristocracy’s water cooler, and Georgescu writes that they “find almost unanimous agreement on the nature of the problem and the urgent need for solutions.”

It is remarkable that Langone is partnered with Georgescu on this crusade for social justice. Langone served on the board of a leading populist philanthropy group called the New York Stock Exchange, and his deep concern for the downtrodden led him to chair that gang of do-gooders. He’s a longtime generous contributor to Republican presidential candidates who have been on the front lines of the battle to institute supply-side and neoliberal economics. “[T]here’s nobody better than him,” said Rudy Giuliani last year about Langone’s prowess as a bundler for GOP politicians. And when he isn’t giving money and raising funds for the political friends of big business, Langone gives the invaluable gift of his careful insight, last year comparing progressives’ attention to income inequality to Hitler’s political project in 1933.

The only thing Langone had right was the year: 1933. It was in that year that President Franklin Roosevelt took office at the height of the Great Depression, inequality peaked to record levels, and fears of revolt circulated among that era’s fat-cat elite. Capitalism, unreined during the 1920s, had hit another of its cyclical failures, this time its worst yet. The powerful feared revolution, and the New Deal constituted a sort of bargain made between capitalists and the people: A bit of socialism to save capitalism from itself.

That year, John Maynard Keynes issued an open letter to the newly inaugurated Roosevelt in the New York Times, whose two opening sentences of the more than 2,500-word manifesto defined the stakes and posed revolution as the price of failure of severely altering capitalism as it was practiced. Keynes was no radical. He urged the new president to work “within the framework of the existing social system,” that is, to reform capitalism without allowing it to be abandoned or abolished.
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Why conservative billionaires have started talking like Bernie Sanders... (Original Post) babylonsister Aug 2015 OP
Duh Alittleliberal Aug 2015 #1
Henry Ford had it figured out long ago. Arugula Latte Aug 2015 #20
It's pretty damn simple. Aerows Aug 2015 #2
Rich men are afraid of two things Warpy Aug 2015 #8
I have to add the one thing that every single capitalist fears Aerows Aug 2015 #9
Also, make public college tuition free. Arugula Latte Aug 2015 #21
BAM! Aerows Aug 2015 #23
Aw Don't Worry Kenneth- LiberalElite Aug 2015 #3
They also sell tar and feathers (pillows). n/t PoliticAverse Aug 2015 #7
Home Depot sells the tar meow2u3 Aug 2015 #11
Hey I did check before posting... PoliticAverse Aug 2015 #13
I stand corrected meow2u3 Aug 2015 #14
Sadly... MrMickeysMom Aug 2015 #10
I do inadvertently make people laugh LiberalElite Aug 2015 #28
Sociopathic reptiles worried .. ananda Aug 2015 #4
Honestly, I'd be happy with: PatrickforO Aug 2015 #5
Limits on how much banks can charge when they loan out money they borrow from the Fed for free. GoneFishin Aug 2015 #15
Ah. No usury. Good call. PatrickforO Aug 2015 #25
Dr. Frankenstein has lost control of his monster. n/t PowerToThePeople Aug 2015 #6
I view feeble conciliatory half measures by the 0.1% as CYA, relieving a little pressure so the GoneFishin Aug 2015 #12
They'll try to do as little as possible, bringing the pot back down just under a boil Hydra Aug 2015 #18
Yep. Exactly. GoneFishin Aug 2015 #19
The usual. . pitchforks and torches. . . n/t annabanana Aug 2015 #16
Irony abounds Hydra Aug 2015 #17
Home Depot? You mean the store where they replaced all the cashiers with scab machines? hatrack Aug 2015 #22
Me too! mackerel Aug 2015 #24
Kenneth Langone could give immediate help by: NCjack Aug 2015 #26
To draw an imperfect analogy, look at the Muslim Brotherhood. closeupready Aug 2015 #27
So is Hillary Clinton Armstead Aug 2015 #29
 

Aerows

(39,961 posts)
2. It's pretty damn simple.
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 09:12 PM
Aug 2015

Raise wages across the board so that everyone who works has a livable wage, see to it that every American has access to quality health care without bankrupting themselves, and reinvest in America's infrastructure.

Do those three things, and you have nothing to fear.

Warpy

(110,907 posts)
8. Rich men are afraid of two things
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 09:27 PM
Aug 2015

First, they're afraid something is going to cost extra money. It doesn't matter if they have enough for a thousand profligate lifetimes, they're terrified of losing anything.

Second, they're afraid of inflation that will mean their wealth is eaten up by those higher prices.

They think increased labor costs fuel both and they couldn't be more wrong.

Depressing wages was their idea to end the inflation built into fiat currency, about 2-4% per year. It didn't work because it's built into the currency and every time a business borrows money, the inflation rate is built into their prices. Most businesses borrow money constantly to keep their cash flow steady.

It didn't work, but now they're trapped by their own lack of success between inflation that never abated and the bogeyman of increased labor cost making it all worse. They've choked off the demand side of the economy and anyone who knows what's going on hates their guts. They also know this can't be sustained much longer, that it will end in meltdown and/or revolution.

You bet your ass they're scared.

 

Aerows

(39,961 posts)
9. I have to add the one thing that every single capitalist fears
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 09:58 PM
Aug 2015

Someone undeservedly earns more than the capitalist in question undeservedly earns.

Another point is this one:

If you have one goat, and your neighbor has a goat, these types of people won't go after the man with a thousand goats. They will do everything in their power to impede the growth of the neighbors goat and steal it if they can. If there is a way to force the neighbor into poverty so that they have to sell the goat for pennies, they will.

It's the philosophy of steal from the poor (bastard that lives next to you) vs. steal from the rich.

I hope that makes sense.

 

Arugula Latte

(50,566 posts)
21. Also, make public college tuition free.
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 11:25 PM
Aug 2015

Close corporate tax loopholes, change the tax system on the super wealthy investment class, slash the military budget and there's more than enough money to pay for all sorts of good things.

meow2u3

(24,743 posts)
11. Home Depot sells the tar
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 10:25 PM
Aug 2015

but you'd have to go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get the feathers (from the pillows).

ananda

(28,782 posts)
4. Sociopathic reptiles worried ..
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 09:18 PM
Aug 2015

.. only about themselves.

"My entitled fears for a society that the criminality of my peers and political party helped create is more important than actually changing anything."

PatrickforO

(14,516 posts)
5. Honestly, I'd be happy with:
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 09:18 PM
Aug 2015

1. Strengthened Social Security
2. Stronger unions
3. Better pensions with stronger rules preventing their theft by corporations
4. Medicare for all Americans
5. Much more affordable postsecondary education
6. Wage hikes matching the productivity curve
7. Minimum wage tied to inflation

Geez. My kitty got on the keyboard and held the space key down...

I think retraining the police departments, body cams, strengthening the voting rights act again and more equitable funding for K-12 would be good too.

GoneFishin

(5,217 posts)
15. Limits on how much banks can charge when they loan out money they borrow from the Fed for free.
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 10:31 PM
Aug 2015

Borrowing from the Fed for 0.25% then loaning it out at 29% should be a jailable offense.

GoneFishin

(5,217 posts)
12. I view feeble conciliatory half measures by the 0.1% as CYA, relieving a little pressure so the
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 10:25 PM
Aug 2015

lid doesn't blow off. They are not going to open the lid and let us out of the pot by choice. Those used to always getting their way are not going to willingly leave one extra cent on the table.

And since they substantially have taken it all, they have to give some of it up if inequality is to be reduced.

Hydra

(14,459 posts)
18. They'll try to do as little as possible, bringing the pot back down just under a boil
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 10:45 PM
Aug 2015

And then be surprised when it comes right back as soon as they try to steal it from us again.

Hydra

(14,459 posts)
17. Irony abounds
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 10:44 PM
Aug 2015

The middle class has always been a great shield for the elite. The Middle class thinks they will one day be in the upper tiers, and so defend and excuse their lawlessness.

And then the elite erased the middle class. A lot of Republicans think they are 1%ers, but other than those morons, everyone else knows they're not getting a slice of that pie, ever.

It's easy to control someone by dangling a carrot like that- but when there is only the stick, then something else is likely to happen.

hatrack

(59,439 posts)
22. Home Depot? You mean the store where they replaced all the cashiers with scab machines?
Tue Aug 11, 2015, 11:30 PM
Aug 2015

The one where I walked in, couldn't find anyone to answer my questions?

The one where I saw exactly one guy trying to help about nine people stacked up at the self-check stands, on a Saturday afternoon in summer?

That Home Depot?

Sure, it's one store in one city, but I have my doubts as to just how fucking concerned he is.

NCjack

(10,279 posts)
26. Kenneth Langone could give immediate help by:
Wed Aug 12, 2015, 12:01 AM
Aug 2015

1. Shut down the donations by the 1% to RW Republicans. (Put those assholes out of business.)
2. Shut down the buying of advertisements by the 1% on Fox News. (Put those assholes out of business.)

 

closeupready

(29,503 posts)
27. To draw an imperfect analogy, look at the Muslim Brotherhood.
Wed Aug 12, 2015, 12:09 AM
Aug 2015

In the face of colonial repression, this was a grass roots movement to unite arabs against colonial invaders. Their founders were persecuted, arrested, tortured, and killed. And that was about 100 years ago. And it is now one of the most popular political factions in Egypt, and popular all over the arab world. It's tragic that violence has been used to achieve some of their aims, whereas people like Gandhi were even more successful against colonial Britain through means of nonviolent resistance.

Are there parallels, however, between what happened in Egypt and what is happening here? As I say, it's an imperfect analogy, so who can say, but for those who enjoy studying history, it's an interesting exercise.

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