110 Comments

What we need is to overturn Citizens United - the SC decision that allowed unfettered big money into politics. Most people have never even heard of this and yet it drives politicians voting. Sure there's always been under the table stuff but the outright purchase of a politician by corporations was not legal until then. How do we get rid of this pernicious legal decision?

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The only way to truly be able to tax the wealthy is to completely get rid of donor money in politics. Why are we so unable to do this? Billions upon billions of dollars go into electing people that are then beholden to those donors and not the people that actually elected them. The system is so inherently flawed. Get rid of donors and lobbyists, return politics to people that actually want to better the country, not just get rich or have power.

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So what do we do about this?? There are over 300 different Representatives who represent different parts of the country. I can tell my Representative what I want but he is only 1 person.

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Robert, by the way I love your art drawings and I think you are a talented artist !!!!

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Sorry, but the answer is quite obvious. Money rules, and our representatives are beholden to it. Rare is the human being who would put the greater good above self-preservation. We need to change the rules of the game, a complete overhaul of our political and economic systems.

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If democracy means government responsiveness to what majorities of citizens want, we present strong evidence that in recent years, the United States has not been very democratic at all. Our analysis of some 2,000 federal government policy decisions indicates that when you take account of what affluent Americans, corporations and organized interest groups want, ordinary citizens have little or no independent influence at all. The wealthy, corporations and organized interest groups have substantial influence. But the estimated influence of the public is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

Moreover, if you simply look at how often ordinary Americans get policy changes they want, you see that they are frequently thwarted. Even big majorities — 60 to 80 percent of Americans — get the policy changes they want only about 40 percent of the time. This has real consequences. Millions of Americans are denied government help with jobs, incomes, health care or retirement pensions. They do not get action against climate change or stricter regulation of the financial sector or a tax system that asks the wealthy to pay a fair share. On all these issues, wealthy Americans tend to want very different things than average Americans do. And the wealthy usually win.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/23/democracy-in-america-an-interview-with-authors-ben-page-and-martin-gilens/

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Why are any of these groups allowed to make political contributions? Isn’t the Constitution for the general welfare of We the People? Are the goals of these groups Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness? As they are not people, they should have no direct influence on our politicians! I agree that the corrupting influence of these groups has been evident for way too long and the people won’t have a say in our government until their ability to “buy” politicians is brought to an end.

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ConstanceReaderjust now

My question is...when did it become moderate to sit back and do nothing to stop democracy from dying, to stop the physical country crumbling to dust, to continually fall behind the rest of the first world? When did it become 'radical' to preserve democracy (especially by eliminating unelected obstacles not required by the Constitution, such as the Parliamentarian and the filibuster), to repair what is broken, to bring us up to the standards of our economic peer countries, to make not-rich people's lives suck less?

In re: the Parliamentarian, I saw a commenter on another site say they are necessary because the rules are not going to interpret themselves. WTF?? If a third party is required to interpret a congressional rule that congress itself wrote, the rule is crap and should be thrown out and rewritten. This is not rocket surgery.

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You just won the lotto and got $1 million dollars. What do you buy first? A big house, perhaps?

Your company just went public and the stock jumped 35% the first week. You are a billionaire. What do you buy first? A politician, of course.

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Senator Warren, in her brilliance is spot-on Again in giving an overview of the problem, and an

Excellent Recipe/Solution; it is in the following:

THE BIG ESCAPE: How the Ultra-Wealthy Avoid Paying Taxes and How to Fix It https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-report-the-big-escape-how-the-ultra-wealthy-avoid-paying-taxes-and-how-to-fix-it

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Isn't Bernie Sanders on the Ways and Means committee? Surely he would tax the rich and large corporations!

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Robert, if there are only 600 american billionaires , could the dems just add a wealth tax of 30% of only the income that is more than $1 billion? why not? "As that allocation becomes ever more grotesquely imbalanced, this debate over wealth and power will loom ever larger over American politics."

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This really is a great piece of information. The outline of important points bolstered with even more with substantiated info. is eye opening. Could not agree more. So where do we go from here?

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On wealth Tax.

How to tax wealth: (It works with the three: individuals, companies, and corporations)

Say we tax Amazon on wealth, because we tax Jeff Bezos.

He would have to sell his stock to pay those taxes, meaning someone else would buy it.

It would generate revenue trice for the government, one on the sale, two on the buy, three on the wealth tax rate.

We would still always be able tax the income.

Either wealth or value would never be destroyed, nor income, and the transactions would stimulate the stock market and its value.

It is a mischievous perversion, does Biden agree with this!?... a mischievous perversion and a perfect put down for those that live from the value employees generate.

Personally I am not a big fan of taxes, I am more in favor of a strong monetary policy, a strong monetary policy based on spending on an education system that goes all the way to PhD (for those willing, some people do not like university). A world with no ideas is a world without an end in mind, it all starts with an idea!

Taxes are good only to monitor the economy, and are supposed to be in the low single digits.

Taxes as a policy is another thing, but if we are going to tax (wealth) let's do it wisely.

We have to see if the inequality is only caused by the accumulation of wealth, or if there is also a component due to continued austere monetary policy (that appears more to be the case here).

I would not be surprised if there is also an accumulation of wealth, capitalist wealth, it is normal with the excessive monetization and financialization environment we live in.

I would not be surprised to see a great loss of value all over, specially if we do not invest more in education. We have been being saved by QE and low rates policy.

In this context it is normal the ones like Bezos accumulate so much, such is the case of Jack Ma in China. Should we tax them to remove some excess liquidity and use it somewhere else and save the monetary policy for a rainy day?

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We need to publicly fund all elections, ad tax unearned wealth at the same (or higher rate) than earnings. We also need to educate the American people about the myths that surround their fears to tax wealth. Charts, live discussions at community halls. Each democratic senator and congressperson must go on the offensive to educate the American people about the royal f'ng they are getting.

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Here's how you get campaign finance reform: for the next 2 cycles of congress, u vote out every incumbent. We the people have the power, we just need to use it collectively. I'm guessing after 2 cycles of every single incumbent getting voted out, calls for campaign finance reform get some attention! What do ya think 🤔

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