What if they really did cut each other’s hair, on each other’s yachts?!?
I think I’ve created the billionaire vortex.
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And, as we all know, when you’re making $21/hr (versus $7.15 w/no health insurance) you can afford the “pricier” burger, no problem!
@PsiPhiGrrrl - as infuriating as the subject of that article is, totally worth the read for this, among several other gems:
also called “trickle-down” economics, which it’s called because of the notion that everyone will be prosperous as long as rich people are allowed to piss on them.
Thanks for that! 
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Golden showers indeed…
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Do I want to know the colors of the handshake or parachute for the worker-bees? 
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Personally I’m in favor of both. But progressive tax plans are a liberal idea, that would not get bi-partisan support.
A plea that everyone should pay taxes, including the 1%, I think would have overwhelming support by everyone (except for the maybe people like the Walton family who would throw millions behind disinformation and opposition to meaningful change). That is to say start with what everyone can get behind, then later push or the tougher sells.
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It doesn’t matter what the idea is… if a real or perceived “liberal” aka “progressive” aka “stalinists” aka “satanic pedophiles” are in support, most of the GOP leadership will be against it, just on principle. Nancy Pelosi could propose the “make sure all democrats have to crawl through glass to vote, the gays need to stay closeted, women have to stay home and cook for their mens, everyone must attend a white evangelical church twice a week, corporations pay no tax and can pay their workers whatever they want including nothing, and huge pay raises for the Pentagon so they can go to war with everyone” Act and they would refuse to pass it on the grounds that it’s a “liberal” bill. 
But was not always the case. A healthy progressive tax base used to be the foundation of the liberal consensus, with the highest marginal tax rate being over 90% for incomes over like $400,000? Someone mentioned it up thread.
That has been the Democratic line for years now on the more progressive side of things and It already does have wide support from the majority of voters. Including reform AND raising corporate tax rates and taxes on the wealthy. Getting the voters on board is NOT the problem here. Many of the things the Democrats WANT to do is wildly popular, like in the 60% or 70% from both sides. It’s the GOP that’s the problem.
We can’t keep letting them set the agenda for things that need to get done. We have to keep pushing against them, because the world they wish to create around us solves none of our actual problems, and in fact deepens them and makes new ones.
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“Ooh, this one is tricky. Obviously we reject it out of hand…but after all that, how do we still double our demands?”
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It’s never good enough. They take any thing that isn’t FULL capitulation to their position, and claim they can’t agree. That’s what they want. THEIR way. Full stop. And even if they get what they want, they STILL demand concessions! They are no longer a party that values compromise and democracy. they are a full on authoritarian party now and we have to work around them on issues like taxes, where the Democratic position is popular.
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I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that if you own more than a tiny fraction of a company, you often can’t actually sell much at once at market price, because you sell would drop the market price. I also don’t know how significant that is in practice. Though if it got founders to more consistently divest from their companies in a way that gradually wore away, say, weird voting structures that mean a public company is still controlled by a handful of minority shareholders? I’m all for it.
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Probably not too bad. At the levels of net worth we’re discussing, these people are diversified enough that even if they own a significant piece of one company (e.g one they founded) they should be able to sell off enough of the other securities and realise enough dividends that they can fund a 2% wealth tax payment.
The weird voting structures are a separate issue, but you’re correct that they need to be addressed (one would hope in the anti-trust measures currently being formulated in Congress). Facebook would be significantly less toxic (though probably still awful) if Zuckerberg didn’t control the majority of the voting shares.
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It is with a heavy heart that we must tell you America’s richest continue to pay not quite as much tax as you do
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Logic!
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