Thread: What Do You Think of This Idea?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/De-bil ... 5-918.html

I read both liberal and conservative news, it keeps me balanced and informed of both sides because I trust neither extreme fully. I would say if there are billionaires who are actually pro-America and are NOT working to put a noose around our necks, this rule shouldn't apply-but to those who are trying to take away our freedoms and make us slaves to the system, what a great idea! :P

Not bad ideas at all...

These Multi Billionairs who work to dismantle and destroy the U S are far more dangerous to our freedom, liberty, and way of life than any Islamic Extremists.

Something must be done, indeed.

As an old timer and hard core conservative I believe in capitalism however it too can fail without love of country, morals and values on the part of business. Since 1980 I continue to see companies who care little for this country and think only of the bottom line, while profit is great if it destroys American it can be bad.

Currently greed of government, companies and stockholders is killing the American middle class in the end how to save capitalism and correct the problem.

I don't think it would work I'm sure these people will find ways to hide their money and besides as nice of an idea to have these people help out their fellow man if they're not already giving they're not going to have a change of heart because the laws change. Doesn't the un have the same additude towards our country and that we need to share our wealth and jobs with other 3rd world countries?

Don't get me wrong, I do believe in Capitalism-but the original that this country had, balanced with morals and the respect of our being our own autonomous nation with its own distinct American-born culture(s)(the pan-European mainstream, African American and Native/indigenous cultures), one shared commercial public language (American English-with the exception of our indigenous people wanting to speak their own languages-but all immigrants having to learn and speak our language in public) and customs, all not subject to change from outside pressures ie "globalism". I don't have a problem with people working to become rich but who don't bother the rest of us, but I sure as heck do have a problem with those who work to take away our freedoms and the chance for US to improve our lot in life, you know? For the latter, why NOT believe in "redistributing the wealth", since the billionaires are making it where there already is a redistribution of wealth-they're getting richer-off our misery-and we're getting poorer and poorer.

From the above link
De Billionairize The Planet

By Rob Kall (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)
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This is one of a series of articles based on the ideas first described in my article, Time For the Left To Declare Bloody, Ugly War BACK.

When people grow past seven and a half feet, they live very short lives. Almost all of the largest creatures that have walked the earth are extinct. Whales are threatened too, though totally because of humans. Nature doesn't approve of really big. Matter of fact, it kills or severely handicaps biological anomalies and freaks that become really big. I'm suggesting that we do such a "natural" thing with billionaires-- eliminate their existence and prevent them from developing.

Billionaires are too big. The power they command through their wealth is too dangerous to be allowed in the control of any flawed human. The economic influence they wield produces warps in the capitalist space-time-economic dimension that prevent capitalism from operating in a free, natural state, as strange attractors change the dynamics in chaotic systems.

We have seen the effects of billionaires like the Koches, Waltons, Mellons, Scaife and Soros on American politics. They spend hundreds of millions influencing the political process. They are not alone. They do this along with transnational corporations that the Supreme Court has traitorously and perversely given rights of corporate personhood.

Both Billionaires and the largest corporations must be eliminated, boycotted, civil resistanced and legislated out of existence.

This is a daunting but not insurmountable task. Of course the 400 plus billionaires in the US will fight this tooth and claw. Forbes reports that there a bit over 1000 billionaires world wide, less than 10 percent of them women. We can be certain that most of the 1000 have interests and investments in the US, so we'll see most of them fighting any of the efforts I'm advocating. They'll do it using fake bottom up grassroots front groups, PR charm offensives, and all the tools that the biggest corporations have used to block legislation that helps the middle class by reining in the most powerful-- people and corporations.

I'm putting this idea out there-- that we should do all we can to eliminate the existence of billionaires, so that a conversation can be started.



Some will argue that free enterprise needs the hope and possibility that a person can become a billionaire for people to work hard and innovate. I don't believe that it is necessary.

Think of blood tests. There are healthy ranges for results. Take blood sugar, for example-- too high and you have diabetes, too low and you have low blood sugar and could pass out. Salt, triglycerides, BUN, you name it, there's a healthy range. Why not apply the same idea to wealth. Too much is unhealthy-- maybe not for the possessor, but for society.

When someone's wealth reaches, say, $100 million he or she should get a warning that his wealth is starting to approach the legally allowed upper limits. At $250 million, the tax on assets, not just income, should start to escalate, so it is impossible to possess more than, say $500 million. I said tax, but instead of the money going to government, the billionaire could also be required to put into place a plan to get rid of the money-- through charity-- contributions to non-profit organizations (yes, this will massively help NGOs) that are not political or economically motivated, or by sharing of equity with workers, preferably a combination of both. I'm sure other ways could also be added.

We need leaders and lone innovators and we always will, but there is no reason to assume that they need to have the possibility of possessing BILLIONS for them to be motivated to work hard and creatively. One might even consider that those who work strictly to make more and more money may not have the best motives.

The richest man in the world this year, according to the Forbes billionaire report , Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu, probably passed Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the previous top billionaires, because they've given billions to charity foundations. Gates and Buffet are moving in the right direction but they haven't gone nearly far enough. I can't imagine any of the billionaires, with an average of $3.5 billion each, being willing to give up the power associated with their wealth.

This "de-billionairization" of the planet would necessarily have to be done in steps. An easier first step might be to begin with inheritances. Make it a law that no person can be bequeathed or assets worth more than half a billion dollars, or, over the course of a lifetime, be gifted or bequeathed more than that amount, in total. Make it a law that corporations may not issue stocks or modify stock ownership structuring so anyone owns more than $500 million in sellable shares. That may mean creating a new category of stock ownership so founders and principal shareholders can maintain control of a company without having shares that can be sold. Or maybe the answer is to no longer allow a company that gets that big to exist, or to have so much of a percentage controlled by one person.

There are all kinds of too big to fail. And perhaps we should also be talking about too big to be allowed to exist, let alone fail.

I can imagine some critics attacking this idea as communist or socialist. I don't think so.

Capitalists like Friedman and Hayek promote the idea of the free market. But billionaires exert greater influences on the market, or at least influences comparable to those produced by unions and government regulations.

I've written before about the idea of applying nature's rules to macro-economics, discussing a need for a smarter approach to globalization: Membrane Economic Globalization.

By Rob Kall (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)
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Pat Buchanan wrote,
"The U.S. trade deficit is the greatest foreign aid and wealth transfer in program in history, and our workers are paying for it by the loss to their families of the American Dream."

I propose that allowing billionaires to exist, with their propensity to invest overseas, to invest in gold and commodities and real estate, actually is an equally devastating transfer of national resources away from applications that create jobs. Buchanan suggested in his 2004 article that a billion in exports created 20,000 jobs. I propose that a billion in a billionaire's portfolio costs the nation 20,000 jobs, though it may create jobs overseas.

This idea of eliminating billionaires would start in the US, or perhaps, once the meme is in the air, it would start in more liberal democracies, like those in Europe. But one way to enforce it on other billionaires, outside the US would be to not allow them to enter the US. Consider them dangerous people, threats to our democracy, our economy. They really already are.

I agree totaly but big bisness does more to sell us out than billionaries. Companies like walmart, lowes, home depot, costco, budwieser and others have done more dammage to america than any 1 person. Big bisness has put more people out of jobs than anything else nafta's just another nail in that coffen! My fear would be this first they say ok only 500 million and sooner or later that will prove to be too much money and at some point it will get down to you and I. They will tell us we make too much what then? I would like to see a better distrubition of wealth as well but I feel it would be better if these wealthy people were to take on projects like building a fence across the border. Hover dam was built by wealthy americans who wanted to reinvest in america it provided a lot of work for out of work citizans during the depression. Those were real americans who put their money where their mouths were! No days I just see too much greed be it people, biisness, or goverment! Neighbors don't care for neighbors they just want to out do'em

Still looking, but the problem seems to be when government and business jump into bed and spread their STDs.

When you look at the bailouts that we just went thru, then one must ask why? What is the opposite of too big to fail? Big business would fail under its own size and weight. Sooner or later the competition, if left unfettered by government restrictions, regulations that favor one over the other, or down right contractural fraud and favortism or corruption, the smaller would gain advantage by less overhead, quicker response time to the market and host of other natural factors that would give advantage and the larger would collapse under its own weight.

So that would be a more free and open market place with natural cycles of success/failure.

Then there is the favoritism played by easy access to finance capital. When this is placed into favorites aided by corrupt government forces and further aided by the investment banks, the corporation gains advantage despite its lack of natural competitive advantage. It becomes propt up not because of competitive spirits but due to favoritism. The fiat dollar helps to aid in this respect, as if we were working with commodity based currencies, gold, silver, whatever, one with capital would be much more conservative with their outlay of capital.

In other words much of this whole problem stems from a fiat based monetary system and the corrupt government that has always followed such currencies. The printing press brings with it endless possibilities when you have control of the switch.

Businesses must be allowed to fail and the growth and competive spirit be allowed to take their place.

Our wealth is being stolen from us each and every minute and this is being transfered up to the top, and feeding unsound, corrupt, unproductive, uncompetitive businesses.

There are thoughts that dictate that capitalism is both creative and destructive in a very natural cyclical manners. Propping up businesses just delay creativity and creates stagnation in the market. Society pays for the stagnation and it benefits few.

So unless the wealthy can be found to have benefitted by corrupt manners and forces, taking their wealth just because they understand the system and play the system seems to be less than right.

The governmental corruption needs to be reigned in.

The multi-billionaires are the result of blatant corruption.

We have bought into a system that will end badly. Ill-gotten ?gains? generally have haunting legacies.

At a micro level, each and every one that partakes in the market place, with each and every action or trans-action are responsible for the system that we have built. After all, besides taxes and other forced expenditures, all other dollar transactions are voluntary.

Psst.........throw your TV out the window.

JMOs