Analyst Hyacinth, in the moss>> Brian Eno perfectly explains selfishness of the super rich >
(transcript follows - edited for clarity)
YouTube
Brian Eno, cont'd >
> Q: Why do you think you should be paying more #tax?
>> BRIAN: I would like to live in a pleasant, comfortable #society, and to do that means you have to reduce the number of #poor people....I don't like the thought that half of the population are struggling, and I don't think there's any need that they they should be struggling. There are plenty of people that are quite well-off like me who would be happy to share their #money a little bit more than they do.
>>
> Q: What's your message to....#millionaires or #billionaires, you know, people like #ElonMusk who obviously don't think the same way you do and think that they should...be allowed to accumulate their #wealth into the billions and billions of pounds? What would your message be for those people?
>>
>> BRIAN: It's obvious to me that there's a feedback loop involved in #wealth, which to say if you get a little bit #rich, you are very likely to get richer. It works the other way 'round with #poverty - if you get poor, you’re very likely to get poorer, so those things are not self-correcting...it doesn't work. There's not the #TrickleDownTheory that people used to believe in...that it's good for people to get rich 'cuz that money gets dispersed among poorer people so it helps them.
>>
>> BRIAN (cont'd): ...But it isn't what happens - the rich accumulate more and more #wealth. It doesn't trickle down to anybody, it trickles up actually.
> Q: #Labor have obviously been very, very reluctant to speak about a wealth #tax because they say that it might drive wealth creators or #business people out of the country. Do you agree with that assessment?
>>
>> BRIAN: I don't think that's true. I think some people will leave 'cuz there are some people who are mean-minded to the extent that they would rather go and live in some shithole country than pay an extra few thousand quid a year rent. So, there are those people. Frankly I'd be bloody pleased if they fucked off and went and lived there. Excuse my language, but rich people really piss me off a little bit because it's so small-minded...>>
>> BRIAN, cont'd: ...to think that the only thing that matters is the number that you have in the bank. It’s just amazing to me! Don't we #love #life because we love seeing everybody else enjoying it as well?
> Q: And it also seems that once you've got your house, or houses, and you can go on your nice holidays, what more do you want? Really, like, what do you need that extra #money for?
>>
>> BRIAN: I would love to know what you need the extra money for. You need it to impress your rich friends?....Can you imagine being in that state of mind, where what really matters to you is where you are in the top 20 of #richest people in the world?
> Q: So what do you think, then, of this idea that money #corrupts and if you earn a lot of money at some point you're going to be evil and selfish and not care about other people?
>>
>> BRIAN: Well, there's a lot of evidence for that. I mean, look at the joy and abandon with which #Musk and #Bezos and #Zuckerberg have jumped into #fascism! They're completely happy to be there. In fact, they're quite proud, it seems to me.
> Q: What do you think of the argument that we don't need to tax rich people more, because they can use their money to give away to charitable causes, or be beneficiaries?
>>
>> BRIAN: It’s absolute bollocks. The rich give away a smaller proportion of their money than the poor do....I don't actually remember the figures on this, but poor people, as a proportion of the money they earn, give away much more than rich people do. #Philanthropy is something that people do to make themselves feel they have an alibi for being #wealthy.
>>
> Q: If we had enough money to fund #PublicServices properly, we would need less #philanthropy.
>> BRIAN: Exactly. Philanthropy is a very poor way of deciding how the #money is distributed.
/fin
> Julia Davies, of Patriotic Millionaires:
>> JULIA: Why do we look up to them? Why do we give them honorary titles when they say, "If you make me contribute a bit more to Britain, to making Britain thrive, I'm going to leave."
>> The first thing you do is take their honorary title off them. Because they clearly don't care about Britain. They don't care about their fellow British people if that's what they're willing to do.
>>
Millionaire spells out need for a wealth tax
> Q: Why do you think that you should be paying tax?
>> JULIA: Because I can and, at the moment, we have people who have been struggling for a very long time. We absolutely need to be investing more in our public services and infrastructure. We've been saying that for a long time, and things have just become become a lot more urgent because, as you know, the world is becoming a more insecure place.
>> We now have situation where we have a government that's saying we need to
look at how...
>>
>> ... we can invest more in defense and security - absolutely, yeah, I agree with that, but the answer to that is not cutting public services and investment because they've already been cut to the bone and that's been going on for a very long period of time. We don't need to do that. The UK is a very wealthy country. There is loads of wealth in the UK - it's just not spread out. We've been expecting people to just keep on digging deeper and deeper and deeper and and people have been....
>>
>> struggling for a very long period of time. It's not necessary.
>> We haven't built the public momentum yet. We're not demanding it enough as a nation, so there are a small number of people who are putting out what are often false stories...about the number of millionaires that are leaving the UK. [It's] based on complete nonsensical interpretation of some data gathered from LinkedIn. It was nonsense.
>> At the moment the government are listening to a very small number of....
>>
>> ... very powerful people who have a kind of a warped sense of morality. We're all brought up with very simple basic principles, which are just very human principles: That you share nicely, you you contribute if you're able, you participate as a member of society. There are a few people who have had those basic moral principles warped, and as they get more wealth they kind of become obsessed with their place in this high-level pecking order of who's got the most billions, and who's got...
>>
>> ... the biggest superyacht, etc. That is not a natural way of being as a human being.
> Q: What about those people who say, well, look - you've got this money and you can decide where you want to donate it. You can decide how you want to act as a philanthropist, what causes you want to give to, and that should be each wealthy person's individual choice and they shouldn't be forced to give money to the government?
>>
>> JULIA: Philanthropy by incredibly wealthy people is not generous. It's not democratic. Generosity in charitable giving in the single mom who's struggling to put food on the table who still manages to sponsor her child when she's in a sponsored walk at school, because that's taking money out of the household budget. When you're an incredibly wealthy person, philanthropy is just basically something that's done to get away with this obscenely unfair, unjust distribution of wealth. >>
>> ... What would you think if a child behaved like this? I was thinking about #ElonMusk the other day 'cuz people were trying to make out that he was a hero, and going up and rescuing these astronauts. Well, it just so happens that his companies have billion-dollar contracts to the US government, and part of that happens to be providing shuttle services up to the space station. So whilst this man is cutting jobs for people working in education and health and aid, he's obsessing and...
>>
>> saying that these things are awful organizations to support. He, in his companies, is receiving billions of dollars from the US taxpayers.
>> I was thinking about Elon when he was a little boy. Imagine if Elon as a little boy went into a children's party, where there was loads of kids and the tables laid out with all the food, and he took ALL of the cakes and he took ALL of the sandwiches and he took ALL the crisps and everything, and all he left was half a cake and half a sandwich. ...
>>
>> ... And then someone said to him, "That's not very nice, that little boy over there hasn't got any food," and he gave back a quarter of a sandwich and a couple of cheesy what's its. We wouldn't say that was good. We wouldn't say, "Oh, well done, Elon!" We'd say "What is wrong with you, Elon?" Come on.
>> That's what philanthropy by these incredibly wealthy people is like. These are false choices. We do not have to choose between defending our country in a world that's become much more...
>>
>> ... insecure, looking after our pensioners, investing in our health services - those choices do not need to be made if we tax wealth fairly.
>> It is not necessary to shut down libraries. It is not necessary to shut down access to public swimming pools, etc. These should not be luxuries. So what you happen have when you have an extreme transfer of wealth is you have some people who have multiple houses with swimming pools, and you have the shameful situation where kids now don't have...
>>
>> what I had when I grew up. There were several public swimming pools I could choose from, where I went and I learned to swim, and where people could go and they could swim and exercise, and now we are now treating that as if that is a luxury.
Julia ends by saying that they've done polling that indicates ~75% of millionaires would agree to a 2% tax over $10M, but that their Representatives are the ones pushing back, which shows they are not working for the People.
Sounds familiar, eh?
/fin