Mastodawn

@broadwaybabyto

How much are you planning to donate to these people in need?

@AlexanderKingsbury @broadwaybabyto

J. R. DePriest

:EA DATA. SF:Jun 16

Would you please explain what your comment had to do with the evil of the United States governments allowing a single wretched, racist human being to amass a wealth of one trillion United States dollars while also having allowed the same man to indiscriminately and illegally take a metaphorical chainsaw to multiple United States government bodies' budgets and staffs as well as steal gigabytes of data regarding United States citizens with no oversight or accountability?

There are not enough regular people in the country to "donate" our way out of the generational damage done by this one man. It's like asking me to take cold showers and turn off my AC so genAI datacenters can have more power. There are orders of magnitude of difference in accountability.

After the United States government cut $1,000,000,000 earmarked for PBS and NPR, they saw a flood of donations, including a single $80,000,000 donation, for a total of $113,000,000. I give PBS $5 a month. Now a single human being has been allowed to hoard $1,000,000,000,000. The scale is incomparable. He's killed 600,000 people that we know of so far. He should be in prison awaiting trial as a mass murderer not profiting off an artificially pumped IPO designed to steal from my retirement and the retirement of every other United States citizen who works an honest job.

AKingsbury

"There are not enough regular people in the country to "donate" our way out of the generational damage done by this one man."

Then there aren't enough of us to bear the tax burden of these programs. These programs pretty much have to be funded by taxes. And no, "tax the rich" is not an answer. Confiscate every single penny of wealth from every billionaire in the US and you would 1; totally crash the economy. 2; fund the federal government for a whopping...9 months.

@AlexanderKingsbury @broadwaybabyto

J. R. DePriest

:EA DATA. SF:Jun 16

Saying "Tax the rich is not the answer" is either disengenous or trolling. Wealth at those levels used to be taxed at 90% and they still had more money than most saw in a lifetime.

IT IS THE ANSWER AND IT WORKED UNTIL IT WAS INTENTIONALLY DISMANTLED OVER TWO GENERATIONS PRECISELY TO GET US TO THIS POINT.

This has been the goal for longer than I've been alive: unchecked power for capitalism and "the people" with no recourse but to go along with it, starve, go to prison, or be executed.

Ever since The New Deal, they've been undoing it piece by piece.

If you can't see that, you need to look beyond the wall to wall propaganda they've been feeding us that this is normal.

Reagan, Citizens United, overturning Roe v. Wade, overturning VRA one decision at a time. All slowly squeezing anyone who isn't a wealthy white man into irrelevance and servitude. The SAVE Act will make it much more difficult for married women to vote and likely impossible for most transgender people to vote. Marriage equality is next.

Please, wake up and look around. We are ruled by evil, selfish men who must be held accountable and everything they have stolen must be taken back. That is the only way to end this cycle.

"Saying "Tax the rich is not the answer" is either disengenous or trolling."

It's mathematically ltiierate. I'm sorry if you hate the truth, but it's very simple. Look at the nordic nations; they don't "tax the rich" heavily, they tax EVERYONE heavily.

You can claim something is "the answer" by yelling and screaming all you want, but at the end of the day, if the numbers don't add up (hint; they don't), you don't actually have a solution.

@AlexanderKingsbury @broadwaybabyto

J. R. DePriest

:EA DATA. SF:Jun 16

Okay. Never mind. I don't have time for this level of foolishness. Please have a very pleasant evening.

Please feel free to let me know if you ever start caring about facts instead of emotions. For better or worse, it's facts that lead us towards actual solutions. Emotions do not.

Just as one example, go ahead and try to find anyone who actually paid 90% income tax historically. You can claim that that's "the answer", except...no one actually paid that amount. So it's not the answer, and never was.

M.S. Bellows, Jr.Jun 16

@AlexanderKingsbury
Were you always a trollish, pustulent asshole, or do you actually work at it? c @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

@msbellows @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

As with the other user, I'm sorry if the truth hurts you. But math doesn't lie, and history, math, economics, these are all on my side. I don't agree with your need to resort to personal attacks rather than facts, but given that you have no facts on your side, I'm certainly not surprised.

@AlexanderKingsbury @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

M.S. Bellows, Jr.Jun 16

@msbellows @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

"Kindness is king", allegedly.

M.S. Bellows, Jr.Jun 16

@AlexanderKingsbury @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto You get no respect until you get an analog profile photo.

@msbellows @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

Hey, set whatever standard you like. Apparently kindness ISN'T king.

morton Jun 16

@AlexanderKingsbury @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto You worry about China's economy, not ssTwitter. If China has a problem, you won't have anything to wear, nothing to cook with, and you won't have electronics.
USAID was the US's soft power. Thanks to USAID, we were the good guys. Now the world sees that China, in the race to become superpowers, is turning into the good guys. Stable, predictable, and doesn't wage war.

@morton @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

Don't worry; I was never particularly concerned about twitter.

morton Jun 16

@AlexanderKingsbury @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto You're worried about the taxpayer cost of USAID, yet you've spent hundreds of billions on a losing war with Iran. These are facts and figures. The house is on fire, and you're worried about the faucet dripping.

@morton @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

This might surprise you; I also object to the war in Iran. I have this strange condition where I can object to more than one thing at a time

Dźwiedziu Jun 16

@AlexanderKingsbury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_States#Development_of_the_modern_income_tax – those facts

Also:
- don't boast that maths is on your side if you present none,
- don't do the same about economics, after the Cambridge capital controversy and the beating of “economists” by Joan Robinson so savage, that it's under those “economists'” omerta,
- emotions are valid, people can get emotional when confronted by a liar doubling down, who is using their emotions against them,
- (one in the pocket for later).

History of taxation in the United States - Wikipedia

@dzwiedziu @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

It's hardly a "boast". Yes, emotions are valid; they are not a substitute for facts or an excuse for ignoring them.

Dźwiedziu Jun 16

@AlexanderKingsbury
So I'll be right here, waiting for you to acknowledge the facts I've mentioned.

No need to rush. You're not ignoring them, right?

Right?…

@dzwiedziu @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

Yes, you linked a wikipedia article. I didn't realize you needed me to say that, but you certainly did.

Dźwiedziu Jun 16

@AlexanderKingsbury
I certainly did more than that.

But okay, since you're now doing the ignoring things thing I can now safely ignore everything you say (unless you'll be harassing people).

Byyyyyeeeeee

Edit: also put you on a timed mute.

@dzwiedziu @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

I'm not ignoring anything, but use whatever excuses you like

Manny Dexter Jun 17

@AlexanderKingsbury, who taught you math?

Even taxing a billionaire one percent of their wealth can add tens or hundreds of millions to the budget spreadsheet.

And there's precedent for the US government to hold shares of corporations. So they wouldn't necessarily need to liquidate any assets.

Remove your head from your prostate tissue, and have a blessed life.

@MannyDexter @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

AKingsbury Jun 17

I learned math from a variety of sources. "tens or hundreds of millions" sounds very impressive; it's also a drop in the bucket compared to the US federal budget. yes, there is precedent for the US to own parts of corporations. There is precedent for a lot of terrible ideas.

@AlexanderKingsbury @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

David P Jun 16

You are incorrect.

Musk could personally solve global poverty. He would still, personally have multiple billions of dollars and that wouldn't crash any economy.

@pewnack @jrdepriest @broadwaybabyto

Complete nonsense. If nothing else, it's not as if he (or anyone) can simply convert their net wealth to cash and hand it out. Much of such wealth is in the form of financial instruments, and liquidating them en masse would tank their value., which would have serious economic impacts.

David P Jun 16

@AlexanderKingsbury

Firstly, he accretes enough interest on his investments to fund anti-poverty programs without liquidating anything. He could actually invest significant capital in humanitarian causes.

Wealthy people used to do it a lot, Carnegie, Rockerfeller. Without crashing the value of their assets.
Back when the wealthy had even a semblance of shame.

You're defending a neo-Nazi trillionaire. You clearly don't have any semblance of shame.