2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[The Minsky Moment]

My sense is exactly the same - he has the business soul of Trump but without the drawback of being a complete moron.  He is skilled in playing the private investor hype game and exploiting the relatively lax rules around private offerings.  Pharma has great potential for such games because of the lottery-style payoff schedule where 90%+ of prospects bust but the few successes can payoff big.  If you can convince some investors that a 99% bust candidate is really a 92% bust candidate, you can skim off quite a lot of cash.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It is also worth noting, not that it "matters" but unlike a lot of families of immigrants, Ramaswamy doesn't have a narrative of rags to riches. His family were actually members of the highest caste in the Indian caste system in his region of India (Brahmin) and controlled basically a traditional feudal land holding for generations. He had grandparents who were college graduates and successful in the modern economy of mid-20th century India. He isn't a "child of immigrants who made it big", he is the child of wealth who got more wealthy.

[Josquius]

It is also worth noting, not that it "matters" but unlike a lot of families of immigrants, Ramaswamy doesn't have a narrative of rags to riches. His family were actually members of the highest caste in the Indian caste system in his region of India (Brahmin) and controlled basically a traditional feudal land holding for generations. He had grandparents who were college graduates and successful in the modern economy of mid-20th century India. He isn't a "child of immigrants who made it big", he is the child of wealth who got more wealthy.

So a textbook conservative politician albeit with a very handy "I can't be racist as I support a brown guy. Maybe YOU'RE the racist for hating him"? card for supporters.

[Gups]

It is also worth noting, not that it "matters" but unlike a lot of families of immigrants, Ramaswamy doesn't have a narrative of rags to riches. His family were actually members of the highest caste in the Indian caste system in his region of India (Brahmin) and controlled basically a traditional feudal land holding for generations. He had grandparents who were college graduates and successful in the modern economy of mid-20th century India. He isn't a "child of immigrants who made it big", he is the child of wealth who got more wealthy.

Fyi, brahmins are the top caste anywhere in India  it's not regional for the the four main caste although there are regional subcastes.Brahmins aren't necessarily wealthy, though they can be. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Good to know--I was trying to tread lightly since I know close to nothing about the Indian caste system or Indian feudal norms. The reporting I had read noted his family were Brahmin and had controlled a traditional "Agraharam" land holding for generations, which as best I can tell was a sort of feudal style holding although probably not directly equivalent to any Western concept.

Vivek's dad and mom both graduated from prestigious universities in India, his dad was an engineer and patent attorney for General Electric, his Mom a psychiatrist.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong from being from an affluent family, obviously--I only pointed it out because Vivek like many Republican billionaires (or near-billionaires) often present themselves as people who got wealthy as entirely self-made men, which is very often false if you read up on any of the sort who make those claims.

[garbon]

I think being a billionaire for any sustained period of time means you are a bad person.

[crazy canuck]

What do you have against Buffet?

[Sheilbh]

I think being a billionaire for any sustained period of time means you are a bad person.

Totally agree.

[Josquius]

It depends on whether it's the same billions I say.
If you've an income hitting such levels then it says a lot about problems with the world but not so much the person. If they're then using this huge income for positive ends then being such a billionaire can be perfectly fine.
Can't think of an example who qualifies though.

[crazy canuck]

It depends on whether it's the same billions I say.
If you've an income hitting such levels then it says a lot about problems with the world but not so much the person. If they're then using this huge income for positive ends then being such a billionaire can be perfectly fine.
Can't think of an example who qualifies though.

Quibble- billionaires become billionaires because of their investments not their income.

A person can become wealthy and never have a large income.  And that is normally how it is done.  The working stiffs earning large incomes are still working.

And ever heard of the Gates foundation? 

[The Minsky Moment]

What do you have against Buffet?

Second this comment.  Not aware of any support for the proposition that he is a bad person. 

[garbon]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/opinion/warren-buffett-billionaire-taxes.html

Warren Buffett and the Myth of the 'Good Billionaire'

Warren Buffett appears to be the safest kind of billionaire: the good kind. Mr. Buffett is neither Zuckerbergian messiah nor Musky provocateur, neither Bezosist space cadet nor Sacklerian undertaker. He is, or seems to be, quiet, humble, indifferent to money, philanthropic and critical of the system that allowed him to rise. Years ago, a proposed tax increase was named after him.

It's easy for people to think: If only members of the Sackler family were more like Mr. Buffett, imagine how many lives would have been saved. If only the billionaires who haven't signed the Giving Pledge would give away as much as Mr. Buffett has pledged to, imagine the impact on the world. If only more billionaires would make use of the system without feeling the need to pervert it, so many of our troubles would vanish.

So I regret to inform you that Mr. Buffett is actually the most dangerous kind of billionaire we have. The worst billionaires are the Good Billionaires. The sort who make it seem like the problem is the distortion of the system when, in fact, the problem is the system.

Actually malevolent and disastrously negligent plutocrats get most of the attention. And when we hear about these Bad Billionaire exploits, it is possible to conclude from them that the system needs better policing, updated regulations and maybe slightly higher taxes. The system needs to be made to work again.

But as America slouches toward plutocracy, our problem isn't the virtue level of billionaires. It's a set of social arrangements that make it possible for anyone to gain and guard and keep so much wealth, even as millions of others lack for food, work, housing, health, connectivity, education, dignity and the occasion to pursue their happiness.

There is no way to be a billionaire in America without taking advantage of a system predicated on cruelty, a system whose tax code and labor laws and regulatory apparatus prioritize your needs above most people's. Even noted Good Billionaire Mr. Buffett has profited from Coca-Cola's sugary drinks, Amazon's union busting, Chevron's oil drilling, Clayton Homes's predatory loans and, as the country learned recently, the failure to tax billionaires on their wealth.

The Good Billionaire myth took a hard blow in recent days when Mr. Buffett won a dubious distinction. A staggering exposé published by ProPublica revealed just how little the biggest plutocrats pay in taxes, despite mounting piles of wealth. And at the very top of that list of plutocrats — many of them with troubled reputations — was the cleanest, grandfatherliest plutocrat of them all: Mr. Buffett.

ProPublica's story was unusual in that, for once, it was the Good Billionaire at the top of the naughty list. This was helpful, because it served to indict the system that makes him possible, even when it is working perfectly, wholly lawfully.

From 2014 to 2018, Mr. Buffett's wealth soared by $24.3 billion, according to ProPublica. (To underline, this is just the amount the fortune grew.) The amount of taxes Mr. Buffett paid over this period? $23.7 million. If middle-class Americans in their 40s enjoyed such a low effective tax rate, they would have paid a few dozen bucks per household over this same time period. Instead, as the ProPublica story notes, they paid around $62,000.
Imagine if Mr. Buffett had to pay the same fraction of the growth of his net worth that regular people do. Taxing that money could have helped pay for bridge repairs, mammograms, and free day care. More important — and this isn't said enough — there is intrinsic value in shrinking gargantuan fortunes. The sway plutocrats have over public life is inconsistent with a one person, one vote democracy.

The important point here is that Mr. Buffett's tax payments as detailed by ProPublica are fully legal. Though Mr. Buffett has called for changing the tax system, while we have the one we have, he will continue to benefit from the madness of taxing billionaires for their income, rather than their wealth, when their income is pretty much just a number they can construct.

I asked Mr. Buffett last week, via his longtime secretary, Debbie Bosanek, if he could think of even one tax or accounting practice that he has come to regret. Sure, he may have followed the letter of the law. But was there any aspect of his patriotism or humanity that left him feeling guilty for hoarding so much untaxed when regular people pay so much in taxes? Though Ms. Bosanek responded to an initial inquiry, she declined to offer any such examples.

In a long statement last week, Mr. Buffett defended himself by pointing to his long advocacy for a fairer taxation system, and then he immediately told on himself by undermining the very idea of taxes in the same letter. "I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically than if it is used to slightly reduce an ever-increasing U.S. debt."

In other words: I believe in higher income taxes on people like me, but I'm highly organized to avoid having income to report, and I don't really believe in taxes because I think I should decide how these surplus resources are spent.

And this points to another way in which the Good Billionaire is hard to deal with. The crooks and the scoundrels and the people manifestly looking for quick P.R. highs come to philanthropy for the marketing payoff. When Goldman Sachs announces a new initiative on fighting the racial wealth gap despite having done little to repair the damage it did to Black homeowners in contributing to the 2008 financial meltdown, some may be fooled, but, more and more, many are not.

Supposed Good Billionaires like Mr. Buffett and his friend Bill Gates are more complicated because they give real money. They may benefit from marketing but also seem to many people to be motivated by more than that, and they apply their smarts to the work.

Yet because of this, it is often the Good Billionaires who end up with the most illegitimate influence over public life. No one is asking members of the Sackler family for public health advice. But Mr. Gates has become a major policy voice on vaccines despite holding no elected position. Mr. Buffett, for his part, has shied away from that kind of lane hopping and richsplaining, but in donating his fortune to Mr. Gates's foundation he has pumped up that undemocratic influence.

Mr. Buffett is almost the perfectly made billionaire for this moment in which, at last, many Americans are beginning to question not only corruptions of the system but the matter of whether billionaires should exist at all. He doesn't do the things the worst of them do. He isn't in it for what they're in it for. He clearly must care about money, but he also kind of doesn't care about money. Even in his generosity, he has avoided the imperial lording over that others cannot resist.

And this is what makes him so troubling, because through him we are tempted into believing that a system can be defended that allows a man to accumulate more than $100 billion while people are sleeping, in hock to him, in his mobile homes, shortening their lives with the beverages he's invested in, scampering around the warehouses whose nonunion status has redounded to his money pile.

It can't. And who keeps us from seeing that simple, stark truth more effectively, more perniciously, than the Good Billionaire?

[garbon]

And then a bit more...stridently.

https://pittnews.com/article/175763/opinions/opinion-there-are-no-ethical-billionaires/amp/

There are no ethical billionaires

In a capitalist economy with few limits on how a person can acquire and maintain their wealth, we live with an abundance of billionaires. Social media, news sources and politics constantly bombard us with the idea of "$1 billion" to the extent that we've become numb to it. As a result, the majority of Americans, myself included, fail to properly conceptualize just how much a billion truly is.

Through the typical immoral strategies used to earn and maintain a billion dollars — such as investments in big oil, technology expansion reliant on the abuse of natural resources and manufacturing reliant on the mistreatment of workers — I have recently come to believe that no one can truly be a good person while owning a billion dollars. Not to mention, the understanding that an individual with a billion dollars — in accumulated wealth, assets and investments — actively chooses not to ease the suffering of millions, even billions worldwide, instead hoarding a fortune that is too much for one person to reasonably spend.

In order to understand why a person cannot morally own a billion dollars, one must first understand exactly how much money that truly is. So how much is one billion, really? Here are a few examples to help us conceptualize the amount — a million seconds is roughly equal to eleven days, whereas a billion seconds is roughly equal to 31.5 years. If you had a million dollars and spent $1000 a day, you would run out of money in three years. In contrast, if you had a billion dollars and spent the same amount each day, it would take you 2,740 years to spend your wealth. If you earned $7,000 an hour every day since the birth of Jesus Christ, you'd have a whopping $124 billion by the end of 2022 and would still have made less money than 58-year-old Jeff Bezos — whose estimated net worth is $138.2 billion.

A billion dollars, in reality, is an alarming amount of wealth for one person to earn and maintain. Even while most billionaires dedicate large sums of money to charitable causes and philanthropic organizations, these are small sums in comparison to their overall wealth. Even more, they often use their money to minimally mitigate the large, negative impacts of their own financial practices. Mark Zuckerburg, for example, donates millions each year to combat the housing crisis in Silicon Valley — one that he created himself through mass gentrification.

Even "charitable" billionaires known for donating their fortune to valuable causes are not in the clear ethics-wise. Oprah Winfrey is a great example of this phenomenon, working herself out of poverty and into wealth and fame through the "Oprah Winfrey Show" from 1986 to 2011. The $2.9 billion she's acquired from this show, however, does not go towards entirely ethical expenses. She owns a $42 million private jet and has taken multiple cruises via private yachts worth tens of millions of dollars — both of which are known for their catastrophic carbon emissions. She's also spent over $100 million on property around the world — including in many highly desired locations such as Maui, Hawaii and Montecito, California — which takes away and raises the price of valuable land from working-class, indigenous individuals.

Even while Winfrey has donated hundreds of millions over the years to a number of charitable organizations — from schools in South Africa to the Time's Up campaign — her immense private spending has produced considerable environmental damage while simultaneously exposing the massive fortune she keeps for herself.

While we do exist in a free-market economy and it is not any individual's responsibility to spend their money on others living in poverty and squalor, billionaires have the undeniable power to do something major at little cost to themselves. A billion dollars is far more than a single person needs to survive or even enjoy life. Yet, these individuals continue to perform charitable acts for the public eye while spending the vast majority of their wealth on personal, environmentally destructive means, hoarding insane amounts of money while the majority of individuals on Earth struggle to afford basic necessities.

This is why, as of 2019, the wealthiest 1% of American families own roughly 34% of the country's wealth, whereas the bottom 50% of American families own nearly 2% — all while the wealthiest pay only 25.6% of all taxes.

Furthermore, billionaires exhibit a link between corruption and extreme wealth, often using unethical means to earn and hoard money that others desperately need, simultaneously wielding insane political power in the process. As United States House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once said, "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars."

Capitalist systems create billionaires by enabling the abuse of others. Jeff Bezos, for example, is known to place his Amazon workers in horrendous conditions in order to maximize their labor, even forcing individuals to skip bathroom breaks in order to keep their jobs.

Billionaires thrive off of the abuse of their workers. They do not make the products they sell themselves — rather, they oversee thousands of workers who create these products for them. In order to turn over a profit of a billion dollars, these workers are, more often than not, underpaid and subject to physical and other abuses. Billionaires make their money off the backs of novel immigrants, minority groups and those living in poverty who are desperate enough for a job that they will accept any pay or conditions if it means a stable wage.

Simultaneously, these billionaires save money by ignoring environmental needs, choosing to leave enormous carbon footprints rather than pay the price for renewable, clean energy and other environmentally friendly practices. Again, Amazon's Jeff Bezos knowingly emitted roughly 71.44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2021 — a powerful greenhouse gas that rapidly warms our planet, causing mass environmental disaster — in 2018 alone. This number is greater than the carbon footprint of many small countries, such as that of Switzerland.

The business models of many billionaires further relies on the concept of overconsumption. This entails lowering prices to increase purchasing demand, consequently manufacturing intentionally low-quality items for the appeal of cheapness. This culture of overconsumption imposed by large, wealthy companies encourages consumers to buy and toss products to their delight, appealing to fast-fashion trends especially.

The resources required to make, package and ship these products all over the world increase as companies such as Amazon sell more and more. The cycle intensifies, repeats, and Jeff Bezos gains money while our climate crisis worsens.

As the wealth gap between rich and poor widens globally each year, billionaires threaten the lives of everyone on Earth. They earn their money by abusing their workers, reaping the planet of its limited resources and paying politicians to keep rules and regulations in their favor. Even seemingly philanthropic and kind billionaires choose to maintain their wealth rather than alleviate the poverty of millions, even if they did acquire their money through seemingly ethical means. It is about time that we all realize — there are no ethical billionaires.

[crazy canuck]

But that does not support your claim he is a bad person.  They make the claim the system is deeply flawed.

Buffet himself has been very public in saying exactly that and imploring politicians to change the system and in particular the tax code.

[The Minsky Moment]

Those are really weak arguments.

Buffett is a bad person because although he strongly advocates tax laws that would result in a much higher tax burden for himself, he does not deliberately misreport his taxable income to pay higher tax?

Because he has put investor money into oil companies etc. that 98% of Americans who own IRAs and 401ks also invest in (look up the composition of the S&P 500 index)?

That's bullshit. Using the same sort of logic, I will condemn the writer of the NYT piece as evil incarnate, profiting off the newspaper business with its wholesale slaughter of trees, use of printer ink and its toxic chemical by-products, and exploitation of the non-union labor used to produce both.