This is what happens when belief in the American Dream runs amok.
The American Dream is dead, statistically your odds of moving up the economic food chain are higher in Europe than they are in the United States. But a disinformation campaign by the rich, those in control of our country, has kept the dream alive so the underclasses won't revolt. So you hope you can make it, you believe you can make it, and if you work that hard to make it you don't want to be taxed. But the end result is you don't make it and those with wealth, often continuing through generations, keep it.
But it gets worse. A lot of the rich are tied to multinational companies, and as a result don't pay the low taxes they should, i.e. they hide their revenue abroad. Ever hear of the Panama Papers? Read Bill Browder's new book, the Russian oligarchs moved all their money to "neutral" Switzerland. But it's not only Switzerland, it's Cyprus and the Bahamas and... If you've got a lot of money you can afford to come up with schemes to avoid taxes, parking your cash in places where it oftentimes can't be found, and if it is your army of lawyers will keep the government at bay possibly indefinitely. Even U2 takes advantage of tax schemes, parking their money in the Netherlands. You don't want to give back to Ireland, the country that bred and supported you, made you who you are.
There's a fiction that the rich make this money independently. This could not be further from the truth. If people stop buying Teslas, Elon Musk's fortune rapidly decreases. And SpaceX is supported by the government and the companies which employ it to launch satellites.
But it gets even worse. Musk thinks he's more powerful than the government, that he's immune. Yes, he was supposed to file with the SEC when he purchased a certain amount of Twitter stock but he didn't. He has a long history of making deals with the government and then breaking them and/or asking for relief.
As for Twitter... Sure, every company can be improved. But do we really want one guy in charge of an enterprise deciding what to do? it's one thing if you built the company, it's quite another if you go around buying and changing companies on a whim, because you're so damn rich.
Best/worst example being Peter Thiel and Gawker. He put the company out of business because it outed him as gay. Thiel did it by funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit. When you're a billionaire there's more than one way to skin a cat.
And when it comes to the government... It's controlled by the rich. Because they are the ones with money. There was a big exposé of this in the paper recently but people don't know it, they're too busy worrying about hip-hop beefs and enjoying rooting for the team on Fox News. They don't want you to know the truth, you might get angry, you might revolt.
Rupert Murdoch, an Australian citizen, comes to the U.S. becomes an American citizen and lobbies for the rule limiting TV station ownership to be changed. You don't even have any change in your pocket!
They keep saying it can't happen here. But Trump evidences that authoritarianism is at our doorstep. It can happen here, and it seems to be happening, look at the changes in voting laws, never mind the evisceration of abortion rights.
It all comes down to money. Fat cats. Not only the Kochs, but hedge fund money too. The names are out there, but they rarely get traction. The biggest scapegoat is George Soros while Elon Musk takes action in plain sight and gets away with it.
I don't want to live in a country where billionaires can change the course of history on a whim.
I don't want to live in a country where you can work for an established company and make fifty or a hundred million a year or more. It's one thing if you start it, but why should you get paid this kind of cash if you're just managing it? There are a zillion offenders, even Tim Apple. Cook is running what Jobs built, the true innovation is in the rearview mirror, but when his tenure at Apple is done he'll be a billionaire. And Cook's name is one you know, there are many more which you don't.
And it's an insiders club. They sit on each others boards and grant these paydays and they lobby the government to approve their behavior. As for the government, the financial industry crashes the government and they don't get penalized, they get rewarded! They're given money to keep the country afloat. No one goes to jail, no one pays a price, which has these wankers believing they're immune. Which to a great degree they are, unlike you.
And you are whipsawed by their whims.
And then there's the b.s. that the poor don't pay taxes. They may not pay income taxes, but they're paying a slew of taxes every day, and they have to spend all of their income to stay alive, whereas the rich do not.
So Putin is waging a war against Ukraine nearly with impunity. It's on the front page of every newspaper, it's on cable TV, but it's remote, you're focused on what's in front of your face and there's nothing you, or to a great deal anybody, can do about it. Everybody's afraid of causing a nuclear conflagration. So Putin's troops commit war crimes, what happened in Bucha is horrifying, but the experts believe he will skate.
And they cracked down on the Russian oligarchs. Who might have stolen their assets, Putin being complicit, but somehow the rest of the world's oligarchs are immune. They're buying big yachts, they're flaunting their wealth, they're nearly untouchable.
Musk is a madman. Intelligent, yes. Responsible for successes, yes. But look at the actions in his personal life. The multiple marriages, the multiple kids. The statements on Twitter. Is this who we want in charge?
OF COURSE NOT!
And his goal is free speech on Twitter... I.e. no penalties for himself and the allowance of disinformation on the site, like allowing Trump back on. We need guardrails in society. We need limits. We need laws. We can't have free-for-alls.
This has got to stop.
But it won't. Because these same people are in control and don't want to give up power. Talk to anybody with a buck and they'll say they need to pay fewer taxes, that they earned the money and they deserve to keep it and the government wastes it. Well, once again, they didn't earn it in a vacuum. And if you think you want to live in a country without laws...,you don't. You like the laws, you like to be protected, you like having the police.
But they can't even nail Trump, Congress is afraid of the backlash and in New York City the new DA whittled down the case and those responsible for the prosecution left their jobs. It's always the same, the people invading the Capitol on 1/6...they're going to jail, thank god, but the big people, those in charge, they're getting away scot-free. Just like Wall Street in 2008.
People will wake up. When it's too late. When their freedom is compromised. It's like boiling a lobster, you don't realize you're being cooked until it's too late.
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