Thank heaven. I thought no Democrat would ever come forward.
(I think the officially tally is now 24.) There are six or seven in there that I’ve never heard of. Only six of the candidates are polling at 3% or more, per RCP:
Biden 40
Sanders 16
Warren 8
Harris 8
Buttigieg 7
O’Rourke 5
Only 15 candidates are above the Hickenlooper line (0.2%). The rest are at virtual zero.
Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich. The American Way.
“But I can say this; if I am a guy who has some money and I put that money at risk to build something and that something grows and succeeds greatly, then as the guy who put up the money in the beginning, I feel I am entitled to a large return on my money, based on how much the thing I created is making. And that has nothing to do with how much I might pay my workers, as long as I pay them a fair wage.
If my workers get paid as much for working as I get for risking my money in the beginning, then my business will fail. Economics 101.”
Except this isn’t about that. Japan has one of the most hardcore work cultures in the world, yet their CEO pay is at a fraction of everywhere else. Yet, auto companies, major tech companies, among others are still wildly successful:
And CEO pay has risen exponentially versus average worker pay. 11% versus 937% since 1978.
There’s a hell of a lot of difference between the the lame Republican dismissal of income inequity that comes up. They bring up ‘small business’ when we damn sure know the breaks are going to the Apple and Wal-Mart executives of the world and not the mom and pop businesses they claim to be supporting.
They’re not working any harder or better than in 1978, and they’re sure as hell aren’t outworking Japanese execs.
No, that’s not at all what I am saying. You are misinterpreting my statement. My comment was, and is, simply that each side needs the other for society to function. The absence of either one causes collapse.
You are at liberty to interpret or misinterpret that rather simple statement in any way that pleases you, of course, but my statement remains the same. You can’t make a cake without both batter and baker.
Oh. Now it’s 0.1% not 1%. The percentage seems to get smaller with each of your posts, Roger. Next one will be 0.001%?
Am I saying that everybody in the “Suits” category is smart and honest and should make a lot of money? Hell No. Just like not everybody in the bluejeans category is a dumb, hard-working stiff. Hell, I’M a part of the bluejeans! I think the bluejeans should make tons of money from their efforts but in a capitalistic society that is a rarity.
The simple point I am making, no matter how much you desperately want to make this an anti-Trump (or maybe even broader, an anti-RICH) tirade, BOTH sides need each other. Neither can survive for very long alone.
It’s that simple. Complicate it all you want, but that’s what it comes down to. If you can show me proof that there is a situation in America where the suits not only paid for the material and built something spectacular without the bluejeans or the bluejeans did without the suits, I will be very happy to read that case study.
Captain Obvious, I know you think you are somehow making some kind of point supporting your original post, but you aren’t. Mostly you are trying to shift your position on what you originally said. This means you are tacitly admitting you were wrong, which is nice of you.
Does anybody in this thread realize that without the “1%r’s” as you so glibly call them, this country would not be possible?
I saw a FB Meme once that said “Men in bluejeans built this country; Men in suits are destroying it.”
Got a small flash for y’all…. The men in suits are necessary to the building of this country as much as the men in bluejeans are. Maybe we should all start to think like TEAMMATES rather than OPPONENTS.
Good one.
As someone who is quite familiar with ‘suits’ – let me tell you a secret. Those people aren’t as smart as you think.
There’s no labor tribunal board to be a grand arbitrator for any skilled worker who has a dumbass manager or director, who only got to that point because they had the right family name, or happened to be golfing buddies with who hired them at the time.
Quite frankly, I wonder how some of them even put a tie on in the morning, since the only things they seem to be acquainted with are the buttons to go on conference calls each day while they shine a seat with their ass.
Look no further than Tim Armstrong, the genius who walked away with $60 million for orchestrating one of the biggest failed acquisitions of all time after Verizon purchased AOL and Yahoo:
I’m pretty sure any layman with a lick of sense could have told you how that would turn out. And the costs? Thousands lost their job from the massive losses, which were a complete write off. And him? He walked away with $60 million, when the man should be responsible for the jobs he cost others.
But that’s how the game works right? Worship these false idols who get into those positions by who they know, and when they fail, ignore it and pay them the salary of thousands of workers.
They do nothing, and give nothing back to this world. They claim to know more, and be better, but how many back up those claims? Or put their positions on the line for someone else to challenge them who hasn’t had a silver spoon in their mouth?
Fuck them, and fuck anyone who supports them. The only compensation these men deserve is rock and dirt for the scorched earth they leave behind them.
Well, you went quite a bit more complicated than I intended with my comment. All I am saying is the “Suits” people pay for the “Bluejeans” people and for the materials they use to build with. Without both, this project is bust. Go ahead try to build something without money to buy your supplies and to pay your workers. It won’t work.
There is a difference between having money and having all the money. It IS men in suits who are ruining the country. It just isn’t *every* man in a suit.
Cpt Obvious, lets be clear. The suits ‘pay’ with infrastructure that the United States of America BUILT by the people, for the people over CENTURIES. They get in compensation what the general public decides is acceptable, which can very easily change.
The fact that the Walton family has made billions is off the American public, is a privilege given to them by the ability to access the strength of the American consumer base. It’s a privilege given to them by infrastructure building, through the railroads and the Interstate Commerce Act, the Federal Highway Act, among others.
The reason everything from pharmaceutical companies to technology companies are afforded protection from competition, is merely the fact of the enforcement of a patent system. The reason companies like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others can make money hand over fist is due to the developments of systems such as the Internet Protocol by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn at DARPA, that you’re using right now to access this site, or the Hypertext Transfer Protocol by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.
Quite frankly, if you want regular people and the the 1% .. or the 0.1% .. or whatever percentage you want to set the line at to hoarding more wealth and resources that no human being should ethically obtain at the cost of others – then they need to start by accepting their wealth and privilege by being taxed fairly and appropriately.
They’re afforded protection by the Securities and Exchange Commission that helps them obtain the wealth through their stock options. They’re afforded millions in material protection by law enforcement. They’re afforded the building blocks that public domain or GNU Public License has afforded them – everything from Microsoft Office’s patent built off the public domain of grandfather VisiCalc to Cisco’s routing dominance off of IPv4, to the pharmaceutical company in the news for charging $2,000 for a drug in the US that is $8 in Australia.
As for me, I don’t really give a shit about their protections. If it were up to me, every technological advancement would be put under the GNU Public License and there would be complete patent reform. If trillion dollar corporations want to flood patent courts with litigation, then they can pay BILLIONS to the US government to the right to uphold it.
If CEOs want to amass billions in wealth based off of stock options, they can pay MILLIONS off of that wealth for the protections afforded to them by the US Government and the SEC. I wouldn’t give a damn if there was a ‘Dark Knight Rises’ esque takeover myself, those protections mean less than NOTHING to the general public.
If we want to begin working together, then its about time those who hoard most of the wealth in this world pay up based on the massive amount of protections and infrastructure built up over time off the backs of others, and stop gaming the system and give back to the society that’s given them their privilege.
For me, I wouldn’t care less if they lost those things in an anarchist 1%er purge.
Do you deny that the SUITS and the JEANS need each other? Regardless of how you break it down? My comment was meant to point out that the relationship between the suits and the jeans is symbiotic – each needs the other to survive. The moneymen don’t know how to build and the builders don’t have the money.
My comment was not in support of or in denial of whatever the top dogs in the suits get paid. Personally, I could care less.
But I can say this; if I am a guy who has some money and I put that money at risk to build something and that something grows and succeeds greatly, then as the guy who put up the money in the beginning, I feel I am entitled to a large return on my money, based on how much the thing I created is making. And that has nothing to do with how much I might pay my workers, as long as I pay them a fair wage.
If my workers get paid as much for working as I get for risking my money in the beginning, then my business will fail. Economics 101.
“Suits”; engineers, managers, and to a much much smaller extent lawyers and bankers, are necessary.
1 %ers – people who are usually born into their fortunes then lobby for Trump’s tax bill to make them richer – are not.
I don’t want the Sam Waltons raising their kids to spend their lives sprawled on the couch while the help stuff them full of chocolate. I want them inheriting $1,000,000 tops and having to work (though a much cushier version of “work” than someone without $1,000,000) for a living.
Wow. Weren’t you one of those who were whining several months back about Trump not being the businessman some of us think he is because he got a $1,000,000 start up from his dad?|
Just askin’…
Yes I am. And your point would be…?
How can you make this statement. “I don’t want the Sam Waltons raising their kids to spend their lives sprawled on the couch while the help stuff them full of chocolate. I want them inheriting $1,000,000 tops and having to work (though a much cushier version of “work” than someone without $1,000,000) for a living” and then from the other side of your face, as my grandmother used to say, denigrate Trump for being a member of the very class you say you prefer?
Captain Obvious, this is exactly what the 0.1% believe about themselves. It is how they justify their incredible compensation to themselves. It is also how they justify their purchase of the Republican Party, and their use of it to legislate privileges (such as large tax preferences) for themselves.
Although they consider themselves brilliant, they are ignorant of the examples of Imperial Rome and Royal France, both of which ruined themselves by excessive privileges to their own irresponsible oligarchies/aristocracies, until their states either revolted (France) or crumbled away beneath them (Western Roman Empire).
They believe what Captain Obvious says with every fiber of their beings. After all, Ayn Rand said it was true, didn’t she?
As for being their teammates rather than their opponents – I will when they will. (Ha ha! They never will.)
We now know where Captain Obvious is coming from, what flavor of Kool-Aid he has drunk, and whose boots he adores licking. Thanks for clearing that up. Now go kiss, oh, say, Jamie Dimon’s butt. You know, the corporate genius who is STILL IN CHARGE AT CHASE BANK after blowing about $6 billion in bad trades a few years back. Brilliant guy, that. Worth every cent of the hundreds of millions he has gotten.
Personally, I think De Blasio’s campaign is way too important to be a part time gig, so I think he should resign as mayor to focus on running for president. Care to guess what city I live in? De Blasio is one of the Dems that could get me to vote for Trump.
Biden is a likeable moderate guy that should be as close to a lock to beat Trump as the Democrats could choose. Cory Booker struck me as a decent guy in the vein of Ed Koch, “a liberal with sanity.” But he went from running for mayor as an advocate for school choice and charter schools, to being a US Senator toeing the line of the teachers unions. But depending on how far left he might drift in search of the nomination, I might be able to vote for him. Rosario Dawson would be a cool first lady, if they were to get married. A president getting married in office? It’s been awhile since that’s happened.
But to say Bernie Sanders isn’t that far left leads me to ask, who is to the left of Bernie? Gus Hall? He calls HIMSELF a socialist and only started calling himself a “democratic socialist” when he started running for the democratic nomination. The fact that Joe Biden supported a crime bill in the 1990’s is seen as disqualifying by some today. During the Cold War Bernie Sanders, the self proclaimed socialist, honeymooned in the Soviet Union. The problem with winning such a generational conflict is that people, particularly young people (Bernie’s biggest supporters) forget (or never learn) what the struggle was about. Even with Venezuela as such a stark example/warning young people are attracted to socialism. As a former teacher I find it extremely depressing…
Can’t wait to hear DeBlasio’s campaign slogan: “Let me do for America what I’ve done for New York!” Because Kansas doesn’t have enough homeless drug addicts sleeping on mass transit.
Is there anyone on this list that you can honestly get excited about?
Biden will fade, Sanders is too far left and Warren!?!?
Side note, funny how little play the Biden claims have had in the MSM, I am not saying he is guilty and believe in due justice but compare this to the other allegations that have come out in recent years it really seems like a huge cover up.
In 6 years I would really be willing to get behind a moderate candidate that could repair the division we have today.
Biden is like an old pair of jeans, the fade is already there. Just hope that people will also see that the ass and both knees are worn through and the cuffs are bellbottoms.
Sanders and Warren really aren’t that far to the left. They just want to get back to a prosperous, unionized workforce and the ability to work your way through school – not graduate with so much debt that a mortgage is a pipe dream.
But if you’re like my sister who watches Fox all day, you’re convinced that the people who sit on their asses while their investments pay out are the “makers” and the ones who punch a clock and actually add value all day are the “takers”. If you’ll swallow that then, yeah, you’ll believe Sanders is a communist, or a fascist, or a Rotarian, or whatever the fuck.
I guess the Biden claims get so little play because they are only claims. But before they drop it, I wish they’d answer why Biden WAS trying to get that prosecutor fired, if not to help his son.
So you and your sister are a couple of crazy old bats.
I know a lot of Fox News viewers, white, black, male, female, and none of them are Wall Street sympathizers. They are some of the hardest working blue collar people you’ll ever meet, and they fully support Trump.
Which goes to show, a lack of intelligence goes a far way.
They may say they’re not Wall Street sympathizers, but they go out of their way to vote and listen to Republican propaganda that does nothing but help those on Wall Street, or those 1%’ers who equally manipulate the game. We already know these people are either hypocrites, or too stupid to realize what they’re doing.
2017 Tax Act went straight to raising stock prices and CEO compensation directly. This is an objective, observed fact. You would think actual substance and logic would matter more to blue collar workers, but it doesn’t.
Instead, apparently what matters is supporting a President who spends their tax dollars paying golf every weekend, that directly supports more compensation for corporate executives, while paying an $80 cable bill, to watch a $200 million net worth propaganda artist on FOX News every night tell his audience which scapegoat of the month is the cause of all their hardship.
Uh…we believe opposite things and both sides are crazy?
OK, YOU explain this makers/takers horseshit to me then Is it all just a crock? If not, who, really are the makers and who are the takers?