No Billionaires Campaign

Thom Hartmann continues to discuss a 100% tax on income and assets over a billion dollars (video below), and as posted earlier here, the "No Billionaires Campaign" (it has a title and a website too).  He earlier compared our economic system to one where children go into a classroom and almost all the toys are given to only one or two children while the rest must make do among themselves with (maybe one busted up slinky and a barbi without an arm).  Via Bengunty, "Does it seem fair?", citing an article by Nicholas Kristof, who also cites the kindergarten analogy, though he shies from ultimately declaring (like a parent who knows how to set limits that), yes, we're serious, and you can't have all the toys to yourself.  (That would be the scary idea of re-re-re-distribution for the parent.  While we know the parent needs to take this bull by the horns.)



Mr. Kristof lays out some grim statistics in that article - the conversation clearly going on for a while already (hey, we've had Occupy too), though Fox is just starting to catch wind (and which only flatters Mr. Hartmann, to his credit).  More in an article by Rob Kall who states that the existence of billionaires is "an anomaly, an economic wrong-turn that not only the U.S., but the world needs to correct."  

Rob Kall says that Chrystia Freeland, author of the book, Plutocrats, characterizes this new breed, so to speak, as "the most international" - Mr. Kall even saying that, "They are not loyal Americans" (since) "They are loyal to money" (and) "take it where they can keep the most," (and) "even though they used the strengths and resources of the US to make their money."  

I like to think of the dinosaurs-- how the big, top of the food chain carnivores died out and were replaced by much smaller, less powerful mammals-- evolution happened. And then there's the history of the human race-- a million years or more of humans and their close predecessors living in tribes and bands where everyone was bottom up equal, no dynasties, no passing on of wealth from generation to generation. Any person who tried to own 400 or 4000 times more than anyone else would have been considered insane and either straightened out or thrown out.

Another way of putting it, via Urban Dictionary, *reality check*, people.  

Photo credit/courtesy of Bengunty/Taking All The Toys - "does it seem fair?"