Kyle Merryman We already have a regressive system of taxation. A more EQUAL system of taxation is what’s needed. For example investment income can be taxed as regular income then all taxes can be lowered in stead of raised.

Excellent quote. Like Anand Giridharadas has observed plain and simple: _Philantropy is a charade to keep things the way they are & to mask intentional stagnation as change._

How do the poor not have equal political power to determine their own fate?

@@Poleeze1 the poor can't buy lobbyists, media companies, pacs, personal influence, ect. to serve their agenda and get their message out and ingrained in people's minds

@@bobrolander4344 yep why do you think the European Union funds the African Union? It makes them feel better about their companies extracting African resources at absurdly low rates

I guess she wrote it and was like "Whoops this is longer than 10 minutes...I mean if Eminem can do it..."

"I'm sorry, I'm on the clock."

I agree, it helps to watch the video at 0.75x speed

Agree, very poor delivery

I agree. This is a subject for interaction with the audience, and not for a speedy, hard to understand rehearsal. Nevertheless, Well done, Prof. B.

The nature of capitalism has been the biggest blessing on humankind ever, fact.

@@bigfan1041 Eh? Blessing to the 'west' would an easier statement to fathom, but try defending that whilst talking to the 50% living in poverty. Now democracy on the other hand... Comparing with communism, which is run by a few power hungry individuals who suppress the rest, is capitalism so different? It's only that it usually comes together with democracy that has a chance of reclaiming that power. Chance being the operative word there. fwiw, I think Prof Baradaran nailed it for me. It IS immoral to control more wealth than you can personally and not too lavishly use in your own lifetime. Depending on where you live in the world the amount differs greatly but to note some numbers down for the purpose of argument - in an average part of the UK an avarage wage of [say] £25,000 should provide (in todays prices) a reasonable, not lavish but not too frugal, living standard. Multiplied by a rough adult life span of 60yrs gives £1.5m. So I'd argue that even getting to £1m at the midpoint of that life span is already pushing the boundary of morality. There are many pressing needs, money should be put to use... now, not when a rich benefactor decides it's in their interest to stave off negative opinion or that they just want an excuse to pat themselves on the back. For further colour, it's estimated there's around a quadrillion USD in the world (fifteen 0's), divided equally amongst it's inhabitants is around $130,000 each. Doesn't sound a colossal amount to our western ears does it. Question is, do I deserve my million eight times as much as the average humanbeing, not to mention someone who was unlucky enough to be born in rural Africa? I feel guilty everyday.

The definition of capitalism is blurred so usually those who defend it are just patriotic.

JxJxJxJx I don't know that's it that simple. Capitalism started at the same time as the industrial revolution. Correlation is not causation. Obviously technology has had the largest impact on quality of life standard of living etc

Here's a for instance:. In my geographical area, a locally owned paper company went public, was bought up by an Australian Billionaire, who proceeded to sell off all the valuable assets (hydroelectric plant, timber lands, company gathering buildings for family picnics, etc.), pumping up share values, and then dumped his shares onto the markets and ran off with the cash. The company crashed, high unemployment in the town, but eventually the paper mill itself was bought up by a very large firm and it reopened as a subsidiary, albeit with lower wages and no family feel to it. Had it remained in the hands of the caring family that started it, the happy extended family would have remained happy with good pay and benefits. Had it been given over to the workers it would have in all likelihood prospered with good pay and benefits. But market forces have no heart for people, only maximum profits and growth, often at employee expense. Markets work for products and cash infusions where needed, but unfettered capitalism is unethical.

@0 what

technological akshually void spaghetti seeds She SLAM DUNKED on any aspiring greedy bastard.

No you dum@ @uck she is naive idiot

no one addressed that is simply cos, no one knows of a billionaire that became one without immoral actions. Thats why to cover that imaginary situation, in Anand Giridharadas' argument 2 videos ago, he was stating that imagine there is a billionaire that became one without commiting fraud, tax evasion, child labour etc. etc. is he still considered immoral? You can check out his argument on that

@@produdeyay agreed

Yes under veil of ignorance

Like saying I could do so i did

Amand did

Seriously he has a very annoying face lol

i always fall asleep after 25 minutes of being lectured regardless of if i want to be there or not, maybe he is the same

I thought he took a bunch of extascy before showing up

Right on!!!! I don't believe in a system like communism, but I DO strongly believe in employee-profitsharing and employee-companies. I am sure this was the concept Carl Marx had in mind, not Communism.

You would think students attending Oxford would be interested in a hugely important subject thus as this one. I am totally disappointed and disillusioned when I see their indifferent faces and lack of attention.

Agreed, long form videos with time stamps for speakers would benefit all.

Did you do this?

@@ianjameslee Transcript extracted from accompanying KZfaq-generated closed captions file (*.srt) - corrected by PMS | "Prof Mehrsa Baradaran | It Is Immoral To Be A Billionaire (7/8) | Oxford Union" | Sept 5, 2019 (09m:11s) [ kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qZt7rLyBrJ25kZc.html ]: "Thank you so much for having me. This is very exciting. So, there are roughly 2,000 billionaires in a world of about 8 billion people. Half the world's population lives in poverty - deep poverty, living under less than 3 dollars a day. They are exposed to disease, hunger and violence. It is immoral for a tiny fraction of the world's population to hoard more resources than they and all their heirs combined can ever spend in a lifetime of living in luxury, while half the world has hardly a chance to flourish under the weight of poverty. My argument is not that billionaires are immoral for having accrued their fortunes, or are any more immoral than the rest of us. No, they have just been big winners in a deeply immoral game that we, the members of many societies, have allowed. I won't argue for a game where everyone wins - that's boring - but the gap between winners and losers should not be so large and so consequential, where the stakes are so high that it means a life of excess for a few and destitution for many. The game I'm describing is raw, unbridled, capitalism with delinquent referees where the winners get to keep all the spoils, bribe the officials, change the rules, run up the score and convince the losers that it was a fair game all along. The existence of billionaires is evidence that there's something wrong with our shared norms and that we have neglected our moral duties to each other. To be clear, it is not capitalism or inequality that are immoral. Markets leavened with democracy can have many benefits and it's fine that some people win due to skill or luck, but this is not what we're talking about here; the problem is too much inequality which is a threat to social cohesion, democracy and justice. On nearly every [measurable] measurement available, the higher the inequality the higher the problems facing society. It corrodes trust, community and even our health and well-being. Whether we're using an expansive definition of justice - the greatest good for the greatest amount of people - or a limited concept, not taking more than you deserve. Billionaires threaten justice and community at a time when these shared norms are desperately needed. Specifically I want to highlight how inequality threatens both democracy and freedom. First democracy, the higher the inequality the higher the threat to democracy. Louis Brandeis said we can have democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few - we cannot have both. By most accounts the United States has one of the highest levels of inequality; also home to the world's most billionaires. In 2018 alone, 3.5 billion dollars was spent just on political lobbying in the US Congress. Hoarding billions therefore, doesn't just allow you to buy luxury goods, it allows you to buy votes, laws and legislators; and what are the things that billionaires are lobbying for? Mostly tax-breaks and de-regulation. Monopolists lobby against anti-trust enforcement. Banks lobby against risk regulation. Polluters lobby against environmental regulations, and private companies lobby against public services. This is anti-social rent-seeking and it harms the majority. The very wealthy lobby for tax cuts and tax loopholes. Thus wealth leads to political power, which leads to even more wealth. The opposite is also true; disadvantage self-perpetuates. The desires of the wealthy are heated by the political structure and the voice of the poor is drowned out. The wealthy have no interest in social safety nets, public schools and public health care. These are the things that get cut when inequality is high and this is exactly what's happened in the United States. Over the span of time, as deregulation, privatisation, monopolisation and trickle-down economics enabled the creation of unprecedented fortune and business empires. Public resources have shrunk. Public schools, housing, poverty aid and even services like the public post office (where Anand's [Anand Giridharadas] wallet showed up) have been discredited and defunded. The result is that, while the rich have gotten even richer, the majority of the public have more debt, inadequate shelter, food insecurity, wage stagnation, under-funded schools and affordable health care. This is a direct result of lobbying. It's not direct lobbying, but the very wealthy also fund a propaganda industry that promotes a neoliberal ideology that justifies their extravagant fortunes. They share their ideology through right-wing think tanks, foundations, newspapers and television networks; and it's working. Thanks to decades of story-telling, many people believe that anyone can get rich if they just work hard. That billionaires deserve their money and that poverty is a matter of personal flaws, as opposed to institutional delinquencies. This is salt on wounds. Not only do the poor suffer, but they are convinced to feel shame about their own poverty. The poor have thus been persuaded to vote for billionaire-friendly policies. One might even argue that the world-wide political, ecological and cultural crises have, in fact, been caused by the unprecedented inequality in wealth and the neoliberal dogma used to justify it. Two; inequality threatens individual freedom and autonomy. Vast fortunes create social and political power; and if there's one lesson we can learn from history it is that power always seeks self-preservation first and foremost. Frederick Douglas remarked, power concedes nothing without a demand, it never did, and it never will. Thus fortune and power propagate like compounding interest over time and tip the scales until the game becomes rigged. The winners can maintain their dominance across generations by hoarding resources and opportunity. Class becomes rigid and inescapable. The higher the inequality, the higher the likelihood that kids will inherit their life outcomes and have no autonomy to change them. Some kids are born on third base, and others will never step up to the plate. In an environment of vast inequality the most important decision a child can make to better their life outcome is to choose their parents wisely. Advice to the discerning unborn; in addition to class be sure to pick the right country, race and gender. In America, a Black child is much more likely than a White child, to grow up in deep poverty, attend an under-funded school, not go to college, and end-up in prison. Meanwhile the children of the wealthy have to try really hard not to be wealthy themselves. If we're going to call this state of life determinism, freedom, we're going to have to significantly narrow the definition. The list of billionaires reflects this history of stagnant social power and racial and gender hierarchies. There are only a few African-American billionaires; one just got added, Jay-Z, this week. So that brings it to a handful. Fine, none are none are Native-American. There are no Untouchables that are billionaires. There are about 200 on the list that are women; nearly all of them, by my count, are heirs of an empire. Men from historically dominant races make up the majority of this list - reflecting of course the history of colonisation, empire, patriarchy, and exploitation. This is not a meritocracy. What about when billionaires give away their money? Aid to the poor is not an adequate stand-in for justice and a fair social contract. Allowing billionaires to accumulate, and then decide where and how to give their money, is a transfer of freedom and autonomy from the poor to the wealthy. Why should they get to allocate the world's resources? By making these distributional decisions, billionaire charity shifts power from public governments, by the people and for the people, to private individuals. There are good and charitable billionaires who fund the building of wells in the Middle-East, micro-lending in Bangladesh, mosquito nets in Africa - these projects surely improve lives, but they do nothing to address the root problems of the global poor - which is a history of colonialism, war, corruption and resource extraction. Former empires, and the new corporate empires, give foreign aid even as these empires have long plundered the land, installed dictators, crushed movements for sovereignty - all in the pursuit of large fortunes. It's like the bully who comes in and takes your lunch and wants to be congratulated for giving you some scraps. Many of the world's largest fortunes are similarly implicated in causing harm first, and giving alms later. It would be better if we could stop the bully from taking the lunch in the first place; and for that we need democracy and meaningful freedom, and this is exactly what's what's threatened with high inequality. If we want to fix poverty we must give the poor equal political power to determine their own fate. Benevolence from Kings, Lords, dictators or billionaires is still a form of tyranny when it impedes freedom. Mosquito nets and charity are nice, but sovereignty, freedom and self-rule are better. As for billionaires, it's great that they're giving away their money - it's not enough. Democracy requires a progressive system of taxation, and justice requires an egalitarian distribution of goods. The existence of billionaires in any society indicates a high level of inequality, and like a dead canary in the coal mine, it is a sign that something is deeply wrong. Thank you."

@@ianjameslee Hi Ian, Sorry 'bout that... it slipped from my "todo" list. Thank you for prompting me to do so. I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting Prof. Baradaran's presentation. Please find Professor Baradaran's transcript in my earlier response to your query. The opponents to the motion appear to be hanging their heads in either defeat or shame, as Prof. Baradaran iterates through each of her powerful arguments in favour of the motion; or perhaps they're ambivalent to plight of the victims of exploitation and simply refusing to pay attention. Cheers!

@@PMunkS This is great, much appreciated. Thanks.

@@PMunkS Meant to ask is there some software you use for this, or how do you capture this? Thanks

A sensible observation however, we might then critique the letter of the motion put forward by the Union. 1. "morality" is entirely subjective and, 2. where billionaire status is defined by accumulated wealth, "being a billionaire" is not a natural state of human existence. Prof. Baradaran exercises discretion in light of the ambiguity inherent within the the motion (as do all participants) to challenge the social construct that enables exploitation.

Hi A Kahn, I've downloaded the *.srt file, capturing the transcript. I've posted it elsewhere in the comments section, but will reprint it here for your benefit. Prof. Baradaran's presentation is brilliant.. share it with others if you're able. Transcript extracted from accompanying KZfaq-generated closed captions file (*.srt) - corrected by PMS | "Prof Mehrsa Baradaran | It Is Immoral To Be A Billionaire (7/8) | Oxford Union" | Sept 5, 2019 (09m:11s) [ kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qZt7rLyBrJ25kZc.html ]: "Thank you so much for having me. This is very exciting. So, there are roughly 2,000 billionaires in a world of about 8 billion people. Half the world's population lives in poverty - deep poverty, living under less than 3 dollars a day. They are exposed to disease, hunger and violence. It is immoral for a tiny fraction of the world's population to hoard more resources than they and all their heirs combined can ever spend in a lifetime of living in luxury, while half the world has hardly a chance to flourish under the weight of poverty. My argument is not that billionaires are immoral for having accrued their fortunes, or are any more immoral than the rest of us. No, they have just been big winners in a deeply immoral game that we, the members of many societies, have allowed. I won't argue for a game where everyone wins - that's boring - but the gap between winners and losers should not be so large and so consequential, where the stakes are so high that it means a life of excess for a few and destitution for many. The game I'm describing is raw, unbridled, capitalism with delinquent referees where the winners get to keep all the spoils, bribe the officials, change the rules, run up the score and convince the losers that it was a fair game all along. The existence of billionaires is evidence that there's something wrong with our shared norms and that we have neglected our moral duties to each other. To be clear, it is not capitalism or inequality that are immoral. Markets leavened with democracy can have many benefits and it's fine that some people win due to skill or luck, but this is not what we're talking about here; the problem is too much inequality which is a threat to social cohesion, democracy and justice. On nearly every [measurable] measurement available, the higher the inequality the higher the problems facing society. It corrodes trust, community and even our health and well-being. Whether we're using an expansive definition of justice - the greatest good for the greatest amount of people - or a limited concept, not taking more than you deserve. Billionaires threaten justice and community at a time when these shared norms are desperately needed. Specifically I want to highlight how inequality threatens both democracy and freedom. First democracy, the higher the inequality the higher the threat to democracy. Louis Brandeis said we can have democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few - we cannot have both. By most accounts the United States has one of the highest levels of inequality; also home to the world's most billionaires. In 2018 alone, 3.5 billion dollars was spent just on political lobbying in the US Congress. Hoarding billions therefore, doesn't just allow you to buy luxury goods, it allows you to buy votes, laws and legislators; and what are the things that billionaires are lobbying for? Mostly tax-breaks and de-regulation. Monopolists lobby against anti-trust enforcement. Banks lobby against risk regulation. Polluters lobby against environmental regulations, and private companies lobby against public services. This is anti-social rent-seeking and it harms the majority. The very wealthy lobby for tax cuts and tax loopholes. Thus wealth leads to political power, which leads to even more wealth. The opposite is also true; disadvantage self-perpetuates. The desires of the wealthy are heated by the political structure and the voice of the poor is drowned out. The wealthy have no interest in social safety nets, public schools and public health care. These are the things that get cut when inequality is high and this is exactly what's happened in the United States. Over the span of time, as deregulation, privatisation, monopolisation and trickle-down economics enabled the creation of unprecedented fortune and business empires. Public resources have shrunk. Public schools, housing, poverty aid and even services like the public post office (where Anand's [Anand Giridharadas] wallet showed up) have been discredited and defunded. The result is that, while the rich have gotten even richer, the majority of the public have more debt, inadequate shelter, food insecurity, wage stagnation, under-funded schools and affordable health care. This is a direct result of lobbying. It's not direct lobbying, but the very wealthy also fund a propaganda industry that promotes a neoliberal ideology that justifies their extravagant fortunes. They share their ideology through right-wing think tanks, foundations, newspapers and television networks; and it's working. Thanks to decades of story-telling, many people believe that anyone can get rich if they just work hard. That billionaires deserve their money and that poverty is a matter of personal flaws, as opposed to institutional delinquencies. This is salt on wounds. Not only do the poor suffer, but they are convinced to feel shame about their own poverty. The poor have thus been persuaded to vote for billionaire-friendly policies. One might even argue that the world-wide political, ecological and cultural crises have, in fact, been caused by the unprecedented inequality in wealth and the neoliberal dogma used to justify it. Two; inequality threatens individual freedom and autonomy. Vast fortunes create social and political power; and if there's one lesson we can learn from history it is that power always seeks self-preservation first and foremost. Frederick Douglas remarked, power concedes nothing without a demand, it never did, and it never will. Thus fortune and power propagate like compounding interest over time and tip the scales until the game becomes rigged. The winners can maintain their dominance across generations by hoarding resources and opportunity. Class becomes rigid and inescapable. The higher the inequality, the higher the likelihood that kids will inherit their life outcomes and have no autonomy to change them. Some kids are born on third base, and others will never step up to the plate. In an environment of vast inequality the most important decision a child can make to better their life outcome is to choose their parents wisely. Advice to the discerning unborn; in addition to class be sure to pick the right country, race and gender. In America, a Black child is much more likely than a White child, to grow up in deep poverty, attend an under-funded school, not go to college, and end-up in prison. Meanwhile the children of the wealthy have to try really hard not to be wealthy themselves. If we're going to call this state of life determinism, freedom, we're going to have to significantly narrow the definition. The list of billionaires reflects this history of stagnant social power and racial and gender hierarchies. There are only a few African-American billionaires; one just got added, Jay-Z, this week. So that brings it to a handful. Fine, none are none are Native-American. There are no Untouchables that are billionaires. There are about 200 on the list that are women; nearly all of them, by my count, are heirs of an empire. Men from historically dominant races make up the majority of this list - reflecting of course the history of colonisation, empire, patriarchy, and exploitation. This is not a meritocracy. What about when billionaires give away their money? Aid to the poor is not an adequate stand-in for justice and a fair social contract. Allowing billionaires to accumulate, and then decide where and how to give their money, is a transfer of freedom and autonomy from the poor to the wealthy. Why should they get to allocate the world's resources? By making these distributional decisions, billionaire charity shifts power from public governments, by the people and for the people, to private individuals. There are good and charitable billionaires who fund the building of wells in the Middle-East, micro-lending in Bangladesh, mosquito nets in Africa - these projects surely improve lives, but they do nothing to address the root problems of the global poor - which is a history of colonialism, war, corruption and resource extraction. Former empires, and the new corporate empires, give foreign aid even as these empires have long plundered the land, installed dictators, crushed movements for sovereignty - all in the pursuit of large fortunes. It's like the bully who comes in and takes your lunch and wants to be congratulated for giving you some scraps. Many of the world's largest fortunes are similarly implicated in causing harm first, and giving alms later. It would be better if we could stop the bully from taking the lunch in the first place; and for that we need democracy and meaningful freedom, and this is exactly what's what's threatened with high inequality. If we want to fix poverty we must give the poor equal political power to determine their own fate. Benevolence from Kings, Lords, dictators or billionaires is still a form of tyranny when it impedes freedom. Mosquito nets and charity are nice, but sovereignty, freedom and self-rule are better. As for billionaires, it's great that they're giving away their money - it's not enough. Democracy requires a progressive system of taxation, and justice requires an egalitarian distribution of goods. The existence of billionaires in any society indicates a high level of inequality, and like a dead canary in the coal mine, it is a sign that something is deeply wrong. Thank you."

I’m writing this comment so I can come back to this.

I think it's a timed debate

Is it immoral to want a better life? To work for stability? Becoming rich is often the result of hard work and a desire to build something consumers want. Is that wrong? Amazon isn't successful because it was greedy. It's successful because people like 2 day (or faster) shipping. The fact that Jeff Bezos made money on this isn't greed - it's profit. Every business works on this principle, some better than others.

@@steverguy That's hilarious. Becoming rich comes from hard work? Yeah, maybe in the 1800s. When looking at anyone whose wealth comes from resource extraction or tech had a huge boost from government subsidy. Bezos just extracts human resources where workers have to relieve themselves in bottles for fear of getting written up or losing their job for taking time to use a restroom. No one said that wanting a better life was immoral. Also steverguy, do you know the difference between wealth and income? Just asking.

@@Madaboutmada wow you are so misguided. Any successful person will tell you it takes hard work to get where they are and harder work to stay there.

@@jbo4547 tell that to a mother of two who works 2 jobs/double shifts 6 out of 7 days a week, and barely gets time off work to be with their kids

@@karabomafa5609 choices make a person. If you have 2 kids and complain that you can't take care of them And work its YOUR problem. You made the choice

Hi Kim, Not only is a game where everyone wins "boring", but it is a logical fallacy. One's choice to use the term "win", when describing an outcome, presumes competition and thus necessarily defines a "loser". Some do not even qualify to play as Prof. Baradaran later goes on to illustrate. She later calls in to question the legitimacy of the "game", indirectly suggesting that 'the house always wins'. Everything comes at a cost, even at the base currency unit of time. At higher levels of abstraction, access to resources, access to opportunity, capability, and innumerable externalities, all conspire to tip the balance of equality that influence the outcome of competition. Anand G. does a wonderful job illustrating the fallacy of "win-win". Best of luck with your project.

As a result of capitalism, but that's not part of the party line

had me in the first half

yeah you are a billionaire in absolute sense but still a loser like all of us in relative terms :)

@@ishkool8664 not having extreme financial means doesn't make you a loser. It isn't zero sum . The argument is stupid.

Agreed. A conversation about wealth inequality that isn't centered around laws of iterative trading like the Perato Distribution feels intentionally misleading to me.

itachi Theonlylegend that would only increase tax evasion. It would also take away from the ambition of earning more because if you’re obligated to give away most of it, why earn it?

@@aditiparmar6097 then isn't that good to not earn more than enough? That's the whole point here, earning more than your necessities 🙄root cause of poverty. The point of making a society is basically survival of everyone and have a healthy life.

@@satishm5260 I am from a shithole socialist country called India. Here companies cannot fire employees without permission from government. Even the GST is progressive with higher tax on luxury goods. Result is poverty. The education in govt institutions is horrible. I got a job because I learned Machine learning and programming online on youtube thanks to the "evil billionaires". Now ppl want to turn western countries into shitholes like India. Shame.

The rich in the US were taxed as high until Reagan lowered their taxes and raised the taxes of the lower and middle class. I know, my 7 percent taxes on my pitiful income at the time was raised to 15 percent thanks to Reagan.

Are you saying that her argument is the better one, but she used the wrong rhetoric?

White folk have told that lie for hundreds of years. And everyone believed it. Its not true.

salemdesigns65 what is the truth?

@@Furtivo95 The truth: white institutions/banks were NEVER for minorities and the poor.

salemdesigns65 So what is your knowledge of money and investing?

@@Furtivo95 I know that the color of money is white. Why invest when the market is so racist and has exploited so many? Who cares... ?

Good point, let's get started

Actually if you’re suggesting that socialism is defined by the government providing for its citizens then the US is already a socialist state.....but I suspect you’re defining socialism as something much more extreme. You can simply have a progressive tax structure that’s actually progressive in practice (vs one that’s progressive in name only with loopholes to beat the band). You then combine that with a wealth tax that acts as a governor to limit net worth to a certain level (say $1 short of a billion). Society would win because they’d have more funds to allocate according to need The ‘used to be’ billionaire neither wins nor loses....their lifestyle remains exactly the same. And for those that believe those ultra wealth would stop working (thus robbing the world of their job creating productivity), ask yourself this question: “when a businessperson eclipses $100 million in net worth (for instance), does he/she continue on for the money itself or do they just love doing what they do? They’ll continue or stop for reasons beyond money because in the hundreds of millions of dollars of net worth, they’ve already accumulated more than they can reasonably spend on themselves

Evidently there is a lot of people in favor of socialism and/or communism. That's too bad. If these systems were that great, they would have had better results throughout the history of their implementation.

David Brock - your response suggests you didn’t read mine. Every society has some form of socialism (eg I’ll bet you don’t form an army on your own or pave the piece of road in front of your house). See also everyone lies but not all people are liars. The difference is the prevailing nature of the economic model. Having capitalism that has some limitations is worthy of discussion and implementation. As for criticisms for places that didn’t succeed (the old Soviet Union being the tired and far from thoughtful example), that is not what I or many others are advocating. Take healthcare....single payer addresses the PAYMENT not the DELIVERY of healthcare in a country. Let doctors, nurses, etc. leverage supply and demand capitalism to earn several multiples over the average income, but allow public money to pay them (opting for waste due to government waste/bureaucracy over corporate profit). What’s the result? The US pays much more for care per capita than any western nation and have demonstrably worse outcomes. Relating back to the billionaire topic.....unfettered capitalism gets you huge wealth inequality and compromises society in a great number of ways. Don’t allow someone to preach the value of hard work and then pass all their wealth to their kids (making them wealthy without having worked a day in their lives) and you see the personification of hypocrisy. I’d argue Trump is the dumpster fire that he his largely because he’s been given everything in his life and he knows nothing of the relationship between earned and entitled. He’s the poster child for bad applications of capitalism

In a democracy... That's called voting

Would never consider her. Or if they did and appointed her she would be so hemmed in it wouldn't be worth it for her. Her influence is best generated and projected in her current autonomous spaces.

But the function of that is to generate more wealth, even if you consider that they have employees and benefit employees an employee is only hired if they produce more than they are paid or else the firm wouldn't make a profit simply off of salary expense. I agree with the sentiment you ascribe but your argument is weak.

@@Eric-zl1kn My point is simple. When you and I earn money it is dead money - it goes into a bank or wherever. But a billionaire's money is directly correlated to maintaining jobs and large sections of the economy. It generates further wealth for them - yes, why should it not? But it is vital for you and I to put dinner on the table.

@@pneron2032 lol that's the exact opposite of reality!!! When you and I earn money, we buy things, because we need them! When a billionaire earns money, it goes to an offshore account, or nonprofit foundation, or some other shell game.

@@KefkaJr A non-profit? Is that a bad thing? ...Anyway, billionaires invest their money in companies that you shop at and work for. You can do without those services in Leftist Utopia but not in the real world. Jealousy is an ugly trait: it is guaranteed that your bank balance could help some child in Africa. So go and be generous with your own money and stop campaigning to be generous with other people's.

@Ewarton Charlton No , they do reinvest their money. Imagine if you were a billionaire and you had a competitor who is also a billionaire. Both got a profit of million dollars. You decide to put it in an offshore account,buy a yacht or whatever. Competitor decides to reinvest and expand business. Eventually he will beat your business. So putting money under pillow or buying luxury goods instead of reinvesting is harmful.

what does the carrot represent?

@@ChillSydneyWebSurfer money

That is not how taxes work at these levels. In addition, the bigger point is that the profit shouldn't be going to a person but rather be redistributed to those who helped *actually* create it - the employees.

@@nitramwin The employees are compensated for their work through the wages that they receive. If they wish to be rich then they can set up their own businesses. Also exactly what should the compensation be for the owner who created the company that provided the jobs for otherwise unemployed people be? How much of his money should he be allowed to keep? 20%? 10%? 5%? 1%? 0.1%? Anything?

Martin That my friend is called THEFT.,Redistributed is how Communist talk.

@@nitramwin The employees didn't put up the risk of starting the business. If the business man fails in business and loses everything will the employees bail him out?

Harrison, you don't understand. What a billionaire wants most is another billion. :-) You know, a billion isn't a lot of money these days.

Often when propelled by profit it is unneeded, poor quality and even detrimental products being produced and many, much better small businesess pushed out in a process, plus the whole system creates insecurity and need to work way too much for our level of technology, overproducing and needing to push people into extreme consumerism, destroying both their psychi and our planet. Essentially, we need the same people working less hours producing better , really needed, not hazardous goods, with noone making billions. We need coops for bigger things like cars, we need prohibition on commercials, we need to change economy to be able to do less but distribute more fairly. Culture of billionairs and peons is very detrimental to everyone including billionairs themselves. Most normal people will quit after 5,10 or max 50 million in savings, only very "special" people continue to hoard money beyond satisfying any imaginable need and freedom, and, on top of it, they usually continue to underpay, to harm their countries, to avoid taxes and to me those are signs of mental sickness, brought by enormity of power of owing extraordinarily large sums of money. Those who want money to do good, usually start doing it way before having hoarded billions. One exception is Chuck Freeny and another, my favorite billionaire, Douglas Tomkins. He simply awakened to evils of producing unneeded things and spent all of his funds and energy for nature conservation. There are indeed some very rich people who keep businesses for the sake of their workers and pay more than they have to and try some nice things, not with one thousands parts of their profit and time, but for real, unfortunatelly, percentage wise, they are drop in a bucket, and often, once starting to share fairly, and producing not crap, becoming billionaire becomes simply impossible. And because you need to be very special to withstand power of money if you did not stop after achieving freedom from ever needing to work for money, I can argue that, on average, billionaire is no more capable than person who quit after achieving the said financial freedom, but usually much less sane. Alternative ? For starters I would want all restaurants to be owned by chefs, one per chef. I want all farmers to be independent small or average sized organic, humane farmers. I want furniture to be produced by independent artisans with natural wood glue and to last for 50 years minimum, so kids can inherit some vs. majority of consumers pushed into buying new, flimsy, poisonous crap, made by, usually foreign, completely abused workers. Small buisnesses would never outsorce or move business abroad. Would not have billions for swinging whole governmental policies their way, and so forth. Some businesses need to be big, coops are in their infancy so let's start with those industries which do not need to be big. No need for Wallmart, for example, it created only misery in a wake of putting countless small shop owners out of business. This family belongs in a mental asylum, if only for harrassing workers for taking any sick days, but now they are major work creators, creating misery instead of content, mostly. US needs free healthcare, education and legal representation plus small universal income, for average people to be able to create own businesses and keep them without growing too much, vs. having to work for giant conglomerates.

@@NoName-vw6ft Wow you just demonstrated that you not only don't understand billionaires but anything to do with the economy. You want people to work less when humans are working less than ever. We live in a time where you don't even need to go to work because you can work from home. Work isn't a bad thing. Often through work we gain self worth. The problem is socialists don't want to work and hate the idea of competition. They can't handle reality. Walmart has helped millions of workers and hundreds of millions of customers. It provides jobs and affordable products. Yes, consumerism can be a problem, but it is a choice. Limiting this choice is not a good thing. The idea of individuals running businesses is fine if they can out compete other forms of businesses. Many of the franchise restaurants are actually family owned. Governments shouldn't decide how people live their lives or run their businesses. Governments can't even manage their own business let alone someone else's.

@eddieisfiction You don't understand my point. Often people think of billionaires as having pools of money that the swim in. In reality that don't. They own shares of the companies they built. That is important to understand for two reason. A wealth tax takes shares of the company which means the government is gradually stealing the company away. Having not built the business they (the government) don't know or care how to maintain or grow it. This is a recipe to disaster. This is often why socialism fails. Without the original owner/creator the business fails.

@eddieisfiction I got what you were saying but you seem not to understand my point still. Once government gets even a small amount of ownership of a business it causes issues. Also as the visionary is gradually removed from the company it gradually can die too. You don't want the government to own business at all.

@eddieisfiction Has nothing to do with the stock holders faith. The owners of a business seek to make a profit and this drive keeps a business successful. But also the entrepreneur who founds the company has a vision for where the company needs to go. A government lacks both of these traits. I've seen government run businesses they just don't understand the profit incentive and often run businesses into the ground.

There is a thing called Google, you know en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

The term "trickle-down", used in an economic context, had previously been referred to as "horse and sparrow economic theory". The latter terminology predates the use of the term "trickle-down" to describe the economy in terms of how the populace (sparrows) are relegated to picking out undigested oats from the shit of the well-fed horse.

@@thecockerel86 I think you need to actually read that Wikipedia entry. The term started as a joke, a strawman. This is like calling anyone who wants higher taxes a socialist. You are jumping to conclusions and it's not intellectual honest.

@@PMunkS The term "trickle-down" originated as a joke by humorist Will Rogers. So there is no economic context, there is just a strawmanning, a hit job. There is no economic theory called trickle down, the only time you see the term in acedemic papers is when the aurther is more interested in politics then in economic theory, unsurprisingly mist of theses people are not economists themselves. If you think use of strawmen is effective in critizing an economic theory, such as Supply Side, the I guess that means calling anyone who wants higher taxes a socialist, solely based off this fact, is a valid claim.

No matter how many times you use the word 'strawman', trickle-down is a well established economic theory. It governed all of Ronald Reagan's 2 terms as president and as recently as last year, it was the foundation for the Trump tax cuts. To pretend that trickle-down economics isn't a thing is to deliberately bury your head in the sand. That's disingenuous.

One has no idea why that employee has that job (or one like it). Were he an inner-city Black American, for example, your calculus would probably collapse for an embarrassment of ignorance. Fix the inequalities experienced by Blacks (at all social, political and economic levels), so life outcomes can mirror yours. Expend some of your educational, economic, and racial* good fortune for changing a system which historically sees them as a lower caste. The horrors of slavery, segregation and present policy strongly determines their life outcomes. *If you're Black you must do better than serve White Supremacy; if you're White, you have to do more for having significant historical advantages and power...so use it for the common good -- or die trying. With all due respect. (KFB 100619)

@@kevinboone2178 I will pass your message on to my black engineer co-workers. Fortunately most have a good sense of humor, and will laugh before being insulted by your pity of them.

No one is talking about middle class people at all. Being a billionaire is not the same as working at an aerospace company. Hoarding wealth that you could never spend in a thousand life times why billions live in poverty for your personal greed is immoral.

It's not so much that your pay is immoral, as the average person's lack of pay is. We don't live in a hunter gatherer society, we can provide food, shelter, water, and wealth to every single person on the planet right now. No one needs to be making starvation level wages when we can do at least that, and then some.

It takes you 84 hours to complete your work for the week? Either you suck at your job or you're being taken advantage of.

Here...HEAR...sarcasm as its own reward.

What's so absurd about it?

From the 1960s on. Like most other institutions.

Wow great argument there, I'm speechless. Left wing DESTROYED, you got me bro. Billionaires forever!

Poverty is no longer a choice when plenty of people come out of college in the US and get jobs that wont allow them to pay their bills. The current system in the US allows for the mass exploitation of the majority in the name of the 1% just look at healthcare for an example. If the states job is not to look after its people and I mean all of its people then what is the role of the state?

Ding dong. Your opinion is wrong

Thomas its more than that, the poor need to try twice as hard! Its not an equal or even playing field.

For the people who have the same social media tendencies as the above poster, I want to ask you to watch the video again, and ask yourself, did she really advocate against capitalism? Did she advocate for a communist regime or empowerment of democracy? Were all of her arguments based around emotion or just the conclusions? If you are a true rationalistic thinker, and not a carbon copy of member of a politically reactionary online community, you will answer these questions truthfully.

She literally says she supports capitalism in the first minute of the video you absolute mong