Liquidate Musk
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
335 points (98.0% liked)
politics
23167 readers
3307 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Liquefy Musk
Expropriate their organs.
This article claims that Bernie Sanders and AOC are intentionally trying to redirect public anger towards useless methods the author views as useless, but where is the evidence for this?
The argument is right there in the article.
But Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez never indict capitalism as a system or call for a struggle against it. And they supported and hailed the Biden administration even as it was presiding over the greatest-ever accumulation of wealth on the part of the financial aristocracy.
For all their fulminations against the oligarchy, they carefully avoid advancing any demand that would deprive the billionaires of their ill-gotten riches. They pretend that society can be changed without a drastic redistribution of wealth, which requires the expropriation of the billionaires.
Tldr: critiquing the system only insofar as to not question capitalism.
That doesn't necessarily mean that they are plants. It could be that they actually believe social democracy can work or that they think they can't get support while opposing capitalism explicitly.
Would useful idiots be more appropriate then?
Confiscate all personal wealth over 100million. Break up any company worth over 50billion. Take all institutions of public service out of private equity: utilities, house, prisons, retirement, schools, postal, healthcare and public land management. Reform the legal system to not give the wealthy any advantage. Do not allow elected representatives. Do not allow politicians to take private money for political campaigns. Allowing people and corporations to acquire this type of power has been humanity’s whole problem for thousands of years
Do not allow elected representatives.
Do not allow elected representatives to do what exactly? Trade individual stocks?
Feels like something is missing here.
Do not allow elected representatives
I think I get your general gist, but would you please explain, so I'm not mistaken? Thanks.
Billionaires technically don't have much personal wealth. They leverage their illiquid assets as collateral to take out massive loans. Which they can later cover with taking out even bigger loans.
The liquid wealth of the wealthy is very low, technically in debt. This is another way they can avoid paying tax as they technically don't have much of anything, and the reason why 'declining to take a salary' is typically meaningless.
They shouldn't control that much wealth anyway, even if it's not 'real' money
That feels like an easy loophole to patch- Treat loans as income. Maybe tax it at some separate progressive rate so people using small loans as intended don't get fucked. But if Muskerberg has $100 million in loans taken out against his stock, taxing $90 million of that as income would make a difference. Especially if the top rate is like 90%.
So a loan of $10 million has like $5mil taxed right away? You get $5mil to spend, and still owe the bank like $12mil? Those interest rates are insane, and will definitely affect the working class more than the ultra-wealthy. Specifically businesses, which will increase giants' monopolies. And you can't make businesses an exception, because then the ultra-wealthy will borrow through those.
The money is not the problem. Money isn't real, it's just a tool that represents power and resources. There's nothing you can do to tax or control money itself because what wealthy people have is all the resources, and they can leverage them with or without money.
You can't tax your way out of hierarchal Capitalism. The rich are paying as much tax as the current system legally asks of them - which is very little, when your wealth is in resources and not money.
The poor and workers are more affected by taxes and costs because most of our worth is in money. Once you have enough to start investing and have resources, your worth can grow rapidly.
Buy borrow die
It does have a notable Achilles heel though, which is that the underlying portfolio has to keep appreciating in value.
Well if it doesn't, sell your stock to yourself a la Elon Musk, who sold X at a loss to XAI (a company he also majority owns). The 'loss' of ~6bil in value (iirc) means he can now gain ~6bil from any other sources without paying gains tax.
you should run for president
Unfortunately, I don’t know any billionaires who would be willing to finance my campaign
Democrats would say this person is unelectable. After losing to Trump twice...
Get private equity out of hospitals and forbid them land ownership.
The current private equity hospital grift:
- Buy a non profit hospital and ruthlessly expand it, putting all other competition out of business.
- Become the hospital's own 3rd party billing center (same name)
- Become the hospitals own 3rd party collection service, a law firm.
- Collect millions per year from the government to pay off unpaid hospital bills.
- Collect those bills with the third party collections by any means, garnishment, denials of service. 6. 6. Get the local courts dependent upon the court fees involved.
- Collect legal fees on top of the actual medical bills, thus "triple dipping" and getting paid three times ... all for services that were mostly paid for by insurance already.
Tax wealth, not work.
And churches.
And money isn’t speech
Fuck Citizens United.
But my tree fiddy has so much to say! /$
The article nicely makes the case for defenestrating billionaires as well
load more comments
(4 replies)
Is that Michael Jackson in the picture to the left of pezoz?
I had to take a 2nd look. I think you're right! Tee-hee .
view more: next ›