The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
To a billionaire, a mere millionaire is as much a pauper as any homeless person. When the Psychopathic Oligarchs demand a reduction in population, being a millionaire won’t save them.
In fact, the Psychopathic Oligarch’s Capital Hoarding OCD will kick in even bigger over a millionaire, because he actually has the money that they covet so badly. The rest are just drains on society, but a millionaire has something that the mentally-ill financial hoarders actually want - more wealth.
It will be for different reasons, but they’re going to kill the millionaires, too.
It will be for different reasons, but they’re going to kill the millionaires, too.
I want to try to imagine what that actually looks like.
The billionaires have been raiding the federal budget and debt. Eventually we will hit a wall, and then it will be time for some good old-fashioned crisis austerity! And the president will get on the podium and somberly tell the American people. (Imagine this as someone (of either party) after Trump or feel free to translate this to Trump drivel.):
My fellow Americans. After generations of reckless spending, we have finally reached the end. We have tried to balance the budget, but the opposition party has spent years bleeding the budget dry. You know all they have done. Ultimately this is their fault. But unfortunately, we now are incapable of borrowing the amount of money we need to keep the light on, and tough choices have to be made. We will all need to tighten our belts. Taxes will go up, and reforms will be made to retirement programs…
And then out of nowhere a “must pass” reform package will appear. It will be a thousand pages long. Despite the crisis only appearing this week, the bill have clearly taken years to write. They clearly had this thing written beforehand. And the part that will hit the millionaires the hardest? Severe restrictions on the tax-advantaged provisions of IRAs, 401ks, and home ownership. That’s how ordinary people who amass a few million of their working careers usually manage to do it. That and home equity is where most of the wealth of single digit millionaires is kept.
For 401ks and IRAs, look to see that minimum withdraw range rise higher. Make it so you have to be age 70 to access the funds in your 401k without an early withdrawal penalty. Or apply penalties to social security benefits for those with large 401k and IRA balances. If they were really cynical, the billionaires might even cynically sell this as “taxing the millionaires.”
Look for curtailments to the tax advantages to home ownership. It’s very rare for ordinary people to pay capital gains taxes on any increase in their home’s value when they sell it. When a couples sells a home, they are exempt from the first $500k of home appreciation. Plus there’s the mortgage increase and property tax income tax deductions. Etc.
This is how you effectively steal what remains of the wealth of the middle class. The billionaires use both parties to raid the nation’s credit until it is maxed out. Then they keep the grift going by removing all the tax advantages the middle class has earned for itself over the generations. Then at some point, when that is not enough, taxes will simply be raised, but in forms that fall lightest on the wealthy. There is a reason these guys love tariffs.
Excellent speculation. Add to that their out-of-control health care costs, which have been deliberately engineered to strip their wealth, and bankrupt families.
I truly believe that one of their objectives is to kill middle class inheritances. Back in the days when it was possible for the average person to actually build wealth through savings program, pensions, and Social Security. People would then inherit the result of their parents’ saving efforts, hopefully two inheritances for a couple, and somewhere in the 50s or so, between decent jobs, a decent savings account, and an inheritance or two, and a person might be able to retire early, or quit and start their own business, which a company isn’t going to like if if it’s competition. Even if it’s NOT competition, they don’t want to lose a highly experienced worker who might hold an important role. They want to fire them when they gets older, at THEIR discretion, not the workers.
Today, pensions barely exist, financial corporations manage retirement programs to benefit the firm over the investor, and savings accounts don’t have any significant interest. By the time someone dies, they have little or nothing left to pass on to their kids. If they died of a prolonged illness, they may even pass on debts.
So future middle-aged couples can’t look forward to a decent inheritance from their parents to boost their lives into retirement.
And future generations will also die with student loans still to be paid, which will have suppressed any savings opportunities for their entire life, as the career they spent tens of thousands to pursue, is now mostly poorly-handled by AI. I wouldn’t be surprised when the student loan generation starts to die, that the permanent MAGA government will force their heirs to pay off the loans, and saddle the next generation with the previous generation’s debt, too.
The overall objective is to keep prices high (which rich people can always afford), and keep us economically enslaved with several low-wage jobs per multi-generational household in order to stay alive, leaving little time to plot a Revolution.
The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
To a billionaire, a mere millionaire is as much a pauper as any homeless person. When the Psychopathic Oligarchs demand a reduction in population, being a millionaire won’t save them.
In fact, the Psychopathic Oligarch’s Capital Hoarding OCD will kick in even bigger over a millionaire, because he actually has the money that they covet so badly. The rest are just drains on society, but a millionaire has something that the mentally-ill financial hoarders actually want - more wealth.
It will be for different reasons, but they’re going to kill the millionaires, too.
I want to try to imagine what that actually looks like.
The billionaires have been raiding the federal budget and debt. Eventually we will hit a wall, and then it will be time for some good old-fashioned crisis austerity! And the president will get on the podium and somberly tell the American people. (Imagine this as someone (of either party) after Trump or feel free to translate this to Trump drivel.):
My fellow Americans. After generations of reckless spending, we have finally reached the end. We have tried to balance the budget, but the opposition party has spent years bleeding the budget dry. You know all they have done. Ultimately this is their fault. But unfortunately, we now are incapable of borrowing the amount of money we need to keep the light on, and tough choices have to be made. We will all need to tighten our belts. Taxes will go up, and reforms will be made to retirement programs…
And then out of nowhere a “must pass” reform package will appear. It will be a thousand pages long. Despite the crisis only appearing this week, the bill have clearly taken years to write. They clearly had this thing written beforehand. And the part that will hit the millionaires the hardest? Severe restrictions on the tax-advantaged provisions of IRAs, 401ks, and home ownership. That’s how ordinary people who amass a few million of their working careers usually manage to do it. That and home equity is where most of the wealth of single digit millionaires is kept.
For 401ks and IRAs, look to see that minimum withdraw range rise higher. Make it so you have to be age 70 to access the funds in your 401k without an early withdrawal penalty. Or apply penalties to social security benefits for those with large 401k and IRA balances. If they were really cynical, the billionaires might even cynically sell this as “taxing the millionaires.”
Look for curtailments to the tax advantages to home ownership. It’s very rare for ordinary people to pay capital gains taxes on any increase in their home’s value when they sell it. When a couples sells a home, they are exempt from the first $500k of home appreciation. Plus there’s the mortgage increase and property tax income tax deductions. Etc.
This is how you effectively steal what remains of the wealth of the middle class. The billionaires use both parties to raid the nation’s credit until it is maxed out. Then they keep the grift going by removing all the tax advantages the middle class has earned for itself over the generations. Then at some point, when that is not enough, taxes will simply be raised, but in forms that fall lightest on the wealthy. There is a reason these guys love tariffs.
Excellent speculation. Add to that their out-of-control health care costs, which have been deliberately engineered to strip their wealth, and bankrupt families.
I truly believe that one of their objectives is to kill middle class inheritances. Back in the days when it was possible for the average person to actually build wealth through savings program, pensions, and Social Security. People would then inherit the result of their parents’ saving efforts, hopefully two inheritances for a couple, and somewhere in the 50s or so, between decent jobs, a decent savings account, and an inheritance or two, and a person might be able to retire early, or quit and start their own business, which a company isn’t going to like if if it’s competition. Even if it’s NOT competition, they don’t want to lose a highly experienced worker who might hold an important role. They want to fire them when they gets older, at THEIR discretion, not the workers.
Today, pensions barely exist, financial corporations manage retirement programs to benefit the firm over the investor, and savings accounts don’t have any significant interest. By the time someone dies, they have little or nothing left to pass on to their kids. If they died of a prolonged illness, they may even pass on debts.
So future middle-aged couples can’t look forward to a decent inheritance from their parents to boost their lives into retirement.
And future generations will also die with student loans still to be paid, which will have suppressed any savings opportunities for their entire life, as the career they spent tens of thousands to pursue, is now mostly poorly-handled by AI. I wouldn’t be surprised when the student loan generation starts to die, that the permanent MAGA government will force their heirs to pay off the loans, and saddle the next generation with the previous generation’s debt, too.
The overall objective is to keep prices high (which rich people can always afford), and keep us economically enslaved with several low-wage jobs per multi-generational household in order to stay alive, leaving little time to plot a Revolution.