What's the point of billionaires? O

[muon2]

But the lack of ISP competition in your area is not the result billionaires and their corporations. Going back to the time of the telegraph, telecommunication has been coupled to large infrastructure investments. There's never been a time where more than a handful could afford the investment into any one area.

I remember talking to cable providers back in the late 90's. It was during the tech boom, and I was trying to find out why we weren't seeing any competition. The answer was that the infrastructure costs were high enough that putting in cables/wires/towers required a very high market share to recover the costs. If a provider thought they would only get 20% market share it wasn't worth the capital risk to enter an area. Things improved when AT&T built Uverse and some wireless services could provide content, too.

[Virginiá]

But the lack of ISP competition in your area is not the result billionaires and their corporations.

That's true. I sort of went off the rails, didn't I? Infrastructure investment is heavy and I wouldn't expect a myriad providers to materialize. But, where this fits in is individuals and corporations using their wealth to bribe lawmakers into passing laws prohibiting say, local governments from setting up their own fiber networks for their community. There are other things, such as letting newcomers use utility polls and some other infrastructure. These kinds of things are not practical with a powerful incumbent provider that can use the wealth they obtained from being that sole incumbent to manipulate the laws and regulations of the state.

To be fair, I'm an open access girl. If it was my call, I would mandate line sharing to significantly reduce the initial infrastructure costs and expand competition. Existing ISPs could receive some limited reimbursement, I suppose? They have already received so much money at both the state and federal level and have consistently failed to hold up their end of the agreement in terms of broadband expansion, though. I believe some EU countries do this and they don't have any real problems with it. In fact, I believe we did this with DSL for some time, no?

[muon2]

That sounds a bit like telecom right after the breakup of the Bell System. The local lines were a state-regulated monopoly but long distance companies could come in and market packages to households using the regulated lines.

The system is used in deregulated electric markets like IL. The company with the wires is regulated by the state and gets a fixed return. Power producers sell in the competitive market to power procurers. Individuals can buy the state's procurement, but most get their power through alternative retail electric suppliers (ARES). The ARES can compete for individual or municipal contracts based on the power contracts they've bought from producers. The customer's bill has a line for electricity usage and one for transmission and distribution.

[Hillary pays minimum wage]

The poor Democrats who are atheists and whine about Christmas decorations everywhere instead of looking for jobs should be thankful for billionaires who are at higher tax rates to pay for their welfare checks.

[Virginiá]

The poor Democrats who are atheists and whine about Christmas decorations everywhere instead of looking for jobs should be thankful for billionaires who are at higher tax rates to pay for their welfare checks.

Of which middle class folks pay more than poorer people. I imagine you're a flat tax person?

I'm really glad this whole "up by your bootstraps" worldview doesn't dominate policy relating to social programs, because if our system was built around those ideals, the country would have a much more crushing layer of poverty. So many conservatives think that if they just yank those EBT cards away, everyone will magically get jobs and hearty paychecks. Meanwhile, they cut education funding to reduce the quality of knowledge people have. They refuse to invest in infrastructure, so the economy as a whole suffers and there are less jobs to go around.  They fight collective bargaining power tooth and nail so workers have no ability to negotiate better wages and are left completely at the mercy of the corporations (who, as of the past 40 years, have largely left wages stagnant). They fight basically any pro-worker regulations to ensure fair pay, overtime compensation, benefits, you name it. They try to cut any and all social programs so there is little to help people when they fall down. The list goes on and on.

Sometimes I think the only people Republican establishment politicians are looking out for are businesses, under some misguided (or corrupt) idea that those businesses will take care of the workers. Their policy positions almost seem fine-tuned to make life very difficult for workers at, or near the bottom. Too bad the worker-business social contract was broken a long time ago.

[Hillary pays minimum wage]

The poor Democrats who are atheists and whine about Christmas decorations everywhere instead of looking for jobs should be thankful for billionaires who are at higher tax rates to pay for their welfare checks.

What taxes? They've been paying the lowest taxes they've had in a LONG time. Taxes should be raised to at least 70% above 10 million dollars a year.

If you were paying that much you'd be against it.  Why do you think you're so entitled to such things when there's children starving in D.C.?  Come join our party since Obama hasn't fixed this issue then! Put your tax dollars where your mouth is.... I love seeing Democrats squirm.

[Ebsy]

If you were paying that much you'd be against it.  Why do you think you're so entitled to such things when there's children starving in D.C.?  Come join our party since Obama hasn't fixed this issue then! Put your tax dollars where your mouth is.... I love seeing Democrats squirm.

We're squirming because your idiocy is bad enough to cause physical pain.

[Hillary pays minimum wage]

If you were paying that much you'd be against it.  Why do you think you're so entitled to such things when there's children starving in D.C.?  Come join our party since Obama hasn't fixed this issue then! Put your tax dollars where your mouth is.... I love seeing Democrats squirm.

We're squirming because your idiocy is bad enough to cause physical pain.

Not as bad as you'll be squirming when we take away your entitlements.  I'm not saying we shouldn't help the less fortunate, but the attitude that because someone is born in the US, they're entitled to the government babysitting them through life causes Americans physical pain.

[Hillary pays minimum wage]

The poor Democrats who are atheists and whine about Christmas decorations everywhere instead of looking for jobs should be thankful for billionaires who are at higher tax rates to pay for their welfare checks.

What taxes? They've been paying the lowest taxes they've had in a LONG time. Taxes should be raised to at least 70% above 10 million dollars a year.

If you were paying that much you'd be against it.  Why do you think you're so entitled to such things when there's children starving in D.C.?  Come join our party since Obama hasn't fixed this issue then! Put your tax dollars where your mouth is.... I love seeing Democrats squirm.

Uh... I don't feel like I'm "entitled" to any of their money. However, we could use it to improve infrastructure and finally adopt sane healthcare policy (UHC).

It's splitting hairs but I thought Obamacare was supposed to solve everything.

[Hillary pays minimum wage]

The poor Democrats who are atheists and whine about Christmas decorations everywhere instead of looking for jobs should be thankful for billionaires who are at higher tax rates to pay for their welfare checks.

What taxes? They've been paying the lowest taxes they've had in a LONG time. Taxes should be raised to at least 70% above 10 million dollars a year.

If you were paying that much you'd be against it.  Why do you think you're so entitled to such things when there's children starving in D.C.?  Come join our party since Obama hasn't fixed this issue then! Put your tax dollars where your mouth is.... I love seeing Democrats squirm.

Uh... I don't feel like I'm "entitled" to any of their money. However, we could use it to improve infrastructure and finally adopt sane healthcare policy (UHC).

It's splitting hairs but I thought Obamacare was supposed to solve everything.

No, it fixed some of the problems, but one day we'll have sane UHC.

That was the goal all along.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Well at a certain degree of wealth, profit is less of a "motivator". A small businessowner or entrepeneur receiving a grand would have a different reaction to a billionaire receiving a grand. AT a certain degree of personal wealth, the cash reward is less of a reason to work. So if we are encouraging more "labour" in society; you would think that we should have less very, very rich and have more people of moderate wealth.

I suppose the counterpoint would be that the billionaire can take more risks irt investment, but this would have to be bolstered with direct evidence that the rich are more likely to invest their cash in useful ventures than businesses or the public sector.

[Hillary pays minimum wage]

Well, the problem with that at larger companies is that the CEO doesn't really own the profit.

If we're talking about the huge corporations, then the idea of making money becomes really political. It's not the CEO, but the shareholders who need to make their dividends. I don't really have a problem with that; they took a risk by investing in the company, and they receive a return on that investment.

Every dollar labor receives is one less that the shareholders will (not counting taxes). With public companies, the shareholders could be members of the public, who might just be average people who are investing their life savings, or a mutual fund manager, who is trying to make money for other investors, who again, could just be average people. However, most of the time, it's richer people.

Then there's the stack of money that the company keeps after taxes/dividends. The company usually would reinvest this back into the company, to purchase capital equipment, land, or other inputs the company needs.

So that's why the profit needs to be as high as possible with the current corporate system.  I'm a liberal, so I support high income taxes for rich CEOs, but I'm ambiguous about corporate taxation, because some of the time, corporate profits can increase productivity through development of industry, which increases supply, and in the end, would lower prices.

Corporate taxes do hurt jobs and it's one of the reason companies move overseas.  It's nice to see a liberal notice this.  The U.S. is no place to start a business anymore.  I'd lower it to at least 34%.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

I guess when I look today I have my choice between AT&T, Comcast, or a wireless provider for my ISP. I've switched when one got uncompetitive or I didn't like their pricing structure. I can get cloud storage and web hosting lots of places, so that's very competitive it seems. In the search world Google is big, but I've used Bing and even Yahoo at times when I didn't like the ad layers that came with particular search requests.

The government (FCC) was just in a huge fight last year with the ISPs over net neutrality, with the content providers winning over the ISPs. How much competition are you looking for?

While quietly ignoring millions of people in America only have one choice as far as broadband providers...

It gets reported over and over again but never underestimate agenda driven people's capacity to ignore things they don't want to hear.

Anyone who thinks America has a vibrant free market competitive broadband market has either never actually seen what a vibrant broadband market looks like or they are on crack.

Now having said that America is a big place with lots of empty parts (those are the areas where Republicans reside).  So it would be mighty expensive to give everyone the same broadband choices as are available in high density areas in other countries.  But that is still no excuse to pretend the "free market" is solving the problem in America.

Or, to be less opaque, does the economy in general benefit from the presence of billionaires and multimillionaires? Do they invest more (or in better ways) than if the equivalent capital was invested by public bodies?

Or is there no benefit, but they are a necessary noxious by-product from the economy that we have to just deal with?

Um... If you don't retire a multimillionaire you by definition are living a subpar life.  Even in so called "affordable" areas in the United States homes are going for $300,000 to $500,000.  Healthcare costs aren't exactly cheap in America.  If you own a nice home in a cosmopolitan area and a couple of nice cars you are going to need a million just to pay the on going property taxes, insurance and maintenance.

No one who has actually run the real numbers thinks a 65 year old multimillionare is "rolling in it".  If their net worth is $2 million and they live a modest life they may be okay, but they are not making it rain.

I think having millionaires pay a bit more tax makes sense.  I mean they can afford it.  But demonizing them especially on the low end makes no sense.

Here is some simple math.  There are plenty of places where a nice but not lavish home costs $400,000.  And there are multiple areas where property taxes are 2.5%.  That is assuming you live in a city vs in the middle of the country.  So you would need to pay a minimum of $10,000 a year for the privilege of living in a home you already own.  That does not include maintenance, insurance, etc.  That is before you eat, pay electricity, put gas in your cars, etc.  If you stop working at 65 and have the misfortune of living 20 more years that's at least $200,000 you have to pay in property taxes for your $400,000 house.  So when you lump  in the value of your house, cars, life insurance policy, etc $2 million net worth is not exactly f-you money.

This response was written from the American perspective.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Or, to be less opaque, does the economy in general benefit from the presence of billionaires and multimillionaires? Do they invest more (or in better ways) than if the equivalent capital was invested by public bodies?

Or is there no benefit, but they are a necessary noxious by-product from the economy that we have to just deal with?

There can't be light without darkness.

[Murica!]

They exist so that there will be plenty of wine for Lady la Guillotine.

[Swedge]

Living in Ireland, I see a lot of corporations come here because of our low corp tax. So it's good for us!

[Meclazine for Israel]

Depends on the billionaire.

Bill Gates is a benefit to places like Africa.

McAfee. Not so much.

Donald Trump. All the US citizens will be feeling his benefits in 2017.

In terms of who should control money between governments, corporations and individuals, its a never ending debate.

[Andy Hine]

The rich generally don't need laws to protect them. The middle and lower classes do.

[Murica!]

The rich generally don't need laws to protect them. The middle and lower classes do.

The bourgeoisie requires the State to protect them. If they didn't have the State they would have been hung by their intestines a long fycking time ago.

[OSR stands with Israel]

To help invest in new small businesses and give them funds to grow them and to create lots of new Jobs.

[beaver2.0]

There is no point: they are just millionaires with a little extra cash.

[RaphaelDLG]

I think it's great for people who contribute phenomenal things to the world to become phenomenally
wealthy.

However, I think much of and maybe even the vast majority of billion-dollar wealth isn't obtained through innovation but rather extraction.

Billionaires use their immense political clout to
1) Pay almost no taxes on investment or corporate income - while smaller corporations and upper-middle class professionals pay steep, steep taxes

2) Maintain a rigged board system that drastically inflates both CEO and board member salaries

3) Explode wealth exponentially using compounding math and also unique access to benefits derived from lucrative financial instruments (attempts at rent seeking or, like subprime CDOs, just straight-up scams) that have little to do with allocating capital or even providing hedging, pricing or liquidity and instead just suck wealth out of the economy (this is the state of finance generally right now)

4) Give their massive wealth largely tax-free to their descendants, who earned their inheritance (which they will then compound and maintain using the same rigged rules as their parents) by doing jack sh**t for human society.

In my opinion, billionaires will only be acceptable when
1) They have an influence in politics relative to their quantity, not their income
2) Inheritance is taxed aggressively at the multimillion dollar-level, at something like 90% and loopholes for tax avoidance of all kinds are ruthlessly closed

[Weiner/Holder]

They fund Hillary Clinton's campaign and keep her out of prison.

[Antonio the Sixth]

muh job creators

[Kingpoleon]

What's the point of poor people??