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Last night, MSNBC and the Washington Post sponsored another (the fifth) Democrat Debate with ten of the remaining Presidential candidates. Julian Castro and New Age author Marianne Williamson didn’t make the cut. New candidates Mike Bloomberg and Deval Patrick watched from home, too. Of the many moments that offended my ideological sensibilities, Elizabeth Warren made a comment about “freeloading billionaires” and my brain burped.
Elizabeth Warren, in my humble opinion, is a lying, frosty-spirited, puke-stocking. Even if she believed family lore that they had aboriginal-American blood, she used that lore to obtain a position at Harvard Law School. She wasn’t looking for a merit-based position. She lied about losing a teaching job because of pregnancy. Also, she has lied about her work as a consumer advocate. She actually worked against the consumers.
Elizabeth Warren has spent her career kvetching about income inequality and the billionaires that cause it. To combat income inequality, she introduced her Accountable Capitalism Act in 2018. The fact that government intervention most often has the opposite effect of its intentions never seems to occur to her.
All of the above are nothing when compared to her statement last night that she was tired of “freeloading billionaires”. Yahoo Finance reports:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) wealth tax came under the spotlight during the Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday night.
The Massachusetts senator was asked about her ultra-millionaire tax, which would impose an annual tax of 2% on every dollar a household has above $50 million, which increases to 6% for households with more than $1 billion.
“I’m tired of freeloading billionaires,” Warren said at the podium. “I think it’s time that we ask the very top to pay more.”
Warren recently unveiled a Calculator for the Billionaires, which features sections for high net worth individuals, like Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos and Facebook (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to show what they would pay with her wealth tax. It also allows individuals who identify as billionaires to enter in their respective incomes to find out how much they would pay.
While I really like millionaires, I love billionaires. I am here to praise billionaires.
Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, along with greed. If envy is a sin, how much worse is a person who stokes envy? Elizabeth Warren’s envy of billionaires speaks to her belief that billionaires have an unfair advantage. An unfair advantage like that of her using her make-believe heritage to gain an Ivy League position. Hmmm?
Who are America’s billionaires? According to U.S. News and World Report, there are 607 billionaires in the United States. I would have thought there were more. The list of billionaires includes, Kylie Jenner, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and President Donald Trump. They all had some money to begin with. Each and every one of them worked and continue to work hard at what they do, because they love it.
This morning, Ken Langone, a founder of Home Depot was on Fox & Friends. He is a billionaire. He stated that he loves what he does so much, he would pay to work if necessary. That’s what makes billionaires different from most of us. They maybe didn’t start their business to get rich. They truly are passionate about what they do.
Home Depot employed 400,000 people as of 2018. That’s nearly half a million people. The company pays well and has good benefits, including tuition reimbursement.
The Langone family has funded the Langone Medical Center, and through NYU, is offering free medical school tuition.
And, that’s just one billionaire. Bezos, the Walton Family of Walmart, Bill Gates and Donald Trump, all have created and built companies that employ people and move them through the ranks to make the employees wealthy.
Hedge fund manager and billionaire Leon Cooperman recently took on Elizabeth Warren after she called him out by name in her most recent ad:
Yes, he has funded lots of college opportunities with his wealth.
Warren can stoke envy and that is sinful. My question is what has Elizabeth Warren done to earn her millions and what good has she ever in her life done? Who is the freeloader, Lizzie.
New Indian name for Warren: Green-eyed Liar.
Photo Credit: Flickr.com/DonkeyHotey/Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)/cropped/resized
GWB says: how much worse is a person who stokes envy?
Remember the bit about “better a millstone be hung about their neck”?
By definition, a “freeloader” is someone taking benefits without contributing anything. And billionaires meet this definition exactly… how? What are they taking from the gov’t?
– Medicare for all: this would actually place people like billionaires on the gov’t system (of course, they could still fund their own medical care – unlike everyone else)
– Tax breaks: yes, they are “taking something” with this, but they are “contributing” all sorts of things, like jobs and commerce (they require other people’s services and goods). The idea is that any tax breaks provided are less than the contributions (though I doubt many analyses related to this).
– Infrastructure: maybe. Often they pay for a lot of the infrastructure themselves (contra what many Big Gov’t folks claim), and that infrastructure often leads to other billionaires putting their business there, as well.
– Welfare: well, nope. Even if they provide sub-standard wages (that are below a level requiring subsidy from welfare), they are reducing the welfare outlay by providing any wages at all.
– Pollution and such: well, we have laws about such things.
So, how again are they “freeloading”?
GWB says: Oh, and if you’re taking the position they are “freeloading” because they don’t produce actual work product, your attitude is why they are management and you’re not.
Until the guy wielding the shovel sees the value-added by the guy supervising, he’ll never rise above wielding the shovel.
MortMain says: Warren is coming for rich people today, you and me tomorrow. No limit to socialist greed.
Joe in PNG says: ‘Rich’ can be a surprisingly flexible definition.
I suspect that the normal working family with a retirement plan will be rich, while Bloomberg and others cash machines won’t be.
GWB says: Since progressives never grasp this little thing called “human nature” they forget/ignore/can’t comprehend that truly wealthy people by definition have the ability to hide their wealth. They can do it with influence on the politicos, going overseas, or just hiring mute accountants with big shovels and muddy boots.
(Yes, then there are the politicos, who often are merely serving up the rich for votes, and never intend to actually inflict their ‘plans’ on them.)
Joe in PNG says: Can’t jeopardize those six figure sinecures for the relatives of powerful politicians, or huge grants to “charitable foundations” of same.
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