I have always been fascinated by the World Economic Forum at Davos, where world leaders, rich people (and people who want to be seen among the previous, like then-Mayor Gavin Newsom). The elites talk about issues like global poverty and cimate change – and except for the occasional Mark Benioff, don’t ever discuss their own role in creating the problems.
This year, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman was there, and his comments (and those by others on the panel) are about the best thing that has ever come out of this scam.
He makes the point very clearly: The rich and big businesses – that is, the people in the room and their operations – need to stop talking about philanthropy and start paying taxes.
Watch:
I don’t know if Bernie Sanders is going to run for president again, and I’m not going to argue about whether he should. But in a sense, he’s already won the debate.
Issues of economic injustice are now smack in the center of the Democratic Party’s presidential discussion. Four years ago, it’s hard to believe that a proposal by a first-term member of Congress to raise tax rates on the very wealthy to 70 percent would have gotten any traction at all; now, it’s national news(and more than half of US residents polled say they like the idea).
Wall Street has noticed; the folks there (even the ones who don’t like Trump) are openly nervous about the possibilitythat Sanders or Elizabeth Warren might be the nominee (although, according to Politico, they are okay with the idea of Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Kirstin Gillibrand and Kamala Harris).
I’m still waiting for this idea that the rich have to pay more taxes to trickle down to the office of the governor of California and the mayor of San Francisco.
