I would argue that Donald Trump can grind the legal system to a halt because quite often the judges let him and others like him do it. At any point a judge could do what they are increasingly doing now and just crush his legal delaying tactics. Judges kept letting Trump do this and exhaust his opponents. No trial should last more than a …
I would argue that Donald Trump can grind the legal system to a halt because quite often the judges let him and others like him do it. At any point a judge could do what they are increasingly doing now and just crush his legal delaying tactics. Judges kept letting Trump do this and exhaust his opponents. No trial should last more than a year, period, yet Judges continuously do so. At any time, Judges can and are really obligated to even the scales and not allow this type of behavior. Sadly few of them do.
I would argue institutional cowardice allowed Trump to get away with so much for so long. The judges and members of these institutions knew they had a duty to reign in this behavior and they abdicated that responsibility. Wealth wasn't the cause of this type of cowardice, human weakness was. Hence the topic of Bill's Newsletter.
Trump has revealed extensive institutional cowardice and vulnerabilities along the stretch of our political, social, as well as institutional systems.
As for taxes, we've had taxes like the Alternative Minimum Tax, 3 Martini Lunch Tax, and other oddities to curb tax evasion. Our tax code itself is ridiculously complex and ineffective. Little of it has ever worked. Rather than create a tax rate that no rational person will ever pay, I think policies to help people and reduce bad behavior is a better option. Having more tax collectors and a simplified tax code can collect more revenue as well.
A person being a billionaire is not a problem in my mind. It is the fact that such a person can exploit clear vulnerabilities in our institutions is the problem. I would argue we need stronger people in those institutions who are more than simply Ivy League minted homunculi born to replicate true leaders. Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, Elise Stefanik, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ted Cruz and others are perfect examples of the type of Ivy Leagued produced 'perfect people' who have nothing inside them to resist a corrupting challenge to character represented by Donald Trump.
Donald Trump himself was never really that rich in the first place. Most of our "billionaires" are nothing but an illusion propped up on financing. A small wealth tax is all that is needed to reduce those bloated financial evaluations. Just 1% or 2% could do it over a long period of time along with removing tax loopholes and increasing tax collector numbers.
Reestablishing Character and substance instead of Ivy League Pedigree alone as a qualification of leadership is much harder, but far more necessary.
Principled people said no and took the Liz Cheney route. There are very few of them and we are realizing how truly lacking our leaders are.
"Rather than create a tax rate that no rational person will ever pay..."
Well, if you don't pay your taxes you go to jail. Happy to let rich people who refuse to pay the taxes get jailed and then have their assets seized to pay back the taxes they tried dodging.
"A person being a billionaire is not a problem in my mind." So when this kind of greed-based behavior scales up and we have a class of billionaires who become an oligarchy, do you see a problem there? How strong are institutions going to be when "money talks" and all of these people have so much of it? You seem to have a lot of faith in institutions avoiding corruptibility when there are plenty of people with 9-figure-deep pockets who seem to be able to bend them to their will when it comes time to do so--as high up as the SCOTUS in the case of Clarence Thomas.
"Reestablishing Character and substance instead of Ivy League Pedigree alone as a qualification of leadership is much harder, but far more necessary." Here's the thing, when people are rich like Trump is, their money allows them to avoid accountability and so they're de facto allowed to become the worst versions of themselves because the power of their wealth and position allows them to do so. These people don't need to have better character, because their wealth allows them to avoid character-based accountability. How do you enforce character standards on the rich when enough money dissolves the necessity to adjust character to anyone else's desires but your own? Elon Musk and Donald Trump are perfect examples of this dynamic. They don't answer to anyone because they're too rich to be held accountable. And when you can buy your way into the Ivy League the way that Trump did and still walk out the other side a complete moron, how strong are these institutions really? When the Ivy League-driven "meritocracy" becomes a pay-to-play system for families like the Trumps it kind of shows how easily these institutes bend to wealth.
The more wealth you allow these folks to accrue, the more they will use it to bend institutions and our meritocracy into giving them more power and defending themselves from true accountability. America is for sale, and bootlickers to the oligarchy keep letting them take more and more so they can warp the country and our institutes with the power they hoard.
If our institutions were not filled with such empty vulnerable people, no amount of money could be enough to get them to abandon their principles. Clarence Thomas took the money because he had nothing left except temporary comforts of wealth to believe in.
You saw that ultimately with Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and others. They took the career black pill to defend our Democratic Republic. Money, power and safety were not enough to buy them off.
Elon, Trump and most of our 'billionaires" have no real wealth of their own. It is simply assets supported by debt that can and eventually will evaporate at any time. They are fleeting illusions. So many of the US's largest and most important companies are like this. Better Monetary, Banking, and even more effective tax enforcement will remove the bloated evaluations that they have.
Taxing these rich into oblivion won't grant the rest of our political and institutional figures any level of increased integrity or character. Their weakness and obvious lack of virtue will remain. They will simply just acquiesce to a different standard of power. Trump's power right now is less monetary and more influence within a passionate base. Hillary outspent Trump two to one in monetary power.
Reducing the gap in money is not enough. Another source of imbalance will inevitably show up. The way to curb this is stronger institutions made with better people of higher character.
"Elon, Trump and most of our 'billionaires" have no real wealth of their own. It is simply assets supported by debt that can and eventually will evaporate at any time."
Elon has his Tesla shares and Trump has his properties. These things actually *do* have value, are not necessarily supported by debt--only the case if those assets are leveraged for loans, at which point it becomes a factor of their debt-to-income ratio for the purposes of classifying their net worth, and nothing suggests that the valuations on these assets will simply "evaporate at any time."
"Reducing the gap in money is not enough. Another source of imbalance will inevitably show up. The way to curb this is stronger institutions made with better people of higher character."
Got any suggestions of how we get to institutions staffed by "better people of higher character" when the Ivy League that feeds these institutions are pay-to-play schemes where students are mostly selected from wealthy families and "higher character" isn't evaluated? The Ivy League isn't exactly screening applicants/students for character flaws--not with people like Josh Hawley coming out of Yale/Stanford or Bannon/Kushner coming out of Harvard or Donald Trump coming out of UPenn.
I agree with a lot of what you say in some respects about character, I just don't think you see what extreme wealth does to character. It makes people more individualistic and less patriotic. It makes them think of themselves and not the country. It also degrades the meritocracy when the meritocracy caters to wealth and the children of the wealthy get auto-populated into the Ivy League and then into these important institutions afterwards where their character flaws show up and have real consequences for everyone else.
I would argue that Donald Trump can grind the legal system to a halt because quite often the judges let him and others like him do it. At any point a judge could do what they are increasingly doing now and just crush his legal delaying tactics. Judges kept letting Trump do this and exhaust his opponents. No trial should last more than a year, period, yet Judges continuously do so. At any time, Judges can and are really obligated to even the scales and not allow this type of behavior. Sadly few of them do.
I would argue institutional cowardice allowed Trump to get away with so much for so long. The judges and members of these institutions knew they had a duty to reign in this behavior and they abdicated that responsibility. Wealth wasn't the cause of this type of cowardice, human weakness was. Hence the topic of Bill's Newsletter.
Trump has revealed extensive institutional cowardice and vulnerabilities along the stretch of our political, social, as well as institutional systems.
As for taxes, we've had taxes like the Alternative Minimum Tax, 3 Martini Lunch Tax, and other oddities to curb tax evasion. Our tax code itself is ridiculously complex and ineffective. Little of it has ever worked. Rather than create a tax rate that no rational person will ever pay, I think policies to help people and reduce bad behavior is a better option. Having more tax collectors and a simplified tax code can collect more revenue as well.
A person being a billionaire is not a problem in my mind. It is the fact that such a person can exploit clear vulnerabilities in our institutions is the problem. I would argue we need stronger people in those institutions who are more than simply Ivy League minted homunculi born to replicate true leaders. Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, Elise Stefanik, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ted Cruz and others are perfect examples of the type of Ivy Leagued produced 'perfect people' who have nothing inside them to resist a corrupting challenge to character represented by Donald Trump.
Donald Trump himself was never really that rich in the first place. Most of our "billionaires" are nothing but an illusion propped up on financing. A small wealth tax is all that is needed to reduce those bloated financial evaluations. Just 1% or 2% could do it over a long period of time along with removing tax loopholes and increasing tax collector numbers.
Reestablishing Character and substance instead of Ivy League Pedigree alone as a qualification of leadership is much harder, but far more necessary.
Principled people said no and took the Liz Cheney route. There are very few of them and we are realizing how truly lacking our leaders are.
TimesLostArc, Like your note, but disagree in key parts.
Share your attraction to the Invictus remedy, but not your diagnosis- “Wealth wasn't the cause of this type of cowardice, human weakness was.”
Attraction to wealth(/power) IS that VERY same human weakness that is destroying our best institutions and our nation.
Appetite for wealth and the will to more power is the Achilles heel of our valuing laissez-faire capitalism as a the proper end of human aspirations.
(Is your favorite child the one with the largest bank account?)
Ironically, in a different sense, if we can’t let it go, the will to power may well be the ‘end’ of human aspiration.
"Rather than create a tax rate that no rational person will ever pay..."
Well, if you don't pay your taxes you go to jail. Happy to let rich people who refuse to pay the taxes get jailed and then have their assets seized to pay back the taxes they tried dodging.
"A person being a billionaire is not a problem in my mind." So when this kind of greed-based behavior scales up and we have a class of billionaires who become an oligarchy, do you see a problem there? How strong are institutions going to be when "money talks" and all of these people have so much of it? You seem to have a lot of faith in institutions avoiding corruptibility when there are plenty of people with 9-figure-deep pockets who seem to be able to bend them to their will when it comes time to do so--as high up as the SCOTUS in the case of Clarence Thomas.
"Reestablishing Character and substance instead of Ivy League Pedigree alone as a qualification of leadership is much harder, but far more necessary." Here's the thing, when people are rich like Trump is, their money allows them to avoid accountability and so they're de facto allowed to become the worst versions of themselves because the power of their wealth and position allows them to do so. These people don't need to have better character, because their wealth allows them to avoid character-based accountability. How do you enforce character standards on the rich when enough money dissolves the necessity to adjust character to anyone else's desires but your own? Elon Musk and Donald Trump are perfect examples of this dynamic. They don't answer to anyone because they're too rich to be held accountable. And when you can buy your way into the Ivy League the way that Trump did and still walk out the other side a complete moron, how strong are these institutions really? When the Ivy League-driven "meritocracy" becomes a pay-to-play system for families like the Trumps it kind of shows how easily these institutes bend to wealth.
The more wealth you allow these folks to accrue, the more they will use it to bend institutions and our meritocracy into giving them more power and defending themselves from true accountability. America is for sale, and bootlickers to the oligarchy keep letting them take more and more so they can warp the country and our institutes with the power they hoard.
If our institutions were not filled with such empty vulnerable people, no amount of money could be enough to get them to abandon their principles. Clarence Thomas took the money because he had nothing left except temporary comforts of wealth to believe in.
You saw that ultimately with Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and others. They took the career black pill to defend our Democratic Republic. Money, power and safety were not enough to buy them off.
Elon, Trump and most of our 'billionaires" have no real wealth of their own. It is simply assets supported by debt that can and eventually will evaporate at any time. They are fleeting illusions. So many of the US's largest and most important companies are like this. Better Monetary, Banking, and even more effective tax enforcement will remove the bloated evaluations that they have.
Taxing these rich into oblivion won't grant the rest of our political and institutional figures any level of increased integrity or character. Their weakness and obvious lack of virtue will remain. They will simply just acquiesce to a different standard of power. Trump's power right now is less monetary and more influence within a passionate base. Hillary outspent Trump two to one in monetary power.
Reducing the gap in money is not enough. Another source of imbalance will inevitably show up. The way to curb this is stronger institutions made with better people of higher character.
"Elon, Trump and most of our 'billionaires" have no real wealth of their own. It is simply assets supported by debt that can and eventually will evaporate at any time."
Elon has his Tesla shares and Trump has his properties. These things actually *do* have value, are not necessarily supported by debt--only the case if those assets are leveraged for loans, at which point it becomes a factor of their debt-to-income ratio for the purposes of classifying their net worth, and nothing suggests that the valuations on these assets will simply "evaporate at any time."
"Reducing the gap in money is not enough. Another source of imbalance will inevitably show up. The way to curb this is stronger institutions made with better people of higher character."
Got any suggestions of how we get to institutions staffed by "better people of higher character" when the Ivy League that feeds these institutions are pay-to-play schemes where students are mostly selected from wealthy families and "higher character" isn't evaluated? The Ivy League isn't exactly screening applicants/students for character flaws--not with people like Josh Hawley coming out of Yale/Stanford or Bannon/Kushner coming out of Harvard or Donald Trump coming out of UPenn.
I agree with a lot of what you say in some respects about character, I just don't think you see what extreme wealth does to character. It makes people more individualistic and less patriotic. It makes them think of themselves and not the country. It also degrades the meritocracy when the meritocracy caters to wealth and the children of the wealthy get auto-populated into the Ivy League and then into these important institutions afterwards where their character flaws show up and have real consequences for everyone else.