Culture Wars Era - is it moving into its final phase?

[David Horn]

(01-26-2017, 10:05 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-26-2017, 09:39 PM)David Horn Wrote: Prevent what, exactly? 

Prevent the billionaires from protecting their money against taxation, of course.  If we really wanted to tax the rich, we would focus on the rich that hold most of the money and pay the least in taxes, which is the billionaires.  Anyone who ignores the billionaires does not really want to tax the rich, no matter what rhetoric they use.

The Billionaires fall into several categories.  There are the entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Howard Schultz, The financial types like the entire C Suite at Goldman Sachs, the rent seekers who benefit almost exclusively from beneficial relationships with government, and the heirs.. 

• I have more than a little respect for the first group.  They earned it the hard way, and deserve their wealth.  They still need to pay their fair share of taxes, but let's not demonize them. 
  
• The second group consists of money manipulators and gamblers who get lucky or they don't.  I don't see them as valuable to the system, and would tax the bejesus out of them.  Right now, they are the ones who get the carried interest tax rate because they generate carried interest. 
  
• The third group seems to be the one that irks you the most.  These people run K Street (and its equivalents in the states) and use their influence to obtain things, like lucrative government contracts.  They also like to establish monopolies or duopolies if they can, so they can milk the system with less effort.  The biggest duopolies going today are Verizon and AT&T in wireless, and AT&T (soon) and Comcast in broadband.  The biggest monopolies are the utility companies.  All of these guys are protected, and the protection needs to be removed to see, as Warren Buffett put it, who is swimming naked.
  
• Which brings us to the ones born on third base who tell you how they hit a home run.  Guys like The Donald.  Isn't it interesting that they can always justify leaving everything to the next generation, because it preserves family businesses.  The Steinbrenner brothers god the NY Yankees handed to them with $0.00 inheritance tax.  Thank GWB for that one. 
  

So out of that list, who has gotten special treatment by the Democrats and who has gotten it from Republicans?  I'll save you time researching the second question: they all have benefitted from GOP policies and direct help of one form or another.  Look into the Dems.