It’s not just tech titans. Letting media companies megamerge left us with a handful of corporations that control the narrative. Studios shouldn’t be able to own the content, the tv channels, the set top boxes and the wires they’re transmitted on.
Especially considering what we know about the uneducation system in America. Now featuring flat Earthers.
Yup. News sources have been consolidating for the last 50 years. It used to be that every news outlets you watched was ultimately owned by one of 40 companies. Today, that number is 5. So if five billionaires get together and decide something is not going to be talked about, then it DOESN'T get talked about. This is why the Internet has them so freaked out. They can't control it (yet) so it's a threat to their version of reality.
This is also why our "liberal news media" does such a terrible job of speaking truth to bullshit. It's not necessary to report "both sides of an argument" if one side of the argument is insane, woo-woo dipshiterry. What they're doing there is gaslighting you into thinking that babbling nonsense is "just another point of view" It's not in the interest of billionaires to have informed citizens, capable of critical thinking, so the point of this exercise is to keep us fighting with each other about where the REAL source of our problems come from while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the f*cking money.
Five dudes control more wealth than half the country shit's wack yo!
Way I see it, the brackets should be marked first at the quintile thresholds for household income, then at the 5th percentile threshold, then at the 1st percentile threshold.
Then each bracket's rate is the total of the percentages of wealth controlled by every bracket below the given bracket plus half the difference between that and the sum of percentages including the wealth that bracket owns.
So as an example, the 1%, they control 26.5% of the country's wealth, so the base is 73.5%, plus half of 26.5 is 86.75% for income above the 1% threshold.
That's how it should be.
But really that's what gets the other side to whine for when they'll leave the trailer park and become billionaires.
Even if we changed it to a fractiotof that it would still bring immense change. As long as it doesn't go to the military budget I guess
Personally I think the surplus revenue should actually be set aside at first.
Turn it into a national sovereign wealth fund to use as a way to patch over lean times in the budget or to dip into during a recession or depression.
With so many people interested on embezzling or at least "using" it, which constitutional mechanism is going to ensure that doesn't happen?
I'd just put it in the control of the Fed with a requirement of providing reports of performing their duty as a fiduciary controlling it.
Plus being able to quickly make use of it in an emergency would allow the Fed to be alot more dynamic on monetary policy where needed.
It's still an organization made up of people.
I don't have a better answer, I still think yours is not satisfactory.
Yeah but those people report directly to Congress, and personally I've got my own bone to pick with how Congress is set up so my pie in the sky version of things has a much better designed one
Also abolishing the independent executive because it inherently acts as a parasitic force dragging a country further and further from a democratic/republican core of design
lol, I used to work there. I sold David Blaine an iPhone 3G standing under that thing. I saw Seal climb up on a display case and sing Kiss From A Rose (and hype up a huge crowd) 3 times in a row until we had to make him stop. I sold Eddie Izzard 3 pairs of the same shitty Skullbocks headphones that kept breaking, but he refused to buy a better pair because he really liked them. I got Jonathan Groff’s phone number at the genius bar. He was wearing an Epcot T-shirt, and I had no idea who he was.
Working there was fucking wild.
K
Can't believe I can't buy Spotify premium from their ios app. Thanks Apple
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
