Hello T. A. Gardner,
We need to create more opportunities for the poor to get rich.
Taxing the super rich more, and using the money for government spending creates opportunities left and right. Our American standard of living is not the result of capitalism alone. Government assistance programs have lifted millions out of poverty. Government spending creates jobs. Those jobs create consumerism. That consumerism creates demand. The demand creates private sector jobs and individual wealth as long as government guarantees that workers earn enough to build wealth. Want even more prosperity? Want to Promote the General Welfare even more? Raise the minimum wage.
Most of the filthy rich got that way by working hard and finding an opportunity to get filthy rich
Wealth is the result of working hard at something that pays well. Poverty is the result of working hard at something that pays poorly. Extraordinary wealth is the result of being able to wisely invest great capital. Practically nobody ever got to be super-rich working for someone else.
The more government you have the more inequality you'll end up with.
I completely disagree. Without our large government and all the social assistance programs, laws and regulations; wealth inequality would be far higher than it is.
In countries with overbearing, dictatorial governments you have a mass of poor, a small middle class that supports the rich, and an upper strata of filthy rich that are entrenched in their position.
I disagree. Government is the only thing that stands between the worst of vulture capitalism and the largely powerless people. Great poverty in America is the result of very rich and powerful, often corrupt, people taking full advantage of the poor and bleeding them for everything they can. Using them as workers in great wealth production schemes, but not sharing the fruits of their labor with them, only the lowest pittance they can get away with in most cases.
On taxes for example, if nationally we had no property tax on someone's primary residence--that is a married couple or a single person could own one residential piece of property that they live in most of the time and they'd pay no taxes on that property. That'd go a long way to making the poor a lot less poor. More people over time would become owners of their own home and owe nothing to anyone on it. Tax business properties. Tax second, third, homes. Tax rental properties. That's fine. But someone's home should be theirs and the government can't tax it away from them.
There is no national property tax. That is typically State domain. Many States offer significant tax breaks to personal residence homeowners.
[The newest generation will not be able on average to earn the same standard of living as even their own parents. ]
because we're in the early stages of a technological revolution and like all such past revolutions--there have been two, the Renaissance and the Industrial, and we're in the third the Electronic--upheaval of society and the economy were part of these.
But this time we have a large powerful government capable of mitigating the social damage. Helping people in need, even to the point of having a UBI, is good for the economy because it creates consumerism, which creates demand, which generates capitalistic job creation.
The problem with improperly regulated capitalism is that it is self-destructive. It extracts most of the available wealth out of the hands of the many and concentrates in the hands of the few. This hold the economy back. Minimizes GDP. When wealth is more evenly distributed, there is more consumer spending which creates more demand, more jobs, more widely shared wealth, the best economy, and the highest GDP possible.
AOC's other positions are equally idiotic. Probably the worst, most dangerous, and retarded is the New Green Deal.
It's the Green New Deal, aptly named after the most successful social engineering project ever undertaken in America, but updated to reflect the Climate Crisis. It is absolutely needed, and the longer we delay the greater the need.