Numerically, @1. As Charles just clearly wrote.

The Age of Billionaires is over.

The Thousannaire supplants his reign.

There are asshole billionaires and decent billionaires. What is not ok is to vilify them BECAUSE they are billionaires.

@6, i actually think you did not read my post.

I think the important thing is to realize that amassing capital is not really beneficial to our economy. The right wing would have us believe that billionaires create jobs through investments, but with sufficient fortune they can amass more without any effort.

In order to spur investments we need to make it beneficial to spend money, but expensive to amass money. This requires taxing passive investments, interest, and capital gains while encouraging spending by relaxing amortization.

We can also spur the job market by making it more expensive to pay million dollar salaries simply by returning to a more progressive tax bracket scheme. A company should pay more in the overall tax bill to have one $10,000,000 employee than they do to have ten $1,000,000 employees or a hundred $100,000 employees.

I noticed how Tim Keck did this with his series of minimum wage infomercials. Instead of giving a representative sample of Seattle business owners enough rope to hang themselves with in The Stranger's free advertising column inches, he picked out a few cute and fuzzy entrepreneurs whose adorable little boutiques were chosen to arouse maximum sympathy.

I mean, even at that, they really embarrassed themselves, making shit up and blaming everyone else for their own fuckups. But it would have been much better to hear the a fair sample of the bosses of Seattle's 110,000 sub-$15/hr workers speak out, instead of these ostensibly plucky poster bosses.

But Keck is one of them. Just like the owners of these other media Mudede and Piketty complain about are members of the same class they are portraying. These bullshit stories are selfies.

The rich should be taxed for being alive. - Dorothy Parker.

#8

Billionaires are population control.

If 1000 people didn't own the earth, we would have eaten it up decades ago.

Sterling said that he thinks that he is "entitled" to make one mistake. It wasn't his first mistake, his belief that he should be entitled will not be his last.

@11: JBITSMFOTP

Gates Foundation is a big pusher of Common Core and (widely failing) private charter schools.

@15: "... I don't think the story has anything to do with how Donald Sterling made his fortune in the first place..."

Actually he made his fortune in real estate, and he has a well-earned reputation for refusing to rent to people of color and otherwise harassing them. So it is relevant.

@11: JBITSMFOTP

We don't actually need to heavily tax billionaires.

But we do need to remove all corporate tax exemptions and all exemptions for capital gains - like carried interest - and remove the Social Security and Medicare earnings cap and tax all earnings including dividends

@19 Racist pig.

@20

If you did all of that in the US, the rate of return on capital (net taxes) would still be greater than the (historic and present) growth rate. Which means the gap between the (increasingly hereditary) rich and the poor would continue to grow.

It would work if the economy got back up to a 4% growth rate, and sustained it indefinitely, but unless the US population starts increasing at 2% again, and sustains that rate indefinitely, the available data suggest a future long-term 4% growth rate in the US is effectively impossible.

Nice use of "words in others' mouths brackets" there, @15.

Charles never implies that Sterling embodies any widespread "racism" among the preternaturally wealthy. What Sterling embodies is a widespread cluelessness: an entitlement, a lack of common sense, a divorce from reality, and a total absence of special acumen beyond situational luck.

Charles directly confronts the disturbing narrative, bolstered by the hagiographic focus on Jobs and similar outliers, that ability and earnings potential are correlated in the realm of American business. They simply are not, as this obscenely wealthy moron helps to expose.

Sterling has an ass for a face.

@venomlash: JBITSMFOTP

Ok, I'll bite - what does that mean?

#24

He can Google Bomb all he wants, the law is catching up to him:

EU court backs 'right to be forgotten': Google must amend results on request

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/20…

The next step is come after these childish imbeciles, who cannot argue except with anonymously made personal attacks, with lawsuits. And believe you me, it will happen.

@25: Ah, thanks to your tip, I was able to figure it out.

"Most billionaires"

Charles, could you provide a link that supports this claim?

@27, i refer you to @23 and piketty's book.

@25: Stop posting here and we'll happily forget you soon enough. Also, you don't know what Google bombing is.
John Bailo Is The Stupidest Mother Fucker On The Planet.

He looks like he has some neurologic issues. His affect is disturbingly like that of some stroke victims. Medication, infection, dementia, brain injury? Whatever the case, he needs a neurological evaluation.

I think if u look at the IPCC reports on one hand and the pro fatcat distributional behavior of the present political economic situation on the other, and hold the basic fact that more consumption = more carbon emissions in your teeth, or something, @25 is onto something with his contention that surpressed consumption is eco-unkind

@31, I just thought he was drunk.