Wajahat Ali references the Daniel Day Lewis line (There Will Be Blood) “I drink your milkshake” to underscore this point. It drives home the hoarding aspect: billionaires don’t earn their wealth; they extract it from the rest of us.
I’m a mom with a wooden spoon! We desperately need legislation to address the grabbing of treasure. Perhaps voting for folks that are not grabbing would be a good idea.
Fantastic analogy Jess. My husband & I keep saying, "how much can one person really spend?". Our culture is out of whack! Or as our lawyer friend says, "I've never seen a Brinks Truck behind the hearse".
My dad always said he wished he could come back every hundred years to see how things are going. I figure the problems may look different but are always the same.
In Jackson County, MO, Stacy Lake is running for county executive. That is exactly part of her plan!
“ Under my plan, we will prioritize Homeowners over developers. This means providing tax breaks and grant opportunities for purchasing and rehabilitating homes for Jackson County residents. Additionally, I will support litigation that will stifle foreign, corporate and outside investors from buying residential single family houses in Jackson County. With these policies, we will protect our neighborhoods and ensure homeownership is attainable for our future generations.”
I live in the suburbs in Charlotte, NC. IMO, we can trace a lot of the corporate ownership to the housing crisis back in 2007 - 2008, when so many people were underwater on their mortgages and the banks were authorizing short sales right and left.
Several houses in my neighborhood were sold that way and almost all of them became rental properties. There is a public county database where you can look up properties by owner or street address and I recall seeing the ownership passed to LLCs rather than individuals for the most part. And a reverse search showed multiple properties for the same owner of record.
Since I moved to Charlotte back in the '80s, we have also had an influx of people moving from more expensive real estate markets (as companies moved their corporate headquarters here). Home builders were quick to jump on the demand for fancier homes and the average size (and price) of new-construction homes grew dramatically. We have also seen a flurry of teardowns and "gentrification" in older more modest neighborhoods, futher depleting the stock of smaller homes.
I was able to buy a modest "starter" home of under 1400 sq. ft in the early 90s, but the vast majority of the homes in my neighborhood are in the range of 2200 - 3400 sq. ft. And for the surrounding neighborhoods (built since my neighborhood was built out) 3400 sq. feet would be considered on the smaller side!
Young families are definitely priced out and like many places around the country we have an affordable housing crisis. If I were coming up now, I **might** have technically been able to qualify for a mortgage on my current home, but the mortgage payment would have taken a much larger chunk of my take home pay.
Lots of people measure success by the accumulation of things. And marketing gurus really learned the power of leveraging FOMO (fear of missing out). My news feed had an article earlier this week complaining about people being "hoarders" and holding on to their devices too long. Who gets to decide what is "too long"?
BTW, I think we would all be better off if we measured success by the quality of our relationships.
Unfortunately your analogy points to the need for enforcement and when it comes to wealth, the same is true. We scrutinise and monitor people collecting any sort of government assistance but we never ask the wealthy hard questions. Hell, we don't even audit their tax returns and when they become a billionaire, we do not ask for an accounting of how they accumulated that much money. We must support the bill that has yet to be heard in Congress to tax the wealthy. Let's stop giving them tax breaks and start increasing their tax rate.
Really good point about how the poor are scrutinized and monitored if they apply for any assistantship. But the wealth hoarders escape scrutiny. Our president is the primo example of a scrutiny dodger. He said he would make his taxes public, and there ought to be a real hue and cry that once again he lied. When Jess talked about the ham balls guy’s heaping plate, in my mind, he had wild hair and orange makeup.
Interestingly, the same sentiment was exploited by the right to drive disaffected voters to bring about our current plutocracy. So how do we help the redhats recognize that they’ve been played?
After the 2016 presidential election, I literally witnessed my hard-working daughter, mother of two, cry after the results. She told me she grieved, she wanted a woman president. Living and working in DC as a humane rights senior legislator, she knew Hillary was perfect for the job. A Historian, I knew trump was our hitler. I could not do nothing. I did my research and learned the only way to help the situation was to get involved in local politics. I am thrilled to say my state legislative district is still blue. We voted for Kamala, and mostly blue down the ballot to include our local school board, keeping religion and other nazi ideas out of our local school. (Our boards are non-partisan however influenced by redhats.) Sadly, too many voters are not aware of the red scare. We still need a majority in our state, however we are closer than the past 30 years and our county is blue, to include our mayor. We knock on doors, host meet 'n greets for candidates and much, much more. Please contact your local democrats, get involved.
In 2023, there were 3 at-large school board seats up for election and 13 candidates running. Our county Democratic party got organized and decided to endorse non-partisan school board candidates for the first time, in an attempt to shut out the under-the-radar "Moms for Liberty" candidates. They also endorsed candidates for mayor and town council/board of commissioners for all the towns/cities in the county if there were any Democrats running. (With the exception of Charlotte mayor and city council, all these races were also non-partisan.
The county party invited all the school board candidates to speak with the panel deciding on endorsements and then we knocked doors, did candidate forums, did lit drops and recruited lots of poll greeters to hand out blue ballots at early voting sites. We managed to shut out the book banners for school board and we flipped the mayor and town council for a smaller town at the north end of the county.
This year, all the Democrat-endorsed candidates for the 6 school board district seats won there races and we flipped a Charlotte city council seat from (R) to (D).
Thank you for sharing this Cheryl, I'd only shared a few of our success in AZ. I am so glad you shared more, we need to encourage others to do the same. My mantra, talk to your family friends and neighbors. Get the facts, share the facts. Get active in your community.
Try stating one fact, one sentence. For example; did you know republicans are working to end social security? Republicans are supporting corporate welfare? In Arizona, republicans are breaking their state budget to fund private schools? Public schools are closing as a result. Find your fact that appeals to them.
The end goal for the tech bros and the felon is privatization of all social services, or the administrative state (otherwise known as the federal civil service).
This is not just germane in the USA but across the 'developed' world. Here in UK, years of austerity following the 2008 crash have widened the gap between the obscenely wealthy and the poor. The richest 10% of the population owning 43% of all wealth and their wealth being more than the bottom 50% of the population. The poorest 50% control a mere 9% of the Nations' total wealth The wealthy have a ladle, the poor a teaspoon.
Thanks for repeating what Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Robert Reich have been saying for decades. They say it, but you put it in terms people can relate to in their own lives.
There's some research suggesting we have moved into a far more narcissistic era than we have seen in 100 years. Our parents/grandparents taught us to share, to not be greedy. Wealthy families did not, although the Roosevelts may be an exception.
The corporations that do blockbuster business do so because America gave them the opportunity to succeed. Their response is not to give back to society but to grab even more off the table--and thus make sure no one ever competes with them. I avoid buying anything from those companies when I can, but consumer boycotts, while a start, will not be enough. We need radical transformation. Businesses used to pay a lot more toward the social stability that allows them to thrive. The gap between what a CEO and a worker are paid has never been so wide, and it keeps getting wider.
private equity is the problem. They own hundreds of thousands of houses as investments. The estimate is that private equity will control 30% of single family housing in the US by 2030. It is massively harmful to our country.
Wajahat Ali references the Daniel Day Lewis line (There Will Be Blood) “I drink your milkshake” to underscore this point. It drives home the hoarding aspect: billionaires don’t earn their wealth; they extract it from the rest of us.
We called them treasures…..in the soup and salads, too. I’m 66 and still leave most of the treasures for others…..there’s no greater joy than this
Ahhhh…I love that you call the goodies “treasures.”
I’m a mom with a wooden spoon! We desperately need legislation to address the grabbing of treasure. Perhaps voting for folks that are not grabbing would be a good idea.
Yes !
I’m a dad with four ”No Kings” signs and a substack where we organize local “We the People” protests.
Fantastic analogy Jess. My husband & I keep saying, "how much can one person really spend?". Our culture is out of whack! Or as our lawyer friend says, "I've never seen a Brinks Truck behind the hearse".
My dad always added, "Every hundred years, everything changes hands."
My dad always said he wished he could come back every hundred years to see how things are going. I figure the problems may look different but are always the same.
Our country needs a mom, period. Put a woman in charge! Preferably one over 40 who is over all the bullshirt!
❤️❤️❤️
We can do that!
In Jackson County, MO, Stacy Lake is running for county executive. That is exactly part of her plan!
“ Under my plan, we will prioritize Homeowners over developers. This means providing tax breaks and grant opportunities for purchasing and rehabilitating homes for Jackson County residents. Additionally, I will support litigation that will stifle foreign, corporate and outside investors from buying residential single family houses in Jackson County. With these policies, we will protect our neighborhoods and ensure homeownership is attainable for our future generations.”
I live in the suburbs in Charlotte, NC. IMO, we can trace a lot of the corporate ownership to the housing crisis back in 2007 - 2008, when so many people were underwater on their mortgages and the banks were authorizing short sales right and left.
Several houses in my neighborhood were sold that way and almost all of them became rental properties. There is a public county database where you can look up properties by owner or street address and I recall seeing the ownership passed to LLCs rather than individuals for the most part. And a reverse search showed multiple properties for the same owner of record.
Since I moved to Charlotte back in the '80s, we have also had an influx of people moving from more expensive real estate markets (as companies moved their corporate headquarters here). Home builders were quick to jump on the demand for fancier homes and the average size (and price) of new-construction homes grew dramatically. We have also seen a flurry of teardowns and "gentrification" in older more modest neighborhoods, futher depleting the stock of smaller homes.
I was able to buy a modest "starter" home of under 1400 sq. ft in the early 90s, but the vast majority of the homes in my neighborhood are in the range of 2200 - 3400 sq. ft. And for the surrounding neighborhoods (built since my neighborhood was built out) 3400 sq. feet would be considered on the smaller side!
Young families are definitely priced out and like many places around the country we have an affordable housing crisis. If I were coming up now, I **might** have technically been able to qualify for a mortgage on my current home, but the mortgage payment would have taken a much larger chunk of my take home pay.
Indeed, we are in another age of Robber Barons. I remember how the last one ended.
"Live simply, so that others may simply live." That sounds so quaint now, doesn't it? Who raised these greedy assholes?
Lots of people measure success by the accumulation of things. And marketing gurus really learned the power of leveraging FOMO (fear of missing out). My news feed had an article earlier this week complaining about people being "hoarders" and holding on to their devices too long. Who gets to decide what is "too long"?
BTW, I think we would all be better off if we measured success by the quality of our relationships.
I have always admired the concept of potlatch ceremony! Status attained through generosity.
They sleep not, except they have done mischief;
And their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall
For they eat the bread of wickedness,
And they drink the wine of violence.
- PROVERBS 4: 16-17
"Help thy brother's boat across, and Lo! thine own hath reached the shore."--Hindu Proverb
Unfortunately your analogy points to the need for enforcement and when it comes to wealth, the same is true. We scrutinise and monitor people collecting any sort of government assistance but we never ask the wealthy hard questions. Hell, we don't even audit their tax returns and when they become a billionaire, we do not ask for an accounting of how they accumulated that much money. We must support the bill that has yet to be heard in Congress to tax the wealthy. Let's stop giving them tax breaks and start increasing their tax rate.
Really good point about how the poor are scrutinized and monitored if they apply for any assistantship. But the wealth hoarders escape scrutiny. Our president is the primo example of a scrutiny dodger. He said he would make his taxes public, and there ought to be a real hue and cry that once again he lied. When Jess talked about the ham balls guy’s heaping plate, in my mind, he had wild hair and orange makeup.
Well said, thank you, I will repeat your post.
Interestingly, the same sentiment was exploited by the right to drive disaffected voters to bring about our current plutocracy. So how do we help the redhats recognize that they’ve been played?
After the 2016 presidential election, I literally witnessed my hard-working daughter, mother of two, cry after the results. She told me she grieved, she wanted a woman president. Living and working in DC as a humane rights senior legislator, she knew Hillary was perfect for the job. A Historian, I knew trump was our hitler. I could not do nothing. I did my research and learned the only way to help the situation was to get involved in local politics. I am thrilled to say my state legislative district is still blue. We voted for Kamala, and mostly blue down the ballot to include our local school board, keeping religion and other nazi ideas out of our local school. (Our boards are non-partisan however influenced by redhats.) Sadly, too many voters are not aware of the red scare. We still need a majority in our state, however we are closer than the past 30 years and our county is blue, to include our mayor. We knock on doors, host meet 'n greets for candidates and much, much more. Please contact your local democrats, get involved.
We do our municipal elections in odd years.
In 2023, there were 3 at-large school board seats up for election and 13 candidates running. Our county Democratic party got organized and decided to endorse non-partisan school board candidates for the first time, in an attempt to shut out the under-the-radar "Moms for Liberty" candidates. They also endorsed candidates for mayor and town council/board of commissioners for all the towns/cities in the county if there were any Democrats running. (With the exception of Charlotte mayor and city council, all these races were also non-partisan.
The county party invited all the school board candidates to speak with the panel deciding on endorsements and then we knocked doors, did candidate forums, did lit drops and recruited lots of poll greeters to hand out blue ballots at early voting sites. We managed to shut out the book banners for school board and we flipped the mayor and town council for a smaller town at the north end of the county.
This year, all the Democrat-endorsed candidates for the 6 school board district seats won there races and we flipped a Charlotte city council seat from (R) to (D).
Thank you for sharing this Cheryl, I'd only shared a few of our success in AZ. I am so glad you shared more, we need to encourage others to do the same. My mantra, talk to your family friends and neighbors. Get the facts, share the facts. Get active in your community.
⬆️"...we need to encourage others to do the same."
Exactly!!
Not sure it is possible for Red Hats to change their minds.
Try stating one fact, one sentence. For example; did you know republicans are working to end social security? Republicans are supporting corporate welfare? In Arizona, republicans are breaking their state budget to fund private schools? Public schools are closing as a result. Find your fact that appeals to them.
The end goal for the tech bros and the felon is privatization of all social services, or the administrative state (otherwise known as the federal civil service).
Yep, which will make them richer and us neglected. Spread the word, get involved locally.
Good question. Looking for clues.
Go with what you know...ie schools, taxes, budget, figure out what the reds in your life have to lose, high costs? insurance? medicare?
You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.
This is not just germane in the USA but across the 'developed' world. Here in UK, years of austerity following the 2008 crash have widened the gap between the obscenely wealthy and the poor. The richest 10% of the population owning 43% of all wealth and their wealth being more than the bottom 50% of the population. The poorest 50% control a mere 9% of the Nations' total wealth The wealthy have a ladle, the poor a teaspoon.
Thanks for repeating what Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Robert Reich have been saying for decades. They say it, but you put it in terms people can relate to in their own lives.
Another good parable Jess. Thank you. Anxious to see the results of Tennessee's election this week.
Me too! Go Aftyn!
There's some research suggesting we have moved into a far more narcissistic era than we have seen in 100 years. Our parents/grandparents taught us to share, to not be greedy. Wealthy families did not, although the Roosevelts may be an exception.
And the Kennedy's also cared about others welfare. At least the majority of them.
The corporations that do blockbuster business do so because America gave them the opportunity to succeed. Their response is not to give back to society but to grab even more off the table--and thus make sure no one ever competes with them. I avoid buying anything from those companies when I can, but consumer boycotts, while a start, will not be enough. We need radical transformation. Businesses used to pay a lot more toward the social stability that allows them to thrive. The gap between what a CEO and a worker are paid has never been so wide, and it keeps getting wider.
private equity is the problem. They own hundreds of thousands of houses as investments. The estimate is that private equity will control 30% of single family housing in the US by 2030. It is massively harmful to our country.
Love the wooden spoon part!!