Doing nothing will cost much more than passing the Green New Deal, investing in renewable energy, and preparing our infrastructure for a rapidly changing climate. pic.twitter.com/1LRkaflOFJ
Election Day is tomorrow, Tuesday, November 2. NYC voters can visit https://t.co/e0ZdOe2GW8 or @NYCVotes to find their polling place and learn more about the candidates and proposals that will be on the ballot. pic.twitter.com/Xk4KqT4zPX
That designation is not to be taken at face value. He might have been if he had gotten himself elected president. But the execution part of him has been mush. Maybe AOC? She could be the Elon Musk of politics. But spare me the exactitude. I am only reacting to Elon Musk's disrespect of Bernie. Do not respect old people. That does not sound right.
I just finished reading Eizabeth Warren's book Persist a few weeks ago. I am all for the wealth tax. Without the wealth tax America as a country will kill itself. The inequality in America is civilization ending.
I would propose a 10% wealth tax on all billionaires.
That will not take away from innovation. That will not mean Elon Musk will have less money to invest in Tesla, or SpaceX. When was the last time Elon sold his shares in Tesla to put money back in Tesla? Instead I have seen him and Jeff Bezos do the my thing is bigger than yours thing. Give them marbles. Take the money to the homeless, and the hungry.
यो देशमा सचीव भएर रिटायर्ड भएकाको यो लेबलको बौद्धिक दरिद्रता छ ! अनि तपाई कुरा गर्नु हुन्छ। pic.twitter.com/Id5WqHZBBn
Knowing God Named by Christianity Today as one of the top fifty books that have shaped evangelicals, Knowing God is now among the iconic books featured in the IVP Signature Collection. ....... "A hundred years from now only a handful of books written today will still be widely read and accepted as Christian classics. Dr. James I. Packer's Knowing God may well prove to be one of them. A gifted theologian and writer, Dr. Packer has the rare ability to deal with profound and basic spiritual truths in a practical and highly readable way. This book will help every reader grasp in a fuller way one of the Bible's greatest truths: that we can know God personally because God wants us to know him."
..... Billy Graham .......... As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. ............. “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” .........
Why You Need to Read ‘Knowing God’ by JI Packer Christians have become confused as a result of their dealings with modern skepticism. Lacking a strong Biblical understanding of God, believers have become less certain about both God and His Word. The truth of Scripture is routinely questioned, and even the very concept of truth is itself been put up for debate. ........ there is an important distinction between knowing about God and knowing God. Whereas we can know a lot about God by reading Scripture and studying what theologians have to say on the topic, we can only know God by entering into a right relationship with Him ........ “Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.” ........ God is “immutable,” which is a fancy seminary word for “doesn’t change” or “unchangeable.” This is a very helpful reminder for the Christian. There is not a discontinuity between God as He is revealed in the Old Testament and how He is revealed in the New. He is unchanging in His truth, in His ways, and His purposes ......... being more diligent in our spiritual duties of prayer and reading His Word, of course, but we also must be more aware of the blessings which come from His hand. .......... how inward trials can be used by God to chastise us for sin, to guide us, and to draw us to fuller reliance on Him .........
What could the US afford if it raised billionaires' taxes? We do the math “Every billionaire is a policy failure.” So says a key adviser to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez herself says that it’s wrong to have a “system that allows billionaires to exist” alongside poverty. And the New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo recently called for us to “abolish billionaires”. ...... Today, the top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. ....... But what does it really mean? Is it setting a cap on the amount of wealth one household can own? Or does it entail something a little more structural: unrigging the system that gave us billionaires and instead creating an economy in which everyday people get the benefits from the growth that they have created. ........ The richest 1% own nearly 40% of all the wealth, but pay only 20% of all the taxes. ............
Inequality makes bubbles more likely, it undermines the foundations for innovation and productivity, and it weakens and destabilizes consumer demand.
........ taxing the super-rich would generate revenue that could be put to better uses than letting that money sit in a Bahamian bank account of a billionaire. .......
Over the next 10 years, the richest 1% of American households will take home about another $22tn, after federal taxes. Their average annual post-tax income will be about $1.7m.
........ Three trillion dollars in new revenue is enough to make college free at all public universities, make a massive new investment in infrastructure along the lines of what Senate Democrats have proposed, and triple the budget for the National Institutes of Health. Needless to say, all of these investments would pay enormous economic dividends. .......... Doing that would generate about $8tn in revenue, which is enough to send every household in the bottom 75% a check for nearly $8,500 every year for 10 years........ As of 2016, the wealthiest 1% of American households owned about $27tn in total, an average of about $23m per household. ........ A tax that took about 1% of that wealth each year would yield about $4tn over the next decade. To put that amount in perspective, $4tn is more than the federal government will spend over the next decade on foster care, school lunch, school breakfast, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, unemployment compensation, supplemental security income for the elderly, blind people and those with disabilities, and all the tax credits for working families combined........ Rich people are neither the source of economic prosperity, nor will they decide to go off and form their own society in Antarctica or 10 miles off the coast of San Diego...... If we disincentivize hoarding at the top, money will more easily flow to the workers and families who really drive economic growth. ........ And before long, instead of a few hundred billionaires taking ever more, we could instead have a thriving middle class, widespread economic security, and real opportunities to give the next generation a better life.
It’s time for a new capitalism — a more fair, equal & sustainable capitalism that actually works for everyone and where businesses, including tech companies, don’t just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact. Values create value. https://t.co/4AQzBYS6hd
New capitalism is tech-heavy. It is not ideology heavy. You just do do do. You get it done.
Face it. We are one planet. We need a world government. 100 Gates Foundations will not be able to meet the challenges of the world. Only a world government can.
The world has $300 trillion in wealth. Everyone who owns property needs to pay a wealth tax of 3%. That money needs to pay for a Universal Basic Income. Since when did Universal mean American?
That arrangement will be a constant stimulus to the global economy.
Form a T100 along the lines of G20. The top 100 tech companies by market value meet annually. Because there are unavoidable governance issues. Unless you tackle those governance issues, you can not roll out the Blockchain.
World War II is over. Abolish the veto. We need a world government with a bicameral legislature. We don't have to wait until every country on earth has an American style "democracy." No country in Europe has an American style democracy. The President of the World can be directly elected. Why not? Every human being gets to register on any phone or tablet with their finger. You create or claim your biometric ID, and you vote. Your phone is your voting booth. In the lower house, every country gets a vote in direct proportion to their population. In the Upper House it is in direct proportion to their GDP. Each country pays 1% of its GDP as membership fee to the world government.
Global warming is existential, there is only a 10-12 year window before we hit a point of no return, and no one government could solve it. Only a world government could hope to solve it.
T100, pass a proposal that data gathered on every individual is the property of that individual, even though collected by a tech company. A person's data is their personal oil well. Use that to boost the UBI.
T100, pass a proposal that all monetary transactions on the Blockchain can only go from individuals to individuals, or companies and organizations duly registered by individuals, who all have biometric IDs resting on that very same Blockchain. Promises of frictionless global money transfers are giving nightmares to the governments around the world who have to deal with things like terrorism and human trafficking and the drug trade.
1% is not enough. My tech startup is starting by giving 10% ownership of our company to our foundation.
Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism I have been fortunate to live a life beyond the wildest imaginations of my great-grandfather, who immigrated to San Francisco from Kiev in the late 1800s. ........
Capitalism, as we know it, is dead.
....... On a personal level, the success that I’ve achieved has allowed me to embrace philanthropy and invest in improving local public schools and reducing homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area, advancing children’s health care and protecting our oceans. ........ Globally,
the 26 richest people in the world now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people
......... In the United States, income inequality has reached its highest level in at least 50 years, with the top 0.1 percent — people like me — owning roughly 20 percent of the wealth while many Americans cannot afford to pay for a $400 emergency. It’s no wonder that support for capitalism has dropped, especially among young people........ profits are important, but so is society. And if our quest for greater profits leaves our world worse off than before, all we will have taught our children is the power of
greed.
....... they focus not only on their shareholders, but also on all of their stakeholders — their employees, customers, communities and the planet. ....... the “purpose of a corporation” includes “a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.” ......... When asked whether companies should serve all stakeholders and whether capitalism should be updated, Vice President Mike Pence warned against “leftist policies.” ...... with political dysfunction in Washington, D.C., Americans overwhelmingly say C.E.O.s should take the lead on economic and social challenges, and employees, investors and customers increasingly seek out companies that share their values........ Since learning that we were paying women less than men for equal work at Salesforce, we have spent $10.3 million to ensure equal pay; today we conduct annual audits to ensure that pay remains equal. Just about every company, I suspect, has a pay gap — and every company can close it now......... by integrating philanthropy into our company culture from the beginning — giving 1 percent of our equity, time and technology — Salesforce has donated nearly $300 million to worthy causes, including local public schools and addressing homelessness. ....... Entrepreneurs looking to develop great products and develop their communities can join the 9,000 companies in the Pledge 1% movement and commit to donating 1 percent of their equity, time and product, starting on their first day of business. ......... Rather than instinctively opposing new regulations, tech leaders should support a strong, comprehensive national privacy law — perhaps modeled on the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation — and recognize that protecting privacy and upholding trust is ultimately good for business. .......
Research shows that companies that embrace a broader mission — and, importantly, integrate that purpose into their corporate culture — outperform their peers, grow faster, and deliver higher profits.
....... We don’t have to choose between doing well and doing good. They’re not mutually exclusive. ....... Of course, C.E.O. activism and corporate philanthropy alone will never be enough to meet the immense scale of today’s challenges. It could take $23 billion a year to address racial inequalities in our public schools. College graduates are drowning in $1.6 trillion of student debt. It will cost billions to retrain American workers for the digital jobs of the future. Trillions of dollars of investments will be needed to avert the worst effects of climate change. All this, when our budget deficit has already surpassed $1 trillion............. increasing taxes on high-income individuals like myself would help generate the trillions of dollars that we desperately need to improve education and health care and fight climate change. ......
It’s time for a new capitalism — a more fair, equal & sustainable capitalism that actually works for everyone and where businesses, including tech companies, don’t just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact. Values create value. https://t.co/4AQzBYS6hd
Nobody is saying American Basic Income (ABI). The term is UBI, or Universal Basic Income. It necessarily has to cover every human being on the planet (and any other planet, should Elon Musk get his way).
Forget robotics, forget automation, forget artificial intelligence, forget technology. The wealth inequality on its own is as big a problem as the climate crisis. The threat is existential. Unless the wealth gap in this country and around the world is significantly reduced, ahead lies mayhem. Human civilization will not work if the gap keeps widening. Right now it is widening.
The globe is warming. The wealth gap is widening. And the two are two sides of the same coin, like electricity and magnetism.
How do you put in place a wealth tax? You need to know who everyone is. You need to know what everyone owns. You need to know what the sum total of wealth on earth is. The data on each of that is scant right now. It is certainly not in any one database.
That is where technology comes in. Look at how easy it has become to send anyone text and photos these days. We think of it as free. In 1990 it was not free. It was not possible. If you wanted to share pictures, you needed to use postal mail. It cost money. It was slow. It was not done much.
The Blockchain is the Internet on steroids. The Blockchain is going to be 100 or 1,000 times more impactful than the Internet. The Blockchain will do to money what the Internet has done to media. Everyone on earth will get a biometric ID. What every person owns in terms of wealth will get recorded on that Blockchain. And then the wealth tax is easy. According to one proposal, that of Senator Elizabeth Warren, you simply pay 2% every year on all wealth you own above 50 million dollars.
That sounds like trickle-down economics to me. Unless your wealth above 50 million is generating at least 3% income, or likely 5% or more, why will you want to keep it? And so the idea of parking money will no longer be in vogue. Right now the ultra-wealthy have trillions of dollars in parked money, wealth that exists, but that is not invested in anything productive like clean energy, or a new generation of jobs.
The global wealth tax is coming. It is unstoppable. The Blockchain does not belong to any company or country.
While we are on the topic of China is an excellent time also to talk about Arab countries. How will democracy come to Arab countries? Most of them are monarchies.
There is the Bhutan way where the monarch decides he has been king long enough. Now he should choose to become a constitutional monarch and let an elected parliament run the show. That is the least disruptive path for all parties concerned. The people get their rule. The monarchs keep their wealth and respect. Although it should be noted, some of these royal things have obscene amounts of wealth. Nobody really needs that much money.
They should pay a generous wealth tax.
But this option does not seem on the horizon. I don't know of any monarch who is considering it.
But the current arrangements are inherently unsustainable. They will not go on forever.
2010: Bridging the Gulf: Bahrain's big experiment with democracyThough more liberal than its neighbours, the country is feeling the impact of political Islam. ........ Saudi Arabia. The two countries are linked by a 16-mile toll road, the King Fahd Causeway, but Khadija would not be welcome on the Saudi side where women are not allowed to drive even private cars. In Manama City, she bowls around in a stylish white London taxi, wearing a black hijab and grasping the steering wheel with white gloves........... worried about being cheated. "They pay or I drive on," she says bluntly........ "One hundred per cent of the male drivers see her as a threat" ........ a modernising experiment which was begun by the royal family a decade ago. ....... Eight years ago, Bahrain underwent a startling transition from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy; this archipelago with a population of around a million people is still getting used to political campaigns and four-yearly parliamentary elections. It's an experiment that has some limitations: political parties are not allowed and most candidates belong to political "societies" which function like parties in all but name. Ministers are appointed by the King and after the 2006 elections just over half the cabinet were relatives of the royal family; the long-serving Prime Minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, is his uncle........ But while the royal family retains a great deal of power, political exiles have been allowed to return home, newspapers have more freedom than in most Middle Eastern states, and there has been a concerted attempt to give women more rights......... It's a standing joke that wealthy Saudis barrel across the King Fahd Causeway in gas-guzzling limousines, eager to enjoy the bars and casinos that are banned in their own country......... Bahrain has a history stretching back several thousand years. The glass-and-steel towers of Manama City are joined by another causeway to the old capital, Muharraq, where wood-shuttered pearl merchants' homes are being turned into museums. Bahrain Fort is a restored 15th-century complex at the northern tip of the archipelago, near Bahrain airport, but the site on which it stands has been occupied for almost 2,500 years. What looks like a set from Lawrence of Arabia was once the capital of the Dilmun, one of the most important ancient civilisations in the region........... Bahrain's pearl-fishing industry, which fell into disuse when oil was discovered in 1931. ........ The Khalifa family has ruled Bahrain since the 18th century and the present king, 60-year-old Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, has been in power since the death of his father in 1999. As in many Muslim countries, the ruling family follows a different branch of Islam from the majority of the population; the Khalifas are Sunni, while most Bahrainis are Shia. It's hard to believe that this wasn't a factor in the King's decision to start introducing political reforms, and the success of Islamist "societies" in parliamentary elections has exposed – and thus far contained – profound underlying tensions. Official briefings are at pains to characterise the royal family's modernisation programme as the result of "a genuine benevolent attitude towards citizens", but the government has benefited enormously from its support for the US during the Iraq and Afghan wars............ In 2002, the results of the first parliamentary elections in Bahrain were ominous for secular politicians: the elected lower house was immediately dominated by Islamist parties and not a single woman candidate was elected. The same thing happened in 2006, when the Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society took almost half of the 40 seats, although on that occasion one woman was successful.......... Dr Salah Ali, a former political exile who now chairs the Al-Menbar Islamic Society, a Sunni group which has seven seats in the lower house and is widely believed to have close links with the Muslim Brotherhood.......... there has been a ferocious campaign by Islamists in the lower house to ban alcohol in Bahrain ........ Mohammed Khalid, an outspoken MP from the Al-Menbar Society, who has made a name for himself as an opponent of anything he regards as un-Islamic. Mr Khalid embarrassed the government when he hailed terrorists fighting American forces in Iraq as "heroes"........... Diplomatic and business sources confirm that Bahrain is under pressure from political Islam, suggesting that the Shia parties in the lower house are worryingly close to Iran. That isn't much comfort to Bahrain's small Jewish population, although the government is fighting back; this is the only Arab nation in the world whose current ambassador to Washington, Houda Noono, is a Jewish woman........... One of the ironies of Bahrain's democratic experiment is that it depends on the unelected upper chamber, the consultative council (Shura), to defend the state from political Islam and a socially conservative electorate. ........ 45 per cent of public employees are female. Recent laws have given women paid leave to look after their children while the Shura is trying to establish workplace nurseries "with some resistance from colleagues" ........... This is the problem of the Middle East writ large. In the West, it goes without saying that democracy means respect for the rights of the individual, but across the region,
Islamist parties are attracting support on programmes that deny the most basic human rights.
......... the Al-Menbar Society vociferously opposed government plans to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which allows individuals to change their religion. "This means that Muslims could convert to another religion, something against Islamic law, since those who do so should be beheaded," declared a leading Al-Menbar MP, Dr Salah Abdulrahman........ Opposition to the protocol was eventually defeated, allowing Bahrain to ratify the treaty in 2006, but the episode demonstrates the difficulties facing the royal family's modernisation project. ........
Bahrain's experiment with democracy is being watched closely across the Middle East.
"It's having a positive effect on the region, including Saudi Arabia," Dr Haffadh told me. What is undeniably true is that
Saudi women, who are among the most cloistered in the world, now have only to cross a bridge to see Bahraini women dress as they wish, enjoy the same legal rights as men
– and even drive taxis.......... Iran... A woman's testimony in court carries only half the weight of a man's.
This would be my first choice ticket. Warren Harris 2020. Because, as far as I am concerned, gender is the number one issue. Bigger than inequality, bigger than poverty, much bigger than Donald Trump. It is about time. UBI is an idea whose time has come, true. But I don't see how President Warren could avoid that.
My current lineup:
President: Elizabeth Warren
Vice President: Kamala Devi Harris
Secretary of Labor: Andrew Yang
Secretary of Urban Affairs: Pete Buttiegieg
Senate Lion: Bernie Sanders
Chancellor of the Obama Library: Joe Biden
Texas Governor: Beto (I will make no attempt to spell out his last name.)
UN Ambassador: Tulsi Gabbard
New Jersey Senator: Corey Booker
New York Senator: Kristen Gillibrand
Elizabeth Warren's top quality for 2020 is that there is no way she will be bullied by Donald Trump. She will go toe to toe. She will fight. She will turn Trump into mush. And she will swamp him with her ideas.
So one fifth of a Yang? That's nice, but it's only 20% of what @AndrewYang is offering every single recipient of Social Security.https://t.co/kqyvOjWOuk
Warren is the only winner in polls after previous Democratic debates Warren unveils far-reaching Social Security plan ‘Why Are You Pissing In Our Face?’: Inside Warren’s War With the Obama Team “I was not going to set that agency up asking Tim Geithner every day ‘Mother may I?’” Warren says now. “It just wasn't going to work.” ..... she reserved her real fury for Geithner and White House National Economic Council chief Larry Summers, whom she regarded as predisposed towards big banks over families struggling to save their homes....... the conviction at the heart of her presidential candidacy: that the system is rigged. ..... while former Vice President Joe Biden often boasts on the campaign trail that his and Obama’s efforts saved the economy from another Great Depression, Warren regards the Obama administration’s top-down response to the financial crisis as part of the reason a man like Donald Trump won the White House eight years later. ...... As for the Obama team’s arguments that the financial rescue was a success -- the bank bailouts ultimately made a profit, a depression was averted, and GDP growth resumed faster than the aftermath of most financial crises -- Warren considers them obscene self-congratulation. ....... “When I raised it with Tim, he reassured me that they'd done the calculations and it was all going to work out. And what he meant was the survival of the banks,” Warren says, recalling a meeting in the Treasury building in the fall of 2009. “He says ‘We’ve foamed the runway -- enough that the big banks can land.’ And the fact that millions of families were losing their homes, that millions of people lost their jobs, you know, savings, just wasn't part of that calculation.” ...... “Tim and Larry and those guys, they are the villains of the Woody Guthrie song,” says one, a reference to the lyric “Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen” in ‘Pretty Boy Floyd.’..... top administration officials remember Obama spending an inordinate amount of time going back and forth about what to do with Warren...... she “broke a lot of eggs.” ...... “That the survival of the big banks is not the measure of recovery.” ....... “I started to understand in that process, how the only way to get Congress on the side of families that were broke was to bring public pressure on them. So in that space of time, during the ‘Bankruptcy Wars,’ I must have spent a million hours on the telephone with reporters
starting with ‘B is for bankruptcy.’”
...... “If you've got no stories to tell, there are a lot of reporters who won’t talk about it,” she explains. “And if the reporters won’t talk about it, then the world isn't going to hear about it.” ....... It would begin before dawn with an aide bringing her an Egg McMuffin but no coffee (
“Can you imagine me on coffee?!,”
she once explained to an aide who asked how she didn’t drink it.) ........ Warren surprised members of her own staff by producing monthly videos of herself explaining each report. She and aides also created a comprehensive website with a regularly updated “blog.” Commonplace now, these digital tools weren't being used by many members of Congress in 2008. ..... “He meets with bankers. He doesn’t meet with me.” ....... Her national profile reached the point-of-no-return in April 2009 after an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. “That is the first time in six months to a year that I felt better,” Stewart said after she summed up the financial crisis. “I don’t know what you did just there but for a second that was like financial chicken soup for me.”........ A former student once dubbed Warren’s teaching method as “Socratic with a machine gun,” and in 2009 and 2010 Geithner was at the end of the barrel. Her questioning was so brutal at times that it stunned some of the Republicans working on the oversight panel. ....... As Obama positioned himself between the bankers and the pitchforks and took a hard turn from campaign poetry to governing prose,
Warren’s furious rhetoric filled a populist void that many on the left had hoped Obama would occupy.
Her response to the financial crisis led New York Magazine to declare in 2011 that “in large swathes of blue America, Warren’s star actually eclipses Obama’s.” ........ Reid, who appointed Warren to the oversight panel and has been an admirer of her presidential run, says he thought Warren clashed so fiercely with Geithner and Summers in part because she understood financial markets well enough that they couldn’t condescend to her......... Warren came from a working-class family in Oklahoma that faced its own micro financial crisis when her father had a heart attack. She earned a debate scholarship to George Washington University, but dropped out to marry her high school boyfriend whom she later divorced. She ultimately graduated from the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School and worked her way up to the highest rungs of legal academia -- from teaching at the University of Houston to Harvard and becoming one of the country’s foremost experts on bankruptcy. ..... She spoke unapologetically and bluntly....... When the crash came, Warren saw a reckoning for a system she had long said was fraudulent and the chance to revamp it entirely. Geithner felt his first, second and third priority was to save that same system from collapse because then no other goals were possible. ...... “After the rush-rush-rush to bail out the big banks with giant buckets of money, this plan seemed designed to deliver foreclosure relief with all the urgency of putting out a forest fire with an eyedropper,” Warren wrote in her 2014 memoir, A Fighting Chance. ....... One former Treasury official says people in the department were glad Warren addressed the letter to Obama so he could finally understand what it was like to have to deal with her on a daily basis. ....... Warren insists that she doesn’t question the motives of the people who served in Obama’s Treasury Department. But asked if she thought they had been “sort of captured by the system--” Warren jumps in: “That’s it. They just they saw the world differently. They had spent all their time with giant banks and their representatives. This is my point about how Washington works.” ....... Beyond the question of her loyalty, some question the soundness of her ideas. Summers, for one, has co-written two op-eds arguing against the underlying math in Warren’s wealth tax, the central means for how she says she will pay for her ambitious liberal agenda. ...... “Ironically, and I give her credit on this, part of the reason she’s doing well politically today is that she has put forward plans that have details,” the former official says. “I certainly like this Elizabeth Warren more than the Elizabeth Warren of that era."