The billionaire class needs to be abolished

This evening I watched the movie José. It is a gay story from Guatemala and highly regarded on the gay cinema circuit. The main character is on the cusp of manhood and trying to figure out his place in the world. There is some gay sex and even a bit of gay romance. There are complications, such as a mother who wants her son to stay with her forever. But the complications don’t amount to much, and several times I wondered what happened to the consequences to this action or that, such as an earthquake. Mother and son flee outside, but the next scene they’re back inside and there isn’t any damage. The movie is only 85 minutes and in the last 20 I kept wondering how all this is going to resolve. It just sort of ended.

There is one plus. There was very little overt homophobia. Then again José seemed firmly closeted.



Thomas Kaine, political consultant, tweeted:

HUGE STORY not getting much press. First time in USA history, the USA gov't controls stock prices. The Fed and Mnuchin are buying $1,250,000,000,000 (yep Trillions) of corporate bonds resulting in spikes in the stock prices of those companies.

Benjamin Franklin responded:

The economy has contracted more than the great depression, yet the stock market hasn't crashed. Why? Because the government is pumping money into to make sure it continually goes up as a way of rewarding asset holders and creating the appearance of prosperity.

They’re just gonna make it go up and down and tell all their friends what will happen before it does until all the wealth is consolidated at the top.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos discusses a report from the Aspen Institute that estimates there may be 40 million people evicted by the end of the year. Other estimates 17-23 million by the end of September. And Congress can’t get a relief deal worked out. That’s partly because so many GOP senators believe no relief package is needed.

Clawson points out black and brown people will be hit hardest by evictions. She wrote:

Already, around one in four Black and Latino renters has been unable to pay rent compared with just 13% of white renters. The South will also be hammered: The two states with the highest percentage of renters facing eviction are Mississippi and Louisiana. Alabama, Florida, and Georgia also rank highly.

Landlords are moving to evict people. I waded into the comments to learn a bit more. Landlords have expenses that would be tough to make when units are empty. So why evict when there aren’t other people to rent the units to? Because an empty unit is less expensive than a unit that’s occupied but not paying. There’s no maintenance and no utilities.



Bree Newsome Bass tweeted a thread:

The billionaire class needs to be abolished.

There’s less than 1K of them, they account for ~0.0002% of the total population but they control ~30-40% of all wealth in the country. We can literally write all their names on a sheet of paper. It’s a practical place to start.

I’m 100% serious. They can’t be allowed to hoard that much wealth. It’s directly connected to the scope of human suffering in this country. It’s actually a very practical place to begin addressing wealth inequality & a host of other issues.

Their philanthropic donations never match the amount of wealth they suck out of the larger economy nor does it resolve the problem of them controlling & dictating what things get funded, from non-profits to politicians to business ventures. No one needs $1B let alone $100B.

Resolve added:

Encouraging greater wealth is abetting a mental illness. (think hoarders) It becomes a competition to see who can get the most money. I cringed when they reported a company reached a trillion dollars in value. That will now be the new bench mark. Ppl be damned.