Plutes gonna plute -- How billionaires are killing the American Dream

[Torsten]

I’m going to transcribe this video over the next couple of days because I think it’s just brilliant. If you like please do join on in… @bitarooh, it might good training for your writing skills.

0:00 to 2:13
Welcome to the Daily Show.

Thank you.

Congratulations on a book that has made you the enemy of billionaires all over the world.

Right.

You are a foolish man. Why would you write a book that basically accuses billionaires of being like ‘fake good people’ as philanthropists. What does that even mean?

There was no good reason to do it except that it was true. You know, we live in this time – and I was thinking about when we were talking about the president because he is kind of an example of this. He had a fake foundation. They’re not all fake but we live in this time in which rich people… You can’t walk down the street in Manhattan or other parts of the country without bumping into a rich person who is trying to change the world. Right? Mark Zuckerberg is trying to change the world, Elon Musk is going to try and change the world, Jeff Bezos changing the world. They’re all changing the world. More money being given away that has ever been given away in the history of the word. Young people, all, you know, elite graduates, elite campuses, we want to go to Africa and start a social enterprise turning recycled poo into coffee.

Right.

With tow bags, Bono is involved, the red iPhone case you get for free. And the question is ‘why is that this era of extraordinary generosity which is real, happens to coincide with an era of extraordinary elite hording’? The very same class of billionaires and plutocrats who do so much to give and constantly talk about how much they give, have a monopoly on the future in this country. The one percent in this country takes 49% of new income. Half the new income and imagine half the new income of all this studio audience went to one person. Imagine, if another true statistic: The 0.1% (point one percent) owns more wealth than the bottom 80% of people in this country.

Right.

The bottom half of people in this country on average have not gotten a raise, as many of you may know, in 40 years.

Right.

And so the question then becomes ‘what’s the relationship between all this nice stuff elites do and this elite predation’? And the relationship that I discovered and I reported in this book was that it’s this nice, it’s these nice deeds, the sprinkling of these nice deeds, that help us uphold the system in which rich people can monopolize the future, horde progress, kill the American dream and not satisfied with that: They’re trying to kill the planet now, too.

[Natalia_Polteva]

I agree, it’s a very good interview. Here is my contribution:
2:14 to 4:32
Okay, so let’s go back on this. So you are saying that people are hording the money. Alright. But now, everyone here tries to keep the money that they make. I mean, I think that is like a logical thing that human beings do. You get the money, you keep the money. No-one gets the money from like work and is like giving it away. You get what I’m saying? So, when you say that they are hording the money, people would go like 'Yes, but Anand, that’s the American dream: You work hard and then you make your money. Why, why is that a problem? Why do you think that that is a paradox with the public giving they’re doing?

I think another simpler way to say what you’re saying which I agree with is that “Plues gonna plue”. I even have the shirt.

Okay.

Plutes gonna plute.

Yes.

They’re gonna fight for their own interests. The plutocrats are gonna do what’s good for plutocrats. You’re right. The thing is this is not feudal England so we actually have systems that are designed to keep them in check. Because you’re right, people are gonna fight for their own interests. And if you have people who have such vast fortunes that they have the power as monolopies to decide which way our elections go which is the power Mark Zuckerberg frankly has, when you have someone who has the power to dictate whether workers have to pee in a bottle to be able – you know – survive and make productivity at their company. When you have people with so much power over consumers you can’t just say the hording impulse is going to be the hording impulse. You have to tax people properly, taxes, taxes, taxes, you have to regulate people properly, you have to have a minimum wage that actually allows people who have no leverage against these billionaires to have the shared leverage that we all have which is through a goverment negotiating for us. People don’t understand. People denigrate the government. Over the last 40 years we’ve lived in this country under an ideology that says government is bad, wealth creation is good. You know what the government is? The government is like a lawyer who represents all of us. Right? And rich people are not all good or all bad the way you or me or anybody else is all good or all bad. But when rich people start to make money by underpaying people systemically, make money by frankly avoiding taxation in any way they can, hiding money, make money by employing people insecurely, you are a contractor, you work at Uber, you don’t really work at Uber, right. You do all of that, it’s time for the advocate for all of us, the government, to actually fight back on our behalf.

[Anglophile]

Torsten, I think the author is of Indian origin. What he says is true. We say it here in other words: The rich become the richer and the poor the poorer!