Goff on with Spiegal today and so far just in transition I want to put my finger in a light socket. Ripping on rich people and being a racist .

Don't worry, Denni$ will have his butler take care of this. Bigotry against the wealthy is the scourge of humanity!

I mean Goffs an idiot but one thing we can all agree on rich people suck and need to pay way more in taxes. Hes not wrong on hating on rich people for contributing nothing. IE- Elon

LOL, you are blind if you think most well off people do not pay enough in taxes. But hey great narrative.

It has been a principle of Western Civilization--almost since its inception--that those who benefit the most from a given society should contribute the most to maintain that society.

I'm sure I don't need to remind you that the past 45 years have witnessed an astounding upward distribution of wealth and income to the wealthiest people in our society.

Are you sure that the biggest beneficiaries of this phenomenon--known to some as NEOLIBERALISM--shouldn't be doing more to ensure the stability of their inherently destabilizing political-economic system?

Income inequality is a huge problem. Our current system is highly progressive, and any honest view on each slice of income groups shows who pays the taxes. In fact, we have negative federal income taxes for the lowest income groups due to the earned income tax and other tax credits.

Income taxes are not going to solve income inequality. More taxes only feeds the spending problem of this country. A better education system might.

People talk of income inequality as if it is some absolute that even ever be equaled out. In a capitalist economic society there must be haves and have nots. You can raise the bottom I suppose but clamping down the top is foolish.

Oh no, not lower innovation. Those complacent Finns aren't figuring out how to make it so you have to subscribe to your refrigerator.

It’s actually the defining feature of most economic systems. And while Europe has lower inequality, they have higher unemployment, lower growth, lower per capita income, and less innovation.

Yeah, and most economic systems have produced violent conflict or upheaval in one form or another. As Marx famously wrote almost two centuries ago, "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

In any event, my original point of comparison was not between Europe and the U.S., but between two periods of U.S. history. The economic dynamism of the New Deal era certainly shows that the stark inequality that is both a key feature and the principal goal of neoliberalism can be avoided even as the corporate class maintains capitalist hegemony.

Finally, it should be noted that some of the main innovations of the neoliberal era--including the internet itself--are products of public investment, not private sector ingenuity. Moreover, much of the laboring class fueling private sector innovation acquired the skills necessary to contribute to our high-tech economy at public research institutions. Given this context, it can be reasonably argued that the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 stands as the greatest catalyst of innovation in the history of the United States, and one of the greatest such catalysts in the history of the world.

What is the non-critical infrastructure for which there is no place for government spending?

What is the non-critical infrastructure for which there is no place for government spending?

Office tower in Manhattan.
Power Plants.
Transmission lines.
Cable/Internet fiber.
Satellites for non governmental use.

What about the critical infrastructure of Social Security, medicare, medicaid, snap, section 8 housing, and the progressive tax structure? What about property taxes for the non-critical funding of schools? The Earned Income Tax credit?

Love em all. I want more.

I knew he wasn't going to be able to keep his race-war tendencies to himself after that game. Not like it took a lot of detective work; he said the Iowa players call black people the n-word.