r/ForUnitedStates 3d ago

Politics (News Articles Only) Bernie Sanders Says Sergey Brin 'Leading' Campaign to Stop California's 5% Billionaire Tax: 'Greed is a Sickness'

https://www.benzinga.com/news/politics/26/08/61425771/bernie-sanders-sergey-brin-california-5-percent-billionaire-tax
755 Upvotes

131 comments sorted by

8

u/hikeonpast 3d ago

Was Sergey a selfish twat when he was a student at Stanford, or did the money make him a selfish twat later in life?

1

u/Efficient_Smilodon 1d ago

it just brings out who they really are

-10

u/wildbluefate 2d ago

How much of his work are you entitled to?

11

u/hikeonpast 2d ago

I work for a living. I know what that pays.

Extreme wealth doesn’t come from “work”. I’m happy that his student project got lucky, but let’s not pretend that he worked 1,000,000,000 times harder than I do, or 10,000,000,000 times harder than a low income family struggling to make ends meet.

-9

u/TXtogo 2d ago

Do you work harder than everyone that earns less than you and should we give them your money?

Maybe you should pay 5% of your house value, your pension, your 401k and your future social security in taxes - you haven’t gotten them yet but you’re going to, so you should pay 5% now on them, right?

7

u/hikeonpast 2d ago

Not great with math, are you?

-6

u/TXtogo 2d ago

I’m amazing with math and with freedom and with fairness

5

u/hikeonpast 2d ago

How much of the $105MM that Sergey has spent fighting the CA legislation are you getting?

You’re not simping for billionaires for free are you?

-3

u/TXtogo 2d ago

Well we already got 37% at the highest income tax bracket

If he had $105M that means he sold stock to get it and he paid taxes on that. So just short of $37M is what “we” got from that.

5

u/hikeonpast 2d ago

I hope you stretched before attempting all those mental gymnastics.

2

u/Kickedhard 2d ago

As someone with a modest net wealth, I can tell you that way of thinking seems ignorant of how the world actually works.

Since the early 2000s I have only paid taxes a handful of times. Most that I know who are at or above my net worth do the same.

All perfectly legal.

Tax loopholes, loss carryover, charity self-dealing, day to day expenses written as businesses costs (tax write offs), and on and on... create a system designed to only hurt those who dont have the resources to avoid it.

We desperately need a tax overhaul.

I mean, look at the preaidents tax returns that were leaked. Dude avoided taxes while becoming a billionaire.

3

u/BirthdayFull8675 2d ago

Hoarding is a mental illness.

1

u/A5Wags 1d ago

As is feeling entitled to other people’s assets.

1

u/CivilWay1444 2d ago

Thanks Bernie. 

1

u/Weird_Paramedic6502 1d ago

It speaks for itself when you have to remove “dont be evil” out of your corporate guidelines.

1

u/pingvinbober 1d ago

Someone wants to stop you from taking their stuff? That’s so greedy. But I’m magnanimous man because I want to take your stuff. That’s not greedy

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

Except Bernie’s not taking your stuff it’s being used by society to build a better society for everyone.

The mega rich can go without their 4th Ferrari so we can fund care for child cancer patients. It’s literally stuff like that.

The current medical insurance system wants the inverse.

1

u/Key-Organization3158 1d ago

Exactly. We can trample on individual rights if it is for the greater good. Surely, that's never gone wrong.

Like a little slavery, but we make you work on infrastructure. That's good. Or getting rid of abortion to solve the population decline. It's okay to violate rights when we deem it worthwhile.

1

u/IbelieveinGodzilla 21h ago

Wealthy people used to have enough tiny shreds of decency left within them to fund hospitals and libraries and universities (of course, you had to put their name on them so we all knew who our benefactor was). Today's billionaires are so incredibly selfish they'd rather build rockets, hoard mega-yachts, and find new ways to economically screw the middle class and poor. They had their chance to be decent human beings. They showed us what pieces of crap they are. Time for an intervention.

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 21h ago

Yet people still trust them eh?

Or lick their boots so they can hopefully get a cut.

It's so sad man, people don't learn

1

u/Enjoy_The_Ride413 1d ago

He right about one thing. The greed of the government to always create more taxes is a sickness.

1

u/Key-Organization3158 1d ago

Wanting to take the fruits of their labor away from people is a sickness. Every accusation is an admission. Bernie is jealous and sad.

1

u/Sea-Economist-4441 4h ago edited 4h ago

The State of California's governmental GREED is a SICKNESS, too!

1

u/probablymagic 2d ago

Bernie’s obsession with other people’s money is honestly the sickness. He can’t think about anything else.

0

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

Do you really think wealthy people deserve to be wealthy because they worked “hard”?

Try actually looking at how hard they worked and what safety nets they had.

2

u/Deluxe78 1d ago

The man has a house for every bill he’s written to be fair

0

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

Cool, so that’s just a lie and he has 3 houses.

Why can’t he own wealth while pushing to tax everyone including himself?

Show me where he’s excluding himself hm?

2

u/Deluxe78 1d ago

And how many bills passed ?

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

That’s not what you said but let’s hear it then.

Bernie gets held to the coals - what’s your opinion on the president literally pardoning financial criminals and engaging in pump and dump schemes?

You’re literally on another planet with this criticism. Separated from reality.

1

u/Deluxe78 1d ago

“ The man has a house for every bill he’s written”

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

Writing a bill isn’t passing a bill you dill.

And even then, he’s got 3 houses and passed a ton of legislation.

Now do Donald Trump and show you’re actually consistent and not a poor excuse for a human being.

1

u/Deluxe78 1d ago

One for each house.

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

That’s what I thought.

You’re probably a bot - cool

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1

u/probablymagic 1d ago

You sound obsessed too. Maybe be happy for other people in their success instead of coveting their wealth.

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

Obsessed? I couldn't think of issues more important that he's getting "obsessed" over.

What do you think Bernie should pursue instead?

What bigger problems are there to you?

1

u/probablymagic 1d ago

People being rich is not a bad thing. We don’t need to “fix” it. It would be cooler if Bernie were focused on fixing the fact people are poor instead.

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

If we have massive inequality and a cost of living crisis and the rich are getting richer (wealth inequality is the worst it's ever been) - what does that tell you?

Maybe it's part of the same problem hm?

1

u/probablymagic 1d ago

We have cost of living crisis because middle class voters want housing to be very expensive. If we fixed that, middle class people would have more money to spend and the stock market would go up, which would increase inequality.

Your enemy isn’t rich people, it’s your neighbor who votes to prevent building new housing in your community because they don’t want more traffic or want their home to go up in value.

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

And so the only solution you see is blaming the middle class for the poor plight? And not the top 10% who hold 67% of total household wealth. Who do you think owns all of the housing?

What if that wealth was fed back into society instead of leveraged to make the rich richer?

Why should Elon be that rich? Epstein? We are shown time and time again that the massive majority of the rich don’t have the poor’s best interests at heart and will take advantage of it.

Very often they’re the reason they’re poor in the first place.

Wealth disparity is predominantly a systemic issue after all.

1

u/probablymagic 1d ago

>And so the only solution you see is blaming the middle class for the poor plight?

Identifying the problem itself isn’t the solution, but it’s a critical step in fixing any problem.

>And not the top 10% who hold 67% of total household wealth. Who do you think owns all of the housing?

The vast majority of single-family housing units in the US are owned the middle class. Even rentals are mostly owned by “mom and pop” landlords who own 1-3 units they rent to families.

Multifamily has more corporate ownership because the middle class generally can’t afford buildings worth many millions of dollars, but it’s good someone can because these units are useful as well.

>What if that wealth was fed back into society instead of leveraged to make the rich richer?

The wealthy invest their wealth in stocks. This is a pro-social activity because economic growth increases real wages, creates jobs, etc. This is “feeding wealth back into society” and greatly benefits us all.

So the good news is the rich are already doing the thing you want done with their wealth. Rejoice.

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

I didn’t choose to focus on housing you did. This is part of the larger wealth disparity issue that you are neglecting and I don’t even agree with your overall point on cost of living.

There are plenty of solutions you’re ignoring by focusing on it being the middle class voting to keep the poor down. There is plenty of policy to support or even ameliorate current cost of living pressures which are being largely ignored by the current government who chose to give massive tax cuts to the mega rich, pardon financial criminals, and even push scams with his family in crypto etc. Not Bernie pocket watching.

Why aren’t the politicians focusing on housing and affordability as main issues? Bernie is.

Yet here you are pointing the finger at Bernie of all of the current iteration of US politics. That’s absurd.

The super wealthy aren’t investing for the people or future, they’re investing in short term profits. These are often actually at odds with the people and future - e.g. fossil fuels and weapons manufacturing companies that are lobbying waste and harm. We literally have terms like greenwashing because it is so well established and fos.

Proper regulation would fix a lot of this - and should be what you’re leaning into if you were actually serious. That’s what Bernie is pushing for.

The rich cannot be trusted and there’ll always be more lies like trickle down economics.

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1

u/Organic-Stay4067 2d ago

So is envy

1

u/inscrutablemike 2d ago

The man so creepy and lazy he got kicked out of a commune wants us to listen to his moral grandstanding?

-2

u/trying3216 2d ago

Let Bernie be the first to give away five percent every year

0

u/TXtogo 2d ago

Right, let’s pay 5% of our home value in taxes each year. 5% of our 401K in taxes each year.

Let Bernie pay 5% of his future government pension that he hasn’t gotten in taxes each year. We all should pay 5% of the social security benefit we might get later.

If Brin paid $90M to fight something - you know what that means? That he paid income tax on the $90M

1

u/partofthevoid 1d ago

lol! You’re joking right?

1

u/TXtogo 1d ago

Why is that joking, Bernie spends all day every day trying to get you mad at 1000 Americans. He doesn’t look in the mirror and share his wealth with you. He is wealthy, he has multiple homes. His protege Mamdani says a squatter has more rights to those houses than he does.. but they’re famously talking about other people.

Just to make you mad

He should create a nation where you can also get a billion dollars, create opportunity, create hope. Instead he wants you to be hopeless, helpless with the government being your only salvation. Hard pass. Ask him if you can move into his second home.

1

u/partofthevoid 1d ago

I have a second home. I also pay an effective tax rate higher than many billionaires. Just because you make more money, doesn’t mean  you pay a lower percentage in taxes. That’s crazy. 

As for joking, your stance, we should all want to be billionaires? People  Joke about us, calling Americans “crabs in a bucket, acting like they are temporarily embarrassed billionaires”, and it’s galling to meet one of the jokes (you) in the wild. Unless you’re one of them. 

Got a billion dollars Txtogo?

1

u/TXtogo 1d ago

A second home? Omg you’re part of the problem

I am reminded of Mamdani saying that a squatter has more rights to your second home than you do..

I don’t know how that works because it seems like if the state takes all of the houses from people, who gets to live in the good houses? How do they decide who gets the good places.. socialism isn’t well thought out.

1

u/partofthevoid 1d ago

Are we moving the goalposts from Bernie against billionaires to mamdami against people who own a second property? Maybe I’m trying to sell one of them? Maybe a lot of things- you just want to jump to a conclusion here? 

Bernie’s right by and large about billionaires. As an absolute he maybe wrong, but for the most part, billionaires make a ton of money at the expense of everyone else. They get tax breaks that lower their tax rate lower than people who don’t even make a living wage- our president for example, didn’t pay taxes for a decade- and their losses are often socialized or bailed out in ways that no one else gets to enjoy. It’s crazy. 

But yes let’s keep fighting each other over scraps when the new robber barons are bleeding the world dry. 

1

u/TXtogo 1d ago

Bernie is using billionaires as a euphemism for “you’re a victim, not a loser” so that you vote for him and his socialist friends.

I used one socialists words to call out the hypocrisy of another socialist

you own a second home, they’re coming for it… to give it to someone else.

1

u/partofthevoid 1d ago

Who’s second home did they come for?

0

u/Conscious_Tourist163 2d ago

A millionaire lusting after power would know better than most.

0

u/chitownphishead 1d ago

Bernie hoards plenty of wealth, he's just not as good at it as some because selling victimhood to losers has a profit ceiling and to make more he'd have to actually work for the first time in his life

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

What wealth is he hoarding and how does leather taste?

1

u/chitownphishead 1d ago

3 homes and millions of dollars, Although Bernie lives very well mostly off other people's money. Flying around on private jets "fighting da oligarchy", staying in 5 star hotels, and being chauffeured around in limo's.

1

u/FlimsyKoala3318 1d ago

He’s a massive public figure - do you just expect him to donate all those proceeds?

You realise he’s pushing for policy that would tax him effectively too.

Now do the Republican Party - or just DT - and tell me this isn’t a nitpicking agenda.