Billionaire investor warns: U.S. "wealth disparity" will end in "revolution, taxes, or war"

sure they are and other countries can then tariff our goods too thus ending international trade and perhaps starting another Great Depression.

 

not everybody because everybody is not good enough. The economy would crumble if we rewarded the wrong people too much and the right people too little.This is called evolution or survival of the fittest. Its scientific which is why liberals object to it.

 

Your right to your fallacious opinion is duly noted.

 

Asinine non sequitur!

 

Doesn't it always end in war or revolution? Do we think we can escape history?

 

In some instances it was both.

What is different today is that we have a more advanced system of communication than in the past. The Arab Spring benefited from Facebook and while it was a revolution in that instance I believe that We the People have something in addition.

Technically speaking We the People are the government of the people for the people. Reality is that the 1% now owns the government but We the People still have the power to reject the 1% and take the government back from them. Bernie Sanders was running a campaign advocating exactly that kind of "revolution" and it was resonating with a great number of our fellow citizens. Subsequent to 2018 there has been a dramatic increase of grassroots activism to get involved in the electoral process in order to make a difference. We are already seeing signs of that in the local election result.

Be interesting to see what transpires.

 

Sooner or later it always ends the same way, entrenched power never gives it up without a fight. The oppressed end up thinking the only way out is violence or in the case of the old USSR, a massive uprising that pits the military against it's own people. The American Dream feeds the myth that we can overcome history because we are so special. I think that mythology is dying a quick death, our kids don't believe that bull for a second.

 

That's my point, too. President George Bush also increased steel import tariffs in 2002 in order to protect the local producers in front of Russian competitors.

The number of jobs created in order to build and service the automation systems is lower than the number of jobs reduced by implementing automation. Otherwise it won't be cheaper to implement automation in the first place.
The increased automation must bring lower prices. And then the people sent into unemployment can have a comfortable life with the money they get from unemployment help, welfare or basic income. However, the government should ask them to do something in return for that welfare. This is actually the necessary economic evolution of humanity - less and less people will have to work in order to produce the goods for everyone. The rest should work in the fields of education and research (and to a lesser extent in health care too). There are millions of uncategorized images only at Wikimedia Commons who need people to fix them. There is an enormous amount of work necessary outside of the economic purposes. The government can hire people to do that in exchange for the basic income.
After a while, the economy should be just a tiny part of the human activities.

If the increased automation will be used for better profits to the company instead of lowering the price of the goods, that means there's no real competition (a competing company should deliver cheaper products). And then the solution is the robot tax Bill Gates was talking about. However this solution is an artificial and unnecessary complication.

No matter how you look at it, in real capitalism the competition must bring equal incomes. Any income above the average income is the result of anti-competitive practices. And then the automatization brings lower prices for he consumer goods, not bigger profits. The people replaced by the robots will be available in order to do the real stuff - the stuff that actually matters, because the human activity should not be reduced to economy (which is primarily driven by the survival needs).

 

Whatever taxes they pay, they get more than double by looting the economy: tax havens, bailouts, fat contracts with the government, subventions, sucking the blood of their workers etc.

 

you don't understand at all, even with tax havens the top 1% pay 42% of taxes. it's the bottom 50% who pay nothing and get a free ride ripping off the the top 1%.

 

you don't understand at all. the bank bailouts were 100% paid back and saved the world from a great depression. Failed individuals get $trillions in welfare bailouts each year and never pay back a penny. Does it make sense now?

 

sucking blood?? why do you say that when to avoid bankruptcy under capitalism requires a business to pay the highest wages possible or lose their workers to those who do. If you doubt it try starting a business and pay less than other's pay.

 

of course if true you would not be so afraid to provide evidence of that absurdity.

 

totally wrong of course!! today we have 96% employment and that's after 1000 years of more tools and robots being invented. Farm equipment, for example, put 95 of humanity out of farming jobs but that did not mean fewer jobs. Econ 101, class one day one.