Ralph welcomes back Chuck Collins, heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune and cofounder of Patriotic Millionaires to discuss his latest report “The True Cost of Billionaire Philanthropy” which asks the question, “Would society be better off if billionaires just kept their money and paid their fair share of taxes?” Plus, we speak briefly about the situation in Gaza with Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and Francesco DeSantis keeps us up to date with the latest news with his segment “In Case You Haven’t Heard.”
An economically just society doesn't have billionaires. It probably doesn't have millionaires either. A functioning tax system obviates the accrual of excessive wealth by definition. So long as society - and this is a massive problem in U.S. social thinking - believes it has 'the right' to become a millionaire, rather than society needs to function with general prosperity, that won't change. Which is also partially caused by the wrong-headed notion of what taxation is and does. So both views of it as 'stealing our money' and 'money we pay for the government to spend' are just wrong and unhelpful.
All this does is promote factually wrong ideas among the voting population who then start bellowing 'tax the rich' on the assumption that government is waiting to 'get our money back' so it can spend it on collapsing social/physical infrastructure. There is indeed a problem of billionaire thieves of public financial resources storing up unspent income and blocking fiscal space; this is a related yet separate issue from government not properly funding the public purpose. The 'progressive' left seems to be singularly focused on the view that it's a battle to wrest back some giant fixed pot of spending money. I tell you now, you are wrong in your analysis. And so long as this is kept up nothing will change.
The suggestion in this podcast concerning charities building libraries and hospitals is the most retrogressive thing I have heard this week. The point is destroying monetarist economic models, not finding some Dickensian 'charity' relief in the face of complete economic sabotage.
“The point is destroying monetarist economic models, not finding some Dickensian 'charity' relief in the face of complete economic sabotage.”
This is correct. Klassik is perturbed by the right-wing rhetoric displayed in this episode of the RNRH. Discussing tax avoidance is fine, and there is good information in this episode about that, but the understanding of the reasoning for taxes is completely off in this discussion. The idea that charity is needed and beneficial to society is a completely right-wing construct. I am dismayed that Mr. Nader would associate himself with such rubbish.
Mr. Nader discussed his experience where his father told him about how the town library and hospital were built with donated money. At around that same time, the mid-1940s, the British government was starting to implement the National Health Service which meant that the people of the UK never needed charity to receive healthcare. Charity was not needed for community hospitals. It was provided by government under democratic rule. Here we are some 80 years later and we’re still stuck in the US with the notion that charity is needed to build hospitals and to provide healthcare when the British have clearly proven that government can provide healthcare. It is beyond belief that some progressives are trying to defend this failure in US policy!
As it is in the US, many of the ‘charity’ hospitals in the US are run by religious organizations whose idea of healthcare is to shame men into thinking the use of condoms is ‘sinful’. We don’t even need to get into women’s health issues. Do we really want public libraries funded by these same organizations given what some of these organizations are pushing for in terms of library and education policy?
Ferdy refers to this line of thinking as ‘retrogressive’ and he is correct. There is no need for this backwardness in modern society when the federal government is completely capable of spending to provide hospitals, healthcare, and public libraries. Of course, this is only possible when the public understands the reasoning behind taxation under a system like we have with a fiat currency. This episode completely fails in that regard.
I never thought I’d see the day where Ralph Nader is giving credit to a self-proclaimed ‘Patriotic Millionaire’ whose wealth came from the manufacturing and promotion of hot dogs as if we need baloney salesmen and their heirs to fund government programs and local institutions. If Mr. Nader wishes to speak to a truly useful millionaire/billionaire, he ought to speak to Warren Mosler. Not only is he from Manchester, CT, near Winsted, Mosler has useful information about the purpose of taxation and how government can fund progressive policy.
A major issue is the affect of billionaire and millionaires on the deterioration of our democracy. Capitalism has a basic effect of encouraging the disenfranchisement of specific population subgroups into poverty in order to act to undermine Labor rights. As well as the super-wealthy being able to exploit the inherent rise and fall of capitalist economies. A societal economic structure that does not control the just and equitable distribution of capital will create poverty and war.
Great ideas from Chuck Collins regarding making charitable donations from the wealthy real charitable contributions. Making charity more equitable runs up against over 40 years of greed and tax giveaways to the very wealthy. It’s been a long night of partying for the rich and they’re only getting richer. Apple, where I do business, is an incredibly tight corporation dodging their tax burden and shorting their workers who are well trained and see only a tiny portion of the wealth they create for Apple returned to them despite their expertise and dedication to the company.
I look around the fairly well-to-do community where I live and see the party of the the minor league of wealth going on and on and on. There’s constant construction here by people who don’t pay state taxes and have plenty of spare change.
Before the current bout of income inequality, lots of working-class people and middle-class people gave more proportionately than their wealthy counterparts.
Lara Friedman’s interview comes as renewed military action against the people of the Gaza Strip takes place. The latter takes place with a wink and a nod from the Biden administration. A recent poll that appeared in the New York Times showed 61% of those polled in the US supporting Israel. Remember the rules or laws of war? Sort of a quaint idea for some today.
Warning: Those without a sense of humor may find this comment offensive.
Maybe we could require those who accumulate a certain level of wealth to learn about how the concentration of wealth is detrimental to society by making them spend two weeks a year in a "Concentration" camp.
Thank you for sharing, people are in need to understand the danger humanity is now facing because of individuals with sick ideals and way to much power.
Dear all, your program volume is not on par with the average audio compression. I think you can pump it a bit and the listening experience will be better, at least for those of us listening to the podcast version. Always thankful for your work.
As Mr. Nader said, it takes a long time to be aware of the enormity of bad governmental policies. Society is largely defenseless against the lawless, manipulative and criminal corporations who with their lackeys and legal enablers have raped our country for generations sticking the taxpayer and government with unpayable debts.
One example, here in New Canaan, the multi-hundred million "Grace Farms" was built as a charitable foundation to counter human trafficking and almost everyone is oblivious to how it is being used as a tax shelter for the wealthy. After that went through, they tore down perfectly good federal housing instead of doing a rehab, and stuck the federal government with the over $50 million bill all in the name of expanding "affordable housing". That money could have been much better spent in other towns instead of spending over $500k per unit not to mention the equity that was lost by demolishing the 1980 housing and the waste. Then the library was demolished with the town and private sponsors paying $40 million plus. Books have not been expanded, just more feel good architecture.
As for "Grace Farms" the whole project and impetus behind this foundation and the facility were questionable. A huge tax benefit to the corrupt "Bridgewater" hedge fund principal executives; hedge funds extract money from the government in various nefarious ways. All the whitewashing in the world as well as pretentious charitable projects in the world cannot take away from how disruptive these hedge funds are. By tying up this large project as a tax shelter all the taxpayers in the town pay more. Their fear-based protocols during the pandemic were particularly telling and indicative of how shallow and superficial the people who are in charge of this "foundation" are. The amphitheater looks like a cheesy Chinese restaurant. The pretensions are off the charts with this place with a lack of serious intellectual or social activity. Not an "amazing" place but a colossal waste of money that just fans the illusions of fake charitable missions using the corrupt and fierce greed of hedge fund money to be sanitized. Since this project was finalized a number of unsustainable, wasteful and questionable building projects were launched in New Canaan under cover of being modern and trendy, such as Karp's offensive building project.
You’re correct, Tom, but you’re also misguided in one aspect. I can’t speak to what is happening in New Canaan specifically, but it does seem like problems which are going on all over the country. The federal government, not state and local governments, can afford to build, maintain, and operate public housing and keep rents at a livable rate as opposed to market rates driven by things such as speculation. If government wishes for there to be more affordable housing, the answer is simple. Government should build and operate public housing. Problem solved (though there are always local government problems with NIMBYism/zoning when it comes to affordable housing, but that is a separate issue which can be dealt with). Government should never be giving money to the private sector, for-profit or non-profit, for the sake of building affordable housing.
This is rooted in the fact that a currency-issuing entity, such as the US federal government, is not constrained in their spending. There is no ‘debt crisis’ as it pertains to the US government. This is nonsensical monetarism which tries to apply currency-user budgeting principles to an issuer of a fiat currency. That is not the way things work.
Obviously, the same idea behind affordable housing applies to libraries and any other social institutions. There is no reason why the federal government can’t provide grants to local public libraries to ensure freedom from the corporatism which comes from philanthropy.
Then what's to keep the projects from being ostentatious, damaging to the larger culture, a money and power grab by local interests who really don't care how much money they squander of the US government? A half million a unit where one person is living in each unit? That's crazy. And clearly the state and federal governments have finite resources.
For sure there's a problem of private companies getting 'contracts' so they can suck away as much spending as they can to largely syphon away into their Swiss bank accounts and delivering bottom-end 'results'. The federal government does have infinite financial resources (though there aren't infinite real resources for sale). Getting the private sector out of government requires that the public understands that the private sector isn't the government's banker. This falsehood is used to make the public believe government has to permanently be 'in business' with big business.
“Then what's to keep the projects from being ostentatious, damaging to the larger culture, a money and power grab by local interests who really don't care how much money they squander of the US government?”
Elections.
I don’t understand the ‘power grab by local interests’ comment. Why would there be a ‘power grab’ with federal low-income housing or any other public service? The idea behind public ownership is to avoid the ‘power grab’.
“And clearly the state and federal governments have finite resources.”
The US Federal Government? No, they issue a fiat currency. Spending is not constrained. State governments? Yes, they are currency users so their spending capacity is constrained, though the federal government can always subsidize local/state governments via grants.
Then you don't understand how publicly traded, or private equity controlled construction companies are constantly lobbying for very lucrative government paid for projects. I'm sorry, you're totally out of touch with how corrupt the whole system has become! And 33 trillion and growing federal deficits is no big deal when China and Japan are the largest debt holders?? Local politicians push for these extremely wasteful and expensive projects for whatever reasons, personal vanity, feather bedding, graft, corporate interests wanting them leaning hard on them.
“Then you don't understand how publicly traded, or private equity controlled construction companies are constantly lobbying for very lucrative government paid for projects.”
Corrupt lobbying by architectural and construction firms is an issue with publicly-built facilities, such as schools, but this is hardly a reason to not have public education. The same is true with public libraries, public housing, airports, public bus systems, roads, or any other public belonging. The public has to be vigilant of the potential for corruption and scrutinize local construction to ensure it meets local needs and desires. This, of course, involves public participation whenever construction is proposed.
“And 33 trillion and growing federal deficits is no big deal when China and Japan are the largest debt holder??”
Just as Ferdy said above that the private sector is not the federal government’s bank, China and Japan are not the US’s bankers either. The result of US spending surpluses from the US spending their own currency into existence on global export economies is immaterial to the health of the US economy. Actually, that is not true, it is beneficial for the US economy!
As has already been explained before, the US federal budget is not like a household or business budget. Buffoons who confuse the US federal budget for a household budget are not to be taken seriously. The US economy is doing great because it spends. The many imbecilic claims about the US government bankrupting itself via spending have all proven to be false. Not just false, but the inverse has occurred!
Not all spending is equal though. If you feel the public is not benefiting equally as the corporate class, you would be correct. This is due to neoliberal policies which directs spending towards corporate causes and away from social causes like healthcare, education, and so forth. The problem is that government is not spending enough in programs which benefits the public and the government supports privatization efforts which leads to families incurring household debt due to price gouging and a lack of services. This is entirely reversible if the public demands public spending be used for their benefit and not for corporate benefit. Austerity solves nothing is likely even worse for the public than the current flavor of neoliberalism.
I'd ask what your personal experience is that clealy biases your neoliberal viewpoints that elitists who push undisciplined and culturally disruptive policies? Your name calling and ad hominen attacks on those with different views clearly shows you are not capable to addressing the fundamental issues and consequences behind endless spending on unsustainable projects. This reminds me of those who've been behind the local projects focusing on all the benefits of modernization, totally insensitive to the damage and destruction. And the production of waste is yet another uncomfortable reality behind such projects. Sure the green technologies use less in energy moving forward, but what about all the waste, greenhouse gas production, construction vehicles, etc. that go into achieving an end result?
An economically just society doesn't have billionaires. It probably doesn't have millionaires either. A functioning tax system obviates the accrual of excessive wealth by definition. So long as society - and this is a massive problem in U.S. social thinking - believes it has 'the right' to become a millionaire, rather than society needs to function with general prosperity, that won't change. Which is also partially caused by the wrong-headed notion of what taxation is and does. So both views of it as 'stealing our money' and 'money we pay for the government to spend' are just wrong and unhelpful.
All this does is promote factually wrong ideas among the voting population who then start bellowing 'tax the rich' on the assumption that government is waiting to 'get our money back' so it can spend it on collapsing social/physical infrastructure. There is indeed a problem of billionaire thieves of public financial resources storing up unspent income and blocking fiscal space; this is a related yet separate issue from government not properly funding the public purpose. The 'progressive' left seems to be singularly focused on the view that it's a battle to wrest back some giant fixed pot of spending money. I tell you now, you are wrong in your analysis. And so long as this is kept up nothing will change.
The suggestion in this podcast concerning charities building libraries and hospitals is the most retrogressive thing I have heard this week. The point is destroying monetarist economic models, not finding some Dickensian 'charity' relief in the face of complete economic sabotage.
“The point is destroying monetarist economic models, not finding some Dickensian 'charity' relief in the face of complete economic sabotage.”
This is correct. Klassik is perturbed by the right-wing rhetoric displayed in this episode of the RNRH. Discussing tax avoidance is fine, and there is good information in this episode about that, but the understanding of the reasoning for taxes is completely off in this discussion. The idea that charity is needed and beneficial to society is a completely right-wing construct. I am dismayed that Mr. Nader would associate himself with such rubbish.
Mr. Nader discussed his experience where his father told him about how the town library and hospital were built with donated money. At around that same time, the mid-1940s, the British government was starting to implement the National Health Service which meant that the people of the UK never needed charity to receive healthcare. Charity was not needed for community hospitals. It was provided by government under democratic rule. Here we are some 80 years later and we’re still stuck in the US with the notion that charity is needed to build hospitals and to provide healthcare when the British have clearly proven that government can provide healthcare. It is beyond belief that some progressives are trying to defend this failure in US policy!
As it is in the US, many of the ‘charity’ hospitals in the US are run by religious organizations whose idea of healthcare is to shame men into thinking the use of condoms is ‘sinful’. We don’t even need to get into women’s health issues. Do we really want public libraries funded by these same organizations given what some of these organizations are pushing for in terms of library and education policy?
Ferdy refers to this line of thinking as ‘retrogressive’ and he is correct. There is no need for this backwardness in modern society when the federal government is completely capable of spending to provide hospitals, healthcare, and public libraries. Of course, this is only possible when the public understands the reasoning behind taxation under a system like we have with a fiat currency. This episode completely fails in that regard.
I never thought I’d see the day where Ralph Nader is giving credit to a self-proclaimed ‘Patriotic Millionaire’ whose wealth came from the manufacturing and promotion of hot dogs as if we need baloney salesmen and their heirs to fund government programs and local institutions. If Mr. Nader wishes to speak to a truly useful millionaire/billionaire, he ought to speak to Warren Mosler. Not only is he from Manchester, CT, near Winsted, Mosler has useful information about the purpose of taxation and how government can fund progressive policy.
A major issue is the affect of billionaire and millionaires on the deterioration of our democracy. Capitalism has a basic effect of encouraging the disenfranchisement of specific population subgroups into poverty in order to act to undermine Labor rights. As well as the super-wealthy being able to exploit the inherent rise and fall of capitalist economies. A societal economic structure that does not control the just and equitable distribution of capital will create poverty and war.
Great ideas from Chuck Collins regarding making charitable donations from the wealthy real charitable contributions. Making charity more equitable runs up against over 40 years of greed and tax giveaways to the very wealthy. It’s been a long night of partying for the rich and they’re only getting richer. Apple, where I do business, is an incredibly tight corporation dodging their tax burden and shorting their workers who are well trained and see only a tiny portion of the wealth they create for Apple returned to them despite their expertise and dedication to the company.
I look around the fairly well-to-do community where I live and see the party of the the minor league of wealth going on and on and on. There’s constant construction here by people who don’t pay state taxes and have plenty of spare change.
Before the current bout of income inequality, lots of working-class people and middle-class people gave more proportionately than their wealthy counterparts.
Lara Friedman’s interview comes as renewed military action against the people of the Gaza Strip takes place. The latter takes place with a wink and a nod from the Biden administration. A recent poll that appeared in the New York Times showed 61% of those polled in the US supporting Israel. Remember the rules or laws of war? Sort of a quaint idea for some today.
Ralph & everybody boycott.thewitness.news A-Z corporations that support the IDF.
Now hear is the &uckin# news! Thanks folks.
Warning: Those without a sense of humor may find this comment offensive.
Maybe we could require those who accumulate a certain level of wealth to learn about how the concentration of wealth is detrimental to society by making them spend two weeks a year in a "Concentration" camp.
Here an interesting article on the topic
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/05/we-can-have-either-billionaires-or-democracy-not-both/
Thank you for sharing, people are in need to understand the danger humanity is now facing because of individuals with sick ideals and way to much power.
“Billionaires” it’s a club, they are eugenists name landers psychopaths.
Their common ideal, population reduction, their goal global population reduction/genocide.
Dear all, your program volume is not on par with the average audio compression. I think you can pump it a bit and the listening experience will be better, at least for those of us listening to the podcast version. Always thankful for your work.
The term "philanthropath" has been coined to describe the corruption of the charitable. This Substack writer has a piece on it: https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams
As Mr. Nader said, it takes a long time to be aware of the enormity of bad governmental policies. Society is largely defenseless against the lawless, manipulative and criminal corporations who with their lackeys and legal enablers have raped our country for generations sticking the taxpayer and government with unpayable debts.
One example, here in New Canaan, the multi-hundred million "Grace Farms" was built as a charitable foundation to counter human trafficking and almost everyone is oblivious to how it is being used as a tax shelter for the wealthy. After that went through, they tore down perfectly good federal housing instead of doing a rehab, and stuck the federal government with the over $50 million bill all in the name of expanding "affordable housing". That money could have been much better spent in other towns instead of spending over $500k per unit not to mention the equity that was lost by demolishing the 1980 housing and the waste. Then the library was demolished with the town and private sponsors paying $40 million plus. Books have not been expanded, just more feel good architecture.
As for "Grace Farms" the whole project and impetus behind this foundation and the facility were questionable. A huge tax benefit to the corrupt "Bridgewater" hedge fund principal executives; hedge funds extract money from the government in various nefarious ways. All the whitewashing in the world as well as pretentious charitable projects in the world cannot take away from how disruptive these hedge funds are. By tying up this large project as a tax shelter all the taxpayers in the town pay more. Their fear-based protocols during the pandemic were particularly telling and indicative of how shallow and superficial the people who are in charge of this "foundation" are. The amphitheater looks like a cheesy Chinese restaurant. The pretensions are off the charts with this place with a lack of serious intellectual or social activity. Not an "amazing" place but a colossal waste of money that just fans the illusions of fake charitable missions using the corrupt and fierce greed of hedge fund money to be sanitized. Since this project was finalized a number of unsustainable, wasteful and questionable building projects were launched in New Canaan under cover of being modern and trendy, such as Karp's offensive building project.
You’re correct, Tom, but you’re also misguided in one aspect. I can’t speak to what is happening in New Canaan specifically, but it does seem like problems which are going on all over the country. The federal government, not state and local governments, can afford to build, maintain, and operate public housing and keep rents at a livable rate as opposed to market rates driven by things such as speculation. If government wishes for there to be more affordable housing, the answer is simple. Government should build and operate public housing. Problem solved (though there are always local government problems with NIMBYism/zoning when it comes to affordable housing, but that is a separate issue which can be dealt with). Government should never be giving money to the private sector, for-profit or non-profit, for the sake of building affordable housing.
This is rooted in the fact that a currency-issuing entity, such as the US federal government, is not constrained in their spending. There is no ‘debt crisis’ as it pertains to the US government. This is nonsensical monetarism which tries to apply currency-user budgeting principles to an issuer of a fiat currency. That is not the way things work.
Obviously, the same idea behind affordable housing applies to libraries and any other social institutions. There is no reason why the federal government can’t provide grants to local public libraries to ensure freedom from the corporatism which comes from philanthropy.
Then what's to keep the projects from being ostentatious, damaging to the larger culture, a money and power grab by local interests who really don't care how much money they squander of the US government? A half million a unit where one person is living in each unit? That's crazy. And clearly the state and federal governments have finite resources.
For sure there's a problem of private companies getting 'contracts' so they can suck away as much spending as they can to largely syphon away into their Swiss bank accounts and delivering bottom-end 'results'. The federal government does have infinite financial resources (though there aren't infinite real resources for sale). Getting the private sector out of government requires that the public understands that the private sector isn't the government's banker. This falsehood is used to make the public believe government has to permanently be 'in business' with big business.
“Then what's to keep the projects from being ostentatious, damaging to the larger culture, a money and power grab by local interests who really don't care how much money they squander of the US government?”
Elections.
I don’t understand the ‘power grab by local interests’ comment. Why would there be a ‘power grab’ with federal low-income housing or any other public service? The idea behind public ownership is to avoid the ‘power grab’.
“And clearly the state and federal governments have finite resources.”
The US Federal Government? No, they issue a fiat currency. Spending is not constrained. State governments? Yes, they are currency users so their spending capacity is constrained, though the federal government can always subsidize local/state governments via grants.
Then you don't understand how publicly traded, or private equity controlled construction companies are constantly lobbying for very lucrative government paid for projects. I'm sorry, you're totally out of touch with how corrupt the whole system has become! And 33 trillion and growing federal deficits is no big deal when China and Japan are the largest debt holders?? Local politicians push for these extremely wasteful and expensive projects for whatever reasons, personal vanity, feather bedding, graft, corporate interests wanting them leaning hard on them.
“Then you don't understand how publicly traded, or private equity controlled construction companies are constantly lobbying for very lucrative government paid for projects.”
Corrupt lobbying by architectural and construction firms is an issue with publicly-built facilities, such as schools, but this is hardly a reason to not have public education. The same is true with public libraries, public housing, airports, public bus systems, roads, or any other public belonging. The public has to be vigilant of the potential for corruption and scrutinize local construction to ensure it meets local needs and desires. This, of course, involves public participation whenever construction is proposed.
“And 33 trillion and growing federal deficits is no big deal when China and Japan are the largest debt holder??”
Just as Ferdy said above that the private sector is not the federal government’s bank, China and Japan are not the US’s bankers either. The result of US spending surpluses from the US spending their own currency into existence on global export economies is immaterial to the health of the US economy. Actually, that is not true, it is beneficial for the US economy!
As has already been explained before, the US federal budget is not like a household or business budget. Buffoons who confuse the US federal budget for a household budget are not to be taken seriously. The US economy is doing great because it spends. The many imbecilic claims about the US government bankrupting itself via spending have all proven to be false. Not just false, but the inverse has occurred!
Not all spending is equal though. If you feel the public is not benefiting equally as the corporate class, you would be correct. This is due to neoliberal policies which directs spending towards corporate causes and away from social causes like healthcare, education, and so forth. The problem is that government is not spending enough in programs which benefits the public and the government supports privatization efforts which leads to families incurring household debt due to price gouging and a lack of services. This is entirely reversible if the public demands public spending be used for their benefit and not for corporate benefit. Austerity solves nothing is likely even worse for the public than the current flavor of neoliberalism.
I'd ask what your personal experience is that clealy biases your neoliberal viewpoints that elitists who push undisciplined and culturally disruptive policies? Your name calling and ad hominen attacks on those with different views clearly shows you are not capable to addressing the fundamental issues and consequences behind endless spending on unsustainable projects. This reminds me of those who've been behind the local projects focusing on all the benefits of modernization, totally insensitive to the damage and destruction. And the production of waste is yet another uncomfortable reality behind such projects. Sure the green technologies use less in energy moving forward, but what about all the waste, greenhouse gas production, construction vehicles, etc. that go into achieving an end result?
Down load link (MP3) is in the ... on the player