“When you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius (via philosophybits)
Also, the NFL DOES HAVE WAYS OF TRYING TO ASSIST POORLY PERFORMING TEAMS AND LIMIT TEAMS FROM HOARDING PLAYERS.
The Draft: Worst performing team gets the first pick, ie the best chance at the best rookie player, and then goes backwards from worst to best. Teams that make the playoffs are pushed to the end and the team that wins the Super Bowl typically goes last.
The Salary Cap: Teams with absurdly rich owners can’t just throw all their money around, you can only spend so much money before the are capped off and can not give anymore expensive contracts to star players. You can’t buy a whole team of Pro-bowlers. It’s how smaller market teams or collectively owned teams (yes, the Green Bay Packers are owned by the people of Green Bay) to compete with the large market Patriots, Giants, and Cowboys.
Free Agency: Players get a 4-5 year contract when drafted, then can choose free agency to go where their skills will be most valuable, teams can not hoard all of their best talent forever and have to pick and choose.
Revenue Sharing: The rich teams give money to the poor teams to help them compete. Literally. Even the “cut throat, all business” sports leagues realize this form of “socialism” is needed to even the playing field.
Luxury Tax: The NFL doesn’t have this because of the Salary Cap, but other sports, like Baseball, do have a literal tax on teams that spend over a certain threshold. In the case of the MLB, teams that pass the threshold (in 2019 it will be $200 million) pay an escalating tax on every dollar above the threshold (first time is 20%, then 30%, then 50%). Mind you, this tax does not affect any team below the threshold so it is literally like AOC’s plan.
A “lobbyist for a major bank” told Reuters that they’re afraid to meet
with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who now sits on Congress’s Financial
Services Committee, because “anything you do or say can be used against
you” – the lobbyist likened meeting with AOC to “going in to talk to
the FBI.”
Another lobbyist cited AOC’s use of Twitter to denounce the lobbyists
who were invited to brief the incoming Congress at “orientation”
sessions as an example of how letting the mask slip around Ocasio-Cortez
would result in global social-media shaming for poor, defenseless
lobbyists.
“Moore’s economic worldview envisions a slimmed down government and a rolled back social safety net. He has called for eliminating the Departments of Labor, Energy and Commerce, along with the IRS and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. He has questioned the need for both the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education. He has said there’s no need for a federal minimum wage, called for privatizing the ‘Ponzi scheme’ of Social Security and said those on government assistance lost their dignity and meaning.”
Other notable opinions:
- “We have to eliminate the corporate income tax entirely in my opinion because it is just a millstone around the neck of this economy.”
- “Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy.”
If trump’s hateful budget is a “moral document” that highlights his utter failure, trump’s choice of Moore for the Federal Reserve Board doubles down on anti-American elitism, where the core purpose of the entire country (and the planet) is to facilitate building greater wealth for those who already have enormous wealth.
This is no surprise. It’s the core of Republicon policy, except that they are now openly willing to use authoritarianism to force the transition to an unmistakable oligarchy.
They don’t want a great nation. They want selective great wealth. They don’t want a beneficial government. They want a tool they can use to benefit themselves and protect themselves.
I’m sure BigPharma bought back their stocks instead of raising wages or hiring more people because that is 100% predictable behavior from corporations under shareholder economics.
Anyone who has said how the tax “cut” has affected them, has said that their taxes went UP, including mine. We are all lower middle class.
Most people are not even in middle class. It’s most likely working poor!
