Discover Top Posts Tagged with #robber barons

in recognition that TODAY is ECONOMIC BLACKOUT DAY, i ask us all: "When did firing park rangers, scientists and air traffic controllers become a better idea than simply TAXING BILLIONAIRES?

#billionaires #Greedy Bastards #Eat The Rich #Plutocrats #Robber Barons #politics #Economic Policy #taxes

#Game of the Week #game #games #puzzles #puzzle #activities #robber barons #zords

Congress passed the 1913 Revenue Act imposing income taxes to shift the cost of supporting the government from ordinary Americans, especially the women who by then made up a significant portion of household consumers, to men of wealth. Tariffs were regressive because they fell disproportionately on working-class Americans through their everyday purchases. Income taxes spread costs more evenly, according to a man’s ability to pay. The switch from tariffs to income taxes helped to break the power of the so-called robber barons, the powerful industrialists who controlled the U.S. economy and government in the late nineteenth century. To get rid of income taxes, Trump and his Republicans have backed the decimation of the government services that support ordinary Americans. -- Heather Cox Richardson

#tariffs #income tax #robber barons #tax the rich

What happened to the term “robber barons”?

Somehow calling them “oligarchs” doesn’t convey the appropriate level of disgust and contempt.

#fuck musk #you can’t spell felon without elon #oligarchs #robber barons #we are being robbed

Steven Jennings

ONE OF MY FAVORITE CARTOONS OF THE GILDED AGE WHEN I TAUGHT AT CHURCHILL HIGH SCHOOL, 1972-2006 (Zoom in on the signs above the robber barons.) We are back in the 1800's with the Robber Barons, who have INFINITELY more power over government now than you do. And with their power over media increasing, you need no explanation about the danger. Just look at Fox. Imagine the major networks all going full Fox. Wikipedia has an entry for this Puck cartoon, published in 1889, right after "the trusts" got a friendly president, Benjamin Harrison. See below. The cartoon surely had a role in elevating public awareness of the problem with unrestrained monopolists. Already, populism and progressivism were emerging as political forces to combat this national malady. Though we got the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, it took time for the likes of the Roosevelts and Wilson (Clayton Act) to come along and foster more effective congressional attention to the matter. Also, see below. But with today's Extreme Court, the power of concentrated wealth has turned the clock back to the reality portrayed in this cartoon. Hell, the Extreme Court majority is palsy-walsy with our contemporary yachting robber barons. From Wikipedia: The Bosses of the Senate is a "frequently reproduced cartoon, long a staple of textbooks and studies of Congress". NPR has called the cartoon "the defining image of late 19th-century Washington". Historian Josh Brown has stated that it "expresses general public discontent and concern about the growing impact and power of large businesses" and "their control over the political process". Some contemporary commentators have asserted that such corporate interests still have immense power over lawmakers in modern-day America.

#StevenJennings #plutocracy #Robber Barons #The Bosses of the Senate #late 19th Century Washington #the “Extreme” court