Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Friday, August 28, 2015

They don’t pay taxes. They circumvent our laws. They get free stuff from the government.





From The New Yorker:


THE HAMPTONS (The Borowitz Report)—They don’t pay taxes. They circumvent our laws. They get free stuff from the government. They are America’s billionaires, and many would like to see them gone. 

According to a new survey by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, the American people hold the nation’s billionaires in lower esteem than ever before, and a majority would like to see new laws enacted to deport them. 

 “They come here, take thousands of our jobs, and export them overseas,” one respondent said, in an opinion echoed by many others in the survey. “They are part of a shadow economy that sucks billions of dollars out of the United States every year and puts it in Switzerland and the Caymans,” another said. 

Images of hedge-fund managers arriving via helicopter in the Hamptons this summer have only reinforced the impression that authorities have turned a blind eye to their movements. “Many of these people should be in prison, and the government is looking the other way,” one respondent said. 

Stirring even more controversy is the billionaires’ practice of having babies in the United States and using the nation’s porous estate-tax laws to pass down untold wealth to the next generation. “They should leave and take their children with them,” one respondent said. 

Even after it is pointed out to respondents that some billionaires, such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, have made significant philanthropic contributions to the world, a majority of those polled stubbornly maintained their negative views of billionaires. 

 “Look, in every group you’re going to have some good ones,” one of the respondents said. “But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the vast majority of these people are destroying this country.”

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL! Love Borowitz!

Kevin Robbins said...

I read and got my hopes all up before seeing it was Borowitz. Ditto anonymous.

Sandra L. said...

Maybe because the Republican Party has always favored the rich and that's why it's sunk in favorability by the American people. They don't like the Repubs!

"The already raucous Republican presidential campaign may be hurting the party’s brand.


Only 32% of respondents said they had a favorable opinion on the Republican Party in a new Pew Research Center poll published Thursday — the lowest number Pew has reported at any point since 1992, though there have been a couple of 33% ratings during that time. The party is viewed unfavorably by 60% of respondents, again the party’s worst score."

That's a whopping 60%! If their policies are so great for America, why are they so disliked? They're on their way out, that's fer sure!

Les Carpenter said...

Fiscal responsibility, pro growth, and a warijess of foreign entanglements at one time defined the republican party. They are no defined by fiscal irresponsibility and deficits galore, pro war, and outsourcing production to where labor is cheapest. Although Clinton gets the credit for NAFTA... PEROT was right. In a broad sense.

Jerry Critter said...

Clinton was a good "at one time" republican.

A Stark Naked Tooth said...

The rightwing-islamo-fascist anti-global warming mafia has successfully censored our public language and attitudes:

Jindal to Obama: No climate change talk for Katrina visit

Gov. Rick Scott’s ban on climate change term extended to other state agencies

If the islamofascist wingers don't want you to talk about climate change/global warming, they'll put duck tape over your mouths. We must have rightwing PC rule! They NEVER acknowledge the logs in their beady little eyes.

Les Carpenter said...

They NEVER acknowledge the logs in their beady little eyes.

Does any extreme partisan of any party?