Fuck the Billionaires and Fuck Wall Street

On balance, they are nothing but evil.

Wall Street values two things that are disruptive to the American economy: They only value the stockholders of a corporation and they only value short-term results.

First the overvaluing of the stockholders: Wall Street has demanded that companies only consider the interests of the stockholders. They don't give a shit about anything else. In the search for short-term gains, Wall Street pressures companies to abandon long-established factories, instead of investing in renovations of those factories. The casting aside of American factories results in the surrounding towns and cities becoming hollow shells. When companies were controlled by families, those families were happy to see a ten percent return in exchange for making life better for their communities. But that's not good enough for Wall Street, for if offshoring the production will get a 20% return, that's what they'll do, even if it means throwing 20,000 people out of work.

In the process, the value of labor is completely discounted. A stockholder who invests $50,000 in a company can sell their shares later on. maybe they'll make money on the deal, maybe they won't. If they invest elsewhere, they may recoup their investment. Contrast that to someone who goes to work for the company: They are investing their time and, to some degree, their health in the company. If the company closes the factory, those workers cannot get that time and physical health back. In a sense, the employees have made a far more serious investment in a company than a shareholder. But they are no more valued than a robot.

As to the billionaires, nobody emphasizes why those fuckers need to be heavily taxed than Adam Neumann. His start-up, WeWork, is failing, thousands of people are losing their jobs, while Neumann is walking away with over a billion dollars, including a $185 million "consulting fee" which was paid by the bank that bought his shares. When a history is written of the WeWork endeavor, I suspect that it's all going to look like a giant con that will make Trump's cons look amateur.

Other billionaires seem to think that their ability to make money translates into their being experts on everything else: George Soros, the Koch Brothers, Michael "Big Gulp" Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and, of course, El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago. Some of the aforementioned have been using their money to basically legally buy politicians to get things changed so that they can make more money without being hindered by niceties such as pollution laws or labor laws. "Fuck the World, As Long As I Get More" is their motto.

In a way, they are to be pitied. They are in a self-imposed race to amass more and more, regardless of the effect on their communities, their countries or the entire planet. In a just world, they'd probably be institutionalized in a place where they could shiv each other over games of Monopoly.

Wall Street is fretting mightily over the rise of Elizabeth Warren. They would do better to engage in an honest assessment as to why their conduct has given Sen. Warren the opening to appeal of the American people.