Bernie Sanders, Buckminster Fuller, And Elon Mush All Agree That An "Age Of Abundance" Is Upon Us. To Rise To This Occasion (As Norway Has Already Risen To The Occasion), We Need A New Social Contract Under Aegis Of "The General Welfare"
Dad, a 32 hour work week and the need for creativity.
Trump Family Too Much and Never Enough: https://i.imgflip.com/b3o2ap.jpg
We are running out of time to do something bold, decisive, and transformative to accomplish the real, viable goal of "saving the world," before people who have been degraded into ignorance and despair by grotesque wealth inequality (and/or absence of virtue as virtue was defined by the Founding Fathers) destroy some critical, sine qua non, planetary ecosystem.
Unbridled "Cowboy" Capitalism as practiced in the United States of America is hell-bent on political and environmental dystopia.
AI Overview
Of the 195 economies tracked by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 174 countries have a nominal GDP of less than $1 trillion. (Here's AI's entire reply to the question, "How many countries have less than $1 trillion dollars in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In light of Elon Musk having become the world's first trillionaire, I thought his extreme wealth would be informatively contextualized by seeing how many countries' GDP was less than Musk's net worth.
It is difficult to advance my argument without getting bogged in "information overload."
Although I will engage a modicum of "formal" argument below, I am confident it is enough to scroll through the memes that illustrate this essay, and after doing so, it will either be apparent that Christian fundamentalists are right - and that we are entering the "End Times."
Or, you will realize that something revolutionary, something fundamentally transformative, must be done while the rapidly closing window of opportunity still permits radical change. (Apocalypse derives from two Greek words; one meaning to lift, and the other meaning "the veil." More on this below, but for now I propose that the prophetic title of the Christian bible's last book, points to the "lifting of veil" by which the "rich and powerful" have always bamboozled humanity into believing that there is no alternative to whatever iteration of "Dominance-Submission Hierarchy" they wish to impose.)
Note well.
Time is running out.
"Winning the White House in 2028" will be as disastrous as Joe Biden's remarkably decent and productive presidency, if the left side of the aisle continues affirming the existing liberal (and neo-liberal) model.
Biden gave way directly to Trump -- a second time for God's sake! -- because the simple people who make up Trump's Base realized one fundamentally true thing: common folk (deriving from Rust Belt blue-collar workers) had been systematically left out of the left-wing's vision of prosperity disproportionately based on academic accomplishment, a vision that did not take blue collar workers, the underclass, and "the suicidally-desperately disenfranchised" into ANY kind of meaningful account.
They were systematically left behind.
Now, to prevent their desperation from "killing us all" (with democracy being the first casualty), we need to build a new world based on the assertive assumption that a modicum of real prosperity will be everyone's portion, and that looking upon all wealth as Common Wealth will enable everyone to achieve the third of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: "Freedom from Want." https://share.google/aimode/weo6nBJ8jnSpsRLvi
Historically, a "commonwealth" is a traditional English term (dating to the 15th century) meaning the "common well-being" or public welfare.
While the dimwits sling accusations of "socialist" and "communist" n'er-do-wells, I propose that the name of the evolving Democratic Party be changed to "The Commonwealth Party," and that its motto be excerpted from the Preamble to the United States Constitution: "Dedicated to Promoting the General Welfare."
AI Overview: The definitive quote matching your description belongs to the legendary systems theorist, architect, and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller. [1]
His exact quote is:
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." [1, 2]
Fuller frequently critiqued what he viewed as dysfunctional, obsolete governance structures (such as politics, politicians, and rigid national borders), arguing that humanity should treat Earth like a unified system ("Spaceship Earth"). He believed that direct opposition to broken systems only exhausts our energy and reinforces their defenses, whereas designing a superior alternative naturally renders the old system irrelevant. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Other Notable Quotations with the Same Core Vision
If you are looking for similar quotes by notable thinkers that advocate for building entirely new visions rather than trying to fix or fight broken governance, these quotes align perfectly:
Socrates (via Dan Millman's Way of the Peaceful Warrior):
"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change."
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
There are four ways in which luminary prophets have pointed to real pathways to universal prosperity (except for a small portion of every human population whose physical bodies are incapable of engaging material Reality sufficiently to make their way forward. These people will be taken care of.).
Here are those four paths:
1.) Create a Sovereign Wealth Fund akin to Norway's "Oil Money Fund," described below, complete with informative video:
Norway's "Sovereign Wealth Fund" Owns About 1.5% Of Every Publicly Traded Company In The World. These resources belong to the people of Norway, just as a similar "Sovereign Wealth Fund could belong to the people of the United States.
If you don't believe the above claim, here is a brief video explanation of how it happened, plus Google AI's validation of the video's content.
There is NOTHING in our way but lack of vision. Explain to "the American people" how they would benefit just as every single Norwegian benefits, and despite our dumbed-down status as corporate cogs, folks are still innately smart enough to recognize a truly good deal when one is properly pointed out to them.
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1-A) In similar vein...
Just today, 10/19/2026, the cutting-edge technology company, Anthropic, announced plans to commit 5% of its company shares to a newly established Anthropic Public Benefit Fund
https://share.google/aimode/kgc2B2rDNLVDYn46o
There is no good reason not to oblige EVERY publicly traded company in the United States to create analogous Public Benefit Funds (aka Sovereign Wealth Funds).
Notice that you cannot come up with a "good reason" because there is NO good reason.
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AI giant Anthropic commits 5% of shares to ‘public benefit’ fund
Claude creator says fund could be used for donations to NGOs and ‘direct distributions to specific populations’.
This fact-checked analysis by Warren Buffett - arguably America's most successful investment capitalist - bears continual repetition.
Fact Checked By Snopes: Warren Buffett Says If Just 800 Other American Companies Paid The Same 21% Tax Rate That His Company "Berkshire Hathaway" Pays, There Would Be No Need For Any Individual American To Pay Any Federal Income Tax Or Any Social Security Tax
The short form of my Buffett post - with commentary:
Fact Checked By Snopes: Warren Buffett Says If Just 800 Other American Companies Paid The Same 21% Tax Rate That His Company "Berkshire Hathaway" Pays, There Would Be NO Need For Any Individual American To Pay Any Federal Income Tax, Or Any Social Security Tax, Or Any...
Watch it as many times as it takes to move you forward it to the people in your email directory.
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3.) A decade ago, in Hillsborough, North Carolina, I co-founded El Restaurante Ixtapa. I was surprised, verging stunned, to realize that every restaurant in Orange County (NC) is taxed 1% of their gross income, in addition to their property tax, their state tax and their federal tax. If a 1% tax can be levied on every restaurant in the county -- be it a Michelin-rated restaurant or a greasy spoon -- surely a 1% tax (or, let's say a 5% tax -- could be levied on every American corporation, just as Bernie Sanders has now proposed. Bernie's 5% proposal would raise a LOT of money with which a lot could be done by way of making the United States a minimally civilized country. Here's what Bernie's tax bonanza would enable: https://share.google/aimode/oxeNMB4oTYcLvyEme
What I envision (in conjunction with new tax initiatives like Bernie's) is the following top-to-bottom, stem-to-stern re-working of the inheritance tax so that every billionaire can die a billionaire, and every child of a multi-billionaire will inherit a billion.
How To Make A Millionaire Of Every Person Living In Poverty As Norway Has Already Done
I had a brainstorm today.
There are several interrelated parts to my brainstorm.
Although the ultimate goal of my proposal is to eliminate poverty - and in the process make the United States more prosperous place - it will be First necessary to the wealthy in a roundabout way.
Clearly, the wealthy - and even more so ultra-wealthy billionaires - refuse to be taxed in any meaningful way (which, by my lights, means taxing their unrealized capital gains).
My immediate thought was that nobody can spend $1 billion in our lifetime, And so my initial impulse was to tax the welfare money they have excess of $1 billion.
But the welfare are powerful enough to ensure that this real allocation of wealth is a non-starter.
And so let billionaires keep all of their money, but with the obligation that they use their net worth in excess of $1 billion (or one billion per child) to play the same financial games they always play, which is to say they will use their excess capital to invest as they see fit in order to make more money.
Billionaires have far more than enough money to purchase the necessities of life with the "lone" billion that is "left," even after devoting their supernumerary billions to grow "The General Welfare." (The preamble to the Constitution -- which is, in effect, the mission statement of the Constitution -- reads:
Note that the Preamble even uses the dread word, "Welfare."
In any event, there will be no interruption in the way billionaires live their lives, as they will be encouraged to go about their customary business of accumulating even more money.
Money accumulation is The Game they play.
So let them play it.
After all, they’re good at it.
However, when they die, only $1 billion devolves to each of their blood heirs, whereas the rest goes to a federal government fund that would be used to finance "the infancy accounts" of all American newborns.
Senator Corey Booker has long been a proponent of these infancy accounts, and in the last year Donald Trump himself has created a financial vehicle of similar type, called "Trump Accounts."
Baby Bonds - financed by the federal government - will rely on Commonwealth Funds to make deposits into these accounts at regular intervals, and over the first 25 years of a child's life,they will lift youngsters from poverty by taking advantage of the “the miracle of compound interest.”
Here is how this “miracle” works.
When $250,000.00 is deposited into each newborn’s "savings account" at a 6% interest rate, that deposit will make each and every child a millionaire by age 23.4. Here's the math: https://share.google/aimode/btjhziYpfvmv6aRM9 (250K is not a very daunting sum when we keep in mind that it costs $50,000.00 a year to keep an American behind bars. Of course the amount saved can be argued six ways from Sunday, but American prisoners who are currently behind bars and will remain there for 10 years cost half a trillion dollars to incarcerate.)
Keep in mind the annual cost of imprisoning that 3% to 4% of the population currently behind bars is in a country where "the average annual cost for keeping a prisoner behind bars is $46,411 per year, while the state average is roughly $45,000 to $50,000 per year, with individual states ranging from $23,000 to over $130,000.
Here's the math: https://share.google/aimode/2PTgoZ2IkWS0FaZA8
And note well that this 3% to 4% imprisonment rate for poor people is seven (7) times higher than the imprisonment rate for the general population.
If, as the statistics indicate, we were to lower the imprisonment rate by 14.3%, most impoverished prisoners will no be a drain on government budgets by requiring social services, nor will they be inclined to live lives of crime to insure the survival of themselves and their families (just as the protagonist of “Les Miserables” - Jean Valjean became a criminal in order to ensure his own family’s survival.)
The overall result of my proposal would be the elimination of poverty, and the overall enrichment of American society because more resources will be available for profitable investment, and every billionaire remains a billionaire.
To be crystal clear, this expanded profitability will arise not only from "Baby Bonds" financed by the inheritance tax formula I outline above, but also from two additional spring boards: 1.) the money saved on social services will be put to profitable use, and, 2.) the money saved from the needlessness of mass incarceration will be put to profitable use.
Has Charlie Kirk would say, “Prove me wrong.”
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And if you don't think the above argument will enable material wellbeing for every human being, consider Warren Buffett's analysis and perhaps split the "funding" between "billionaire" inheritance tax, and increased corporate taxation so that the contribution of just 200 American companies paying the same tax rate that Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, happily pay would put us "way over the top":
Warren Buffett Blows The Cover Of The Ultra-Wealthy. If We Focus On Propagating Buffett's Revelation -- Only This One Revelation -- The Ruling Class's Overarching (And Nearly Invisible) Structure Of Dominance-Submission-Bondage Would Come To A Prompt Crashing End
Chesterton the dullness of the rich --- https://share.google/aimode/OOrFerMO3EXtHHfXC
Compendium Of G.K. Chesterton Posts (And What I Consider The Necessary Companion Piece Of Spanish Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset's Views On "The Incipient Unraveling Of The Western World)
The preamble to the United States Constitution contains 52 words.
Everyone knows the opening salvo, "We the People."
But 9 other words ( 17.3% of the entire document) are devoted to justice, happiness and promoting the General Welfare."
The preamble, which is rightly viewed as the Constitution's "mission statement" - is "to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility (... and) to promote the general Welfare." https://share.google/aimode/PhDqrOGZv7OwRkq2a
Currently, there is vanishingly little tranquility in these "United" States - on either side of the political aisle.
And there is even less "general Welfare."
Trump and his team perpetrate some daily monstrosity to remind "the People" that these oligarchs consider themselves "above the law" (thus eroding Justice), and both Trump's actions and his ideology scream that "the general Welfare" means nothing to the oligarchs, plutocrats and kakistocrats now in power, all of them grifters and thieves, not to mention Constitution Trashers and Democracy Demolitionists.
Trump's anti-constitutional, autocratic regime may well crash-and-burn with the mid-term elections in November, but unless we establish the Rule of Law as the sine qua non cornerstone of the United States, the outcome will be no more restorative than Joe Biden's presidency which, while a quite good administration in the eyes of presidential historians, was, at bottom, more of "the same old, same old."
The same old same old.
Bucky and Jung
The "new thing under the sun" is The Apocalypse, not considered as conflagrational destruction, but as the word's two part etymology indicates, "lifting the veil." https://share.google/aimode/iR6k4QkGBdxWSipCF
Since our ancestors first climbed down from the trees in Olduvai Gorge, the most strident chest thumpers have insured that they - and they alone - occupy top rung of the everpresent "Dominance-Submission" hierarchy, and by primacy of place they sequester most of thee available resources for themselves.
Traditionally, this imposition of overpowering "upper body strength" has cowed most hominids and most humans to play along, persuaded that crumbs are better than death.
But a new tide is rising, and - astonishingly! - it was Donald Trump who taught us that just one man with the support of dolts-in-the-guise-of-true-believers can introduce a new world order, described by lifelong conservative commentator David Brooks in these words: "Donald Trump believes in one thing. He believes that might makes right. And, in that, he agrees with Vladimir Putin that they are birds of a feather. And he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that’s safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive."https://dianeravitch.net/2025/02/28/pbs-brooks-and-capehart-on-the-white-house-debacle/
Unless we are cowards and refuse to follow Donald Trump's ground-breaking lead, "the existing order -- the perennial "Dominance-Submission Hierarchy" -- can be overthrown in short order by making clear that the Ultra-Wealthy are obliged by the Constitution's demand that they promote "the general Welfare" to share their hugely disproportionate slice of the nation's now-privatized wealth, which to date has innsured that most Americans lead tenuous, if not degraded.
"Once Upon A Time... The Hidden History Of Corporations In The United States"
From now on, all Americans will enjoy a modicum of prosperity and will no longer have to suffer, die and, most crucially, endure degradation as their daily lot.
This modicum of prosperity already prevails in Western Europe, so there is no reason why the wealthiest country in the world cannot do the same. Even Elon Musk - a self-seeking snake-in-the-grass if ever there was one, recently announced
Here is a list of great thinkers and their concordant ideas that we cannot replace the old world from within the paradigm of the old world. https://share.google/aimode/EZQ2GLKD3zYINouUC
Remember.
Trump, a bedrock ignoramus, changed the world.
Completely!
It will never be the same again.
Sure, it was relatively easy to send the world to hell in a handbasket.
But the point is: He did it!
He transformed the whole world singlehandedly.
As I see it we need to accept Trump's implicit challenge of "Changing The World" so that, henceforth, every human being will have a modicum of prosperity.
What is the excuse behind YOUR resistance to "getting on board?"
If we don't accept Trump's implicit challenge to revolutionize planetary economics, what will happen in 2028 when the Democratic Party wins the Oval Office is that we will witness the manifestation of "Biden 2.0," another ho-hum liberal presidency that fails to change everything - "root and branch!"
This is not in the traditional political sense "revolutionary."
This is the assertion of rudimentary sanity in a world that, predictably, went insane.
Ike warned us about this insanity, and the loss of our Democractic Republic.
The most courageous words ever spoken from the Oval Office were spoken by Dwight Eisenhower, the general who coordinated Uncle Sam's victory in World War II (with massive help from Churchill, Stalin and the non-Germanic underfround all over Europe.
Ike's bona fides are unimpeachable, even in the historical imagination of Republicans:
Eisenhower Reveals THE DEEP STATE: Ike's Farewell Address Televised From The Oval Office Sounds The Alarm That The "Military-Industrial Complex" Comprises The Greatest Threat To American Democracy By Making Us A Murderous Corporatocracy
There is no getting around the nation's need to reestablish the American Experiment under aegis of "the general Welfare" and "the Common Good," and to that end be at least as sweepingly transformative as Trump has been by his unimpeded blitzkrieg all across America's political culture.
We must be at least as bold in "shaking things up" as the cowardly, anti-American toddler has been
If we are at all serious about saving America, we would return - with bells on - to the mission of "promoting the general Welfare, Happiness, domestic tranquility, and establishing Justice."
To achieve this vision we much dethrone the whole set of interlocking capitalist ruses, delusions, illusions and presumptuousness that assumes putting people ahead of profits is the cornerstone norm of greatness and "progress."
"Once Upon A Time... The Hidden History Of Corporations In The United States"
Updated Compendium Of Pax-Barbaria Posts Concerning The Ravages Of Capitalism - Personal, Interpersonal, Political, Social, Economic and Environmental Ravages, 4/17/2026
and therefore not sweeping enough to prevent reversion to the grotesqueries of Trump's first administration, but now "new and improved," embodying a stem-to-stern autocracy, supposedly ordained by "Christian Dominionism" and the overarching authority of God's Law, a set of circumstances which, in the view of lifelong conservative columnist, David Brooks, noted that "Donald Trump believes in one thing. He believes that might makes right. And ... he agrees with Vladimir Putin that ... (they) are trying to create a world that's safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive."
I repeat: "They are trying to create a world that's safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive."
The whole bloody ethos must be torn from the ground root-and-branch, and "the general Welfare," advocated, supported and advanced by government dedicated to "The Common Good," a recent synonym for "the general Welfare."
"The Greatest Generation: Labor, Capital And Betrayal Of The Social Contract"
The secularly-satanic miscreants of Trump World (unlike the "sandlot sinners" who reside on the left-side of the aisle) are beyond-the-pale liars, cheats, felons, thieves, rapists, pedophiles-and-pedophile-enablers.
That paradigm, which has now taken root at the highest levels of government must be uprooted.
It is time for bold action that re-forms (and re-informs) the entire putrescent system.
(Minutes ago, I finished watching Jack Lemmon. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas in "The China Syndrome," a revelatory movie that cuts to the quick of Cowboy Capitalism's casual murderousness, and its invariable passion for putting profits ahead of people, as witnessed in the Military-Industrial Complex, which brings us Pete Hegseth's "Department of War, and Trump's astonishingly cruel - and equally dimwitted - Whimsy War on Iran.)
If Trump can buy off his peeps with $2000.00 tariff bribes, and $5000.00 "help me win the mid-terms" bribes, we can actually offer a modicum of prosperity to every American, including good healthcare and shelter for those Americans who are so mentally ill that they cannot (or will not) even accept the government's help in making them prosperous.
It was Ronald Reagan who trashed the idea of government as a helpful entity, and it is Donald Trump who has brought Reagan's trash-talking to its beyond pornographic conclusion.
There will be no need to increase individual income tax because the Ultra-Weallthy can keep it all on the condition that they keep using their genius for profitable investment right up till the moment they die. And then, except for a billion dollars that goes to the decedent's spouse and to each of his/her children, all the wealth that they have YUGELY amassed will be swept to to into a sovereign wealth fund like Norway's (described below).
Think it's not workable?
As Charlie Kirk would say, "Prove me wrong."
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How will America's formerly poor people use their new prosperity? (I remember my Dad at the dinner table in the mid 1950s, talking about the big socio-economic move to a 32 hour workweek, and the need to train people to use their leisure creatively in order to avoid the hedonistic cultural decay that would otherwise set it. It will be a problematic transition, as evidenced by the hedonism and cultural decay of people who live lives of perpetual leisure because they have no work, and not enough dole money to do anything but drug themselves (recently with fentanyl and other opiods) into what are called "Deaths of Despair."
Well, these issues (as occur with any unfolding process) will be worked out over time through a "Department of Responsible Investment" (...or some similarly named agency).
Here are a few possibilities:
Educational opportunities at state-sponsored universities and public trade schools (including community colleges, which offer "trade training" and arts training) would be among many approved uses for "Commonwealth Funds."
As educational advancement is incrementally certified, so too will more incremental aliquots of funding be made available to launch business initiatives under guidance of a new-and-improved "Small Business Administration. After initial "seed funding," additional investment funds would be released according to proof-of-progress in the profitability of a citizen's business initiative, whatever its nature, be it a landscaping company, a restaurant, a band, a theater, or highly creative start-ups like those seen on Shark Tank. https://share.google/aimode/x9qE8yh1zuRlEHoVh
But for starters, I would suggest that each person's patrimony be invested in "Green ETFs", and that people live off their profits, and -- if in a given years their ETF holdings don't turn a profit, they would live off their dividend earnings and whatever else they earn on the open market.
Google AI's Validation Of The Claims Made In The Above Video
Design scientist and philosopher (of "the intersection between technology and theology"), Buckminster Fuller, observed "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
This post which feels to me like the most important political document I have ever written probes the "new model" which makes the old model ridiculous, and does so in a way that everybody can understand the prevalent absurdity of what has "always" passed for inalterable reality.
If you disagree, please make your argument and send it to me: alanarchibaldo@gmail.com
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I cannot recommend strongly enough that you view Ken Burn's documentary series, "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History."
"The Roosevelts" explains how FDR, inspired by the progressive politics of his 5th cousin, President Teddy Roosevelt, decided that government must not stand idly by while American oligarchs, plutocrats and kakistocrats prolong the ruse that "real Americans" must lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.
And Franklin "welcomed the hatred" of the "economic royalists" who wished to roll back his democratizing accomplishments, just as the current Republican Party is entirely dedicated to doing.
Excerpt (Now here's the rub...): For decades, the two major political parties have functioned less as opposing visions of society and more as rival management teams serving overlapping concentrations of corporate and financial power. Their ideological branding obscures a shared commitment to maintaining systems of wealth and hierarchy.
The Democratic Party presents itself as the responsible steward - offering moral rhetoric, moderate social reforms, and a technocratic polish.
It speaks the language of inclusion and progress, and does indeed offer some critical checks on polluting and predatory industries, yet it remains structurally dependent on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the consulting-class networks that mediate elite power.
Its economic interventions tend to be symbolic or marginal, tinkering with capitalism’s sharpest edges rather than confronting its core logic. Cultural progressivism becomes a substitute for substantive economic democracy, a way to claim moral high ground while leaving the fundamentals of concentrated ownership untouched.
The Republican Party dispenses with subtlety.
It embraces what might be called gangster capitalism - a celebration of hierarchy, wealth accumulation, and punitive social policy.
It weaponizes resentment and nationalist mythology while shielding the most predatory forms of corporate power from scrutiny.
Its anti-woke crusade is not a cultural rebellion; it is a branding strategy, an ideological smokescreen designed to redirect public anger away from oligarchs and toward scapegoats. This is class warfare disguised as culture war, serving the same interests Roosevelt warned against with less shame and more spectacle.
Both parties therefore perform a critical function: they discipline the political imagination. They limit the range of acceptable policy, debate, and economic structure.
They tell the public that our crisis - ecological, economic, social, democratic - can be resolved without challenging concentrated power. They uphold the fiction that voters are choosing between fundamentally different futures, when in reality they are choosing between two versions of elite rule: a polite, incremental one and a ruthless, theatrical one.
Roosevelt’s insight - that “government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob” - anticipated this moment.
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If you don't have time to watch all 14 hours (as I have now done twice), just watch Episode #5.
Trump is a malefactor of great wealth.
And in light of this fact, I'm going to get in the faces of my fellow liberals and progressives.
The Democratic Party has become effete because it lacks sufficient courage to say, "We welcome your hatred."
Trump won the Oval Office twice because he knew that people were REALLY ready to shake things up.
We liberals and progressives need to take that very maneuver from Trump's playbook in order to propose a seismic shakeup in American governance, primarily by recognizing that we have always lived in an oligarchy with democratic trappings, but now have devolved into a plutocracy-kakistocracy which life-long conservative David Brooks has categorize in the following words:
Here is the staggering amount of wealth that America's richest 10% have sequestered for themselves since Donald Trump first took office.
Eisenhower Reveals THE DEEP STATE: Ike's Farewell Address Televised From The Oval Office Sounds The Alarm That The "Military-Industrial Complex" Comprises The Greatest Threat To American Democracy By Making Us A Murderous Corporatocracy
The ultra-wealthy - and even more so, the "routine wealthy" - do pay their fair share of income tax.
But income tax is a piddling part of the wealth countrolled by people so wealthy that their income is only a minuscule, if not infinitesitmal part, of their wealth that is tied up in "investments" that fall under the umbrella of "unrealized capital gains."
It is THERE, in the domain of "UNREALIZED CAPITAL GAINS" that the REAL MONEY makes rich people, richer and richer.
Trevor Noah
America's wealth inequality is more obscene than the most unbridled pornography that seasoned pornographers can imagine - all of it wrought by a pussy-grabbing, anti-Constitutional, Democracy Demolitionist who is proud of his greed, eagerly admitting that he "loves money."
"The Love Of Money Is The Root Of All Evil" - An Open Invitation To Christian Conservatives
Behold what America's unbridled, cowboy capitalism has wrought:
Enough!
Let the mofos know that they've been "found out," that they are dedicated 24/7 to killing EVERYTHING meaningful in "The American Dream."
And if we do not spread the word, it is because each of us is a cowards, abjectly resigned to the hostile takeover of the United States by corporate marauders who who "run America like a business," and NOT to "promote the general Welfare."
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How To Make A Millionaire Of Every Person Living In Poverty As Norway Has Already Done
I had a brainstorm today.
There are several interrelated parts to my brainstorm.
Although the ultimate goal of my proposal is to eliminate poverty - and in the process make the United States more prosperous place - it will be First necessary to the wealthy in a roundabout way.
Clearly, the wealthy - and even more so ultra-wealthy billionaires - refuse to be taxed in any meaningful way (which, by my lights, means taxing their unrealized capital gains).
My immediate thought was that nobody can spend $1 billion in our lifetime, And so my initial impulse was to tax the welfare money they have excess of $1 billion.
But the welfare are powerful enough to ensure that this real allocation of wealth is a non-starter.
And so let billionaires keep all of their money, but with the obligation that they use their net worth in excess of $1 billion (or one billion per child) to play the same financial games they always play, which is to say they will use their excess capital to invest as they see fit in order to make more money.
Billionaires have far more than enough money to purchase the necessities of life with the "lone" billion that is "left," even after devoting their supernumerary billions to grow "The General Welfare." (The preamble to the Constitution -- which is, in effect, the mission statement of the Constitution -- reads:
Note that the Preamble even uses the dread word, "welfare."
In any event, there will be no interruption in the way billionaires live their lives, as they go about their customary business of accumulating even more money.
Money accumulation is The Game they play.
So let them play it.
After all, they’re good at it.
However, when they die, only $1 billion devolves to each of their blood heirs, whereas all the rest goes to a federal government fund that would be used to finance "the infancy accounts" of all American newborns.
Senator Corey Booker has long been a proponent of these infancy accounts, and in the last year Donald Trump himself has created an account of similar type, called "Trump Accounts."
These Baby Bonds - financed by the federal government which deposits into them at regular intervals, take advantage of what is often called “the miracle of compound interest.”
Here is what happens by virtue of this “miracle.”
When $250,000.00 is deposited into each newborn’s "savings account" with a 6% interest rate, that initial deposit will make each and every child a millionaire by age 23.4. Here's the math: https://share.google/aimode/btjhziYpfvmv6aRM9
Keep in mind the annual cost of imprisoning that 3% to 4% of the population currently behind bars is in a country where "the average annual cost for keeping a prisoner behind bars is $46,411 per year, while the state average is roughly $45,000 to $50,000 per year, with individual states ranging from $23,000 to over $130,000.
Here's the math: https://share.google/aimode/2PTgoZ2IkWS0FaZA8
And note well that this 3% to 4% imprisonment rate for poor people is seven (7) times higher than the imprisonment rate for the general population.
If, as the statistics indicate, we were to lower the imprisonment rate by 14.3%, most impoverished prisoners will no be a drain on government budgets by requiring social services, nor will they be inclined to live lives of crime to insure the survival of themselves and their families (just as the protagonist of “Les Miserables” - Jean Valjean became a criminal in order to ensure his own family’s survival.)
The overall result of my proposal would be the elimination of poverty, and the overall enrichment of American society because more resources will be available for profitable investment, and every billionaire remains a billionaire.
To be crystal clear, this expanded profitability will arise not only from "Baby Bonds" financed by the inheritance tax formula I outline above, but also from two additional spring boards: 1.) the money saved on social services will be put to profitable use, and, 2.) the money saved from the needlessness of mass incarceration will be put to profitable use.
Has Charlie Kirk would say, “Prove me wrong.”
*****
And if you don't think the above argument will enable material wellbeing for every human being, consider Warren Buffett's analysis and perhaps split the "funding" between "billionaire" inheritance tax, and increased corporate taxation so that the contribution of just 200 American companies paying the same tax rate that Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, happily pay would put us "way over the top":
Warren Buffett Blows The Cover Of The Ultra-Wealthy. If We Focus On Propagating Buffett's Revelation -- Only This One Revelation -- The Ruling Class's Overarching (And Nearly Invisible) Structure Of Dominance-Submission-Bondage Would Come To A Prompt Crashing End
I venture that ONLY capitalist pigs will disagree.
Notably, the vast majority of capitalists who refuse to accept regulation are demonstrably piggish.
Unregulated, "feral" capitalists will oppose these proposals tooth.
But their only argument is that they want to continue being piggish when a billion dollars for themselves (and another billion for each of their children) is more than enough money for any healthy, contributory, responsible citizen who is interested in the General Welfare.
Remember.
The damage done to the body politic by not using the nation's "commonwealth" to eliminate poverty is monstrous. Grotesque. Mean-spirited and malicious by any Judeo-Christian measure.
And in the process, the United States will become a model of universal prosperity, and instead of the wealthy fleeing the country (which would be an apt measure of their hatred for promoting The General Welfare), "everyone" will want to come here - especially those clever, creative people who have not yet made their first billion.
Keep in mind that I am not against Capitalism.
To the contrary, I am all for it - at least as it Capitalism began in America, with corporate charters needed to satisfy terms laid down by the community... and if the corporations did not, their charters would be revoked.
However the financing of universal prosperity, I think it would be wise to follow Norway's path in creating a "Sovereign Wealth Fund" that benefits every citizen equally, and I suggest we do this by way of nationalizing Artificial Intelligence companies, if for no other reason than to put that monster under the whole nation's control. AI will not "advance" as quickly as it would without any bridle, but the "slowness" thus imposed will prove to be beneficial.
To repeat the beginning of this essay... or, in case you're more amenable to reading my introduction now that it is clear how only piggish capitalists (like Trump, Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg) stand in the way of prosperity for every American, and every American household, here is its reiteration:
Norway's "Sovereign Wealth Fund" Owns About 1.5% Of Every Publicly Traded Company In The World
If you don't believe this claim, here is a brief video explanation of how it happened, plus Google AI's validation of the video's content.
Buckminster Fuller: Compendium Of Keen Observation, Wonderful Innovation, And Deep Dive Pursuit Of Truth -- Without Which We Have Nothing... No Matter How Wealthy We Might Measure Ourselves To Be
Here is a list of luminaries, starting with Elon Musk, who claim universal abundance is at hand:
Elon Musk has repeatedly doubled down on his prediction that artificial intelligence and advanced robotics will soon usher in an "age of abundance" featuring "universal high income". Speaking to reporters at a White House tech summit in September 2026, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO stated that superintelligence and humanoid robots will drive the cost of goods and services down so dramatically that poverty will be eliminated. Rather than a basic safety net, Musk argues that the sheer volume of automated production will allow governments to distribute high-level income via federal checks without causing inflation. [1, 2, 3] (The full AI Google overview is at https://share.google/aimode/tRdyR53oXYWia38Js
AI Overview
Prominent figures across technology, economics, and futurism—including Peter Diamandis, Sam Altman, Ray Kurzweil, and Marc Andreessen—have similarly argued that rapid advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, and clean energy are ushering in an era of universal abundance.
Key Figures Predicting Universal Abundance
Peter Diamandis (Futurist & Founder of the XPRIZE Foundation): Co-author of Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, Diamandis has spent over a decade arguing that exponential technologies (AI, robotics, synthetic biology, and infinite computing) will demonetize essential needs. He posits that water, energy, healthcare, and education will shift from resource scarcity to ubiquitous abundance for all humanity.
Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI): In his manifesto Moore’s Law for Everything, Altman argued that AI will drive down the marginal cost of labor and production toward near zero. He predicts that as goods, housing, healthcare, and education drop radically in price, society will produce enough wealth to support everyone, advocating for public equity funds and universal basic assets to distribute the surplus.
Ray Kurzweil (Author & Principal Researcher at Google): In works such as The Singularity Is Near and The Singularity Is Nearer, Kurzweil projects that exponential hardware curves and nanotech/AI breakthroughs will collapse the cost of physical and computational goods, rendering classical economic scarcity obsolete.
Marc Andreessen (Co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz): In his Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Andreessen champions technological acceleration as the primary engine for eliminating material poverty, arguing that software and automation create a flywheel of continuous material and computational abundance.
Vinod Khosla (Venture Capitalist, Khosla Ventures): Khosla has frequently asserted that over the next 25 years, AI and robotics will make most physical goods and expertise essentially free, transforming GDP and paving the way for virtually limitless production capacity across medicine, food, and energy.
Demis Hassabis (CEO of Google DeepMind): Hassabis has framed DeepMind’s mission as using AI to solve fundamental scientific bottlenecks—accelerating material discovery, disease eradication, and fusion energy—to build a post-scarcity, radically abundant civilization.
Would you like to explore the specific economic mechanisms proposed to fund and distribute this abundance (such as Universal High Income or equity dividends), or examine the major critiques from economists questioning whether post-scarcity can overcome physical resource constraints?
Moore's Law for Everything
Moore's Law for Everything - Sam Altman
Mar 16, 2021 — The best way to increase societal wealth is to decrease the cost of goods, from food to video games. Technology will rapidly drive...
Diamandis
Abundance Book by Peter Diamandis
Abundance, space entrepreneur … document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, infinite computing, ubiquitous broadba...
Simon & Schuster
Abundance | Book by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler
Feb 15, 2009 — About the Authors Paul Smith Peter H. Diamandis Peter H. Diamandis (Diamandis.com) is a New York Times bestselling author and foun...
May 10, 2026 — the Tesla and xAI CEO sees the possibility that AI and robotics will make everyone rich, an outcome he calls "universal high income."
So, if the avaricious capitalists themselves see the writing on the wall, why -- but for resigned desparation -- are you not able to get on board (assuming you're not).
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