Go ahead and check the link in the description of this video for the full backstory.
Essentially, TED didn’t post this talk. TED doesn’t post a lot of talks; they take their sweet-ass time releasing videos that haven’t yet been released every week.
But this one they specifically didn’t post because, apparently, it was not fantastically received like many other talks, and was, according to them, partisan, something they try to avoid.
It’s a barely 6 minute talk about inequality. There’s nothing fancy here. It’s rather full of common sense. There are little to no facts that this man brings up that you shouldn’t know as someone who lives in the US in this day and age, unless you’re someone who selectively ignores them or misinterprets them.
I read the TED spokesperson’s reasons for not posting this video first, and then watched the video. I encourage you to do the opposite. Or the same. Whatever. I simply fail to see how this talk is partisan. He notes that “higher taxes will kill jobs” is a Republican dogma. This isn’t a partisan statement: it is a factual statement.
There is no good reason to forego taxing the richest amongst us the appropriate amount. There is no good reason that the rich comparatively make exponentially more than they once did, while on the same scale, anybody below super rich is making much less. Our economy suffers for it. And with an increasing poverty rate which is largely ignored as an issue, people suffer for it. They die for it.
What a stupid fucking thing to die for. To starve for. To be out on the street for. To not be able to take care of your kids for. A billionaire foregoing millions of dollars that he will never use, or at the very least, that he doesn’t need, while people starve at an increasing rate.
“Oh, it isn’t his duty to help.”
I don’t give a shit. This way of doing things is unsustainable. If the middle classes continue along the decline they’ve been on for the last 30 years, in another 30, we’ll be below the poverty line too. That’s not a model that works. We don’t even need to make a moral claim here. It’s broken.
Let’s fix it.
