I’m going to correct you. Billionaires were also evil during the guilded age they literally burned company housing down with families in them and had the army shoot down stikers. The thing is people took up arms and we were able to gain some workers rights because the pedophile class was scared not because they were kind. After all that they started doing things like that to repair their reputations. We’re at the part of the story where an uprising is needed but the mass surveillance police state is being rapidly built in anticipation of this

Public opinion used to matter, now they onow that they can get away with quite literally whatever they want.

They need reigned in.

Threaten the guillotines more aggressively. That's what worked previously.

Billionaires used to build libraries and hospital wings

Interesting. I don't think I've ever seen Rupert Murdoch laying down bricks. Are you sure those libraries weren't build by workers?

The modern wealthy are completely divorced from country and city. They no longer build a mansion and improve the town they built it in..now they own several mansions in different countries and the real status symbol is the private jet. The ability to go anywhere at anytime without any strings attached.

Before, the millionaire/billionaire was raised with the classist attitudes that often included charity works for the masses to keep favor with “the people” despite the horrible working conditions that they often kept the lower classes in. Orphanages, libraries, schools, hospitals, homes for the disabled, etc were all on the board for these kinds of “giving.” Of course there was no secret who donated, if their name wasn’t on the building.

Now the donations come with strings attached, rights to any profits from the research these facilities generate, naming rights, tax writeoffs, and can even be donations to charities already owned by a family member or someone already a subdivision of a subdivision of an LLC owned by a parent company of the billionaire.

Isn't capitalism great? Aren't you glad we're not doing the Scientific Socialism thing?

Can somebody please tell me what that Citizens United ruling is all about ?

( Brit in Australia )

They rewrote the tax laws to get the tax breaks where they didnt have to do philanthropic works

if you wanted a single image or chart or graph to illustrate what happened and when, to get where we (the u.s.) 'are' today...

this is it.

Therein lies the problem.

Thank you for sharing this, OP.

Wealth redistribution, American style

I'm sure it's true.

However, currently in Boston(U.S.), there are new hospital buildings going up at Mass. General Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer center that have Billionaire names attached.

A few more in the near pipeline.

JFC. Would be interesting to have this adjusted for inflation as well!

This goes to show America is a democracy for coorporations only. If you are a natural person, you are merely a wage slave.