Below is my column in Fox.com on the interview last night of Michigan Democratic Senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed with Fox host Jesse Watters. (An earlier version appeared on the blog, but I have replaced it with this shorter version).
Here is the column:
Abdul El-Sayed is tackling a new national crisis: the excess of money held by some tragically wealthy citizens. In his interview this week with Fox host Jesse Watters, the Michigan Democratic Senatorial candidate not only reaffirmed his call for a wealth tax, but suggested that wealthy people really do not have much use for money that is best left to the public.
El-Sayed needs money. A lot of money. He has called for massive new programs to fund Medicare-for-All, reparations, roads, and other programs. He is only the latest Democratic leader to support a wealth tax, which would (in my opinion) be unconstitutional on the federal level and disastrous on a state level.
Earlier in the week, El-Sayed expressed full support for a wealth tax, including non-billionaires. He declared on a podcast: “I also think we got to start taxing wealth for people who now have over $100 million. I mean at that point like what are gonna [sic] even do with more money?”
Figures such as Rep. Ro Khanna have also called for a wealth tax on millionaires, not just billionaires. As some of us predicted, the use of billionaires was simply a strategic and political framing. Once politicians succeed in opening up this untapped wealth to taxation, they will gradually work down the tax rolls as they acquire a windfall in new revenue.
I discuss the tax in my book “Rage and the Republic” as an example of the “eat-the-rich” politics used by demagogues from ancient Athens to the French Revolution. Politicians seek to divide a population into “haves” and “have-nots” with the promise that citizens could have it all. Much of what El-Sayed said is ripped from the pages of such figures like Huey Long and his “share our wealth” campaigns in the 1930s.
In his Fox interview, El-Sayed reaffirmed his call for a wealth tax, adding:
“The question ultimately is, ‘Do you want to drive on good roads, or would you rather have a billionaire make a second billion?’ That’s what Mike Rogers wants. That’s why Donald Trump wants. Apparently, that’s what you want. I think the people in Michigan want something different.”
While El-Sayed has reported $686,069 in income with his wife in 2025, they would not be subject to the wealth tax. It would currently apply to those with $100 million or more in property and other forms of wealth.
El-Sayed appears to conflate or confuse wealth taxes and income taxes in the interview. He told Hannity, “If we tax you at 7%, you’re still going to make what? A cool $30 million off your billion dollars? I think that’s okay, they’re going to be okay, Jesse.”
It’s unclear what he is referencing. El-Sayed did not explain his assumptions. He may have been assuming that a $1 billion fortune generates a 10% annual return: $100 million in gains, less a hypothetical 7% wealth tax of $70 million, leaving $30 million. Whether such a return, tax rate and tax base are realistic is a separate question.
There is a great difference between a wealth tax and an income tax. The wealthy have already paid taxes on their wealth. Indeed, they pay income taxes when the money is earned and pay taxes on any profits from that money when it is invested in stock or property. A wealth tax is an additional tax on all that you own from homes to boats to art.
At a seven percent tax on wealth for those worth $100,000,000, the wealthy would pay an additional $7,000,000 every year in Michigan beyond their income taxes. In Michigan, the state tax of 4.25% (and the corporate tax on their businesses at 6%). If the wealth tax is added to an income tax, that would be in addition to the 37% top tax rate in the federal system.
Again, the wealth tax would continue to apply to what an individual owns in the form of cars, homes, and other property every year, regardless of whether income declines.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) drove this point home when she ran for president, taunting the wealthy that she was coming for “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.”
While some states allow a wealth tax, many of us view it as unconstitutional under the federal system. The federal government secured the right to tax individuals in 1913, but the 16th Amendment only approved income taxes.
This is why many of these same politicians are promising a hostile takeover of the Supreme Court by either eliminating the Court or packing it with an instant liberal majority. Once packed, the Court could greenlight a variety of unconstitutional measures.
Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.
Even if states like Michigan are allowed to do this, it will result in the same exodus that is unfolding in California, where an estimated trillions in jobs and revenue have been lost due to the threat of wealth taxes. That is why figures like Khanna and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) are calling for a national wealth tax, leaving the wealthy nowhere to go but out of the country.
This is precisely what socialist governments like France under François Mitterrand attempted in the last century, with disastrous results that tanked their economy and forced a rapid retreat from such policies.
As Michigan struggles to secure new businesses and jobs, El-Sayed is embracing the same policies that would decapitate the top of its tax base. While repeating the mantra that the wealthy are “not paying their fair share,” the top 10 percent pays more taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined. In 2023, the top 1 percent paid an estimated 38.4 percent of all federal individual income taxes.
El-Sayed has proven himself a gifted politician. He juxtaposes concrete benefits like new roads with the image of unused wealth among top earners. The fact is that Michigan will have fewer roads if it chases away top earners with their businesses and jobs.
Like Long, who referred to “our wealth” being held by the rich, El-Sayed portrays the property of the wealthy as rightfully belonging to the people, promising that “if we put a tax on wealth it would return a lot of that money back into public use.”
El-Sayed has perfected the “eat-the-rich” pitch in portraying the wealthy as virtual Scrooge McDucks who accumulate unused wealth as a type of vanity project. He has struck out at “people who have accumulated so much wealth that your money makes money.” That is also called investments that power the economy—and when your “money makes money,” it is taxed as income.
Nevertheless, El-Sayed is waging the same class war as other rising figures in the Democratic Party, denouncing “extreme wealth” as “an existential threat to our economy and our democracy and it demands a crisis-level response.”
The real crisis is unfolding as candidates like El-Sayed are promising trillions in new programs while promising to make the rich pay for it. As with Warren, their property is being portrayed as rightfully belonging to the public.
The problem is that both wealth and the wealthy are mobile and few are likely to stick around for El-Sayed’s people’s paradise in Michigan.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Stupid commies don’t understand how money works. Complete idiots who think they know everything. All born of extreme narcissism.
Disgusting, dirty, murderous commies are so stupid I laugh at their complete ignorance.
And it all started with that crazy —-ing Lincoln!
“It’s time to stop talkin’ and start chalkin’!”
– Chick Hearn, Lakers Sportscaster
_______________________________________
This is war.
This is the enemy.
Envy
If you’re not willing to own up to the “imperfections” our capitalist economy is thrusting on young adults — like starting out heavily in debt, having to forego marrying the partner they love, still living with mom & pop well into their 20s — then get ready to be outmaneuvered politically by those who take these issues seriously (DSA, Dems).
I’m very alarmed at the hyper-defensive crouch conservatives are taking up. You know, “They are only interested in amassing power”. That’s a forfeit — essentially saying, we won’t even acknowledge that the left is raising legitimate issues. The only way to fend off their lame, destined-to-fail proposals is to compete by offering better alternatives — meaning better than the do-nothing status quo — better than “suck it up just like we did when we were young” (in a much simpler economy).
Example: Rather than taxing wealth, why not permit the wealthy to “give back” financially in other ways than via tax & spend bureaucracies?….by creating a new Human Development-focussed business entity (HumDev), and allow the wealthy to choose how much (up to 90%) of their income tax amount to give back instead through these privately-owned, entrepreneurial operations?….ones that compete for clients and philanthropic support based on measurable results. These HumDevs could eventually take-over education and social services from government, and do it much more adaptively and economically.
So long as the wealth is fed-back into human development, why not go the more innovative, efficient route using these HumDevs? Unlike 501(c)3 non-profits, HumDevs would be allowed to amass tradable equity in the form of IP (patents, learning content, proprietary methodologies), and they could merge with other HumDevs. This would create a thriving, private economy of human development.
Just an example. We have to be creative with our conservative principles and be attentive problem-solvers. Sitting back and just demonizing the DSA movement?….that’s making conservatives look complacent and uncaring while the younger generation is raising serious grievances. We’re setting ourselves up to being outflanked politically.
You learned the wrong lesson.
It’s not “capitalism”; it’s freedom.
It’s freedom to engage in one’s own “pursuit of happiness” and freedom to do whatever one chooses with one’s private property and money in the free markets of the private sector.
Communism is enslavement under dictatorship.
Let’s make this simple:
– I own a cow
– I milk the cow. I use the milk to feed my family.
– I sell the excess milk to make a profit at 10% of the cow’s value.
– The government taxes my income.
– Trump cuts my taxes.
– I can now save enough money to buy a second cow.
– I can now sell all of that milk more than doubling my profit.
– I pay taxes on all the extra income.
– I hire someone to help me with the cows.
– My employee pays income taxes.
– The DSA votes in a wealth tax.
– I don’t have enough cash saved to pay the wealth tax.
– I have to sell a cow and fire the employee..
– My income is cut to where I can’t replace the cow.
– The next year comes and I am taxed on both my income and the cow.
– I have to sell the cow.
– My income drops to zero and my family is destitute.
– We are now forced to die or go on government assistance.
‘Nuff Said.
Estovir, this comment should have been from Upstate Farmer or Old Man From Kansas. Their names might have lent credibility to this barnyard tale.
But that annony is not wrong.
I fully endorse annony at August 25, 2026 at 1:48 PM comment.
If you can’t deal with the substance of the argument, attack the speaker, right? Typical.
Wow, so simple. And yet still…so wrong.
This analogy is completely absurd because you are pretending a wealth tax applies to a local farmer with two cows instead of a billionaire with three yachts.
Let’s fix your math: Every actual wealth tax proposal starts at $100 million. Unless your two cows are made of solid diamonds and grazing on prime Manhattan real estate, your tax rate is exactly 0%.
Furthermore, by your own logic, your cows yield a 10% annual profit. If a wealth tax is 2%, you still keep an 8% net profit every single year. The idea that a billionaire would have to fire their staff and starve to death because they can’t afford a 2% tax on a 10% yielding asset shows a total lack of basic arithmetic. You’ve manufactured a fictional sob story about a destitute farmer to protect individuals who have more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes.
Let’s make this simple:
The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional including, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, CRT, DEI, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, PBS, NPR, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax for ONLY debt, defense, and “general Welfare”–ALL or THE WHOLE WELL PROCEED through governmental provision of security and basic infrastructure–omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual Welfare, specific Welfare, particular Welfare, favor, or charity. The same Article enumerates and provides Congress the power to regulate ONLY the Value of money, Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes, and land and naval Forces.
Further, the 5th Amendment right to private property was initially qualified by the Framers and is, therefore, absolute, allowing no further qualification, and allowing ONLY the owner the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property.
Government exists, under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to provide maximal freedom to individuals while government is severely limited and restricted to facilitating that maximal freedom of individuals through the provision of security and infrastructure.
The Necessary and Proper Clause is nothing more than a perfunctory redundancy for the purposes of clarification—a reinforcement of that which was previously codified—and may not be wielded to amend and impose separate acts that do not represent but alter the letter and spirit of the Founders and Framers.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then, and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
El Sayed says “Do you want to drive on good roads, or would you rather have a billionaire make a second billion?”. Since when was having good roads dependent on the rich not getting richer? We have had good roads in most places while still letting the rich get richer. If anything, in places where good roads become unaffordable it is because social spending is so out of control that it has become a choice of one or the other, not because the rich are not paying more in taxes. Indeed, letting the rich invest in new opportunities that help people rise up out of welfare dependency or avoid it altogether in turn helps generate more revenue to fund things like good roads. It is not that hard to understand how these things work, but that is not the point with leftists like El Sayed. They want to separate people by creating envy, fear, and distrust in order to bring down the existing society and government and replace it with their own preferred new society and government, of course with them at the top and everyone else having no say and no option but to obey them.
Enough negativity about billionaires please. These are the ppl who took a risk and developed an idea that blossomed into a commodity that met demand and created jobs. Think about the benefits of Musk’s Starlink, Space X, and Neuralink. The wealthiest 2% of taxpayers pay 50% of all federal taxes.
HazPat: Trump never really took any risks or developed any ideas that met demand or created jobs. He is a trust fund baby whose Daddy bailed him out of one financial mess after another until dementia took over and a guardian had to be appointed to manage his finances. That’s when the bankruptcies started. Just look what he’s done to our economy–the tariffs and stupid war of choice have driven up inflation and the cost of everything. Daddy’s “wealth” came from the federal government–grants to build housing for GIs returning from WWII.
Elon Musk didn’t invent anything either–do you think he invented lithium ion batteries or rocket science? Investing in the product of someone else’s genius doesn’t score many points or entitle you not to pay a fair share of taxes.
The of-quoted figures you cite are deliberately misleading–the wealthiest may pay 50% of all federal taxes, but proportionately to their income and wealth, they pay way less than people who actually work for a living as the Ox Fam piece cited below explains. That’s because of tax shelters, exemptions and other devices to protect their wealth. Trump’s administration has more billionaires than any previous administration in our history. And, why do you think Trump wanted that frivolous “lawsuit” he filed against the IRS to include a settlement provision exempting him and his worthless kids and companies from IRS audits and prosecution? It’s not because he’s paying his fair share of taxes. Why do you think he refuses to disclose his tax returns?
Excerpted from a 1/18/26 Ox Fam piece entitled: “Do the Rich Pay Their Fair Share?”
“Billionaires in the U.S. often pay a lower tax rate than teachers and nurses. Thanks to a tax code that favors income from wealth over income from work—and a slew of tax-avoidance strategies—the richest among us too often end up paying a smaller percentage of their income to the federal government than working families.
Here’s what we know:
Recent Oxfam analysis shows that the wealth of the 10 richest U.S. billionaires surged by $698 billion over the past year.
According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.
According to leaked tax returns highlighted in a ProPublica investigation, the 25 richest Americans paid $13.6 billion in taxes from 2014-2018—a “true” tax rate of just 3.4 percent on $401 billion of income.
That’s not paying your fair share. Instead of rewarding wealth over work, our tax system should ensure that billionaires play by the same set of rules as the rest of us. It’s good for the planet, and it’s essential to the preservation of our democracy.
So what should they pay?
Higher tax rates: The IRS code should raise individual tax rates for billionaires and equalize taxes on capital gains and labor income so work isn’t taxed more than wealth.
A fair tax on their wealth: Billionaires should pay a wealth tax, and we should close tax loopholes that permit the rich to stash profits in tax havens.
“The tax code should be designed to work for ordinary people, not rigged to produce the world’s first trillionaire,” said Rebecca Riddell, Senior Policy Lead for Economic and Racial Justice at Oxfam America.
Do giant corporations pay their fair share?
While giant companies enjoyed record profits in recent years, many still pay lower tax rates than most working families. That’s in part because many take advantage of generous tax breaks and stash profits in tax havens around the world.
Here’s what we know:
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 23 of the largest and most profitable companies in the US paid no federal corporate income taxes from 2018-2022. And 109 corporations paid zero federal tax in at least one of those years.
Corporations shifted nearly $1 trillion in global profits to tax havens in 2022—depriving countries all over the world of desperately needed tax revenue.
That’s not paying your fair share. Instead of only maximizing profits for their overwhelmingly rich, white shareholders, corporations should do more to support the employees, consumers, and community members that corporations rely upon to make their money.
So what should they pay and do?
To reduce tax haven abuse and the offshoring of corporate profits, corporations should pay the same tax rate on their foreign profits as on their domestic profits, and all large multinational corporations should pay a global minimum tax rate.
To end the secrecy that shrouds corporate tax dodging, corporations should publish key financial data like revenue, profits, and taxes paid on a country-by-country basis.
“We want an economy that works for everyone, not just for a small elite,” said former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
Who benefits from the Trump tax cuts?
The ultra-rich and mega-corporations benefited from last year’s massive tax cuts. In 2027, President Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is forecast to reduce the tax bill of the those in the highest-earning 0.1 percent by $311,000 each. At the same time, it slashed vital safety-net programs and increased taxes on households making less than $15,000 annually.
One year into his presidency, billionaire President Trump has governed by and for the wealthy elite, surrounding himself with a record-breaking number of billionaires in his administration. At the risk of driving U.S. inequality to new extremes, his administration has also moved with unprecedented speed and cruelty to carry out major cuts to the social safety net and significant rollbacks for workers’ rights.
“Today, we are seeing the dark extremes of choosing inequality for 50 years,” said Elizabeth Wilkins, Roosevelt Institute President and CEO.
What would the rich paying their fair share mean for ending poverty and injustice?
Taxing the rich would pay incredible dividends in ending poverty and injustice. Calculations from Oxfam found that a modest wealth tax on multimillionaires and billionaires—at a rate of 1 percent for fortunes over $10 million, 3 percent for fortunes over $100 million, and 5 percent for fortunes over $100 billion—could raise an estimated $414 billion to invest in social programs and fighting poverty.
That kind of revenue would allow the US to invest in programs that:
Protect the climate
Lift children out of poverty
Rebuild our infrastructure
Bolster child care and healthcare
All of these programs would provide big benefits for workers, caregivers, and communities of color—unlike corporate tax dodging, which disproportionately benefits a white, wealthy elite.
“It’s time for our nation’s billionaires and giant corporations to contribute their fair share of taxes to support the very people who have provided the labor that has allowed them to enjoy record profits and excess wealth,” said Gina Cummings, Oxfam America’s Vice-President of Advocacy, Alliances and Policy.
Conclusion
While people across the country are struggling to make ends meet, the Trump administration has prioritized massive tax giveaways for the ultra-rich and mega-corporations, all while pushing to slash vital programs—like childcare, education, healthcare, and more—that benefit everyone.
By increasing tax rates on the richest Americans, taxing billionaire wealth, and making corporations pay their fair share, we can make rich polluters pay to protect our climate and lift children out of poverty. And it’s key to saving our democracy and solving our toughest global challenges.
Hundreds of thousands of people like you have joined Oxfam to demand the rich pay their fair share in taxes. Your voice in this fight matters, and when we join our voices together, our message becomes impossible to ignore.”
Perhaps the strongest human desire: getting something for nothing. The mechanism for doing so: the modern welfare state.
What others do with their legally acquired wealth is their business.
The truth reveals the true lack of knowledge held by DSA members.
If you want less of something, tax it. Want even less? Tax it twice. We already do that with state ad valorem and inheritance taxes, and federal estate and gift taxes. The less of something a State gets is loss of tax on income, wealth based on residency, exiting population and Electoral College votes. But also less of a Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak building the first Apple personal computer in the Jobs family garage. We The People do not pursue the inalienable right of happiness through a government power to tax.
Excellent point about jobs and Wozniak. And by extension, less inventors, inventions, creations, no Tom Edisons, no Jonas Salks, no discoveries that benefit humanity
That window at the IRS for volunteering more tax dollars is always open but I never see any of these Marxist walking up to it and handing over 80% of their wealth to the government. Lead by example you Karlies.
Turley Writes:
“..that would be in addition to the 37% top tax rate in the federal system.”
……………………………………….
Here we have the real issue. That 37% is way too low. We don’t need a ‘wealth’ tax. We need an income tax that is more realistic for the amounts of income the wealthy now earn.
To Anony, above: No, we don’t need higher taxes on those that already pay more taxes than 90% of their fellow taxpayers. The government needs to spend less on everything except defense and needs to stop the fraud/grift. Plus, show me where in history, either our’s or elsewhere, making the rich less rich ever made the poor any less poor.
Did el-Sayed not complete postgraduate medical training because he did not match to a clinical residency program resulting in him choosing to pursue public health instead? No medical student in their right mind graduates from medical school and voluntarily chooses to not pursue at least one year of postgraduate training (i.e., an internship, leading to medical licensure eligibility in most states) even if the student did not plan to practice clinical medicine unless that student was unqualified to be accepted into a postgraduate training program. He should release the medical school transcript of his grades, and his medical school Dean’s Letter (the Medical Student Performance Evaluation) of reference to any residency programs to which he may have applied, for public review.
Good point. Get a hacker to locate his academic history.
This is no different from Jay Bhattacharya, the head of NIH under Trump.
He graduated from medical school in 1997, then went directly to a Ph.D. in economics. He never had any postgraduate medical training, never held a license to practice medicine and never actually practiced medicine. He was a professor of economics at Stanford before being appointed as Director of NIH. And yet he is in charge of the nation’s premier health organization.
El Sayed, on the other hand went into the public health arena, and was a professor of epidemiology at Columbia.
So what is your point ???????
Are you comparing el-Sayed, an intellectual lightweight, to Jay Bhattacharya? Good. Let’s make public the medical school grades of each and their Dean’s Letter that recommended each of them to their respective postgraduate schools. The Dean’s Letter not only details a medical student’s academic achievement but provides a subjective assessment of the medical student’s character and personality observed by preclinical and clinical faculty, and sometimes by fellow medical students, as well.
I can guarantee that El Sayed’s academic record is far superior to that of Bhattacharya’s.
El Sayed was admitted to Columbia’s Medical Scientist Training Program for the combined M.D./ Ph.D. This program is one of the most selective and prestigious in the country. The acceptance rate is less than 2%. The median GPA is 3.95 (out of 4.00) and median MCAT is 522 (99th percentile). To gain admission students must have already demonstrated a high level of basic medical research. As an undergraduate El Sayed worked with Prof. Sandro Galea, a world renowned epidemiologist at the University of Michigan. Galea has publicly stated that El Sayed was an invaluable member of his team while he still a senior at Michigan.
Not only did he gain admission to Columbia’s prestigious M.D./Ph.D. program, he was also awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. This scholarship is far and away the most competitive and prestigious academic award, with an acceptance rate of less than 1%. After his second year of medical school at Columbia, he went to Oxford and completed a Ph.D. in epidemiology under the highly renowned Prof. Peter Scarborough. He then returned to Columbia to finish his M.D. He did not pursue postgraduate residency training. Immediately after graduation he was appointed as a professor of Public Health and Epidemiology at Columbia. He did important research in this field and published widely in peered reviewed medical journals and wrote a seminal textbook on public health and epidemiology with his mentor, Sandro Galea.
I can give you an absolute guarantee that El Sayed’s Dean’s letter and academic record is far superior to that of Bhattacharya’s.
On the other hand, Bhattacharya is just a bean counting economist, who just happened to have attended medical school. Unlike El Sayed, he has no postgraduate training in epidemiology or public health.
Too many Errors.
Just to set the record straight, I will protect Bhattachary’s superb name.
M.D. Stanford
PhD Stanford
Professor of Medicine and Health Policy, Stanford
170 peer-reviewed papers
His fields are epidemiology, health economics, and demography.
I will leave it to you to correct the errors about El-Sayed.
There are no errors to correct.
Just because you believe there are errors does not make it so. That is magical thinking, but par for the course for a MAGA moron.
Everything I stated is verifiably correct if you bother to check for yourself, which, unfortunately, you appear to be incapable of doing. If you are not prepared to check the factual validity of my comment, then there is very little I can do to convince you, and it is not worth my time and effort to try explain why you are wrong. It is a total waste of time trying to engage in any meaningful way with an ignoramus. If you are incapable of verifying facts then that is your problem, not mine.
However, I would point out that your comment that Bhattacharya has 170 peer reviewed publications is not as important as you think. That record spans a 30 year academic career, and is quite insignificant. In contrast, El-Sayed published 106 peer reviewed papers, almost all of which were published in a 4 year period from 2011 to 2015.
El-Sayed also published the definitive textbook on complex systems modelling in public health. Up until recently, epidemiology and public health had been studied by examining a single cause and relating it to a single effect, such as the relationship between smoking and lung cancer. This is the standard methodology that Bhattacharya employs.
However this approach to public health is too simplistic. There are many other factors to consider when analyzing cause and effect.
The systems modelling approach pioneered by El-Sayed uses computer modelling and data science to extract useful information from multiple sources using a multi-factorial analysis to find cause and effect relationships that are not immediately obvious. This methodology is now considered the gold standard in advanced epidemiology and public health. Bhattacharya’s methodology is very much old school and prone to errors.
Speaking of errors, feel free to proclaim that there are errors in this, my latest comment, of course without actually bothering to specify the nature of the supposed errors.
Of course, your comment has obvious errors. You state that Bhattacharya was a professor of medicine. In fact he was a professor in the Dept. of Health Policy, which is a basic science department, like biochemistry and microbiology, within the School of Medicine. Technically he was a professor in the medical school but he was not a professor in the clinical Dept. of Medicine.
He currently claims to be Emeritus Professor of Medicine. But again he is playing fast and loose with semantics. He was a Professor of Health Policy, which, as I said, is a basic science department within the medical school. The title Professor of Medicine carries the specific connotation of being a member of the clinical Dept. of Medicine, which he was not.
I invite you to go to the Dept. of Medicine emeritus faculty page at Stanford here:
https://medicine.stanford.edu/people/faculty/emeritus.html
Do you see his name?
Of course not, because he was not a Professor of Medicine. He was a professor in a basic science department of the medical school.
Bhattacharya is a political hack with an agenda. He falsely describes himself as a Professor of Medicine. He has had an insignificant academic career and publication history, and has been heavily criticized by many actual clinicians and clinical organizations. The faculty at Stanford were overwhelming glad to see him go. Bhattacharya himself admitted in an interview that his academic career was over. He has absolutely no standing in any field of clinical medicine. The only arena where he has any standing is in the fantasy world of the MAGA cult.
Your problem is that you simply rely on AI for all your comments. You do not bother to check facts for yourself. You simply ask AI a loaded question, and you get a loaded answer that fits your biases. Everybody knows that AI does not give reliable answers. But unfortunately all you know is what AI tells you.
You are an ignorant, gullible fool.
Again, too many errors; I will provide only one. You say he ‘falsely describes himself as a Professor of Medicine.’ False. That was his literal, primary active faculty appointment at Stanford School of Medicine. Because he was nominated to lead the NIH, he retired from active faculty and holds official Emeritus status. Stop making up department technicalities to dodge an official university record, and stop being a wordy, pompous A$$.
Your research lacks quality and understanding. That is what one gets from a second-class, over-opinionated, illogical illiterate
Unfortunately, the only errors being made here are by you.
Bhattacharya is NOT an Emeritus Professor of Medicine. He is an Emeritus Professor of Health Policy, as Stanford clearly and explicitly states in their online profile of him. I gave you the link to the list of Stanford emeritus professors of medicine. His name does not appear there. Obviously you did not bother to look, preferring instead to believe MAGA dogma rather than reality.
As I previously stated, Bhattacharya is a political hack with an insignificant academic career when compared to El-Sayed.
You seem to think that Bhattacharya’s record of 170 peer reviewed publications over a postgraduate career of 25 years is a sign of an exceptional academic achievement. In reality, it is quite insignificant compared to El-Sayed’s record of 106 peer reviewed publications over a postgraduate career of 5 years starting with his appointment as a professor at Columbia. By comparison, Bhattacharya published only 12 peer reviewed papers in the 5 years after his first academic appointment.
A better way to evaluate their respective careers and contributions to medicine and science is by looking at their m-quotient.
According to Scopus and Clarivate, Bhattacharya has an m-quotient of 1.5, and El-Sayed has an m-quotient of 4.0. You will undoubtedly have to look up what this means, but let me summarize.
An m-quotient of 1.0 indicates a steady, average career of publication by an average but not exceptional scholar.
An m-quotient of 2.0 indicates an above average, or outstanding career of publication.
An m-quotient of 3.0 indicates an exceptional career of a scholar regarded as a leader in his field.
An m-quotient of 4.0 is achieved by less than 0.1% of academic scientists, and indicates a career of exceptional brilliance at the level of a Nobel Laureate who makes a landmark contribution to his field.
You may also want to consider the scandals and investigations of Bhattacharya’s funding while at Stanford. You may recall the Santa Clara seroprevalence study that purported to prove that Covid infections were much more widespread and less severe than had been reported, and that the mortality rate was very low. Bhattacharya failed to disclose that he had received funding for the study from David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue, who was a vocal critic of lockdowns because it was harming his airline. Not only that, it was shown that Bhattacharya’s co-investigator had communicated with Neeleman about their intent to prove that Covid was harmless and no worse than the flu. Failure to disclose funding sources in academic medical research is normally career ending. Even worse, is communicating with a donor about plans to get results consistent with the donor’s beliefs. This should have ended his career right then. Bhattacharya argued that Stanford’s disclosure rules were too vague and that his failure to disclose funding was an administrative error rather than intentional. Stanford cleared him of charges, but the real reason for this clearance was because the Trump administration brought extreme pressure to bear on Stanford, threatening to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. Ultimately, Bhattacharya’s reward from Trump was the appointment as NIH Director.
Bhattacharya is nothing more than a political hack with an agenda. He has no postgraduate clinical training or experience of any kind whatsoever.
He has been comprehensively ostracized by his Stanford peers and the medical community at large.
I would also add that you seem to be laboring under the impression that I get my information from “research”. This is obviously projection on your part, since all you know comes from “research” on the internet and AI, just like the other MAGA morons here.
My information comes from personal and professional knowledge of the world of academic medicine.
“My information comes from personal and professional knowledge of the world of academic medicine.”
Sigmund the Fraud, aside from being a fraud and grandiloquent fool, there is little one can say about you. Your personal and professional knowledge of academic medicine comes from being a trainee phlebotomist who comes to work every day in a suit and tie. The Candy Stripers that walk by laugh and shake their heads, recognizing an idiot when they see one.
Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine (emeritus) unrecognized by you because you do not understand the hierarchy in the School of Medicine. I will quote from Stanford and provide the link because you are incapable of any useful activity.
Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.
https://profiles.stanford.edu/jay-bhattacharya
You provide a lot of nonsense and have already shown yourself to be reliably foolish, so before I continue further, I must insist that you provide trustworthy links for your slander, and then I will place your slanderous words in proper context.
Final Grade: Illogical Illiterate, Pompous Psychotic, and Babbling Baffoon.
I am not sure what is going on with this strange response of yours. It seems to be somewhat incoherent and riddled with peculiar comments and insults that I don’t quite understand.
You seem to be very angry and quite obsessed with trying to justify that Bhattarcharya is something that he is not. He is not a “Professor of Medicine (emeritus)”, as you claim. That phrase cannot be found anywhere on the Stanford website.
You posted a link to his profile page, wherein his Bio states that “Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.”
However you need to understand something about Stanford’s faculty profiles. Every faculty member has a profile page similar to the one that you posted. It is part of the Community Access Profile (CAP) system.
The Bio section of the Stanford CAP Profiles is written by the individual faculty member, not by the Administration. Everything below the Bio section, Academic Appointments, Administrative Appointments, Program Affiliations, Professional Education and Patents, is automatically populated from the Administration records and is not editable by the individual faculty member.
Nowhere in the automatically entered information is Bhattacharya described as a Professor of Medicine.
At the top of the page, next to his photo, under his name it clearly states “Professor of Health Policy, Emeritus”. Under Academic Appointments it clearly states “Emeritus Faculty, Acad. Council, Health Policy”.
The ONLY place that names him as a “Professor of Medicine” is the first sentence of the Bio, which he wrote himself. He falsely describes himself as “Professor of Medicine”. He cannot edit the other entries on his profile page describing him as Professor of Health Policy. Those entries are fixed by the Administration, and not editable by the individual faculty member.
You will not find him described as a Professor of Medicine anywhere on the Stanford website, where the Administration controls the content. The only place he is described as a Professor of Medicine is in places where he has the ability to write and edit the content.
As I previously told you, his name does not appear in the faculty directory under Emeritus Professors of Medicine. I gave you that link. That is a place that he cannot access or edit.
You can check this for yourself by looking here:
https://profiles-info.stanford.edu/about
This is the site that instructs faculty on how to use and disseminate their profile, and how to edit the Bio section.
You should also note this information from the Stanford website:
https://med.stanford.edu/search-results/sm?q=who+writes+the+Bio+section+of+the+CAP+profile&tab=proxyµsite=profiles
I asked the Stanford website this question:
Who writes the Bio section of the CAP profiles.
This is the answer:
The individuals themselves write the “Bio” section of their CAP profile.[1][2][3][4][5] This is indicated by the content of the “Bio” sections, which are written in the first or third person and describe the individual’s research, clinical experience, education, and other professional details.[1][2][3][4][5]
So you see, Jay Bhattacharya is not a Professor of Medicine (emeritus) except in his own mind, and apparently yours. He is a charlatan. He has always played fast and loose with his title, just as he played fast and loose with the funding of his bogus Santa Clara seroprevalence study, that resulted in a major investigation of his ethics.
He is not a clinician, he is an economist, nothing more than a bean counter.
He is not to be trusted, and he has been uniformly ostracized and ignored by the rest of the Stanford medical faculty for his flagrant ethical lapses and misrepresentations in his work.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when he left Stanford.
” Every faculty member has a profile page similar to the one that you posted.”
Sigmund the Fraud, along with being a nutcase, you are paranoid. Only an ignorant person wouldn’t realize that such a claim would not remain on the JB website. By now, the hateful and violent leftists would have forced Stanford to have Professor of Medicine removed, but it remains there, as do many other references by others to JB as Professor of Medicine.
I don’t usually look things up for you, but I spent one minute looking up JB’s employment history. It documents his advancement from assistant professor to associate and then to full professor. “B. EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:
2001-present Professor (Assistant to Full), Stanford University School of Medicine” Use a search engine and put in his name and employment status. Scroll till you get to a site that provides a picture, and under employment it starts with my quoted material.
You can look that up for yourself, as can you look up the hierarchy in the School of Medicine. No one on the blog wants to waste time dealing with a nutcase who doesn’t know how to research. No one wishes to waste time showing that TDS affects all parts of your life, which leads you to slander others who work with Trump and have proven to be correct in their assessment of COVID-19. One minute of my time looking this up for you was more time than I should have spent.
Final Grade: Illiterate Nutcase, Pseudo-Intellectual Mountebank, and Babbling Baffoon.
First of all, the citation you give for Bhattacharya’s EMPLOYMENT HISTORY does not prove what you think it proves. It is copy/pasted from the CV that he posted on his CAP profile page. I can tell this because of the format, capitalization and punctuation. As I said above, the CV that is posted on a faculty CAP profile page is written by the faculty member himself, NOT the medical school administration. He implies that he is a Professor of Medicine, but that is false. The only reliable information about his status comes from sources within the Stanford administration where he has no control of the content. As I have already told you, when you look at his CAP profile page in the sections that are controlled by the administration, and which he is unable to edit, he is described as Professor of Health Policy, Emeritus. As far as Stanford is concerned he is Professor of Health Policy, Emeritus, despite how he describes himself.
As I stated above, and provided the link, if he was in fact Professor of Medicine (Emeritus), then his name should be on the webpage listing all such professors. But his name is not there. It is really that simple. He is not a Prof. of Medicine.
You should also look carefully at the citation you provided for his EMPLOYMENT HISTORY. You will note that it states:
2001 – present Professor (Assistant to Full), Stanford University School of Medicine
It does NOT say that he was appointed as professor in the Department of Medicine. He states that the appointment was to the “Stanford University School of Medicine”, which is technically correct, but not the Department of Medicine. Below that, he lists his appointments to the Department of Economics, and the Department of Health Research and Policy. He specifies the DEPARTMENT for his other appointments, but the first line of the history simply specifies the School of Medicine, a much broader umbrella. An appointment to the Dept. of Health Policy is in fact an appointment to the School of Medicine. It is superfluous to include both descriptions.
So why does Bhattacharya do this?
Because he wants to create the false illusion that he is a Professor of Medicine.
There are numerous other professors in the other Medical School basic science departments, such as Biochemistry, Genetics and Bioengineering. These professors are all professors in the School of Medicine, just like Bhattacharya, but not in the Dept. of Medicine. They are not Professors of Medicine. Bhattarcharya is simply playing fast and loose with terminology in order to create the false impression that he is a Professor of Medicine. He is not, and he does not explicitly make that assertion himself in his CV.
Nowhere in the EMPLOYMENT HISTORY that you cite does even Bhattacaharya himself explicitly claim to be a Professor of Medicine. He hedges with a claim to an appointment to the School of Medicine, trying to imply that he is a Prof. of Medicine. This is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate his real position. He IMPLIES that he is a Prof. of Medicine, but does not explicitly use that terminology, even though he does explicitly describe his appointment to Health Policy as being to that specific department. Unfortunately ignorant people are falsely led to believe that he is a Professor of Medicine.
The only thing you get correct is that if you use a search engine with regard to his employment history, you come up with multiple sources describing him as a Professor of Medicine. That is because the search engine is finding the multiple sources, other than Stanford, who describe him as such. The problem is that those other sources rely on his self-described status in his self-written CV and in multiple other venues where he implies this status.
The fact that you are using Google and AI for your information is quite revealing. You have been extremely vociferous in criticizing others here, especially X, because they get information using the internet and AI. And here you are, doing exactly the same thing. Do you understand the meaning if “hypocrisy”.
However, back to the charlatan known as Bhattacharya.
You seem to think that he was correct about COVID-19. He was not. He was completely wrong.
He based his proposed response on the concept of herd immunity. However he made it perfectly clear that he has no understanding of that concept.
Herd immunity is only achievable for stable viruses that do not mutate, such as measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox and polio to name a few. For these viruses there is one, and only one, strain that does not mutate or change. Acquired immunity from infection or vaccination is generally protective for life. Thus with these viruses, once around 90% of the population is immune there is said to herd immunity because the probability of an unvaccinated person having contact with an infected person is very low. However, if a virus is constantly mutating then herd immunity is impossible, because immunity to one strain may not protect against newly emerging mutant strains. The moment COVID was identified as a coronavirus, the door to herd immunity slammed shut. All coronaviruses are single stranded positive sense RNA viruses and as such they will ALWAYS mutate.
But Bhattacharya does not understand this concept as his proposals clearly proved. He failed to realize that herd immunity is not possible with a virus that mutates. Not only that, he formulated a completely bizarre proposal that it would be possible to isolate the elderly and those at high risk, while establishing “herd immunity” in the rest of the population by letting the virus run free. Apart from the fact that this is absurd because herd immunity to coronaviruses is not possible in ANY community, he seems to think that it would have been possible to completely isolate those at risk from the younger people who would then be able to reach herd immunity. This is absurd. It would have required complete and absolute and total isolation of high risk individuals in facilities completely cut off from the rest of the world, which would have been completely impossible. If Bhattacharya had his way, many tens of millions of people would have died.
Bhattacharya is nothing more than a bean counting economist. He just happens to have graduated from medical school 30 years ago. He is deliberately deceptive about his status as a Prof. of Medicine, and he has a history of deliberate deception and ethics violations and funding violations related to his work, as the investigations by Stanford illustrate.
He is not to be trusted.
Sigmund the Fraud provides BS, continuing to believe Jay Bhattacharya is not a Stanford Professor of Medicine, and then, with meaningless words, makes moronic comments about viruses and other things. He definitely doesn’t know how to research because the Stanford record took only about 2 minutes to find.
Stanford Medicine News Center, written by Stanford in recognition.
Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD
Bhattacharya has been promoted to professor of medicine, effective Aug. 1. His research focuses on the constraints that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status, as well as the effects of government policies and programs designed to benefit vulnerable populations.
Sigmund the Fraud is a FAILURE.
Stanford has written many articles proving JB is a Professor of Medicine, such as the one here: https://healthpolicy.fsi.stanford.edu/multimedia/jay-bhattacharya-discusses-health-and-aging?
There is no reason to believe anything he says. Now he can run away again.
Final Grade: Illogical Illiterate, Pompous Psychotic, and Feckless Failure
Your obsession with Bhattcharya’s title, rather than his expertise, is quite fascinating. It’s as if you believe that his expertise is a function of his title rather than his training.
I am sure you read Estovir’s comment yesterday, August 29, wherein he vilified Abdul El –Sayed’s credentials.
He stated: “Abdul El-Sayed earned a PhD degree from Oxford in Public Health, and an MD degree from Columbia University. Again, very impressive. However, he never underwent training as a physician so he is not a physician”.
El-Sayed never undertook the residency training required to be a licensed physician, and therefore never held a license to practice. In the opinion of Estovir, this means that El-Sayed is not a physician and not to be taken seriously.
Bhattacharya is in EXACTLY the same position, so Estovir is in full agreement with me, that he cannot be a physician. He has no postgraduate training in medicine, so he is not a physician. He is just some bean counting economist who happened to have also graduated from medical school.
However, back to the status of the non-physician scoundrel known as Bhattacharya.
No matter what you say or believe, Bhattacharya’s official status is Professor of Health Policy, Emeritus, as is plainly indicated in all official documentation from Stanford for which he has no ability to edit. He is NOT Professor of Medicine, Emeritus. He is not listed on the Stanford faculty directory of Professors of Medicine, Emeritus, as shown here:
https://medicine.stanford.edu/people/faculty/emeritus.html
Many years ago his first appointment at Stanford was to the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research (PCOR). This was a purely research, non-clinical division of the Dept. of Medicine. It was staffed by a mix of economists, statisticians, and even attorneys. They provided non-clinical guidance to the clinical members of the Dept. of Medicine in terms of statistical analysis of treatment outcomes and how to effectively use funds to get the best possible outcomes. Although, many years ago, when they were a division of the Dept. of Medicine, they were actually located in Encina Commons, a facility a couple of miles away from the medical school on the main Stanford undergraduate campus. They were even in a different zip code. Their teaching responsibilities were mainly for MS and PhD students interested in the economics of health care. Medical students could take their classes as electives, but only 3 or 4 medical students actually did so each year. They were exclusively a non-clinical, basic sciences entity that just happened to be a division of the Dept. of Medicine. In the beginning the PCOR was too small to be a Department in its own right so it was appended as a division of the Dept. of Medicine.
Six or seven years ago, the PCOR had grown in size to the point where Stanford decided to merge it into a stand-alone department. PCOR was merged with Dept. of Health Research and Policy, and the Center for Health Policy that operated within the Freeman Spogli Institute on the main Stanford campus. This was done because PCOR was seen as less relevant to the Dept. of Medicine and more aligned with the other departments and institutes on the main campus. Thus was born the Dept. of Health Policy, to which Bhattacharya was appointed.
The Dept. of Health Policy is a basic science department, still located in Encina Commons on the main Stanford campus. The faculty are mostly PhD economists, statisticians, and attorneys with a few MD’s who also have PhD’s in economics, just like Bhattacharya.
They cater almost exclusively to MS and PhD students pursuing studies in health economics and policies. They do not routinely teach medical students, although medical students may take some of the classes as electives in the senior year. Only 3 or 4 medical students choose these electives each year.
So, as I keep telling you, Bhattacharya is Professor of Health policy, Emeritus. He has no clinical training or responsibilities. He was a professor in a basic science department that was not even located on the medical campus. He has never had personal responsibility for treating a single patient in his entire life.
And as Estovir has so eloquently stated, anyone who simply graduates from medical school without subsequent postgraduate training cannot be considered to be a physician.
Not only does he play fast and loose with his title, he also played fast and loose with his bogus Santa Clara seroprevalence study that purported to show that the prevalence of COVID was much higher than reported and that it was not a severe infection, and the mortality rate was therefore very low.
That study was completely bogus. The study population was recruited by self-selection via Facebook. There was no randomization at all. The study used the publicly available fast antibody tests that had a high false positive rate, rather than the definitive ELISA or chemiluminescence tests used in clinical labs.
On top of all that Bhattacharya failed to identify David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue, as the source of funds for the study. Neeleman had vociferously condemned the lockdowns because it hurt his airline. And one of Bhattacharya’s co-authors had communicated to Neeleman that they had a pre-conceived intent to prove that COVID was a minor infection with low morbidity and mortality.
Ordinarily, this would have been career ending. Stanford launched an investigation. Bhattachaya claimed that the disclosure rules at Stanford were vague, and that the failure to disclose was an inadvertent administrative error rather than intentional. Stanford cleared him of the charges, but there was also strong pressure from the Trump administration who threatened to withhold funding from Stanford if Bhattacharya was disciplined.
Bhattacharya is a bean counting economist and nothing more. His completely aberrant views regarding COVID and his complete misunderstanding of the concept of herd immunity reveal his complete ignorance of clinical medicine.
Postscript:
Are you beginning to sense that I know an awful lot of detail about Bhattacharya and his tenure at Stanford?
Are you beginning to sense that my comments are based on personal and professional knowledge, and not the Google and AI sources that you rely upon?
“Are you beginning to sense that I know an awful lot of detail about Bhattacharya and his tenure at Stanford? Are you beginning to sense that my comments are based on personal and professional knowledge, and not the Google and AI sources that you rely upon?”
Your mindset is grandiose and your language grandiloquent. It matters little how Stanford lists Bhattacharya, though they use the title Professor of Medicine all the time. Health Policy at
Stanford, I believe, is part of the same School of Medicine, and one might lump the Professorship into Health Policy since that is where his major work has been done in recent years. The quality of his work and studies is excellent, and he hit the nail on the head with The Great Barrington Declaration, which he shared with Gupta from Oxford and a third person.
You are implying you have personal knowledge of greater importance than that phlebotomist in training at Stanford who wears a suit and tie. You have no special importance or intelligence; you prove that here daily. In fact I should say intellectually you belong with the other anonomi, though much wordier.
On another issue:
“El-Sayed never undertook the residency training required to be a licensed physician, and therefore never held a license to practice. In the opinion of Estovir, this means that El-Sayed is not a physician and not to be taken seriously. Bhattacharya is in EXACTLY the same”
Why don’t you take that up with Estovir? He actually practiced medicine, and that is his opinion. Many physicians do not practice medicine, and many lawyers do not practice law. Those physicians generally go into research like Estovir and Bhattacharya, which advances the science of medicine, improving our lives. El-Sayed went into politics so he can push his brand of hate.
“ He [Bhattacharya] is just some bean counting economist who happened to have also graduated from medical school.”
If you had any real understanding, you would recognize that having multiple disciplines is important for some of the work; Bhattacharya is an example, and Estovir on this list both practices medicine and does research, though I thought he retired from the active practice of medicine.
You wish to slander Bhattacharya. Go ahead. We already know you don’t know what you are talking about, and everything you say is meaningless. Bhattacharya’s focus is on research, not clinical medicine, though he carries the additional title of Professor of Medicine.
When you get over your disappointment that Bhattacharya is an extremely valuable person with tremendous capabilities, we can address each and every one of your defamations.
Final Grade: Illogical Illiterate, Finicky Fraud, and Feckless Failure
Bhattacharya “never held a license to practice medicine and never actually practiced medicine.”
You constantly use those two points to smear him.
Please do cite El-Sayed’s license to practice medicine and his clinical experience in medicine.
Who would I trust to use their money wisely: billionaires like Elon Musk or the government? Easy answer. How about we eliminate all the fraud and corruption first before looking for more ways to redistribute wealth.
Perhaps this islamist/communist is not aware of the fact that wealthy people such as Andrew Carnegie or Dolly Parton used the wealth that they had procured through Capitalism to build small libraries throughout the nation or who give millions of books to poor children across the country. I am sure there are many within our history that used their wealth for good in acts of charity that are still anonymous to most of us and without the added burden of a government program of bloated bureaucrats susceptible to fraud and waste.
Communist/progressives actually think that they are smarter than the rest of humanity combined and that they can create government programs to cure the world’s ills. What hubris this requires and a cult-like devotion to ideologies that haven’t, as yet, proven functionally effective but more likely display failures at every instance.
If this islamist/communist tool is elected Senator in Michigan then we can pack up the tent and start prepping for the end of America as we have known it and all the works of Charles Martel, and Jan Sobieski were for naught.
“Communist/progressives actually think that they are smarter…” and yet you think you’re smarter than C’s/P’s. No difference eh?
What you do not realize, as you spew it here daily, is that your hate of them surpasses their hate of you.
So, who’s the bigger threat to the USA, your hate everybody but conservatives ilk, or the C/P’s who want a fair society that benefits a majority. Not on your terms?
So libraries are the deciding factor?
whimsicalmama,
“Communist/progressives actually think that they are smarter than the rest of humanity combined and that they can create government programs to cure the world’s ills. What hubris this requires and a cult-like devotion to ideologies that haven’t, as yet, proven functionally effective but more likely display failures at every instance.”
Well, yes.
Despite history showing all the failures of socialism, communism, progressive policies, they think, “When we do it, it will be different!”
And then the fall flat on their face.
They believe they are God
Muslim logic
@Anonymous
That is indeed an oxymoron. And though yes, many *people* of an Islamic tradition are peaceful and wonderful, you cannot separate Sharia law from strict Islam, that just isn’t a thing, period. There is no greater group of indoctrinated people on earth. Islam cannot coexist with freedom, period, it isn’t even intellectually possible. We really are talking Middle Ages, cave man level sh*t. There is quite literally no way to make that work.
It is generational collectivism in which personal autonomy (on which THIS country was founded) couldn’t even hope to have a first breath, even if many adherents are ‘nice’. It is a miracle they no longer practice phrenology. Islam may not strictly be Marxism, but they are great bedfellows, and it perfectly aligns with a globalist, homogeneous, aristocratic (oh, the irony) collectivist vision for the planet. We can’t allow that, even if we are the last holdouts here in the US of A.
All of these crusty liberals claiming we are currently in a Handmaid’s Tale or some frankly, insane, genocidal dominance fantasy when there have been real genocides in our history, nearly always involving the groups in question (as though they even know what that means anymore in 2026) need to eff right off. You are very stupid and/or comfortable people. And in this country, today, no one is trying even a little bit to silence your idiotic opinions; you still have your morning latte and your Sunday brunch and your kvetching, both in public and private.
This was not the case under even very recent dem rule where you could very much be ruined for life for simply expressing a differing view. Modern ‘liberals’ are generally very stupid people. I would not have said that unequivocally even 10 years ago, but today it is a fact.
Please keep your bulls**t confined to the state you ruined with it, we don’t want it. If you want a peaceful life, stop running away, take a look in the mirror, and do something differently.
When we talk about wealth taxes, the money being paid isn’t really in dollars. When taxed, society is giving up access to new businesses where society works, plays, eats, and sleeps.
Abdul El-Sayed was correct when he said, “I mean at that point like what are gonna even do with more money?” That is absolutely true. Billionaires don’t need that extra money to live on, so they invest it in office buildings, sports facilities, restaurants, and hotels. And when the billionaire tries to sell such properties, where will the extra money come from?
Abdul El-Sayed is an economic dunce using promises to bribe the public when all he does is place his hand in our back pockets.
S. Meyer, once again. You make absolutely zero sense.
You claim that taxing a billionaire means society ‘gives up access to businesses where we work, play, eats, and sleeps.’ This makes no sense. If a billionaire is taxed, those physical office buildings, hotels, and restaurants don’t magically vanish into thin air. They still exist. The only thing that changes is who holds the capital. Instead of a single billionaire holding all the chips, that money is recirculated into the economy via public infrastructure (like the roads El-Sayed mentioned), which actually makes it easier for regular people to get to those businesses to work, play, and eat.
Your comment completely trips over itself. First, you agree with El-Sayed that billionaires ‘don’t need that extra money to live on.’ But then you immediately turn around and claim that taxing that unneeded money is ‘placing a hand in our back pockets.’ If the money belongs to a billionaire who doesn’t need it to survive, taxing it is—by your own definition—taking it from their pocket, not the public’s.
You can’t argue that billionaires have so much money they are forced to just dump it into vanity real estate projects, and then turn around and claim that a tax on them is somehow a financial burden on the working class. If anyone is displaying economic confusion here, it’s not El-Sayed.
Oh its George the google accredited lawyer taking the magic tangent road. Tell us how you mange your billions?
“S. Meyer, once again. You make absolutely zero sense.”
You say that because you are stupid.
“If a billionaire is taxed, those physical office buildings, hotels, and restaurants don’t magically vanish into thin air. They still exist”
Where does the billionaire get the money to pay the wealth tax?
The rest of your comment demonstrates a total lack of understanding. You need a course in Economics. Can I suggest Econ 0.01?
No, I say that because you make zero sense. You can’t explain your nonsense without looking stupid.
I love that when you are completely cornered by logic, your only defense is to resort to playground insults and tell me to take an introductory economics class. It’s a brave strategy to cover up the fact that you don’t understand how liquid capital or asset management works.
To answer ‘mind-boggling’ question: ‘Where does the billionaire get the money to pay the wealth tax?’
They get it from the exact same place they get the money to buy superyachts, fund private space programs, or acquire new companies: liquidity. You knew that, right?
Billionaires do not keep 100% of their net worth locked in concrete and drywall. They hold massive cash reserves, receive multi-million dollar dividend payouts, sell off marginal stock options, and borrow against their vast portfolios at near-zero interest rates. If a billionaire has to liquidate a fractional 2% of their stock portfolio or utilize their immense cash flows to pay a tax bill, the physical buildings they own still stand, the businesses still operate, and the sky doesn’t fall.
If you truly believe that billionaires live paycheck-to-paycheck with zero cash flow, and that a tax bill would force them to physically dismantle a hotel brick-by-brick to pay the government, you might want to ask for a refund on that ‘Econ 0.01’ class you keep bragging about. You are confusing net worth with a total lack of liquidity, and it’s a bit embarrassing to watch.
What is even funnier is you never offered any answer to your own question which shows you have no idea what you’re talking about.
You do not understand economics. Your AI is showing.
“No, I say that because you make zero sense”
No, you say it because you are stupid, and there are all too many here who agree with me.
You talk about logic despite being a logical disaster, as pointed out many times by many members of this group.
“They get it from the exact same place they get the money to buy superyachts, fund private space programs, or acquire new companies: liquidity. “
Right! From the businesses you wish to close with the wealth taxes.
I will correct my recommendation: Econ 0.001 and Logic for Dummies and join Half-wits Anonymous.
X, are you a dirty commie? Do you feel murderous?
“society is giving up access “? Theoretically only? But what about the good government intervention does using tax dollars… schools, airports, stadiums, etc. , that corrupt rent-seeking billionaires wring free dollars from the government and create monopolies using bribe and coercion that eventually further financially subjugates
the have-nots. The billionaires have nothing to fear, even European Socialist states, China, and Russia have billionaires – they always make out.
Schools? You are an example of a government failure.
“China, and Russia have billionaires – they always make out.”
Ask Jimmy Lai, Xu Jiayin, Xiao Jianhua, Ren Zhiqiang, Sun Dawu, Wu Xiaohui….
Bribery is a felony. Please post the names of the billionaires you claim engage in bribery.
Government is the only entity in society with a monopoly. It has a monopoly on coercion. It demands you pay it money. If you object and choose not to pay the tribute government demands from you, then it will use the courts and laws it has created to take it from you anyway. If you ignore court orders demanding you pay what the government demands, then eventually men with guns will haul you off and put you into a cage. Only government does that. Businesses don’t. Billionaires don’t.
Because government is a monopoly it has no incentive to focus on economic efficiency. It has no incentive to use the money it confiscates from taxpayers wisely. Businesses do. They must compete against other businesses for dollars. The profit motive makes them provide what consumers want at prices consumers are willing and able to pay. There is not coercion involved. It’s all voluntary.
The beauty of free enterprise is the consumer is king. Consumers, collectively, vote with our dollars. We decide which industries, companies and products fail and which succeed with our dollars. Half of all businesses fail in the first five years because consumers voted with their dollars and those businesses lost.
Just for fun, Google and find the Wikipedia entry titled, “List of defunct auto manufacturers”. Marvel that literally hundreds of auto manufacturers have tried to compete for consumer dollars. Yes, many merged with other companies. But many also failed to satisfy consumer demands and were forced out of business.