Bernie Sanders, is that you posting on FreeRepublic?
First of all, "someone like that" -- this panhandling woman -- has made her own choices in life and is suffering consequences of her own making.
Second, there are countless food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, etc. that are funded through largely private donations. Organizations that are funded through mostly private funds...perhaps some of it from the 1%, but most of it from donations by individuals and families with far less income. Can they help everyone? No, but they can help some, and that's what we do.
Who exactly, are you thinking of that "controls 80 billion in assets?" How many of these people do we have around? What is it you would like them to do with their money? How much do we have to spend, per person, to address this misery in our country?
Capitalism is the only kind of economic system that can provide the kind of regular flow of funds to give any sort of care to those less fortunate. If you start tweaking on it, thinking that you're "doing it to benefit the less fortunate," it becomes less like capitalism and more like socialism or communism.
Yes, genius. I am really Bernie Sanders who has been here since 1996. I fooled you all.
At what point is it a problem to address? Why should monopolies be a problem? Why can’t Jeff Bezos own every TV station, every radio station, every newspaper, and the internet for him to censor? He worked hard to be able to acquire all of them.
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.
Are you paying attention to the political power of those who can influence people and censor what is in Facebook, Twitter, and the Washington Post? When just a very few have almost all of the resources, they have all of the political power to make everyone their slaves.
I have been an entrepreneur all of my life. I don’t have an answer for those who are too lazy to work. They deserve little sympathy if they are able bodied and just refuse to work. Friedman recognized the power to coerce. We are seeing it, not from hard working businessmen who earn a very good living and provide the jobs. They deserve to keep most of what they earn. We are seeing the power to coerce from the ultra wealthy one-worlders -— Soros, et al. They are the oligarchy, folks.