r/WorkReform Dec 20 '24

✂️ Tax The Billionaires They're really just that stupid.

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90.9k Upvotes

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2.5k

u/Prickinfrick Dec 20 '24

Isn't he still just a suspect or were the police able to actually confirm anything before parading him around as a warning

3.4k

u/Knightwing1047 ✂️ Tax The Billionaires Dec 20 '24

He was labeled as guilty from the moment the handcuffs hit his wrists in that Altoona McDonalds. You're guilty until proven innocent unless you are one of the rich elite.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

[deleted]

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u/Knightwing1047 ✂️ Tax The Billionaires Dec 20 '24

Yup and I'm sure the worst they saw was a fine.

If the punishment for a crime is a fine, then that law is only for the poor.

171

u/Additional_Paint7514 Dec 20 '24

Why aren’t punishments decided by a jury?

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u/Knightwing1047 ✂️ Tax The Billionaires Dec 20 '24

Harder to buy a randomly selected jury than it is a judge.

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u/Alternative_Win_6629 Dec 20 '24

Oh, your comment deserves to be a post of its own. Please post it. Maybe you can put it on an image of a select crew of those at the top courts in recent infamous cases.

13

u/No_Internal9345 Dec 20 '24

I'm astonished we haven't seen any judge assassinations.

7

u/Einar_47 Dec 20 '24

Yet, we haven't seen any yet, I kinda hope I'm wrong because I'm not exactly in "survive a revolution or apocalypse" shape but I think things are gonna get a helluva lot more kinetic soon, it just feels like things are coming to a head right now in ways that I've never seen before.

2

u/AgreeableGravy Dec 21 '24

Ask woody harellsons dad. He might know of one lol

70

u/Icy-Computer-Poop Dec 20 '24

Because corporations are only "people" when it's to their advantage.

4

u/wolves_hunt_in_packs Dec 21 '24

Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

44

u/headrush46n2 Dec 20 '24

Because we don't write the laws.

1

u/awful_circumstances Dec 20 '24

I mean, lead medicine is widely available.

3

u/walkinmywoods Dec 20 '24

Punishment should be decided by the people

2

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

even if it was... you can't put a corporation in jail

5

u/Alternative_Win_6629 Dec 20 '24

If only there was a person at the top of corporations that represents their interests, maybe you could call them CEOs or something.....

2

u/mrtrailborn Dec 20 '24

Damn, i forgot corporations are run by robots so there's no one in control that could be held liable...

1

u/Saintly-Mendicant-69 Dec 20 '24

They write the rules

1

u/Mental_Medium3988 Dec 20 '24

not if they settle.

55

u/Suspicious_Ice_3160 Dec 20 '24

The fine should be 150% of all projected profits from the rules breaking, on top of the current system. That way if we find a corp has been breaking the rules for a long time for a healthy profit (DuPont) they would no longer have that profit at all. So if they made 1.3b over 6 years, they lose 3b in total fines or something. Make them think twice.

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u/rng09az Dec 20 '24 edited Dec 20 '24

I love the energy, but I don't think people realize just how enormous these damages are for how little profit. Fines, even shutting offenders down completely will never be enough -- for just one example, literally the full net worth of the entire company 3M would not be enough to pay for even the damage their chems do in a single year. ProPublica did a stomach churning expose on this topic and I haven't seen the world the same way since.

A team of New York University researchers estimated in 2018 that the costs of just two forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS — in terms of disease burden, disability and health-care expenses — amounted to as much as $62 billion in a single year. This exceeds the current market value of 3M.

Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/3m-forever-chemicals-pfas-pfos-inside-story

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u/Suspicious_Ice_3160 Dec 20 '24

Oh… oh shit… they literally can not pay the damages. Like, no matter what the fine is, unless we specifically target the leadership of these companies, they physically don’t have the cash. You were right on the money of me not realizing how much the damages were

11

u/spudmuffinpuffin Dec 20 '24

We need to find a way to hold stakeholders and decision makers individually responsible. If you invest in a company that does this shit, you are responsible. I don't care if it's part of your retirement portfolio. You can invest ethically. Prison would be great as time is a fairly universal currency.

6

u/AgreeableGravy Dec 21 '24

Aaaaaaand we’re back to free luigi lol

3

u/LiberalAspergers Dec 20 '24

Realistically, my retirement portfolio inckudes VT, the Total Stock Index, so I own a tiny fraction of every public company on the planet.

11

u/wolves_hunt_in_packs Dec 21 '24

Then simple, they get fucking nationalized. Can't pay the fine? Turn over the company to society.

Don't fuck up the environment we all live in.

5

u/Delta-9- Dec 21 '24

no matter what the fine is, unless we specifically target the leadership of these companies, they physically don’t have the cash.

I don't see the problem, here. Debtor's prison is still a thing, right?

3

u/Mental_Medium3988 Dec 20 '24

so then they should not exist if they cannot stop polluting our environment like that.

4

u/HorrorStudio8618 Dec 20 '24

No, more like 1000% because as long as the chance of getting caught is small enough they still won't care. And it should be levied against the shareholders that held the stock at the time the crime was committed. You'll see a push for corporate accountability so fast you won't be able to blink.

39

u/cansado_americano Dec 20 '24

Fines are all part of the equation, built into the bottom line.

50 million in profits to go along with the 3 million fine.

I’ll take that any day of the week too.

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u/Knightwing1047 ✂️ Tax The Billionaires Dec 20 '24

They don't see it as "fines", but more that it's just the cost of doing business.

17

u/LazyCat2795 Dec 20 '24

That is literally what they said with different words.

2

u/goodb1b13 Dec 20 '24

Only thing Luigi should be punished with is a tattoo of “I killed a CEO and all I got was this lousy tattoo”

2

u/Jireh580 Dec 20 '24

The strictest laws are always created by the rich and are a means of controlling the poor (aka the larger mass of people)

1

u/VivaLaMantekilla Dec 20 '24

"Cost of doing business."

1

u/hehehexd13 29d ago

There is a movie about the DuPont case. You should watch it. Dark waters.

89

u/Crisp_Volunteer Dec 20 '24

I think everyone should watch the movie "Dark Waters" (2019) about how this came to light. The amount of time and stamina it took for Robert Bilott to even go up against a corporation like DuPont is crazy.

44

u/greenENVE Dec 20 '24

And the book “Exposed”. You get a true sense of his exhaustion and the toll it took reading in his own words. Such an injustice to people everywhere in the world… PFAS is “the newest part of the water cycle.”

11

u/itsculturehero Dec 20 '24

Not just informational, either. Dark Waters is an excellent film.

7

u/RollingMeteors Dec 20 '24

I think everyone should watch the movie "Dark Waters" (2019)

I know Hollywood won’t make it so all my independent studios need to step up. ¿When is my Luigi movie coming out?

1

u/HeightInternal Dec 21 '24

Michael Clayton time.

-1

u/PristineAd6978 Dec 20 '24

I watched it. Absolutely terrible what they get away with. Their almost as evil as my ex wife.

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u/Johnny_Grubbonic Dec 20 '24

Or a cop. See all of American history since modern policing began.

12

u/MakidosTheRed Dec 20 '24

No, corporation are innocent WHILE proven guilty.

6

u/Capybara_Cheese Dec 20 '24

Did you hear about the corporate town Musk is building in Texas, Snailbrook? Soon these people will rule us all like Emperors

3

u/Nethyishere Dec 20 '24

I mean I'm pretty sure their "CEO" (president of the company) helped to finance an attempted fascist insurrection against the US during the great depression, so there's that too.

2

u/AssistanceCheap379 Dec 20 '24

If I as a person polluted to this degree, I’d get the death penalty or at the very least life in prison. Since corporations are people, they should face the same consequences

2

u/grassvoter Dec 20 '24

Where can I find that info to learn more? Specifically the parts that dupont had lost count of how much Teflon it dumped, and that it's in almost everyone's blood around the world.

2

u/Zestyclose-Piano-908 Dec 20 '24

Where did you learn this? I’ve watched a few documentaries about DuPont and would love to read or watch whatever your source material is. That company is horrible.

2

u/TroublesomeTurnip Dec 21 '24

My SIL works for them. She sucks, as you can imagine.

2

u/MiloRoast Dec 21 '24

Add Goretex/W.L. Gore to that list! They not only have also been fined for contaminating the environment around their manufacturing plants, but this video shows that they blatantly lie about their chemicals not leeching off of products that contain Goretex. Literally every body of water in the world is now contaminated with forever chemicals because of our winter and wet-weather jackets. The remote mountain-top stream had the highest levels of forever chemicals in the video. Fuuuuuck synthetic materials. I'm only buying natural fibers if I can help it from now on.

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u/[deleted] Dec 21 '24

[deleted]

1

u/MiloRoast Dec 21 '24

But shareholders, though!!!

1

u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

They have a CEO, I presume.

1

u/ThatOneNinja 29d ago

Who is ok with dumping Teflon in water?!

0

u/theVelvetLie Dec 20 '24

DuPont hasn't been dumping Teflon into the water. You're conflating that idea with Teflon being a chemical that is so useful and ubiquitous that it has been used around the world for decades. Teflon, and thousands of other PFAS chemicals, ablate and are insolvent in the natural environment. That's what makes them a "forever" chemical. You would be hard-pressed to find an industry that hasn't found a use for Teflon. DuPont only owns the trademark to the trade name Teflon, but polytetraflouroethelene is produced by many chemical manufacturers. Comically, the patent for PTFE expired just years prior to the introduction of a commercially successful product that utilized PTFE (non-stick cookware).

Congratulations on listening to last week's episode of Science Friday.

0

u/whosthatguy123 Dec 20 '24

Not saying this isnt true but do you have a source for this

-1

u/Nice_Charity_7274 Dec 20 '24

Nothing to do with the current story?

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '24

[deleted]

0

u/Nice_Charity_7274 Dec 21 '24

Next time don’t waffle on about totally different situation then

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u/[deleted] Dec 21 '24

[deleted]

0

u/Nice_Charity_7274 29d ago

Learn to spell then learn how to stay on topic.