Like, literally, if they took NINENTY NINE PERCENT of that wealth away, he could only retire ONE THOUSAND TIMES. STFU billionaires.
As for Musk, if he didn't make a lot of money, SpaceX never would have been possible. His wealth is all invested in his companies, and he uses it to create more companies.
For example, requiring employers over a certain revenue to have a workers council, and a seat at the board.
Creating stronger union protections. Not weakening them.
Requiring sick pay, paid time off, etc etc.
Limiting the abuse of using contract workers to avoid doing benefits.
Also, the U.S. economy can’t be compared with anywhere else because we are the reserve currency. The control we have over our economy is literally not possible anywhere else. When we didn’t have this control, our economic policies led to the great fucking depression.
That policy was, specifically, tying the exchange rate of the dollar to gold while inflating the hell out of the dollar - Fed policy enacted in the 1914 Federal Reserve Act. This disconnect between the dollar's value and gold's value eventually caused a run on the banks which collapsed them, as you could buy gold for half price. The depression did not start to recover until the government halted gold purchases.
> While doing better on nearly every other social aspect.
Debatable. I've lived in foreign countries.
I'll take optimising for well-being (with a "strong economy" as a mere tool for that, not an end in itself) over "muh gdp" any day now.
It is not a "devastating" level of poverty. The US is not a 3rd world country and the 3rd world poor are desperately trying to get into the US, literally by the millions.
The US poverty rate stopped declining in 1968 when the government began subsidizing it.
For the record, I don't advocate confiscating 99% of their wealth as some scheme to fund the government. (Did I mention the government? no). And I don't advocate confiscating the money out of spite or a sense of moral obligation. But as a society we might want to consider the instability that every example throughout history suggests. When the peasants revolt, they don't tax the rich, they chop their heads off. (And for the record, I am not advocating that either, sheesh).
I mean, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt here, because I can't really know what you really think in depth about such issues, but if you wanna sling meme solutions then it's hard for me to not to fill in the blanks with the rest of it, which is a bunch of corporatist stuff masquerading as today's libertarianism.
> We'd have more than enough money if we had sensible tax policies (read: higher taxes on corporations and the rich)
There isn't enough there to fund the trillions in deficits.
As for who benefits from corporations doing well, did you know that something like 60% of Americans have investments in the stock markets and much of the rest have pension plans invested in stocks?
> The billionaire class also pays less taxes than any other income bracket in the country.
Obviously, they don't pay less than the 0% income tax bracket.
> As for Musk, if he didn't make a lot of money, SpaceX never would have been possible.
Sure, (1) every centibillionaire calculated that they would only do what they do if they got 100,000,000,000$ out of it, for (say) 50,000,000,000$ they wouldn't have gone through the trouble, and (2) no other human could possibly do what Elon Musk does[1]. Praise Space Jesus, hallowed be His name.
Give me a break...
[1] Hint: good marketeers are a dime a dozen.
Except everyone told Musk that what he was doing was impossible, and nobody else did it.
> good marketeers are a dime a dozen
Read one of the many biographies of Steve Jobs and then get back to me!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-net-worth-worst-loss-...
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1591291952464801794
I see this common pattern.
1. Stock goes up: "Oh no, they are stealing from us"
2. Stock goes down: Silence
> And billionaires crow about taxes.
Not just billionaires. Even non-millionaires crow about taxes. Fix the leaky bucket first before filling it up is a good strategy.
Did it dwindle enough for the point to no longer be valid?
(No, not anywhere near close.)
Valid for what?
He can now retire comfortably 50,000 times. It's a good illustration of just how huge that fortune is, and how little someone needs that much money.
> It's a good illustration of just how huge that fortune is, and how little someone needs that much money.
A lot of that money is illiquid wealth that he helped create. Should he give that up to a corrupt politician to distribute "fairly" (cough buy votes for power cough) or should he invest in venues that better humanity.
He doesn't have a Scrooge McDuck type vault with gold coins.
I have some questions below, not to attack, but to understand this view.
1. Should no one have wealth beyond a limit set up by some politician? (lets leave aside what is a "fair" limit and assume politicians have omniscience in this regard)
2. If yes to #1, what incentive would that give for entrepreneurs to create?
3. Do you think wealth is not created? In the world, has wealth remained constant since 1000 AD (an example date). Wouldn't that imply value of human knowledge, creativity and effort is zero?
#2: Plenty, and do incentives really matter from $100B to $200B? They’re going for high scores at that point, not needs.
#3: Sure it’s created. I don’t think the distribution is correct with regards to who’s doing the creating.
Are you purposing the governement take 99% of ownership of endless corporations? That's pretty much what would happen, if you taxed 99% of billionaire's wealth.
And if you did that, who would the governement sell the shares to? Remember, you just taxes those nasty billionaires, taking 99% of their wealth, so there is no one to sell those shares to.
And next year, there are no billionaires left. And likely the economy has crashed, because yeah, the government knows how to run large corporations well.
All that "billionaire" means, is that the person directs private enterprise. Get over it. We need leaders, and they're it.
In the meantime what I've learned is that:
1. Billionaires have 10 fingers and 24 hours just like the rest of us. They are not superhuman, superintelligent, or even particularly good at anything. Many are on top of their organization simply by inheritance or successfully navigating internal organizational politics.
2. Greed is a real disease. It's a mental illness. We don't call it that anymore. But what would you call an obsession with acquiring thousands of times more wealth than is necessary to have a full and complete life? Many lifetimes!? There's some kind of serious pathology there.
3. Billionaires either inherit huge amounts of money or they create organizations that funnel money up to them. The day-to-day earnings of the organization are the operation of a huge pyramid of people who do real work. They're taxing the produced wealth of their org they sit atop of.
4. Most organizations can coast for months or years without any real leadership, but would sputter and stop instantly if the people at the bottom stop working. Our age's conceit is to think the guy with the rudder in the fog is the leader when there are dozens of slaves doing the rowing and fish are jumping in the boat.
5. Billionaires never get screwed. Ever. They have bad ideas all the time. They can literally fuck up until the cows come home and still get mega payouts and people still lionize them.
so if they’re billionaires on paper, can someone explain their lifestyle?
How does Gates own so much farm land?
Yall are actively fooling yourselves.
But billionaires, as I said, are a focal point in a capitalistic society. They direct the wealth they control.
There are indeed good and bad billionaires, just as there are good and bad dentists, janitors, and violinists. I wonder, in your world, how readily you realise this, in categories you villianize?
It seems more to me, that once you realised billionaires are human, you became angry with the the wealth they manage.
Did you become mad with other levers in our society, when you realised the same?
1. A wealth tax of 1% (we pay property taxes today this is no different) over a wealth of $10 million 2. End share buybacks (this is just stock price manipulation to enrich shareholders) 3. Tax corporations on the profits they report to shareholders, not the IRS. If corporations want to dodge taxes with nonsense ownership structures but want to brag about their profits to shareholders then fine, we’ll use that number instead
At the end of the day we don’t need billionaires to run corporations. Amazon would be fine without Bezos, as would Tesla, etc. There’s millions of competent people that exist that can run a business without privatizing all the wealth for themselves.
> There’s millions of competent people that exist that can run a business without privatizing all the wealth for themselves.
So why aren't they billionaires?
If you still think your labor is being stolen, start your own business, where you get to keep all the profits.
> the employer has all the leverage.
You don't need land to start your own business. Besides, if the employer had all the leverage, all the employees in the country would be working at minimum wage.
Affirmative consent can not be given in worker/employer relationships. Which makes the entire contract predatory.
It doesn't work with me, though.
> Affirmative consent can not be given in worker/employer relationships. Which makes the entire contract predatory.
Another rhetorical trick: A is not equal to B, therefore A is not equal to B.
Did you see the part in the history books where capitalism increased work hours and decreased real wages for workers for hundreds of years? Happy to provide sources if you're going to actually read and engage with them, and not going to just dismiss them.
That’s fine. A lot of our culture is based upon force and preserving vestiges of slavery.
This happens subconsciously. It takes a lot of reflection to understand a lot of what we’ve basically accepted as the way to go in the western economic model is beyond unfair and fucked.
> is beyond unfair and fucked.
Oh baloney. The US has the highest standard of living in the world. US poor live better than medieval kings. That's why literally millions of poor people from other countries try desperately to get in to the US.
A note about fairness. Life isn't fair. It cannot be made fair. Everybody's circumstance is different. Some are taller, some shorter, some smarter, some dumber, some healthier, some sickly, it goes on and on. Just look at sports teams. They're all about exaggerating how unfair it is.
But what the US does try to do is:
1. have everyone equal under the law
2. guarantee certain fundamental rights
The rest is up to you to make the most of your opportunities. Note that (1) and (2) are under relentless assault in this country, often in the name of producing equal results.
Do you think only businesses worth billions of dollars should exist? And all small and medium sized businesses shouldn’t?
If "millions" of people are as competent as billionaire managers, why aren't those millions also billionaires?
EDIT: Sorry for the snark. The answer is: unequal access to capital, opportunities, connections, not to mention "intangibles" like education, safety, free time, comfort, lack of caring responsibilities, etc. Was 86-DOS superior to its competitors (or was Bill Gates a uniquely talented/hardworking individual)? Probably not, but he did have every advantage possible: most importantly lots of money and his mum putting in a word for him with IBM's CEO (and the rest, they say, is history ;))
Having used it contemporaneous with MS-DOS, no, it was not. It wasn't as good, and several times more expensive. I assume you meant Gary's OS.
Bill Gates actually initially declined the offer from IBM and SENT IBM TO GARY! To say Gary had no chance is just inaccurate. Gary muffed the deal, and IBM went back to Bill, and this time, Bill wasn't going to miss the opportunity.
Microsoft was started for something like $5000. An advantage nearly every businessman in the US had.
It doesn't stop people at a certain point, because at a certain point the money just isn't "real". If you could earn 60% of a billion dollars, would you take that deal? Of course you would. anyone would. 400 million dollars is a staggering amount of money for anyone.
[0]: https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/25483-howard-hughes-aviat...