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Billionaires don’t “work”. At least not in the sense that they get some amount of money that’s in any way in relation to the value they create. They shuffle around money to do things for them and sometimes that makes them more money. Calling that “work” lessens the meaning of that word and gives them too much credit.
They make more money because they already have so much money. At those levels, the money makes itself.
It’s like slavery with extra steps.
No they don’t really do that either, they pay people to do it for them.
It’s also impossible to work hard enough to “earn” a billion dollars. Billionaires are billionaires because they stole the wages and wealth from the workers who helped them succeed. None of them “earned” it because it’s literally impossible to be such a good worker that you’re worth a billion.
Yep.
Billions come from suppressing wages and benefits, making the employees pay more out of pocket for benefits, understaffing so fewer employees do more work both on and off the clock, and constantly reducing product quality to squeeze more profits from the system. Charge customers the most you can get away with.
This feeds the shareholders. The shareholders prop up the board (who also collect huge payouts along with the C-suite) who then throw money at the C-suite because the BoD are probably all CEOs somewhere else too. Everyone gives themselves raises.
You, too, can be a shareholder, but unless you have a few million invested your ROI will be insignificant…if you’re lucky, a lifetime of investment might get you a retirement.
It takes money to make money. LOTS of money.
They shuffle around money to do things for them and sometimes that makes them more money.
Slight clarification: they pay people to shuffle money around to make them more money. It’s all automated at this point to ensure they don’t have to do anything.
I remember this study done:
“Today’s rich families in Florence, Italy, were rich 700 years ago”
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11691818/barone-mocetti-florenceThe only German in the top 10 of the richest Germans that didn’t inherit that spot is the founder of Biontec - and while he did a great job there it’s just sheer luck that the pandemic hit when it did
B…but muh bootstraps???
Water is wet.
The sky is blue.
Yachts are an indefensible source of carbon emissions.
Incoming Republicans who live in a trailer park to get upset at you over talking shit about something only the rich own
sails
I mean, if you inherit a billion dollars, that’s more money than you will ever earn in several lifetimes of actual work… so yeah.
It’s closer to more money than your entire extended family will earn in the next 50-100 generations of your family combined.
Good spirit in your comment, but it demonstrates the fundamental disconnect in how humans perceive vast sums of wealth. A YouTube personality, Tom Scott, did one of the best jobs I’ve seen of making this concept digestible for people, worth a watch: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUWDrLazCg
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=8YUWDrLazCg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
that’s more money than you will ever earn in several lifetimes of actual work.
Imagine you earn 20 dollars an hour, ten hours a day, work five days a week, two weeks vacation so that’s 50 weeks a year.
20 x 10 x 5 x 50 = 50,000 per year. All your expenses are covered for some reason.
To earn a million dollars you would need to work 20 years.
To earn a billion dollars you would need to work 20,000 years.
To be as rich as Elon Musk is now, you would need to work
3.74.28 million years .e: updated Musk number.
Look, I hate to say it but Elon earned his money by working 370,000 times harder than the rest of us
…by working 370,000
timesslaves in his daddy’s emerald mine harder than the rest of us.Fixed that for you.
It seems like there is definitely an upper limit to the amount of money you can make from actual work. That doesn’t seem fair
That doesn’t seem fair
Ya don’t say
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Oh, no. Far, far more than that.
1 billion / 50,000 a year = 20,000 years.
Musk’s worth 214 billion / 50,000 a year = 4.28 million years.
I say 214 but apparently it’s actually 214.8 billion. That 0.8 billion / 50,000 = 16000 years.
If you stacked all the billionaires in the world, head to toe, starting at the bottom of the Mariana Trench… it’d be a start.
Good thing Ocean’s Gate already started that process for us.
The problem is that wealth correlates directly with power in the West. You’ll never see a Western billionaire get Jack Ma’d, and that’s the problem: Western billionaires have less accountability and more rights than the average citizen.
Jack Ma didn’t get knocked down because he’s rich.
It was because he pissed off the CPC.
Not that I want to defend any mega-rich person, but he seemed to be using the influence that his wealth allowed him to speak out against actual oppressors.
There are no good billionaires. Only people who bypass regulations and cause immense suffering can get there. Idk why y’all are so mad about China getting rid of one lol
The world ain’t binary.
Even among shitty billionaires there is a range of more and less bad.
Yeah, democracy my ass lol
You’re saying that like it’s a unique problem to the West. Do you think Asian billionaires don’t have extra rights and latitude?
Of course they do. It’s simple math.
There was a study on ownership in London’s wealthy “City of London” district about 10 years ago which found most of it had been in the same families for several hundred years.
Seriously. They have a multi-generational culture of hoarding as much wealth as possible.
It would be an embarrassment if any of their offspring lost their wealth considering how many safeguards are put in place to protect it.
The rich typically hate welfare…unless that welfare is unearned wealth passed down to children.
Hey!! My dad worked very hard to inherit his wealth from his father, so I should benefit from that too! - billionaires
That statement is true for **every ** generation of billionaires, not just the current one.
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Will be locked up for the next 400 years while people starve or die of preventable and treatable diseases.
It really doesn’t have to be. The French figured this out a long time ago.
The French also existed within the same reality that they could agree on.
The right and left in America might as well be living in alternative realities… On the right they’ll defend this to the death, they’ll fight for Bezos as he crushes their local economies and they’ll lick musks boots as long as he keeps “sticking it to the libs.”
Unfortunately they also got way too happy with guillotines and devolved into anarchy. Robespierre had his reign of terror, and then he had his own head chopped off.
I’m not saying we don’t redistribute their wealth. Let’s just be careful to not do it in a way that leads to repeated redistribution because violence is normalized.
As broken and deplorable as the people on that list are, you’re doing work for trump here by casually equating him with that lot. He’s not an actual billionaire. It’s as if you said, “look at the most eligible bachelors of all time… Marc Antony, Rudolph Valentino, Brad Pitt and Pepe Le’pew”
One of them was adjacent to females to be sure, but he was a cartoon skunk rapist. Don’t help carry water for a cartoon skunk rapist.
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I like how you edit out the “raping skunk” from your comment - and then somebody else just posts it without consequence XD
It used to be true, and it still is.
Why is this a surprise, exactly?
It still needs to be repeated over and over since people are absolutely opposing a higher inheritance tax thinking it would influence them inheriting their grandma’s house because that’s how those populists are usually spinning it…
Ikr? Everyone today grinding for that “generational wealth” and I honestly don’t see why. Do people really want more spoiled brats in the world?
Life kinda sucks, wealth insulates you from the worst of it, and affords you more opportunities.
If you’re rich you can become an actor, poet, artist, writer, athlete, journalist, doctor, academic, etc. No coincidence that people in these fields are disproportionately from well off families who were able to support them.
Without wealth, a lot of those careers and opportunities are closed to you, and you end up doing dead end jobs, even if you have far more potential. Not that surprising that rich people who love their kids (and grandkids) would want them to have that opportunity.
Of course, too much money can also fuck you over, so perhaps Bill Gates has the right idea in not giving his children too much, and donating most of his wealth.
It’s also quite obviously not fair. Some fields are dominated by defacto aristocracy, and it is to the detriment of society that it isn’t truly meritocratic, but I get why their parents want to give them that opportunity.
You seem to be mistaking a chance to give your family a place to live with whatever the fuck a billion is supposed to offer them.
Some kids want to become actors, some kids want to eat people.
Why deny your grandchildren their dreams?
“work”. Well, i guess it’s networking.
Imagine working so hard, you end up getting birthed by a billionaire! Keep pulling those bootstraps peasants!
If it was for me i would abolish Inheritance entirely. The problem is i cannot imagine a non-dictatorial type of system that could make it work. You would have to make presents illegal, and other things like this. If anybody knows a solution please let me know and they got my vote
edit: a letterI think a scaling inheritance tax that accounts for all assets could work
Company ownership would be wacky after a founder dies since now the government would own most of the company. If the government sells off their shares, the companies value would crash and random other people could get control. So the government would probably need to keep the ownership for a long time at least. Which I guess is one way to nationalize companies.
Better idea: family-owned companies, upon death of the owner, get turned into a coop owned by all the employees of the company, each getting 1 share.
That sounds like a good way to have huge companies with one employee and thousands of contractors. But might be good if you can make it bulletproof.
That just sounds like you need more enforcement against fake subcontracting.
I don’t think inheritance should be illegal, but there should be a wealth cap.
It’s in generation 0’s (original wealth holder) interest as well. Massive inheritance like that ruins upbringing. After a few generations your family line is reduced to Musk and Trump. Nobody wants that.
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Enforce.
Yes, via the IRS that we actually had a shot of doing!
And then… Something something “ThEy’Re CoMiNg AfTeR YoU Mr.PoOr AmErIcAn!”
Fucking propagandists… I can’t fucking stand that they are allowed to exist. Honestly I loathe Rupert Murdock and whatever asshole chucklefuck responsible for Newsmax 100000x more than I loath Trump or any politician.
I don’t like to wish death on anyone, but my God does Murdock deserve all the worst things that could happen to a person.
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Inheritance tax urge to the redistribution of the wealth.
Next generation of billionaires … from inheritance
Sure must be nice to have that to look forward to in life.
Indeed. The only thing I’m looking forward to is the last of my older family members passing so I can finally just off myself and not hurt anyone…
Is it different for the current generation?
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This is a really reductionist take that isn’t all the useful as analysis imo.
Right since you provided something so useful to us
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You’re not providing anything useful that’s why I called out your reductionist analysis
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I never claimed you did thankfully but I hope you wouldnt day something stupid for other people’s benefits lol
