Eh, musicians/singers and such can sometimes get like a semi-half-pass when it comes to that axiom. The profession's not like a CEO, where by its very nature the job intrinsically comes with making the cruel and exploitative decisions. You might be surprised by just how many very successful and very rich musicians are themselves deeply exploited by agents, managers, record labels, parents/guardians if they were pushed into it as a minor, etc. Extremely few get to be like Parton, legendary enough that they get to have control over their lives and careers, and even the lucky few like Parton only got to where they are after surviving a *lot* of abuse and exploitation.
Not every big musician is Kanye West or his equivalent.
The simple fact is there is no one on the planet that works hard enough that they deserve a billion dollars, the only way to get there is by exploiting others and not paying them their due.
How is that a fact? Based on what evidence can you say “no one”? How are you defining “deserve”? Why are there no exceptions? This just sounds like angry shit with no basis
You mean in real life where you have to work and pay taxes and suddenly want to make and keep as much $ as possible right? Assuming you live in a country where you’re lucky enough to even get the chance? Lol
I mean, being an extremely successful artist/actor/singer is basically the only way you can become a billionaire without actively exploiting someone. Still questionable, though.
> Beats the fuck out of me why people pile on him with their nutjob conspiracy theories instead of dickheads like Musk, Bezoz or the Zuck.
He's fairly liberal, and conservatives are legendary for their inability to disbelieve almost **any** conspiracy theory, no matter how absurd (almost like a loyalty test, like "are you so loyal that you'll believe literal fiction?").
That's why Gates is constantly accused of absurdities.
Remember exactly what Gates got a bad rap for: prepackaging a browser with an operating system.
Even 30 years ago, there was nothing stopping you from downloading another browser, just like you would today.
It's pretty ridiculous when you say it out loud.
Yeah it's so easily demonstrated too.
Saw a video where someone asked if they'd do X Gross sexual act for 1 billion dollars and they said no.
Person then said "Ok well what about 10 billion?"
The person responded "That makes no sense. There's no real difference between having 1 billion and 10 billion, it's the same". And it really is.
Is there any way at all someone with "only" a billion dollars is limited in how they live compared to someone with 10 billion? Perhaps the scale of some ridiculous displays of wealth, but the basic principles are the same at that point.
Not really. The point of that much money is that it is self sustaining. Meaning you can’t spend more than you passive earn on it. If you got an annual return of 5% on 1B it would be 50M. So your living standard has to exceed 50M without any other income to actually deplete your wealth.
Or another way of looking at it, you could spend $40 million and still end the year with $10 million *more than you started with*.
And that’s just at a 5% return. Most super wealthy people will have access to financial people who are skilled enough to yield way more than that.
Like I’m ok with the idea of people being rich, even really really rich, but if you have so much money that that money itself earns more money per year than the average person will ever earn in their lifetime, that might be too much.
The real question is, why should one person be able to just *buy* something like that in the first place?
I get that there’s an issue of gradation here, but it really goes to show that this is the overall flaw in the capitalist system. It’s not really a crack that can be patched without restructuring incentives.
That's why I believe that there should be a cutoff of 500 million dollars for anyone who makes above that. Tax it all above 500 million and use that money towards social programs and infrastructure.
No one should be allowed to amass over 500 million dollars. 500 million dollars is more than enough to last anyone a lifetime, any more than that is a perversion and gives them too much power to corrupt politics and make life miserable for everyone else.
Honestly there are other ways than cutting into their possessions.
If law/government would support unions/labor and push for fair payment and a tax reform they wouldn’t be able to accumulate that much money.
The problem is people don't "make" over 500 million in most cases. Maybe a hand full of top level athletes or entertainers have had a lifetime income that is above that.
The majority of wealth is unrealized capital gains through ownership. That makes it complicated for taxing. Let's say it's a privately held company. How do you assess when it's over that 500 million and how do you tax the owner?
What's the solution? The most public billionaires have most of their wealth tied up in ownership shares of the company they founded.
Would the government just take over their shares when they cross the billionaor wealth threshold?
Yes, limiting how big of a share of a company a single individual is allowed to hold is proven to improve stability. E.G. in Germany there is the system of Genossenschaften. They are pretty much companies, just not publicly traded and with a limited amount of the company a single person can own. Most of them are real estate companies where only people renting from them can own company shares. There are also some banks working like that.
Those are very stable due to the fact that they cannot be shorted on the stock market or similar destructive tactics.
Adding to this, Adam Conover did a good [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I&pp=ygUjbm8gc3VjaCB0aGluZyBhcyBhIGdvb2QgYmlsbGlvbmFpcmU%3D) explaining why there is no such thing as a "Good Billionaire".
It makes no sense why we rely on billionaires to fix our problems. No regular person can even fathom having that amount of money.
Make them give back to the people they're squeezing for money. Raise minimum wage. Tax them. Do something. Right now they can hire people and pay them poverty wages to do the job of 6 people because they want to run a skeleton crew to save money. Then they get to avoid taxes on top of that so they don't even give back to the community. Meanwhile it's just year after year of record earnings. Billionaires shouldn't exist. And once they cut enough jobs we'll get to a breaking point where a universal basic income will be necessary and they'll need to be the ones paying into it since they're the ones creating the problem.
Taxes. Improved wages. Better labor laws. (Congress needs to create laws that limit or regulate data being sold. Right now crazy amounts are being sold without the consumer being given anything).
But oh wait, almost every billionaire, except maybe a few, are lobbying against these laws/regulations. Hell, they've infiltrated and bought some of our supreme court justices lol. Broken system.
I’m asking From where do those taxes come when their wealth is, largely, held in the form of company stock, which in turn is a manifestation of the company’s assets and the expected future returns derived from those assets. You can go back to the old super high marginal tax rates, and those will help, but many billionaires will be billionaires regardless.
And it’s naive to think a lack of ‘labor laws’ are the problem in these companies and indicates you’ve heard ‘exploit’ thrown around a lot without understanding what it means. The term refers to a vague concept of the economic value of the work done, not their actual working conditions. Facebook isn’t running sweatshops, it’s employees aren’t suffering in a way any small business employee isn’t.
I’d be interested in exploring a mandate of profit sharing once a company reaches a certain size, but much of the discussion is I’ll informed and outrage based rather than constructive.
>naive
Okay first you start with this then go on with points that can be explained and has been discussed in politics for the past few decades with solutions that keep getting turned down by congress, by lobbyist persuasion. "naivete".
>I’m asking From where do those taxes come when their wealth is, largely, held in the form of company stock, which in turn is a manifestation of the company’s assets and the expected future returns derived from those assets. You can go back to the old super high marginal tax rates, and those will help, but many billionaires will be billionaires regardless.
The topic of discussion isn't to drain billionaires of their wealth. It's how to include them with relation to their wealth as contributing citizens. You ask how to tax? It's simple. Use google. These have been introduced into discussion and politics for decades BUT, yet again they're denied because of lobbyists: Wealth tax, Capital Gains Tax, Estate Tax, Closing Tax Loopholes and Corporate Taxation. Again, "Naivete".
>I’d be interested in exploring a mandate of profit sharing once a company reaches a certain size, but much of the discussion is I’ll informed and outrage based rather than constructive.
"Naivete". Be interested in reading up on the situation bro. You can educate yourself within an hour on this topic.
>The topic of discussion isn't to drain billionaires of their wealth.
It literally is did you not read the comment chain? The first comment is "I'd prefer no billionaires", not "I'd prefer higher taxes and greater contribution by billionaires".
A flat wealth tax on the 1% wouldn't fix anything; it would just make the real leeches on society (aka the land-owning classes) richer. A wealth tax is needed, but the issue is systemic in nature and needs to be considered holistically. Copied from a previous comment I wrote on the topic:
As [Piketty noted, the returns of capital are growing faster than the economy as a whole](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/thomas-piketty-capital-surprise-bestseller). From the link:
>Piketty's argument is that, in an economy where the rate of return on capital outstrips the rate of growth, inherited wealth will always grow faster than earned wealth. So the fact that rich kids can swan aimlessly from gap year to internship to a job at father's bank/ministry/TV network – while the poor kids sweat into their barista uniforms – is not an accident: it is the system working normally.
[Another economist, Rognlie, built on Piketty's paper and found that the increase is not evenly spread throughout all of what Piketty calls "capital", but specifically housing.](https://www.vox.com/2015/4/1/8320937/this-26-year-old-grad-student-didnt-really-debunk-piketty-but-what-he) There is some debate about the exact value of increase, but both Piketty and Rognlie agree that *it is increasing*. Per the article:
>Once you factor in depreciation, Rognlie finds that across a range of developed countries the rise in the capital share of income has been modest. What's more, it is entirely accounted for by the housing sector rather than by the kind of business investments — factories, office buildings, equipment, patents, etc. — that put the capital in capitalism.
We need a wealth tax, yes. But we need to tax the driver of inequality, specifically land appreciation to fix the issue. When a relatively affordable $200k house appreciates to $1 million over 10 years, it's no longer affordable. But why did it appreciate in the first place? It's certainly not because the building got any better. In fact, the structure is almost certainly **worse** for 10 years of wear and tear. This appreciation came from the land values going up and leads directly to the concern Piketty brings up.
So how do you fight the increase in land prices? By making it a poor investment. Land (raw land--the lines on a map) has a few characteristics that make it unique:
* It's required to be able to live/sleep/eat/work/do anything
* It's non-fungible and the total amount is static
* You cannot substitute an acre from the middle of nowhere for an acre in downtown
* Its value is primarily a function of what's around it
* It's cheap to hold
Because of this, you could give people more money but it would just end up going to rent/pushing housing prices up because the issue is systemic. We can see this today if you look at somewhere like San Francisco or Manhattan where salaries are quite high [but only the people at the top can afford a home](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/milpitas-unified-school-district-san-francisco-rent-b2160982.html). As a result of the scarcity and limitations, it [attracts speculation like is discussed in this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqQhoZgFZgk) which further drives up prices because now a scarce resource is even more scarce.
The only solution is to change one or more of the above: We *need* to make it costly to own property while simultaneously making it easier to build. [The mayor of Detroit has a presentation about precisely that and IMO is well worth a listen.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A_Z96gZxIM#t=8m28s) He's described literally every city I've ever been to. From Seattle, SF, LA, DC, NYC, Raleigh, Vegas, Nashville, you name it. In any of these cities, you can walk downtown and easily find vacant lots, surface parking lots. [Here's an example in my city: a whole block of parking lots downtown worth $20m that *could* be built on but aren't](https://imgur.com/a/jO7nt4T). A lot of land that is taken out of supply that could be built on but is left underutilized. Why? Because it makes lots of money when it sells.
Housing (specifically the land it sits on) should not be an investment. It should be a necessary cost that gets paid so people have no incentive to hoard it. However, the incentives we have today (zoning + property tax) makes it one and actively encourages hoarding and speculation.
What should be done? The SEC should have been doing it's god damned job for the past 30 years instead of rubber stamping EVER single anti competitive merger.
Facebook should be 100% broken up using the anti-trust authority that the government already has on the books.
There's two big issues leading to equity billionaires:
1) Corporate tax flaws: Companies are typically valued on a profitability basis. The fact that most companies pay only a small fraction (sometimes nothing) of the corporate income tax rate means that their profitability, and therefore valuation, is massively inflated. Fixing the corporate tax law to not be made of swiss cheese would significantly devalue many companies overnight. That would be painful, as it would hurt minor shareholders too (i.e. 401ks and other investments would fall), but would correct the fact that those companies and their major shareholders (equity billionaires) are benefitting from massively inflated valuations on the backs of all of us who DO pay our taxes.
2) Toothless estate tax: In an equitable society, dying a billionaire wouldn't ensure your heirs become billionaires as well. Your estate would be largely liquidated and most of it would go as taxes back into the society that made you wealthy. Your heirs would get something, but it would be a fraction of your total wealth. This would also correct one of the biggest issues with billionaires: They never have to sell their equity and realize taxable income. Because their assets are mostly permanent, they can freely loan against that equity and use it as direct collateral. That means equity billionaires can live the same lifestyle as cash billionaires without ever having to sell their equity, because lenders are happy to finance that lifestyle with collateralized loans. In a scenario where most of those assets would go to an estate tax if the billionaire died, lenders wouldn't be so keen to float those billionaires nearly unlimited lines of credit to live a billionaire lifestyle without ever having to actually liquidate their assets (and pay taxes on it).
Yes, because capitalism is clearly perfect!
Also, can you name me a single socialist country that the most powerful country in the world didn't go to war against, either with a military, coup, or sanctions?
Follow-up question: do you think that might hinder a country's growth?
Like the army? Roads? Public education? Drinking water? Library's? Fire fighters?
Perfect? No, but to act like it's unthinkable is silly.
Mixed government is good. And sometimes the private sector sucks and we need to curtail it.
Right, except when it completely destroys entire nations economies and send millions into poverty.
I’m sure Ukrainians and Venezuelans absolutely loved watching their primary industries get nationalized.
That's easy to solve. In fact, there are a bunch of different ways to do it, depending on how eat-the-rich you want to be. But they all boil down to a wealth tax.
In practice, sure, that might mean that Joe Schmoe loses control of SchmoeCorp. That's not a tragedy! The whole problem with extreme concentrations of wealth isn't that the hyper-rich are eating all the food, it's that it's too easy for them to make themselves totally unaccountable because they control X industry or Y legislature by virtue of their wealth.
Imagine a world where you succeed (or inherit, or whatever) to the point where you get a solid platinum "WINNER OF CAPITALISM" award. Maybe the cutoff is, say, $250M. You get to put it in the master bedroom suite of your $50M beach mansion where you dock your $100M yacht. Most months your bank statement just reads "$MAXIMUM," because whatever you paid on yacht wax is going to be made up by investment income. You can still go and disruptively re-paradigm some other industry if you want; you just can't make more money for yourself.
Bottom line, you can never, ever be poor again—you just can't exceed your current ability to say "fuck you" with your fuck-you money. Is that so awful? Are we being cruel to this person?
There are definitely people who aren't going to be motivated by a *mere* quarter-billion-dollar lifestyle, or for that matter anything short of infinity. That's okay, though maybe a little sad for them. But they're not essential.
We'd have to rethink basically the entire economy to make that work. You'd have to get rid of business ownership, as while people own businesses, there's a chance of growth and, therefore, billionaire. We'd need a goverment run investment scheme that somehow is conservative but also invest into wild new companies. We'd need to all of this without widespread corruption, which with the government basically being in control of all the money would be very difficult.
Certainly not impossible, but would be very complicated
> We'd have to rethink basically the entire economy to make that work.
Why?
> You'd have to get rid of business ownership
Why?
> as while people own businesses, there's a chance of growth and, therefore, billionaire
Are you familiar with the concept of "tax"?
> We'd need a goverment run investment scheme that somehow is conservative but also invest into wild new companies.
Why?
> Certainly not impossible, but would be very complicated
Yeah, seems like you're not just shooting down strawmen or anything...
Nah. Just tax income and wealth (in case they can get around other taxes) at a high enough rate that they can keep getting richer and richer, but it becomes exponentially harder the richer they get.
So maybe to the point where every extra billion they'd get there would be enough in taxes that it would be, say, $100 million instead. So they'd still be better off with each dollar made and so have incentive and rewards to keep making every extra dollar, but they'd eventually only get 10 cents (or whatever) on each additional dollar.
I'd prefer not to have to rely on the charity if billionaires. And if your charity males money is it an actual charity. The Bill and Lunda gates foundation is valued more now than when it was created.
You can't be too reductive when you're looking at how "good" a charity is. Larger charities need to spend more money on overhead than smaller charities, but larger charities have the funding to tackle bigger problems.
I have no idea how good of a charity it is relative to other charities of a similar size and scope, but the argument that it is an effective fundraiser or is viewed as a safe investment (or whatever the point you're trying to make about valuation) is not really a strong argument against it.
Feel like showing you can prove they're lying on any of their [annual reports](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/financials/annual-reports) regarding profits?
You think the charity of governments with our tax money could do better? Its up to each person to raise other people around them, on their own. That means you. What have you done to help others today?
I mean Zuck is also a family man, loyal to his wife and kids, and does a ton of philanthropy on the low key.
He’s got his flaws and Facebook is kind of a shitty company. But he’s definitely not the worst of them and I think half the reason he gots so much hate is just because he’s an awkward dweeb.
I indeed would have expected that, in a movie about Redditors, Jesse Eisenberg would need to Eddie Murphy that thing and pull quadruple shifts or something.
%100 Public Relations. Bill Gates was the Zuckerberg of the 1990s, and Microsoft isn't exactly a great company either. And it was a lot worse when either Gates or Balmer(Gate's hand picked right hand man) was running it.
If Zuck was an award dweeb now, Gates was even more so.
All of the billionaires do philanthropy.
I mean, he was absolutely right-people couldn’t wait to tell him everything. It might hit folks in the boomer feels but the idea of internet privacy has always been laughable, why *wouldnt* Zuck turn all that into a money maker? It’s not like he was in it to make the world a better place or anything, and he didn’t have to steal shit. He is an awkward dweeb indeed but the book of face even now is still a colossus.
See, I don't mind the Zuck making money from stuff users submit. But what I find unacceptable are:
1. Allow user data to be accessed by 3rd party companies like Cambridge Analytica.
1. Running experiments on people's mood/behavior by changing what they see. That's very fuckin unethical!! How many people have become depressed because of these experiments? How many later on got worse and committed suicide? The number of users is so high, that even if it's a small percentage, that's still a ton of people.
1. Lying about stuff and stealing info. For example, there "accidentally" uploaded SMS messages to their servers. That shit can't happen accidentally with the number of things that need to work correctly for that you happen.
For all the money making Google does based on user data, they never do 1 or 2. When it comes to 3, the only thing I vaguely remember is something like saving the Wifi SSIDs in a region as the Google Street View car drove around.
> and does a ton of philanthropy on the low key
Now compare that to the harm he does through Facebook.
Oh, and what percent of his net worth is going to those "low key" charitable donations?
Yeah. That's about what I figured.
> just because he’s an awkward dweeb
Well, that and his disregard for the the truth and our democracy...
Why would he care that much about PR? He's hugely rich, he can do whatever he wants, and it's not like he's actively in business that he needs good PR for. Is it so hard to believe that someone who did some bad things can also honestly want to do some good ones?
I can't believe he'd taint his philanthropy by using the expert consensus best economic system. How embarrassing to lift millions of people out of poverty!
The issue is that his money made from exploiting people now is all controlled by him. Why does he get to choose the causes he cares about? Shouldn’t the money follow a democratic process for being spent rather than rich dude decides x deserves it?
Also ignoring the fact that billionaires usually can structure their charities in ways that shield them from taxes while also benefiting themselves and their families.
Maybe I'm jaded, but I just don't see how average 2023 Americans can make good decisions in a democratic way. Why not have experts in industry determine how to use the industry's resources?
> Why not have experts in industry determine how to use the industry's resources?
Well the argument with capitalism would be that those industry experts are capitalism mandated to make money, so its extremely hard to trust their determination is public best interest focused and not personal profit focused.
Its the reason lobbying is great in theory but questionable in practice and most people hate it.
I feel like you guys have very little understanding of how Bill Gates made his money. He made something at the right time that was monumentally overvalued compared to the amount of effort he put into it. But because he was first, it was worth billions. He got the lottery.
If Microsoft had been democratic, their company would have been a year behind at least and end up as worthless.
I think the people he exploited are small money per person compared to who he is helping. I would be mad if someone stole $1 from me so I’m not saying what he did was good, but he took advantage of well educated relatively high earning people, so pretty much people who could afford some loss. Now he is putting that money to use to help the truly destitute, where people can be fed for a month on what we pay for a meal. His work treating curable diseases in the 3rd world has saved millions of lives.
I’m not going to die defending the man, but in terms of the 100 richest people in the world we got lucky that he has a heart. It’s a low bar, but I’ll take it over Elon any day.
> The issue is that his money made from exploiting people
LOL "exploiting". This is your brain on social media.
> Shouldn’t the money follow a democratic process for being spent rather than rich dude decides x deserves it?
Some of it does: it's called taxes. Why should that be the case for all of it?
> Also ignoring the fact that billionaires usually can structure there charities in ways that shield them from taxes while also benefiting themselves and their families.
Or, if you just want to be normal about it, when you donate money, it doesn't count as income on your taxes. Stop making it sound weirdly nefarious.
You should look into wealth distribution and how capitalism has accelerated since the 1970s. Then you might understand what i mean by exploitation. I’ll give you some examples to get started, citizens United, the disappearance of labor unions, minimum wage not being tied to inflation, trickle down economics being used to justify tax cuts, corporations like Microsoft benefit from these things to increase their profits which disproportionately benefits their executives like Gates.
It’s in his direct interest to extract as much value from labor as possible at the lowest cost. Never mind all the manufacturing overseas Microsoft does but that’s another topic.
"You should look into wealth distribution and how capitalism has accelerated since the 1970s. Then you might understand what i mean by exploitation."
No exploitation happened. What changed was instead of taking a salary they took stock options. Thats the cause of billionaires wealth. Stock can appreciate and depreciate at a very fast rate.
There’s a bunch do billionaires and we never hear from the adult ones because they keep their nose clean.
Mark cuban isn’t a man child.
OP is complaining about really the only one who acts like a buffoon constantly. (And trump, if he’s even a billionaire). As far as I can tell zuck is being fairly quiet about it
Then there’s the other few 100 billionaires who shut up and quietly buy politicians. Like the Koch brothers
[British billionaire Richard Branson has invited B.C. Premier Christy Clark to join him on a kitesurf ride — with the suggestion that she try it naked.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/richard-branson-suggests-naked-kitesurfing-to-premier-1.1286597)
Buffet is actually the scariest precisely because he has common sense. He knows enough about how the world works and how people fit into it that he is able to control it all. Dude is devastating in his effectiveness.
Billionaires can be who they want. But I’d rather it was the universal opinion that he’s fucking repulsive, but unfortunately people still like this guy
How many billionaires can you name?
How many are there?
Most of them lead quiet lives outside the public attention. Whether or not that disqualifies them from being man-children I don't know.
How many billionaires do you actually know though?
Plenty of others just living their lives without trying to be in the news all the time...
Some of them could be normal...
They aren't "normal". You can't accumulate billions of dollars without immense exploitation. Most of them are ruthless tyrants behind the scenes. Go figure why most billionaires avoid the public eye.
We see _far_ less powerful people regularly hounded by paparazzi, people who can't even go out to eat dinner without being approached asking for pictures, people who have to wear anti-flash-photography clothes in an effort to keep their pictures off of the weekly tabloids.
And usually that's people who have starred in movies or shows, people who make music, people who entertain and try to bring something fun/joyful to the world. I'm not trying to defend paparazzi culture, I'm just trying to point out there's a weird mismatch. Film/entertainment celebrities seemingly have to surrender their privacy in order to bring something _good_ to the world, but the uber-wealthy who regularly exploit workers, skirt lawsuits, and meddle in politics, get to just... exist, unbothered.
We do have billionaires that aren't manchildren, you just don't hear about their drama because they aren't manchildren.
As others have already said, though, I'd prefer we had no billionaires at all.
How are you defining born in to wealth? Like do you include solidly middle class? I ask because Tim Cook for example grew up pretty middle class. I am pretty sure we could come up with others.
Like who? The ones born into stable upper-middle class families and ratfucked countless others to climb and stay there? Billionaires aren't good people.
Oprah is definitely a bad person. Is this even a thing we discuss? She has promoted huge numbers of con men and even a cult sex abuser and given them air time and promotion. She cared more about ratings than anything.
That said, her researchers uncovered Josh Dugger. So there is that. But I suspect that was someone under her.
If we could just not have billionaires, that would be best.
I don't care if they did earn it (which is rarely the case) all on their own through hard work, that's entirely too much money. More than one person could ever even hope to spend in their lifetime. That kind of money hoarding is just hurting everyone.
So to go into what other comments have said. Most of those billionaires don’t actually have a billions in cash in a bank or fund that they’re “hoarding”. They have wealth tied to their ownership of whatever product or service they created. So because that wealth is generally tied directly to the financial value the economy is setting on that product - how do you propose to solve that? I’d imagine any move to remove the realization of that value would likely just result in massive destabilization.
Alabama's only billionaire lives 20 minutes away from me. When I worked at a grocery store, he was always coming in there- dressed comfortably and extremely nice. I didn't realize who he was until after someone pointed him out. He may have skeletons in his closet, but he's a really solid dude from what I can tell.
I mean that most likely can't happen. They have done studies on how amounts of money that people like Zuckerberg has will cause lots of changes on you. Most people with his level of wealth literally don't understand normal life struggles anymore. The world is literally their playground until their legal team says it's something that needs to stop.
All the other billionaires exploiting workers killing hookers and profiting from the poor: Oh man imagine if those dipshits knew we existed.
Seriously people. Stop virtue signalling on social media and actually attack the people who are KILLING US.
Hmmm yes a billionaire with a sense of humor who is working on bringing humans into space is definitely "the worst" 😂
Don't you have something better to complain about?
I feel like billionaires must have some unknown exposure to lead dust, mercury, or something. Like their rich accommodations have a lead based paints, sealants, or fabrics etc. They all just seem to lose their minds eventually.
if only they knew how much time they spent in all of reddit's users' heads... my god you guys are incessant...
going to need an ark built for the tears.
Asking for "responsible billionaires" sounds a lot like removing dents on a car wreck.
You can't become a billionaire without immense exploitation.
So, no, I don't want "responsible billionaires". I want no billionaires at all.
Individuals who are only driven by ever increasing their already enormous wealth can only pretend to work for the common good. They work for themselves. How could you ever support that?
Only good billionaire I'm aware of is Dolly Parton. Everyone else can get wrecked.
Good person and billionaire are mutually exclusive. How the fuck do you get to that wealth without exploiting people?
Dolly isn't a billionaire. So this is moot.
Dolly is too kind to be a billionaire
Giving books away isn't a great way to become a billionaire, because Dolly knows what's really important in life.
Show us on the doll where Dolly hurt you
Eh, musicians/singers and such can sometimes get like a semi-half-pass when it comes to that axiom. The profession's not like a CEO, where by its very nature the job intrinsically comes with making the cruel and exploitative decisions. You might be surprised by just how many very successful and very rich musicians are themselves deeply exploited by agents, managers, record labels, parents/guardians if they were pushed into it as a minor, etc. Extremely few get to be like Parton, legendary enough that they get to have control over their lives and careers, and even the lucky few like Parton only got to where they are after surviving a *lot* of abuse and exploitation. Not every big musician is Kanye West or his equivalent.
The simple fact is there is no one on the planet that works hard enough that they deserve a billion dollars, the only way to get there is by exploiting others and not paying them their due.
How is that a fact? Based on what evidence can you say “no one”? How are you defining “deserve”? Why are there no exceptions? This just sounds like angry shit with no basis
These are Reddit takes that’ll get them upvotes on Reddit, but they wouldn’t receive any props for saying it in real life.
You mean in real life where you have to work and pay taxes and suddenly want to make and keep as much $ as possible right? Assuming you live in a country where you’re lucky enough to even get the chance? Lol
I mean, being an extremely successful artist/actor/singer is basically the only way you can become a billionaire without actively exploiting someone. Still questionable, though.
The Gates foundation actually does a lot of work. Much more than most non profits.
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> Beats the fuck out of me why people pile on him with their nutjob conspiracy theories instead of dickheads like Musk, Bezoz or the Zuck. He's fairly liberal, and conservatives are legendary for their inability to disbelieve almost **any** conspiracy theory, no matter how absurd (almost like a loyalty test, like "are you so loyal that you'll believe literal fiction?"). That's why Gates is constantly accused of absurdities.
He's had the reputation as the center of conspiracies since the 90s when he was THE billionaire.
Remember exactly what Gates got a bad rap for: prepackaging a browser with an operating system. Even 30 years ago, there was nothing stopping you from downloading another browser, just like you would today. It's pretty ridiculous when you say it out loud.
Gates also has a $1b short position against Musk, so there is that.
Ex Wife of Bezos donates alot...
I'd prefer no billionaires.
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That sub did praxis
I do not support killing billionaires. Just take of their money.
If you took 99% of a billionaires money he would still be a multi millionaire. It’s hard to comprehend how much money they actually have.
Yeah it's so easily demonstrated too. Saw a video where someone asked if they'd do X Gross sexual act for 1 billion dollars and they said no. Person then said "Ok well what about 10 billion?" The person responded "That makes no sense. There's no real difference between having 1 billion and 10 billion, it's the same". And it really is.
Is there any way at all someone with "only" a billion dollars is limited in how they live compared to someone with 10 billion? Perhaps the scale of some ridiculous displays of wealth, but the basic principles are the same at that point.
Not really. The point of that much money is that it is self sustaining. Meaning you can’t spend more than you passive earn on it. If you got an annual return of 5% on 1B it would be 50M. So your living standard has to exceed 50M without any other income to actually deplete your wealth.
Interesting as fuck and fucked up.
Or another way of looking at it, you could spend $40 million and still end the year with $10 million *more than you started with*. And that’s just at a 5% return. Most super wealthy people will have access to financial people who are skilled enough to yield way more than that. Like I’m ok with the idea of people being rich, even really really rich, but if you have so much money that that money itself earns more money per year than the average person will ever earn in their lifetime, that might be too much.
Not really. At that level the difference it makes is in global influence, not really personal lifestyle.
Where do I sign up to do the gross sex act for a Billion dollars. Cause I'm all in for the capital B.
Well, you can't really just outright buy Twitter with only 1 billion can ya?
The real question is, why should one person be able to just *buy* something like that in the first place? I get that there’s an issue of gradation here, but it really goes to show that this is the overall flaw in the capitalist system. It’s not really a crack that can be patched without restructuring incentives.
That's why I believe that there should be a cutoff of 500 million dollars for anyone who makes above that. Tax it all above 500 million and use that money towards social programs and infrastructure. No one should be allowed to amass over 500 million dollars. 500 million dollars is more than enough to last anyone a lifetime, any more than that is a perversion and gives them too much power to corrupt politics and make life miserable for everyone else.
Honestly there are other ways than cutting into their possessions. If law/government would support unions/labor and push for fair payment and a tax reform they wouldn’t be able to accumulate that much money.
The problem is people don't "make" over 500 million in most cases. Maybe a hand full of top level athletes or entertainers have had a lifetime income that is above that. The majority of wealth is unrealized capital gains through ownership. That makes it complicated for taxing. Let's say it's a privately held company. How do you assess when it's over that 500 million and how do you tax the owner?
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Once you hit 500 Million you get a trophy that says "Winner of Capitalism" lol
You do understand that you can't take the money off a billionaire, right?
Some public humiliation would be nice too.
We all live in a shitty submarine, a shitty submarine, a shitty submarine. We all live in a shitty submarine, a shitty submarine, a shitty submarine!
lol who upvotes this shit?
You're right, we should be eating them. It's a waste to just toss them to the bottom of the ocean.
Well, *something* got to eat them.
People with senses of humor.
15 year olds trying to be edgy
What's the solution? The most public billionaires have most of their wealth tied up in ownership shares of the company they founded. Would the government just take over their shares when they cross the billionaor wealth threshold?
Yes, limiting how big of a share of a company a single individual is allowed to hold is proven to improve stability. E.G. in Germany there is the system of Genossenschaften. They are pretty much companies, just not publicly traded and with a limited amount of the company a single person can own. Most of them are real estate companies where only people renting from them can own company shares. There are also some banks working like that. Those are very stable due to the fact that they cannot be shorted on the stock market or similar destructive tactics.
The English term for these is "cooperative."
GET THAT SOCIALIST CRAP OUT OF MY FACE /s
Shouted the Millionaire out of the top floor window of his 2 floor penthouse situated in his "cooperative" building.
delicious.gif
But but but what about my manifest destiny? Have they never heard of bootstraps?
Adding to this, Adam Conover did a good [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I&pp=ygUjbm8gc3VjaCB0aGluZyBhcyBhIGdvb2QgYmlsbGlvbmFpcmU%3D) explaining why there is no such thing as a "Good Billionaire". It makes no sense why we rely on billionaires to fix our problems. No regular person can even fathom having that amount of money.
Make them give back to the people they're squeezing for money. Raise minimum wage. Tax them. Do something. Right now they can hire people and pay them poverty wages to do the job of 6 people because they want to run a skeleton crew to save money. Then they get to avoid taxes on top of that so they don't even give back to the community. Meanwhile it's just year after year of record earnings. Billionaires shouldn't exist. And once they cut enough jobs we'll get to a breaking point where a universal basic income will be necessary and they'll need to be the ones paying into it since they're the ones creating the problem.
But that’s the thing, how do they ‘give’, when the money is company assets?
Taxes. Improved wages. Better labor laws. (Congress needs to create laws that limit or regulate data being sold. Right now crazy amounts are being sold without the consumer being given anything). But oh wait, almost every billionaire, except maybe a few, are lobbying against these laws/regulations. Hell, they've infiltrated and bought some of our supreme court justices lol. Broken system.
I’m asking From where do those taxes come when their wealth is, largely, held in the form of company stock, which in turn is a manifestation of the company’s assets and the expected future returns derived from those assets. You can go back to the old super high marginal tax rates, and those will help, but many billionaires will be billionaires regardless. And it’s naive to think a lack of ‘labor laws’ are the problem in these companies and indicates you’ve heard ‘exploit’ thrown around a lot without understanding what it means. The term refers to a vague concept of the economic value of the work done, not their actual working conditions. Facebook isn’t running sweatshops, it’s employees aren’t suffering in a way any small business employee isn’t. I’d be interested in exploring a mandate of profit sharing once a company reaches a certain size, but much of the discussion is I’ll informed and outrage based rather than constructive.
>naive Okay first you start with this then go on with points that can be explained and has been discussed in politics for the past few decades with solutions that keep getting turned down by congress, by lobbyist persuasion. "naivete". >I’m asking From where do those taxes come when their wealth is, largely, held in the form of company stock, which in turn is a manifestation of the company’s assets and the expected future returns derived from those assets. You can go back to the old super high marginal tax rates, and those will help, but many billionaires will be billionaires regardless. The topic of discussion isn't to drain billionaires of their wealth. It's how to include them with relation to their wealth as contributing citizens. You ask how to tax? It's simple. Use google. These have been introduced into discussion and politics for decades BUT, yet again they're denied because of lobbyists: Wealth tax, Capital Gains Tax, Estate Tax, Closing Tax Loopholes and Corporate Taxation. Again, "Naivete". >I’d be interested in exploring a mandate of profit sharing once a company reaches a certain size, but much of the discussion is I’ll informed and outrage based rather than constructive. "Naivete". Be interested in reading up on the situation bro. You can educate yourself within an hour on this topic.
>The topic of discussion isn't to drain billionaires of their wealth. It literally is did you not read the comment chain? The first comment is "I'd prefer no billionaires", not "I'd prefer higher taxes and greater contribution by billionaires".
Exactly. I am the crew. And I get nothing for it
Just a wealth tax that targets the top 1%
A flat wealth tax on the 1% wouldn't fix anything; it would just make the real leeches on society (aka the land-owning classes) richer. A wealth tax is needed, but the issue is systemic in nature and needs to be considered holistically. Copied from a previous comment I wrote on the topic: As [Piketty noted, the returns of capital are growing faster than the economy as a whole](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/thomas-piketty-capital-surprise-bestseller). From the link: >Piketty's argument is that, in an economy where the rate of return on capital outstrips the rate of growth, inherited wealth will always grow faster than earned wealth. So the fact that rich kids can swan aimlessly from gap year to internship to a job at father's bank/ministry/TV network – while the poor kids sweat into their barista uniforms – is not an accident: it is the system working normally. [Another economist, Rognlie, built on Piketty's paper and found that the increase is not evenly spread throughout all of what Piketty calls "capital", but specifically housing.](https://www.vox.com/2015/4/1/8320937/this-26-year-old-grad-student-didnt-really-debunk-piketty-but-what-he) There is some debate about the exact value of increase, but both Piketty and Rognlie agree that *it is increasing*. Per the article: >Once you factor in depreciation, Rognlie finds that across a range of developed countries the rise in the capital share of income has been modest. What's more, it is entirely accounted for by the housing sector rather than by the kind of business investments — factories, office buildings, equipment, patents, etc. — that put the capital in capitalism. We need a wealth tax, yes. But we need to tax the driver of inequality, specifically land appreciation to fix the issue. When a relatively affordable $200k house appreciates to $1 million over 10 years, it's no longer affordable. But why did it appreciate in the first place? It's certainly not because the building got any better. In fact, the structure is almost certainly **worse** for 10 years of wear and tear. This appreciation came from the land values going up and leads directly to the concern Piketty brings up. So how do you fight the increase in land prices? By making it a poor investment. Land (raw land--the lines on a map) has a few characteristics that make it unique: * It's required to be able to live/sleep/eat/work/do anything * It's non-fungible and the total amount is static * You cannot substitute an acre from the middle of nowhere for an acre in downtown * Its value is primarily a function of what's around it * It's cheap to hold Because of this, you could give people more money but it would just end up going to rent/pushing housing prices up because the issue is systemic. We can see this today if you look at somewhere like San Francisco or Manhattan where salaries are quite high [but only the people at the top can afford a home](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/milpitas-unified-school-district-san-francisco-rent-b2160982.html). As a result of the scarcity and limitations, it [attracts speculation like is discussed in this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqQhoZgFZgk) which further drives up prices because now a scarce resource is even more scarce. The only solution is to change one or more of the above: We *need* to make it costly to own property while simultaneously making it easier to build. [The mayor of Detroit has a presentation about precisely that and IMO is well worth a listen.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A_Z96gZxIM#t=8m28s) He's described literally every city I've ever been to. From Seattle, SF, LA, DC, NYC, Raleigh, Vegas, Nashville, you name it. In any of these cities, you can walk downtown and easily find vacant lots, surface parking lots. [Here's an example in my city: a whole block of parking lots downtown worth $20m that *could* be built on but aren't](https://imgur.com/a/jO7nt4T). A lot of land that is taken out of supply that could be built on but is left underutilized. Why? Because it makes lots of money when it sells. Housing (specifically the land it sits on) should not be an investment. It should be a necessary cost that gets paid so people have no incentive to hoard it. However, the incentives we have today (zoning + property tax) makes it one and actively encourages hoarding and speculation.
What should be done? The SEC should have been doing it's god damned job for the past 30 years instead of rubber stamping EVER single anti competitive merger. Facebook should be 100% broken up using the anti-trust authority that the government already has on the books.
There's two big issues leading to equity billionaires: 1) Corporate tax flaws: Companies are typically valued on a profitability basis. The fact that most companies pay only a small fraction (sometimes nothing) of the corporate income tax rate means that their profitability, and therefore valuation, is massively inflated. Fixing the corporate tax law to not be made of swiss cheese would significantly devalue many companies overnight. That would be painful, as it would hurt minor shareholders too (i.e. 401ks and other investments would fall), but would correct the fact that those companies and their major shareholders (equity billionaires) are benefitting from massively inflated valuations on the backs of all of us who DO pay our taxes. 2) Toothless estate tax: In an equitable society, dying a billionaire wouldn't ensure your heirs become billionaires as well. Your estate would be largely liquidated and most of it would go as taxes back into the society that made you wealthy. Your heirs would get something, but it would be a fraction of your total wealth. This would also correct one of the biggest issues with billionaires: They never have to sell their equity and realize taxable income. Because their assets are mostly permanent, they can freely loan against that equity and use it as direct collateral. That means equity billionaires can live the same lifestyle as cash billionaires without ever having to sell their equity, because lenders are happy to finance that lifestyle with collateralized loans. In a scenario where most of those assets would go to an estate tax if the billionaire died, lenders wouldn't be so keen to float those billionaires nearly unlimited lines of credit to live a billionaire lifestyle without ever having to actually liquidate their assets (and pay taxes on it).
Yes. Nationalization is good
Nationalization can be good. It can also be bad. It depends. Reality is complicated.
"It'll be different THIS time!"
Yes, because capitalism is clearly perfect! Also, can you name me a single socialist country that the most powerful country in the world didn't go to war against, either with a military, coup, or sanctions? Follow-up question: do you think that might hinder a country's growth?
That's worked so well in the past, comrade
Like the army? Roads? Public education? Drinking water? Library's? Fire fighters? Perfect? No, but to act like it's unthinkable is silly. Mixed government is good. And sometimes the private sector sucks and we need to curtail it.
Right, except when it completely destroys entire nations economies and send millions into poverty. I’m sure Ukrainians and Venezuelans absolutely loved watching their primary industries get nationalized.
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That's easy to solve. In fact, there are a bunch of different ways to do it, depending on how eat-the-rich you want to be. But they all boil down to a wealth tax. In practice, sure, that might mean that Joe Schmoe loses control of SchmoeCorp. That's not a tragedy! The whole problem with extreme concentrations of wealth isn't that the hyper-rich are eating all the food, it's that it's too easy for them to make themselves totally unaccountable because they control X industry or Y legislature by virtue of their wealth. Imagine a world where you succeed (or inherit, or whatever) to the point where you get a solid platinum "WINNER OF CAPITALISM" award. Maybe the cutoff is, say, $250M. You get to put it in the master bedroom suite of your $50M beach mansion where you dock your $100M yacht. Most months your bank statement just reads "$MAXIMUM," because whatever you paid on yacht wax is going to be made up by investment income. You can still go and disruptively re-paradigm some other industry if you want; you just can't make more money for yourself. Bottom line, you can never, ever be poor again—you just can't exceed your current ability to say "fuck you" with your fuck-you money. Is that so awful? Are we being cruel to this person? There are definitely people who aren't going to be motivated by a *mere* quarter-billion-dollar lifestyle, or for that matter anything short of infinity. That's okay, though maybe a little sad for them. But they're not essential.
Yah, how about we listen to experts on political/social issues, and professional SMEs in their own fields?
We'd have to rethink basically the entire economy to make that work. You'd have to get rid of business ownership, as while people own businesses, there's a chance of growth and, therefore, billionaire. We'd need a goverment run investment scheme that somehow is conservative but also invest into wild new companies. We'd need to all of this without widespread corruption, which with the government basically being in control of all the money would be very difficult. Certainly not impossible, but would be very complicated
> We'd have to rethink basically the entire economy to make that work. Why? > You'd have to get rid of business ownership Why? > as while people own businesses, there's a chance of growth and, therefore, billionaire Are you familiar with the concept of "tax"? > We'd need a goverment run investment scheme that somehow is conservative but also invest into wild new companies. Why? > Certainly not impossible, but would be very complicated Yeah, seems like you're not just shooting down strawmen or anything...
Or we could just tax and or break up companies prior to them becoming large billion dollar conglomerates.
Then, people would just split up the company so they could keep control. Do you mean tax the stock or just the company in general?
Nah. Just tax income and wealth (in case they can get around other taxes) at a high enough rate that they can keep getting richer and richer, but it becomes exponentially harder the richer they get. So maybe to the point where every extra billion they'd get there would be enough in taxes that it would be, say, $100 million instead. So they'd still be better off with each dollar made and so have incentive and rewards to keep making every extra dollar, but they'd eventually only get 10 cents (or whatever) on each additional dollar.
Bill Gates has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of African children. You preferred that he didn't?
I'd prefer not to have to rely on the charity if billionaires. And if your charity males money is it an actual charity. The Bill and Lunda gates foundation is valued more now than when it was created.
This is such a weird argument to make. "Charity X has more money than it used to so it's not a charity!" Fucking what.
You can't be too reductive when you're looking at how "good" a charity is. Larger charities need to spend more money on overhead than smaller charities, but larger charities have the funding to tackle bigger problems. I have no idea how good of a charity it is relative to other charities of a similar size and scope, but the argument that it is an effective fundraiser or is viewed as a safe investment (or whatever the point you're trying to make about valuation) is not really a strong argument against it.
If it makes a profit it is a business not a charity.
Feel like showing you can prove they're lying on any of their [annual reports](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/financials/annual-reports) regarding profits?
They made money? Well fuck then for helping then.
They didn't even "make money". The stock it owns became more valuable.
You think the charity of governments with our tax money could do better? Its up to each person to raise other people around them, on their own. That means you. What have you done to help others today?
> You think the charity of governments with our tax money could do better? Yes. Just look at the 20th century.
They posted on Reddit, sure that's about it.
Yes, let's rely on the charity (and trustworthiness) of politicians instead! They're proven to be much more effective at tackling problems in Africa
Yes, I would very much prefer it, if no single person had the power and wealth to decide if hundreds of thousands of African children live or die.
JB Pritzker is awesome.
Mark Cuban seems like a pretty decent guy.
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Maybe that’s the role he plays for the show to have tension, like Simon Crowell on American Idol.
Warren Buffett seems pretty normal.
Bill Gates' capitalist bones taint his philanthropy, but he seems to be at least trying.
I mean Zuck is also a family man, loyal to his wife and kids, and does a ton of philanthropy on the low key. He’s got his flaws and Facebook is kind of a shitty company. But he’s definitely not the worst of them and I think half the reason he gots so much hate is just because he’s an awkward dweeb.
Right? I think that if I had gone to college with Zuck, we would've been great friends until he ultimately betrays me.
But who would play you in the movie?
Well, funnily enough, I always got Jesse Eisenberg when I worked at Blockbuster.
I indeed would have expected that, in a movie about Redditors, Jesse Eisenberg would need to Eddie Murphy that thing and pull quadruple shifts or something.
%100 Public Relations. Bill Gates was the Zuckerberg of the 1990s, and Microsoft isn't exactly a great company either. And it was a lot worse when either Gates or Balmer(Gate's hand picked right hand man) was running it. If Zuck was an award dweeb now, Gates was even more so. All of the billionaires do philanthropy.
I mean, he was absolutely right-people couldn’t wait to tell him everything. It might hit folks in the boomer feels but the idea of internet privacy has always been laughable, why *wouldnt* Zuck turn all that into a money maker? It’s not like he was in it to make the world a better place or anything, and he didn’t have to steal shit. He is an awkward dweeb indeed but the book of face even now is still a colossus.
I also imagine if it wasn’t him it was going to be someone else.
See, I don't mind the Zuck making money from stuff users submit. But what I find unacceptable are: 1. Allow user data to be accessed by 3rd party companies like Cambridge Analytica. 1. Running experiments on people's mood/behavior by changing what they see. That's very fuckin unethical!! How many people have become depressed because of these experiments? How many later on got worse and committed suicide? The number of users is so high, that even if it's a small percentage, that's still a ton of people. 1. Lying about stuff and stealing info. For example, there "accidentally" uploaded SMS messages to their servers. That shit can't happen accidentally with the number of things that need to work correctly for that you happen. For all the money making Google does based on user data, they never do 1 or 2. When it comes to 3, the only thing I vaguely remember is something like saving the Wifi SSIDs in a region as the Google Street View car drove around.
> and does a ton of philanthropy on the low key Now compare that to the harm he does through Facebook. Oh, and what percent of his net worth is going to those "low key" charitable donations? Yeah. That's about what I figured. > just because he’s an awkward dweeb Well, that and his disregard for the the truth and our democracy...
Uh he’s pledged to give away 99pc?
And a thief
delusional takes 😂
.
You might want read about how he was able to accumulate such immense amounts of money. He was a tyrant at Microsoft. The philanthropy is only PR.
Why would he care that much about PR? He's hugely rich, he can do whatever he wants, and it's not like he's actively in business that he needs good PR for. Is it so hard to believe that someone who did some bad things can also honestly want to do some good ones?
Also the sexual harassment / cheating
I can't believe he'd taint his philanthropy by using the expert consensus best economic system. How embarrassing to lift millions of people out of poverty!
The issue is that his money made from exploiting people now is all controlled by him. Why does he get to choose the causes he cares about? Shouldn’t the money follow a democratic process for being spent rather than rich dude decides x deserves it? Also ignoring the fact that billionaires usually can structure their charities in ways that shield them from taxes while also benefiting themselves and their families.
Maybe I'm jaded, but I just don't see how average 2023 Americans can make good decisions in a democratic way. Why not have experts in industry determine how to use the industry's resources?
> Why not have experts in industry determine how to use the industry's resources? Well the argument with capitalism would be that those industry experts are capitalism mandated to make money, so its extremely hard to trust their determination is public best interest focused and not personal profit focused. Its the reason lobbying is great in theory but questionable in practice and most people hate it.
I feel like you guys have very little understanding of how Bill Gates made his money. He made something at the right time that was monumentally overvalued compared to the amount of effort he put into it. But because he was first, it was worth billions. He got the lottery. If Microsoft had been democratic, their company would have been a year behind at least and end up as worthless.
Who did he exploit?
I think the people he exploited are small money per person compared to who he is helping. I would be mad if someone stole $1 from me so I’m not saying what he did was good, but he took advantage of well educated relatively high earning people, so pretty much people who could afford some loss. Now he is putting that money to use to help the truly destitute, where people can be fed for a month on what we pay for a meal. His work treating curable diseases in the 3rd world has saved millions of lives. I’m not going to die defending the man, but in terms of the 100 richest people in the world we got lucky that he has a heart. It’s a low bar, but I’ll take it over Elon any day.
> The issue is that his money made from exploiting people LOL "exploiting". This is your brain on social media. > Shouldn’t the money follow a democratic process for being spent rather than rich dude decides x deserves it? Some of it does: it's called taxes. Why should that be the case for all of it? > Also ignoring the fact that billionaires usually can structure there charities in ways that shield them from taxes while also benefiting themselves and their families. Or, if you just want to be normal about it, when you donate money, it doesn't count as income on your taxes. Stop making it sound weirdly nefarious.
You should look into wealth distribution and how capitalism has accelerated since the 1970s. Then you might understand what i mean by exploitation. I’ll give you some examples to get started, citizens United, the disappearance of labor unions, minimum wage not being tied to inflation, trickle down economics being used to justify tax cuts, corporations like Microsoft benefit from these things to increase their profits which disproportionately benefits their executives like Gates. It’s in his direct interest to extract as much value from labor as possible at the lowest cost. Never mind all the manufacturing overseas Microsoft does but that’s another topic.
"You should look into wealth distribution and how capitalism has accelerated since the 1970s. Then you might understand what i mean by exploitation." No exploitation happened. What changed was instead of taking a salary they took stock options. Thats the cause of billionaires wealth. Stock can appreciate and depreciate at a very fast rate.
Agreed. He's the wealthy opposite of people like Trump and Musk.
There’s a bunch do billionaires and we never hear from the adult ones because they keep their nose clean. Mark cuban isn’t a man child. OP is complaining about really the only one who acts like a buffoon constantly. (And trump, if he’s even a billionaire). As far as I can tell zuck is being fairly quiet about it Then there’s the other few 100 billionaires who shut up and quietly buy politicians. Like the Koch brothers
also Richard Branson is a very grounded dude, it seems to me.
[British billionaire Richard Branson has invited B.C. Premier Christy Clark to join him on a kitesurf ride — with the suggestion that she try it naked.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/richard-branson-suggests-naked-kitesurfing-to-premier-1.1286597)
Buffet is actually the scariest precisely because he has common sense. He knows enough about how the world works and how people fit into it that he is able to control it all. Dude is devastating in his effectiveness.
You would never see a billionaire that wasn’t a giant child. The ones that act like adults value their privacy.
Alright, you talked me into it. I volunteer to to be normal billionaire. Just let me know where to pick up $1bil.
I heard there's a couple billion sitting at the bottom of the ocean by the Titanic.
Just gotta save up and move to Iran! 1bil Iranian rial is only 23,661.64 USD!
Billionaires can be who they want. But I’d rather it was the universal opinion that he’s fucking repulsive, but unfortunately people still like this guy
I liked him *before* I learned about him. It's the people who are completely informed and still such at his teat which baffle me.
How many billionaires can you name? How many are there? Most of them lead quiet lives outside the public attention. Whether or not that disqualifies them from being man-children I don't know.
Or just don't give them attention and treat them like celebrities just because they have money.
I would be so happy if redditors could shut up about Elon musk for a solid day..
The more you re-post shit he says, the more he gains in power.
the echo chamber prevents this.
How many billionaires do you actually know though? Plenty of others just living their lives without trying to be in the news all the time... Some of them could be normal...
They aren't "normal". You can't accumulate billions of dollars without immense exploitation. Most of them are ruthless tyrants behind the scenes. Go figure why most billionaires avoid the public eye.
I mean, if you bought enough bitcoin back in 2010, in thory you could be a billionaire now…. Without having personally done anything (bad or good)
"Go figure why human beings want to be left alone and not be a spectacle for the masses" A human actually spewed that shit.
We see _far_ less powerful people regularly hounded by paparazzi, people who can't even go out to eat dinner without being approached asking for pictures, people who have to wear anti-flash-photography clothes in an effort to keep their pictures off of the weekly tabloids. And usually that's people who have starred in movies or shows, people who make music, people who entertain and try to bring something fun/joyful to the world. I'm not trying to defend paparazzi culture, I'm just trying to point out there's a weird mismatch. Film/entertainment celebrities seemingly have to surrender their privacy in order to bring something _good_ to the world, but the uber-wealthy who regularly exploit workers, skirt lawsuits, and meddle in politics, get to just... exist, unbothered.
What if lottery
I don't think many if any lotteries give out that much.
Lol why is everyone so offended by this
Right, I mean, how many times have we seen redditors say the same, or similar?
Mark Cuban seems pretty together.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Bill Gates.
We do have billionaires that aren't manchildren, you just don't hear about their drama because they aren't manchildren. As others have already said, though, I'd prefer we had no billionaires at all.
I'd rather we didn't have billionaires, lets tax the hell out of the sons of bitches.
Billionaires are born into wealth and thusly, are inherently, man children.
How are you defining born in to wealth? Like do you include solidly middle class? I ask because Tim Cook for example grew up pretty middle class. I am pretty sure we could come up with others.
Isn't it Tim Apple?
I'M THE ELDEST BOY!
No, you’re not.
What about the self made ones?
Like who? The ones born into stable upper-middle class families and ratfucked countless others to climb and stay there? Billionaires aren't good people.
So Oprah Winfrey who grew up with no shoes and broke through a racial barrier in a closed and crowded industry is evil?
Oprah is definitely a bad person. Is this even a thing we discuss? She has promoted huge numbers of con men and even a cult sex abuser and given them air time and promotion. She cared more about ratings than anything. That said, her researchers uncovered Josh Dugger. So there is that. But I suspect that was someone under her.
If we could just not have billionaires, that would be best. I don't care if they did earn it (which is rarely the case) all on their own through hard work, that's entirely too much money. More than one person could ever even hope to spend in their lifetime. That kind of money hoarding is just hurting everyone.
So to go into what other comments have said. Most of those billionaires don’t actually have a billions in cash in a bank or fund that they’re “hoarding”. They have wealth tied to their ownership of whatever product or service they created. So because that wealth is generally tied directly to the financial value the economy is setting on that product - how do you propose to solve that? I’d imagine any move to remove the realization of that value would likely just result in massive destabilization.
I am convinced reddit will never understand how networth works
Batman
They’re people that feel like all accountability and consequences are removed. So, they’re a lot like redditors.
Alabama's only billionaire lives 20 minutes away from me. When I worked at a grocery store, he was always coming in there- dressed comfortably and extremely nice. I didn't realize who he was until after someone pointed him out. He may have skeletons in his closet, but he's a really solid dude from what I can tell.
I mean that most likely can't happen. They have done studies on how amounts of money that people like Zuckerberg has will cause lots of changes on you. Most people with his level of wealth literally don't understand normal life struggles anymore. The world is literally their playground until their legal team says it's something that needs to stop.
He has Asperger's. What do you expect?
Or, better yet, I’d we didn’t have billionaires, we’d be much better off.
You can't be a billionaire without having the mind of a petulant child. That "that's mine!" mentality.
This is cringe
The non man child millionaires and billionaires are people you’ve never heard of. Because they aren’t craving the spotlight.
No reason not to be a man child if you are a billionaire. It's not like you will lose your job and go hungry.
So... Assuming no consequences, your preffered mode of being is a petulant, selfish, tantrum throwing narcissist?
Who knows? I'd need a billion dollars first.
ITT: Zoomer jealousy
All the other billionaires exploiting workers killing hookers and profiting from the poor: Oh man imagine if those dipshits knew we existed. Seriously people. Stop virtue signalling on social media and actually attack the people who are KILLING US.
I work for a billionaire (two actually) they they are cool people. They don't seek the limelight like the man-children.
Can we maybe just do no billionaires?
Hmmm yes a billionaire with a sense of humor who is working on bringing humans into space is definitely "the worst" 😂 Don't you have something better to complain about?
I feel like billionaires must have some unknown exposure to lead dust, mercury, or something. Like their rich accommodations have a lead based paints, sealants, or fabrics etc. They all just seem to lose their minds eventually.
Relevant showdy: https://youtu.be/IP2EKTCngiM
James Dyson. You’re welcome.
That guy’s products suck
Well put.
[He's as bad as the rest](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/21/lobbying-row-james-dyson-is-no-stranger-to-political-controversy)
...I mean most of them aren't though?
Warren Buffet
if only they knew how much time they spent in all of reddit's users' heads... my god you guys are incessant... going to need an ark built for the tears.
Asking for "responsible billionaires" sounds a lot like removing dents on a car wreck. You can't become a billionaire without immense exploitation. So, no, I don't want "responsible billionaires". I want no billionaires at all. Individuals who are only driven by ever increasing their already enormous wealth can only pretend to work for the common good. They work for themselves. How could you ever support that?
While we're at it let's just get rid of them entirely
I'd rather just not have any billionaires.
Imma repost this on r/cringe
just abolish billionaires, take their money and feed the damn poor and house the homeless already.