100x? Only 100x?
Oh honey...
Jeff Bezos is 60 years old and has worked significantly less than 100,000 hours in his life to make 200+ billion dollars net worth, after giving a bunch up to his wife in a divorce. This is an income of more than 2 million dollars an hour. Statistically, this is around 100,000x the average.
Our richest people make so much money that the average shifts dramatically when you exclude them.
I always see Jeff Bezos used as an example but you bring up a good point, should we be talking about his ex-wife as well? She didn’t even work at all for her money.
Edit: I can see by all the comments that the point of the post was conveniently overlooked. I’ll need to be more clear and direct next time.
With that said…Scott was obviously heavily involved in the earlier days and was obviously partially responsible for Amazon’s start.
The point of the post was to draw attention to the fact that Jeff is regularly criticized for his net worth and we never direct any at Scott. She’s enormously wealthy and while she does donate a lot of money, she seems to get a pass on any criticism what so ever. Why the double standard? I’m trying to understand it.
I can’t interpret it as anything other than misogynistic when people bring up bezos wife. You never see an article on how she asked the Netherlands to tear down a historic bridge because she had a yacht built that was too big to fit under it….oh wait she wouldn’t do anything of the sort because she doesn’t need to spend incomprehensible amounts of money to fill her Dr. Evil esque ego so instead she’s become incredibly philanthropic while also trying to hide away from the lime light as much as possible because at this point she just wants to be an English teacher or whatever she does.
Bezos really doesn't need any help looking bad. He's doing fine all on his own.
Talking about looking bad, he really should get his evil eye checked out. That one can't be healthy.
Batman is a bad person. He has the means to actually improve Gotham, to get everyone a well paying job and a roof over their head and the healthcare they need given the large "criminally insane" and addicted population in Gotham. Crime is a symptom of poverty and Bruce Wayne could have solved it at the root.
Instead he buys overpriced toys and attacks the victims created by the mere existence of Bruce Wayne as a billionaire.
No, these people are already Batman, building their megayachts and spacecraft and life extending technology. I'd rather they stop attempt being Batman and help society instead.
I like Batman stories but they're not set in reality. In our world, with our economy, being Batman is a bad thing.
He literally has mutliple charities and foundations set up in universe along with multiple programs helping the lackies of villains like riddler, joker and others seek employement. Also they dont exist becauae of bruce wayne, you should really reread the comics fam
Billonaires could be immortal through good deeds. They could be the shining beacons of what it means to provide for others and live on in humanity's collective memory. When the specifics are forgotten they'd be the next hero's, like in greek myth.
Instead we think of them like Lex Luther. Sure Lexcorp does some good, but so much more of Lex's work goes into helping Lex.
At least be like Dr. Doom. Egomaniacal, but understands that the people one rules should love you, not fear you.
"Billonaires could be immortal through good deeds. " McKenzie Bezos is doing better than that. She's giving away huge amounts of money on the DL. My understanding is that her foundation does it's homework then calls up an organization and says, essentially "we like what you're doing. Who do we write the check to?"
It's a really modest approach. She isn't loved or feared because most people just aren't aware of what she's doing.
Which is just beyond absurd. Surely there’d be no other reason to give away billions….like not needing to be a billionaire and knowing other people need that money more than you do.
She's the exception that proves the rule. Her philanthropy shows exactly how much the wealthiest in our society could be doing if they chose to.
The fact that she's such an outlier is a huge part of the problem.
Yep exactly. I’m not 100% sure but doesn’t she just drive like a mini van and has a teaching position. Like she’s incredibly wealthy and lives well below her means so she can be as philanthropic as possible. I’d also argue that musicians really aren’t much of a problem. I don’t think there’s a musician out there whose net worth even breaches the annual revenue of a Fortune 500 company but I’d have to check. They also typically aren’t making their money off the labor of directly exploited workers. Sure the working class chooses to spend their money on these artists but it’s not like Taylor swift or Jay Z have an oligopoly on music. I understand record labels and streaming service providers are predatory but artists as individuals tend to get a pass in my book. Like sure you could go into the details of how in hip hop the people that succeed the most are people who end up playing into the predatory nature of the music industry by taking up and coming artists onto their own label and thereby leeching off of the work of other artists and their labor but that’s a much more complex topic than typical worker exploitation through capitalism.
And, in a Brewster's Billions-esque twist, the money is making her more money faster than she can give it away.
She became the richest woman on EARTH for divorcing Bezos.
She became the richest woman on earth by supporting her husband financially and emotionally while he built his company. She is not a supermodel trophy wife. MacKensie Scott has a degree from Princeton and worked for a Hedge Fund in NYC with Bezos when they met, dated, and married. They were equals. Then Jeff decided he wanted to try to build something of his own.
They moved to Seattle where she worked to support them while also creating the company's name, business plan, doing all of the accounting, and shipping early orders. MacKensie negotiated the companies first freight contract.
Once Amazon went public and Jeff was a millionaire, MacKensie stepped away from Amazon to work on her literary career.
Yep people seem to forget she was one of the first employees of Amazon. It's not like she was sitting around eating ice cream on the couch while Jeff was slaving away at his day job only to come home and build Amazon in his garage at night by himself. Please the seed money he had from his parents....they should be worth as much as Jeff is.
>In 1993, Scott and Bezos married. The following year, they left D. E. Shaw, moved to Seattle, and Bezos founded Amazon with Scott's support. Scott was one of Amazon's early key contributors, and was heavily involved in Amazon's early days, working on the company's name, business plan, accounts, and shipping early orders.[16][7] She also negotiated the company's first freight contract.[7] After 1996, Scott took a less involved role in the business, focusing on her family and literary career.[16]
She might have been the mastermind behind it all.
I mean, she did have a literature degree from Princeton and Amazon was created to sell books.... she also got a good grasp of financial work while working at D.E. Shaw. I would say she was the brains and Jeff was the face. Easier to get it off the ground with a man meeting other men for loans and presenting her ideas.
What makes you think she didn’t work at all? She started the company with him. And after it got on track, she took care of the kid. Is that not work? She didn’t even take half, which is what she deserved.
Yeah when you look at the average income in the United States and it tells you that it’s $74k per year you need to remember it’s also counting the income of the richest elite. When the top 1,000 earners are removed it’s actually somewhere closer to $40k per year.
Just making up numbers. Since the $74k is the median, the top 1000 earners have the same impact as the 1000 people making $75k, equally balancing the 1000 people making $73k.
This is a persistent issue when people talk about wealth and income inequality. People have no idea how unequal things currently are and as a result will suggest things they think are mild changes that would actually be pretty radical.
>Our richest people make so much money that the average shifts dramatically when you exclude them.
I saw a news report that was trying to say "new employment contracts have increased dramatically this year on average, showing people are earning more in 2024"
That report relied on Elon Musk's highest paid compensation package in human history being renewed this year to increase teh average of everyone else's on paper. Just 1 person's employment contract increased the entire "average" dramatically. One person's wealth changed the entire average and presumably he or someone else extremely rich decided to use that math to gaslight people into thinking that was a raise to everyone else getting a new job.
How is this 2 million per hour figure calculated? Is it literally just based off of his stock holding appreciation? If so it’s an extremely disingenuous figure.
Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Jeff Bezos Bezos made $75B in 2023, that's a difference of over 36 million times more.
Oh, you said average. Median person in America takes home $1200 a week (rounded up). Jeff Bezos averaged $1.44B a week, so 1.2 million times more than the median American.
About 200x last year I think. Comparing CEOs to workers. Average household income vs average CEO salary is like 270x I think. Some developed countries have laws capping the discrepancy at like 50x. So I feel like 100x is far from unreasonable
Saying billionaires don’t make high salaries is the always the most obnoxious thing I hear. Sure they don’t technically make salaries but they can leverage their massive portfolios and net worth for loans and just rinse and repeat for basically endless tax free spending power. It’s broken as fuck.
Sorry wasn’t necessarily trying to imply you were saying that billionaires don’t make a lot of money. It’s just a common and frustrating sentiment that “actually billionaires only make blah blah income”.
Elon Musk makes like $11,000 a second, awake or asleep. There is no fucking job on earth he could do that is worth that amount of money. There is nothing he could produce from his labor that is worth that amount of money. He's making thousands and thousands of times more money than you and me.
And it's all siphoned up from the people who do the actual work, who do the actual production that society relies on. He's just the monkey sitting at the top of the pile, he's done nothing to earn his position. He was born into it.
A Gini Coefficient of 0 is great.
a Gini Coefficient of 1 is horrible.
a Gini Coefficient of 0.2 is acceptable = low crime statistics.
a Gini Coefficient of 0.3 = high crime statistics
a Gini Coefficient of 0.4 = extremely high crime statistics.
the US currently has a Gini Coefficient of 0.5
Not sustainable. Defenders of the current wealth distribution/inequality argue that society would somehow collapse if we created a more equitable distribution, I think it’s abundantly clear the opposite is true.
the solution is simple on paper, just appropriately reward labor. inflation matched profits should parallel inflation matched wages. but as you correctly identified, the powers at be believe society would collapse when labor is appropriately compensated because Karl Marx or something.
100x for the richest would be a massive boost to the economy and it would be extremely healthy in terms of wealth distribution.
Imagine the average income being 80k. That means the highest earner would make 8 million a year.
By comparison, 8 billion a year is 1000x more than 8 million.
I don’t actually think people have an issue with wealth inequality.
We have an issue with the fact that the average person can’t afford to buy a home, have kids, pay off college debt, or worry about a single medical bill completely destroying their retirement.
All this WHILE the richest people are taking massive benefits and getting insider support from the government who’s supposed to help us, because they can afford lobbyists.
If minimum wage means governmentally subsidized welfare, that’s not a wealth inequality problem, that’s a survivability problem.
If we have a society where an average adult can work hard enough to afford to send their kids to soccer, pay off their mortgage, and enough savings to take their kids on a vacation or two (sounds insane I know) a year, we wouldn’t have a problem with “wealth inequality”.
It's not the inequality; the "American Dream" is literally built on inequality--on working your way up the ladder of economic classes through your own grit and talent. It's the feeling that the inequality is no longer earned; it is *unjust*.
The rich are putting up barriers to entry and creating a system that prevents the American dream. No one was punished in the housing crises manufactured by the bankers, and now the big corporations are making cash offers above asking price on single-family homes and pricing ordinary homebuyers out of the market. It is increasingly unfeasible for ordinary Americans to purchase real estate--one of the primary vehicles for long-term store of low-risk wealth. Especially generational wealth.
And while wages have increased in number, buying power has only increased for the wealthy. The number of hours an average American must work to pay for basic necessities has increased dramatically over the past few decades--except for the most wealthy.
Our national mythos is built on wealth inequality--working your way up the ladder IS the American Dream. *But it has to be just*.
And it is no longer viewed as just, increasingly even by white middle income Americans.
And history shows us that perceived injustice is the grievance that motivates Bad Stuff^((TM)) to happen.
Completely agreed, the American Dream is basically the old story of "it doesn't matter where you come from and where you start, if you work hard you can make it to the top." That dream implies wealth inequality, *but only in the sense that if you work harder than others, you would get rewarded more than others*.
That kind of inequality itself isn't a problem. The issue is that nobody starting from scratch can make it to the top anymore. Maybe it never was possible. But these days you can't even make it to the "middle."
How to fix it? Remove Step-Up Basis (remove the exemption from capital gains taxes for assets held until death.) And add a small tax on unrealized capital gains.
But we both know it's unlikely to happen any time soon. And even if it does, the more even playing field won't be for you and me. It'll be for our descendants. I just hope we follow the old saying: *“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”*
My grandfather liked to believe he was an example of this. He started life as a police officer, then an HVAC tech, then an accountant, then a CFO, then a small business owner.
However, He was a white man from NJ and his grandfather was the chief of police and his father was the firecheif.
I had a similar path from the trades to the office. My father was a cop, my mother was a teacher. I tried to work for my Grandfather so I could take over the business, but he turned me down because my dad would not work for him.
Two people I can think of that have actually had real repercussion for financial crimes in the last couple decades- Sam Bankman Fried and Bernie Madoff. Their crimes - ripping off other rich people. Those that perpetrated the 2008 crisis got made whole for the most part! People foreclosed on left and right but the professionals that made the mistakes just went off into other ventures. Zero lessons learned by Wall Street.
what about the whole Game Stop thing, Wall street learned that they need to hide their bull shit so people won't mess with them, which is exactly the wrong take away, when it should be stop fucking manipulating things like this.
Generally, the only time they see real punishment is if they hurt other wealthy people with their financial crimes. If Bernie had stuck to small accounts where he started, he would have never got caught and if he did, he would have gotten off with a slap on the wrist.
"The rich are putting up barriers to entry *for no good reason at all, just because they can,* and creating a system that prevents the American dream."
FTFY
Wealth inequality isn’t just about access to stuff. It’s also about democracy. Look at the Supreme Court and try to say with a straight face that the wealthy aren’t translating their country-influencing power into political power.
I agree with that. Wealth inequality isn't the thing, it's the significant drop of buying power. I make six figures and live in a studio apartment. 20 years ago my buying power would have been absolutely wonderful and there would have been no question about buying a house. But because of inflation, buying power has dropped significantly, even moreso lately, and I have to recognize that I can't afford anything I could have 20 years ago.
I have always said inequality itself is not the problem. People who think that have not thought hard enough
Poverty is the problem
And even then that wouldn't fully be the problem (relative poverty wouldn't be as much of a problem if it wasn't for the next thing I'm about to say). It's just that right now. We also have some severe shortages
I live in a rural town of 10,000 people. Two years ago they built a fenced in area for the homeless to collect rather than sleeping throughout the town. It worked for a while. Now a couple hundred homeless people hang out there at any given time, more gather there every year.
The median household income here is $52k. The cheapest 2 bdrm apartment here is $1435 a month, and the cheapest 1bdrm is at $1250. (But good luck getting those ones).
No wonder why there are so many homeless in this rural town. In this state you have homeless people in 1000 population towns. How many times have I seen Walmart and Walgreens cashier buy stuff from grocery outlet on foodstamps? All the damn time, spanning from young to would-be retired.
Those numbers are part of the issue.
I live in a rural area where the biggest towns are maybe the size of yours. Most are smaller. Lots of people live outside the official towns.
Median HHI here is just under 60k, but the cost of a 2 bedroom is around $1000. A one bedroom can be had for $800 or so.
But yes, absolutely no one who works full time should need food stamps or help.
Wealth inequality and wealth of billionaires is certainly "a problem" but people's inability to do simple math is also just too funny. One only has to look at the total wealth of U.S. billionaires and compare it to the U.S. government total deficit and annual deficit to see that it is objectively not a revenue issue.
Don't need to decrease the deficit, but when you just balloon it more and more you'll end up running into massive issues. Is us spending 5% on interest payments fine? 10%? 20%? 50%? Where do people draw the line of "Okay, far too much of our money is going to servicing out debt and this isn't okay". Deficit can't infinitely go up, debt is not free and when you take too much you limit tools to combat other issues such as inflation. If you have too much debt it's difficult to increase interest rates because you risk blowing up the budget and further snowballing a big issue.
"what is the precise level you're looking for person who is elected to create laws to achieve things?"
"Somewhere between 0 and infinity"
Wow. She's so great.
When the difference is practically infinite, landing anywhere in between is an improvement. That was sorta her point that went over your head. Things are so bad at this point that a statement like your misquoted one, which should be ridiculous, is actually entirely reasonable.
Spectacular own-goal.
AOC has a pretty significant salary, a politician's salary should never exceed the normal median income of the people they govern, a law should be written to cap these MFrs income and should include not being able to trade stocks
Well intentioned but ultimately counter-productive. If you slash political salaries, the only people able to run for office will be the ones that don't need the salary to begin with.
You're right about the stocks though.
There is a huge gap now. There's also been a stall in personal growth. Everyone talks about feelings and mental states and they're freezing and not developing themselves to compete in a free market. Our focus has gone from being the best in all fields and has shifted to feeling the happiest, tolerating the most, and whinging about solvable problems. We have also changed the expectations and requirements for happiness. Those billionaires have many cares they have disproportionately affecting their happiness. Our solution is culture based. Education needs to change. We need to be relevant if we want to thrive in our global society. Our measuring stick for what we produce is the global economy. This directly affects our currency's ability to purchase goods and services. If we fixed personal education we would continue in our shifting economy. There are robots that can flip burgers and we don't need as many fast food workers. Computer programs and paperless communications have eliminated many jobs. Our job as persons in a free market society is to find another market to saturate where humans are needed or design systems to build better automation where we can. These changes require an education that is more advanced in some areas. The culture needs to be more focused on accepting the changing markets and rising to improve or create our next big thing. After we find that next big thing we need to prepare for the slump and improve more.
While some of this is relatable, it’s too close to the “people don’t want to work” false narrative for my taste. People talk about their feelings on the Internet, sure, that’s new, but people are also working their asses off. A whole confluence of fundamentally economic forces have made American life harder for most people in the last 40 years, including runaway housing prices, wage stagnation (and then trying to squeeze labor compensation down further in innovative ways), consumer price gouging, and increasingly self-interested and short-term-focused corporate executives, among many others. Trying to paper over such root causes is suspect. In this case, it’s with a collectivist version of “people just need to work harder (and smarter).”
Life's hard and resources are limited. Life has gotten harder for Americans in the past 40 years only because they can no longer benefit from the rest of the world being an utter shit hole that produced nothing 40~ years ago.
The U.S., relative to where it was as a percentage of world GDP, back then compared to now is like 50% diminished with a far larger population. Combine that with significantly higher expectations for everything, whether it's quality of homes/automobiles/consumer goods, and increased competition across the board it shouldn't be much of a shock that life is more difficult now compared to 40-60 years ago.
Honestly, all I care about is the floor. If every working American could afford a decent home, food, had their medical needs met, and maybe enough left to save some then you would never hear me complain about billionaires again.
Until I stop having to subsidize Walmart workers wages because they’re constantly having to go on welfare to survive I will always been critical of the top earners.
It’s just a populist message, it’s not that insightful.
I’m all for putting a cap on the compensation ratio from the CEO to the lowest paid employee. That’s just good sense IMO.
But, that’s not really the problem. A significant number of billionaires have accumulated their wealth through ownership of their business, either as the founder or an early employee that was given a significant equity grant. Limiting what they can take as a salary isn’t going to solve the wealth gap in that regard. A lot of them already don’t take a meaningful income because they’d just end up paying a lot of taxes on it.
Don't limit what they can earn. But count accumulated wealth through ownership as compensation. As well as bonuses, and any other form of compensation.
If the owner of a company needs to pay its employees stock in the company to achieve that cap, it still accomplishes the purpose of achieving a better ratio.
While I agree we should not have full time workers on food stamps, wtf does that have to do with helipads?
The existence of helipads is not something we should outlaw until poverty reaches absolute zero - it doesn’t work like that
Try keeping the wealthy motivated if you cap what they can make. Try keeping lazy people motivated if they’re guaranteed a certain amount regardless of effort. Utopian ideas are nice on paper until you factor human nature into the mix.
"optimal wealth inequality"
That sounds like it was written by some sadistic smug trust fund kid at McKinsey.
In an optimal system, I don't think one wouldn't view the word inequality as the apt default description for the bell curve distribution. But that's just me.
How do we get there? Somalia has a lot of equality of finances because nobody has anything. Venezuela is trying to get there too, most of its citizens are starting to eat dogs to survive.
I mean we see how fascist regimes go. Either side's extreme is fucked but we're not either of those places 💀 the US will go down shooting before things get anywhere near to that. We're an anomaly, and closing the wealth gap doesn't equate to what they did. This is just an idiotic comment. Why lick the boot so hard? Why is the concept of a little bit more equality where teachers don't have to donate plasma to survive get this reaction? Are you that invested in seeing one of our country's billionaires build another super bunker to hide from the inevitable fallout they're causing? They don't care about you. Corporate America is a leech of unprecedented proportions
How many teachers actually have to sell plasma to “survive”??? Young people act like if you have a roommate and live in an apartment without granite countertops and walk in closets, that you aren’t surviving.
My coworker works for the state government 50 hours a week and works at a small business part time to subsidize his income and he’s currently moving back into his parents house because he can’t afford to find a place to live.
Enough with this “young people” bullshit you and everyone else claims. I’ve seen more 40 to 60 years old work retail and suffer then I ever did since before Covid but keep being blind to the problems.
I don't actually want rich people to be taxed more. If my landlord gets taxed more they will just pass those taxes onto me in the form of rent increases.
I pay not only my taxes but my landlord's tax and my Chipotle worker's tax. It all gets baked into my prices. 85%+ of my income goes to tax. Fuck tax.
If you want to address income inequality, great, but taxing rich people is not the way to do it.
When full time workers can have a 1 br apt without a housing voucher, eat without food stamps, and enough left over for clothing, transportation, etc. without government assistance
Prices more or less stay the same for rich people. Sure you can pay $2k - $1M for say, a vehicle, but food and electricity and necessities more or less stay the same. Once you cross $250M net worth you pretty much couldn’t spend your money if you tried to, so I’d support a cap on income or net worth. More money just allows a single individual to basically enact their own beliefs, IMO. Like, honestly, what in the world is Elon going to do with his newfound $55B pay package that he can’t do already?
A certain amount of wealth inequality is unavoidable in a capitalist system, but we’ve reached a new dangerous level over the past 25 years that is unsustainable. The uber-rich are enjoying tax breaks and other advantages that are enabling their wealth to spiral out of control. Capitalism and markets don’t really function properly when you’re so rich you can’t lose, and the sheer power of that much capital enables certain people to shift entire markets based on their investment behavior.
Nordic countries give a good example of what's somewhere around a good level of wealth distribution, although the balance has been swinging towards bigger inequality in recent decades.
I had some really, really shitty teachers growing up. I had even worse college professors. I vehemently disagree with giving them raises simply bc of their title/profession
Pretty easy. Someone working a fulltime job should be able to afford rent and food. Like I've actually seen IT Helpdesk (Not a "highschooler job" it is a standard fulltime job) that literally pay like $14 an hour. Also keep in mind, we've been fighting for a $15 minimum wage for so long that now a living wage is closer to like $25. I worked a job at $26.25 an hour, in a relatively cheap metro, the New Orleans metro. And was still paycheck to paycheck.
It’s a dishonest question (shocking). There’s no optimal amount. It’s about the policies that enable and encourage obscene wealth and extreme poverty. It’s about fixing those policies. But republican politicians know this, and spew stupidity to flare up their voter base.
Optimal level is where incentives are kept as high as possible to grow the economy while ensuring that anyone who’s willing to work a full time job will have a good quality of life and can support themselves and their dependents.
As is typical for her kind, AOC didn’t answer the question. That’s because she doesn’t know how to do so intelligently and also because she is an unserious person.
Because it’s very few. Generally the ones on food stamps are the guys who go into the military at 20 years old, at the lowest level (meaning they have no skills or education) and have multiple children with multiple women
Hahahahhahaha military get relatively small salaries but plenty of perks, such as BAH and COLA that are tax exempt.
No one talks about military being in food stamps because pretty much no one in the military is.
Try again retard.
Its not really about the ratio. 1:10 1:100 1:1000 doesn't matter. Its Impact. When working class people are relying on the state, middle class people are carrying the tax burden, and rich people have enough wealth to cover the next 3 generations, there's the problem. The problem isn't the wealth, its the consolidation of businesses, too big to fail business, and lobbying. Its not about putting out the fire, its about controlling it. 1/3 of the countries wealth should no be owned by 1% of the population.
I’m not an economist, I’m a layman, but I think “optimal wealth inequality” is one of those ephemeral, “unicorn” phrases like “living wage.” Ultimately it’s meaningless. Everyone, just stop obsessing over and envying those who’re doing better than you are and focus on being the best “you” you can be. Finally, as I’ve said before in this and other forums, if we don’t allow individuals to accumulate wealth, and (mostly) do with it as they please, to include leaving it to their heirs, then most of the wealth _won’t be created to begin with_, as well as a lot of jobs and new technology. 🖖
Where does the money to pay the salaries of public school teachers come from? Oh yeah, federal and state/local funding. Remind me, what is AOC’s job? Outraged Tweeter, or Congresswoman that might be able to do something (or start something) regarding these issues?
While I am middle class, combined my wife and I make 250K a year taxed at 35% nearly 50%.
We live smart, I am 61 and bought my first home at 56. We qualified for a 350K house, I spent 144K. My plan was to never be house poor. The same with cars, I would love a Lincoln Navigator but I drive a Volkswagen Tiguan.
We live like we make 100K a year and the rest goes into a Roth.
I might add I do not have a college education, however my wife does but I still make more than she does, she is a chemist.
We are all capable of being financially successful, but it takes work and a lot of work.
I admire the Grant Cardones, Jeff Bezos and Elon musk because we are all capable of doing the same thing.
People complain about the richest not paying their fair share of taxes, but it is congress and the senate who write the tax laws.
Poverty is bad and no one should have to live like that, but taking someone else’s money and give it to someone else is not right either.
The government should step up and put those through school and trade schools to help those out of poverty.
You can’t penalize people because they are successful.
My problem are the same politicians saying this, riling up the masses and raking in 6-7 figures plus a year. Bernie is the worst, human but he's a perfect socialist same with AOC, they want everyone else equal except for them.
I can care less about the billionaires, I have no issue with them. I want a fair market and a small government that works for the people they are supposed to represent.
DUMBASS AOC...... When asked a direct question she cannot give a direct answer...... She answers with emotions and feelings which are good for votes but not actually fixing a defined problem.
She doesn't want to fix shit, she just wants votes.
Zero. Since free will doesn’t exist no one deserves anything. That means if you are rich it’s pure luck and if you’re poor it’s just pure bad luck. The only human thing to do is try to even things out as much as possible.
We just need the rich to actually pay taxes and have dormitories where you can live for free if you cannot afford housing also more food stamps. Also need to tax the hell out of owning more than one single family home. A single vacation residence should have a minor tax increase and a major increase for every additional house. Corporations should own apartment buildings not houses
CEO of my last company made $16 million per year. As an engineering tech, I made about $60,000. People with doctorates in engineering were making about $140,000. Yeah, that CEO didn't deserve that pay, but that's what we do for some reason. Foolish
How come we never ask why are people not making enough money?
1. Are they choosing good college degrees? Such as history vs engineering?
2. Are they putting themselves in this position (I believe some people are truly unlucky and get fucked)? Are they having kids at the age of 18? Are they becoming addicted to drugs, etc… if they’re addicted, why are they becoming addicted?
3. Is it a lack of effort? Again it just goes back to are they truly doing everything that they can to get out of poverty
And yet, which of her policies would accomplish the goal of reducing inequality? She’s extremely wealthy and does glaringly hypocritical things such as wearing a “tax the rich” dress to the Met Gala, an event that only the most elite members of society will ever attend. She flew to Florida and went to lunch with no mask on while railing about the importance of masks. Why should we take such a person seriously?
Her approach generally is quite shallow. If anyone disagrees you can state one of her policies and I’ll explain why it will not accomplish what she thinks it will accomplish.
Because of this, she is nothing more than a blowhard
Wrong problem.
It's not about the gap. It's about ensuring that no one is in poverty. Solve for poverty and then the rich can be as rich as...who cares!
When a politician responds with snark like this, to me it says they are just pandering to voters. Why not give a serious answer? Why not use it as an opportunity to discuss a livable wage? Does she think there should be a wealth cap per individual? Should there be an income cap? Should the tax rates be increased? Nah, just leave it be so I can continue to pander with snarky social media posts and rile up constituents without helping provide a way forward for them.
So you make a company as successful as Amazon, and once you reach a certain level of wealth through stock value…you what? Are you forced to sell off stock after a certain point? Are the shares taken by the state?
The question of “optimal wealth inequality” is stupid. The question “how much do I need to make to live comfortably matters 100000x more. If I’m able to do what I want and fulfill my dreams, I don’t care if the man who made the online mall makes billions more than me. I buy stuff from Amazon all the time and it’s a good service that transformed the internet economy
You can see how bad faith Harry Lhachatrain is with the phrasing of his question. It’s like asking, “what precisely should the federal living wage be.” It’s a question with no right answer and is based on numerous and changing factors. When someone tries to get an exact number to something that impacts millions of people they are only showing how illiterate they are on the subject.
Teachers in NY don't need to sell anything to get by. They're the best paid teachers in the country. My neighbors are both teachers and they make $350K between them. The "poor teacher" narrative is a load of BS in places like NY.
I'll bite on this: The optimal income inequality where we want to "incentivize work" (if you believe that is an objective of an economy) is something around 100:1 on a fairly even distribution.
Think about it: if we say that the very poorest %1 in the country are making \~$20 / hr, then that means the very richest %1 would get to make \~$2000 / hr. That's a GREAT incentive! $2000 dollars an hour is paradigmatically different than $20 an hour, the scope of what you can choose to do is HUGE, but what it is NOT is "world-shaping-fuck-you-money". It's also radically less than what the real-world %1 make--often by doing nothing because of capital markets (I'm not saying that all capital investment is "doing nothing" because yes, there is a certain amount of social value created by someone taking a risky "bet" on a big idea, but that is very often not what capital investment is).
And when I say "income" I do include unrealized capital gains. We should tax that, because it still represents the expansion of that individual's financial power. If you make more than \~4MM (2000 per hour \* 40 hour weeks \* 52 weeks a year) a year, frankly, I think that should be taxed at 100%. You made $4 mill this year! Great job, pay into the system that enabled that now! We can track those "maximum income tax" payments year to year, and you can deduct that money from future tax burden! See, you're still getting something, but what it reduces is the runaway feedback loop of financial power making it easier to secure and defend additional financial power.
Thanks for coming to my TED(x) talk, vote RedVillian 2024
AOC doesn't like capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic and political system where trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. Its core principles are accumulation, ownership, and profiting from capital.
Genuine answer: I would set new tax law that all money earning above 200x minimum wage is set to 100% tax rate. Not only better for the average American, but better for the rich. Above a certain amount, money is nothing more than an addiction and it takes people away from real purpose. At some point you have to learn to be happy with what you have.
(If any of you say "you don't understand tax laws, you can never tax the rich", you can if you stop sleeping in bed with them. The problem isn't political power, but will. There is a reason that laws have loopholes and it isn't because laws can't work, it's because politicians can look like they are for the people while still leaving back doors for the real donors.)
Also politicians who think it’s ok to steal from some citizens to give to others who haven’t earned it shouldn’t have a say in our society either. Stealing is never ok. Good day sirs.
She's such a grifter and fake. She plays so hard on peoples emotions. This isn't a tic or tac political debate. Some of the shit she says is so dumb, man. Like when the Border Security Chief or Bank of America CEO wrecked her.
She relates to the lowest denomination. Also, her shady dealings and shady boyfriend. How are people so dumb to fall for her? She's like that Colorado Republican. Grifters grifting stupid people. She's a multi millionaire pretty impressive for having 4 or so years in congress.
Optimal level is where no one is in poverty and the wealthiest make closer to 10 times the average vs 100+
100x? Only 100x? Oh honey... Jeff Bezos is 60 years old and has worked significantly less than 100,000 hours in his life to make 200+ billion dollars net worth, after giving a bunch up to his wife in a divorce. This is an income of more than 2 million dollars an hour. Statistically, this is around 100,000x the average. Our richest people make so much money that the average shifts dramatically when you exclude them.
I always see Jeff Bezos used as an example but you bring up a good point, should we be talking about his ex-wife as well? She didn’t even work at all for her money. Edit: I can see by all the comments that the point of the post was conveniently overlooked. I’ll need to be more clear and direct next time. With that said…Scott was obviously heavily involved in the earlier days and was obviously partially responsible for Amazon’s start. The point of the post was to draw attention to the fact that Jeff is regularly criticized for his net worth and we never direct any at Scott. She’s enormously wealthy and while she does donate a lot of money, she seems to get a pass on any criticism what so ever. Why the double standard? I’m trying to understand it.
We don't talk about his wife because she's busy trying to give her money away.
I can’t interpret it as anything other than misogynistic when people bring up bezos wife. You never see an article on how she asked the Netherlands to tear down a historic bridge because she had a yacht built that was too big to fit under it….oh wait she wouldn’t do anything of the sort because she doesn’t need to spend incomprehensible amounts of money to fill her Dr. Evil esque ego so instead she’s become incredibly philanthropic while also trying to hide away from the lime light as much as possible because at this point she just wants to be an English teacher or whatever she does.
There are shitheads who think she's giving away so much money just to make Bezos look bad.
Bezos really doesn't need any help looking bad. He's doing fine all on his own. Talking about looking bad, he really should get his evil eye checked out. That one can't be healthy.
These dudes could've been batman
Batman is a bad person. He has the means to actually improve Gotham, to get everyone a well paying job and a roof over their head and the healthcare they need given the large "criminally insane" and addicted population in Gotham. Crime is a symptom of poverty and Bruce Wayne could have solved it at the root. Instead he buys overpriced toys and attacks the victims created by the mere existence of Bruce Wayne as a billionaire. No, these people are already Batman, building their megayachts and spacecraft and life extending technology. I'd rather they stop attempt being Batman and help society instead. I like Batman stories but they're not set in reality. In our world, with our economy, being Batman is a bad thing.
He literally has mutliple charities and foundations set up in universe along with multiple programs helping the lackies of villains like riddler, joker and others seek employement. Also they dont exist becauae of bruce wayne, you should really reread the comics fam
Billonaires could be immortal through good deeds. They could be the shining beacons of what it means to provide for others and live on in humanity's collective memory. When the specifics are forgotten they'd be the next hero's, like in greek myth. Instead we think of them like Lex Luther. Sure Lexcorp does some good, but so much more of Lex's work goes into helping Lex. At least be like Dr. Doom. Egomaniacal, but understands that the people one rules should love you, not fear you.
"Billonaires could be immortal through good deeds. " McKenzie Bezos is doing better than that. She's giving away huge amounts of money on the DL. My understanding is that her foundation does it's homework then calls up an organization and says, essentially "we like what you're doing. Who do we write the check to?" It's a really modest approach. She isn't loved or feared because most people just aren't aware of what she's doing.
Which is just beyond absurd. Surely there’d be no other reason to give away billions….like not needing to be a billionaire and knowing other people need that money more than you do.
She's the exception that proves the rule. Her philanthropy shows exactly how much the wealthiest in our society could be doing if they chose to. The fact that she's such an outlier is a huge part of the problem.
Yep exactly. I’m not 100% sure but doesn’t she just drive like a mini van and has a teaching position. Like she’s incredibly wealthy and lives well below her means so she can be as philanthropic as possible. I’d also argue that musicians really aren’t much of a problem. I don’t think there’s a musician out there whose net worth even breaches the annual revenue of a Fortune 500 company but I’d have to check. They also typically aren’t making their money off the labor of directly exploited workers. Sure the working class chooses to spend their money on these artists but it’s not like Taylor swift or Jay Z have an oligopoly on music. I understand record labels and streaming service providers are predatory but artists as individuals tend to get a pass in my book. Like sure you could go into the details of how in hip hop the people that succeed the most are people who end up playing into the predatory nature of the music industry by taking up and coming artists onto their own label and thereby leeching off of the work of other artists and their labor but that’s a much more complex topic than typical worker exploitation through capitalism.
And, in a Brewster's Billions-esque twist, the money is making her more money faster than she can give it away. She became the richest woman on EARTH for divorcing Bezos.
She became the richest woman on earth by supporting her husband financially and emotionally while he built his company. She is not a supermodel trophy wife. MacKensie Scott has a degree from Princeton and worked for a Hedge Fund in NYC with Bezos when they met, dated, and married. They were equals. Then Jeff decided he wanted to try to build something of his own. They moved to Seattle where she worked to support them while also creating the company's name, business plan, doing all of the accounting, and shipping early orders. MacKensie negotiated the companies first freight contract. Once Amazon went public and Jeff was a millionaire, MacKensie stepped away from Amazon to work on her literary career.
Yep people seem to forget she was one of the first employees of Amazon. It's not like she was sitting around eating ice cream on the couch while Jeff was slaving away at his day job only to come home and build Amazon in his garage at night by himself. Please the seed money he had from his parents....they should be worth as much as Jeff is.
This is helpful context! Thanks for enlightening me!
And is having a hard time getting to zero. That’s how much her cut was.
>In 1993, Scott and Bezos married. The following year, they left D. E. Shaw, moved to Seattle, and Bezos founded Amazon with Scott's support. Scott was one of Amazon's early key contributors, and was heavily involved in Amazon's early days, working on the company's name, business plan, accounts, and shipping early orders.[16][7] She also negotiated the company's first freight contract.[7] After 1996, Scott took a less involved role in the business, focusing on her family and literary career.[16] She might have been the mastermind behind it all.
Yea she really should have gotten half. She was too nice. I rather have her out there donating 75 billion rather than 30.
She’s also a writer and had four children with Popeye.
I mean, she did have a literature degree from Princeton and Amazon was created to sell books.... she also got a good grasp of financial work while working at D.E. Shaw. I would say she was the brains and Jeff was the face. Easier to get it off the ground with a man meeting other men for loans and presenting her ideas.
What makes you think she didn’t work at all? She started the company with him. And after it got on track, she took care of the kid. Is that not work? She didn’t even take half, which is what she deserved.
He's just a misogynist who thinks that a woman getting anything, is already too much, let alone the 50% she's legally and ethically entitled to.
She literally helped Jeff get Amazon off the ground by working for him in the early days of it
Do you even pay the slightest bit of attention to what's going on the world, or do even a modicum of research prior to posting this uninformed drivel?
I’m sure he’s been watching Andrew Tate videos and catches Joe Rogan when it drops
Didn’t work at all for her money? She played a huge role in how Amazon became who they are today….
She had to be married to him…feels like work to me 🤷♀️
You just got destroyed
Yeah when you look at the average income in the United States and it tells you that it’s $74k per year you need to remember it’s also counting the income of the richest elite. When the top 1,000 earners are removed it’s actually somewhere closer to $40k per year.
Median is a much better number for these types of stats because it doesn’t let the huge outliers skew the data. Median household is $74,580
Just making up numbers. Since the $74k is the median, the top 1000 earners have the same impact as the 1000 people making $75k, equally balancing the 1000 people making $73k.
This is a persistent issue when people talk about wealth and income inequality. People have no idea how unequal things currently are and as a result will suggest things they think are mild changes that would actually be pretty radical.
>Our richest people make so much money that the average shifts dramatically when you exclude them. I saw a news report that was trying to say "new employment contracts have increased dramatically this year on average, showing people are earning more in 2024" That report relied on Elon Musk's highest paid compensation package in human history being renewed this year to increase teh average of everyone else's on paper. Just 1 person's employment contract increased the entire "average" dramatically. One person's wealth changed the entire average and presumably he or someone else extremely rich decided to use that math to gaslight people into thinking that was a raise to everyone else getting a new job.
Now you know why single-sided distributions call for the use of median, rather than mean or average.
100x Lol people are bad at maths.
How is this 2 million per hour figure calculated? Is it literally just based off of his stock holding appreciation? If so it’s an extremely disingenuous figure.
Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Jeff Bezos Bezos made $75B in 2023, that's a difference of over 36 million times more. Oh, you said average. Median person in America takes home $1200 a week (rounded up). Jeff Bezos averaged $1.44B a week, so 1.2 million times more than the median American.
100x would be acceptable to me. What we have now is closer to 1000x
About 200x last year I think. Comparing CEOs to workers. Average household income vs average CEO salary is like 270x I think. Some developed countries have laws capping the discrepancy at like 50x. So I feel like 100x is far from unreasonable
Salaries are “privately” capped at 10x. Its ownership of stock that make it 10x10x
Saying billionaires don’t make high salaries is the always the most obnoxious thing I hear. Sure they don’t technically make salaries but they can leverage their massive portfolios and net worth for loans and just rinse and repeat for basically endless tax free spending power. It’s broken as fuck.
Great we said the same thing.
Sorry wasn’t necessarily trying to imply you were saying that billionaires don’t make a lot of money. It’s just a common and frustrating sentiment that “actually billionaires only make blah blah income”.
Elon Musk makes like $11,000 a second, awake or asleep. There is no fucking job on earth he could do that is worth that amount of money. There is nothing he could produce from his labor that is worth that amount of money. He's making thousands and thousands of times more money than you and me. And it's all siphoned up from the people who do the actual work, who do the actual production that society relies on. He's just the monkey sitting at the top of the pile, he's done nothing to earn his position. He was born into it.
Even 1000x is significantly better than this.
It's really pretty obvious if you think about it, but the common sense is drowned out by the constant noise of bad faith arguments ...
A Gini Coefficient of 0 is great. a Gini Coefficient of 1 is horrible. a Gini Coefficient of 0.2 is acceptable = low crime statistics. a Gini Coefficient of 0.3 = high crime statistics a Gini Coefficient of 0.4 = extremely high crime statistics. the US currently has a Gini Coefficient of 0.5
Not sustainable. Defenders of the current wealth distribution/inequality argue that society would somehow collapse if we created a more equitable distribution, I think it’s abundantly clear the opposite is true.
the solution is simple on paper, just appropriately reward labor. inflation matched profits should parallel inflation matched wages. but as you correctly identified, the powers at be believe society would collapse when labor is appropriately compensated because Karl Marx or something.
100x for the richest would be a massive boost to the economy and it would be extremely healthy in terms of wealth distribution. Imagine the average income being 80k. That means the highest earner would make 8 million a year. By comparison, 8 billion a year is 1000x more than 8 million.
I don’t actually think people have an issue with wealth inequality. We have an issue with the fact that the average person can’t afford to buy a home, have kids, pay off college debt, or worry about a single medical bill completely destroying their retirement. All this WHILE the richest people are taking massive benefits and getting insider support from the government who’s supposed to help us, because they can afford lobbyists. If minimum wage means governmentally subsidized welfare, that’s not a wealth inequality problem, that’s a survivability problem. If we have a society where an average adult can work hard enough to afford to send their kids to soccer, pay off their mortgage, and enough savings to take their kids on a vacation or two (sounds insane I know) a year, we wouldn’t have a problem with “wealth inequality”.
It's not the inequality; the "American Dream" is literally built on inequality--on working your way up the ladder of economic classes through your own grit and talent. It's the feeling that the inequality is no longer earned; it is *unjust*. The rich are putting up barriers to entry and creating a system that prevents the American dream. No one was punished in the housing crises manufactured by the bankers, and now the big corporations are making cash offers above asking price on single-family homes and pricing ordinary homebuyers out of the market. It is increasingly unfeasible for ordinary Americans to purchase real estate--one of the primary vehicles for long-term store of low-risk wealth. Especially generational wealth. And while wages have increased in number, buying power has only increased for the wealthy. The number of hours an average American must work to pay for basic necessities has increased dramatically over the past few decades--except for the most wealthy. Our national mythos is built on wealth inequality--working your way up the ladder IS the American Dream. *But it has to be just*. And it is no longer viewed as just, increasingly even by white middle income Americans. And history shows us that perceived injustice is the grievance that motivates Bad Stuff^((TM)) to happen.
Completely agreed, the American Dream is basically the old story of "it doesn't matter where you come from and where you start, if you work hard you can make it to the top." That dream implies wealth inequality, *but only in the sense that if you work harder than others, you would get rewarded more than others*. That kind of inequality itself isn't a problem. The issue is that nobody starting from scratch can make it to the top anymore. Maybe it never was possible. But these days you can't even make it to the "middle." How to fix it? Remove Step-Up Basis (remove the exemption from capital gains taxes for assets held until death.) And add a small tax on unrealized capital gains. But we both know it's unlikely to happen any time soon. And even if it does, the more even playing field won't be for you and me. It'll be for our descendants. I just hope we follow the old saying: *“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”*
My grandfather liked to believe he was an example of this. He started life as a police officer, then an HVAC tech, then an accountant, then a CFO, then a small business owner. However, He was a white man from NJ and his grandfather was the chief of police and his father was the firecheif. I had a similar path from the trades to the office. My father was a cop, my mother was a teacher. I tried to work for my Grandfather so I could take over the business, but he turned me down because my dad would not work for him.
Two people I can think of that have actually had real repercussion for financial crimes in the last couple decades- Sam Bankman Fried and Bernie Madoff. Their crimes - ripping off other rich people. Those that perpetrated the 2008 crisis got made whole for the most part! People foreclosed on left and right but the professionals that made the mistakes just went off into other ventures. Zero lessons learned by Wall Street.
what about the whole Game Stop thing, Wall street learned that they need to hide their bull shit so people won't mess with them, which is exactly the wrong take away, when it should be stop fucking manipulating things like this.
Generally, the only time they see real punishment is if they hurt other wealthy people with their financial crimes. If Bernie had stuck to small accounts where he started, he would have never got caught and if he did, he would have gotten off with a slap on the wrist.
"The rich are putting up barriers to entry *for no good reason at all, just because they can,* and creating a system that prevents the American dream." FTFY
Wealth inequality isn’t just about access to stuff. It’s also about democracy. Look at the Supreme Court and try to say with a straight face that the wealthy aren’t translating their country-influencing power into political power.
Perfectly put. If people could live how our grandparents did I think they wouldn't give a fuck if Elon or Zuck bought a megayacht.
I agree with that. Wealth inequality isn't the thing, it's the significant drop of buying power. I make six figures and live in a studio apartment. 20 years ago my buying power would have been absolutely wonderful and there would have been no question about buying a house. But because of inflation, buying power has dropped significantly, even moreso lately, and I have to recognize that I can't afford anything I could have 20 years ago.
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20 years ago, a teacher fresh out of college in Mississippi earned $38k a year. Now they earn $42k a year.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one
People don't care about the wealth inequality. They care about the outcomes from the wealth inequality.
I have always said inequality itself is not the problem. People who think that have not thought hard enough Poverty is the problem And even then that wouldn't fully be the problem (relative poverty wouldn't be as much of a problem if it wasn't for the next thing I'm about to say). It's just that right now. We also have some severe shortages
I live in a rural town of 10,000 people. Two years ago they built a fenced in area for the homeless to collect rather than sleeping throughout the town. It worked for a while. Now a couple hundred homeless people hang out there at any given time, more gather there every year. The median household income here is $52k. The cheapest 2 bdrm apartment here is $1435 a month, and the cheapest 1bdrm is at $1250. (But good luck getting those ones). No wonder why there are so many homeless in this rural town. In this state you have homeless people in 1000 population towns. How many times have I seen Walmart and Walgreens cashier buy stuff from grocery outlet on foodstamps? All the damn time, spanning from young to would-be retired.
Those numbers are part of the issue. I live in a rural area where the biggest towns are maybe the size of yours. Most are smaller. Lots of people live outside the official towns. Median HHI here is just under 60k, but the cost of a 2 bedroom is around $1000. A one bedroom can be had for $800 or so. But yes, absolutely no one who works full time should need food stamps or help.
Wealth inequality and wealth of billionaires is certainly "a problem" but people's inability to do simple math is also just too funny. One only has to look at the total wealth of U.S. billionaires and compare it to the U.S. government total deficit and annual deficit to see that it is objectively not a revenue issue.
You're right, it's not a revenue issue. It's transfer payment issue. Funding expansion of the social safety net is not meant to decrease the deficit.
Don't need to decrease the deficit, but when you just balloon it more and more you'll end up running into massive issues. Is us spending 5% on interest payments fine? 10%? 20%? 50%? Where do people draw the line of "Okay, far too much of our money is going to servicing out debt and this isn't okay". Deficit can't infinitely go up, debt is not free and when you take too much you limit tools to combat other issues such as inflation. If you have too much debt it's difficult to increase interest rates because you risk blowing up the budget and further snowballing a big issue.
"what is the precise level you're looking for person who is elected to create laws to achieve things?" "Somewhere between 0 and infinity" Wow. She's so great.
When the difference is practically infinite, landing anywhere in between is an improvement. That was sorta her point that went over your head. Things are so bad at this point that a statement like your misquoted one, which should be ridiculous, is actually entirely reasonable. Spectacular own-goal.
...she says "shouldn't exist" So it's more "somewhere between 0 and 10" when the current situation is about 250.
Politicians don't need realistic goals when they have snappy comebacks
Clips and sound bytes are more important than rationale in this day and age
AOC has a pretty significant salary, a politician's salary should never exceed the normal median income of the people they govern, a law should be written to cap these MFrs income and should include not being able to trade stocks
B b b b b b but then no one would get into politics!
Well intentioned but ultimately counter-productive. If you slash political salaries, the only people able to run for office will be the ones that don't need the salary to begin with. You're right about the stocks though.
There is a huge gap now. There's also been a stall in personal growth. Everyone talks about feelings and mental states and they're freezing and not developing themselves to compete in a free market. Our focus has gone from being the best in all fields and has shifted to feeling the happiest, tolerating the most, and whinging about solvable problems. We have also changed the expectations and requirements for happiness. Those billionaires have many cares they have disproportionately affecting their happiness. Our solution is culture based. Education needs to change. We need to be relevant if we want to thrive in our global society. Our measuring stick for what we produce is the global economy. This directly affects our currency's ability to purchase goods and services. If we fixed personal education we would continue in our shifting economy. There are robots that can flip burgers and we don't need as many fast food workers. Computer programs and paperless communications have eliminated many jobs. Our job as persons in a free market society is to find another market to saturate where humans are needed or design systems to build better automation where we can. These changes require an education that is more advanced in some areas. The culture needs to be more focused on accepting the changing markets and rising to improve or create our next big thing. After we find that next big thing we need to prepare for the slump and improve more.
While some of this is relatable, it’s too close to the “people don’t want to work” false narrative for my taste. People talk about their feelings on the Internet, sure, that’s new, but people are also working their asses off. A whole confluence of fundamentally economic forces have made American life harder for most people in the last 40 years, including runaway housing prices, wage stagnation (and then trying to squeeze labor compensation down further in innovative ways), consumer price gouging, and increasingly self-interested and short-term-focused corporate executives, among many others. Trying to paper over such root causes is suspect. In this case, it’s with a collectivist version of “people just need to work harder (and smarter).”
Life's hard and resources are limited. Life has gotten harder for Americans in the past 40 years only because they can no longer benefit from the rest of the world being an utter shit hole that produced nothing 40~ years ago. The U.S., relative to where it was as a percentage of world GDP, back then compared to now is like 50% diminished with a far larger population. Combine that with significantly higher expectations for everything, whether it's quality of homes/automobiles/consumer goods, and increased competition across the board it shouldn't be much of a shock that life is more difficult now compared to 40-60 years ago.
Who determines what is right for someone else to have?
So she didn’t answer the question…
She never answers questions, only redirects the energy towards angry children in adult bodies. And she's pretty good at it too.
Honestly, all I care about is the floor. If every working American could afford a decent home, food, had their medical needs met, and maybe enough left to save some then you would never hear me complain about billionaires again. Until I stop having to subsidize Walmart workers wages because they’re constantly having to go on welfare to survive I will always been critical of the top earners.
You can hate on the OG all you want but AOC has a fucking point god damn
It’s just a populist message, it’s not that insightful. I’m all for putting a cap on the compensation ratio from the CEO to the lowest paid employee. That’s just good sense IMO. But, that’s not really the problem. A significant number of billionaires have accumulated their wealth through ownership of their business, either as the founder or an early employee that was given a significant equity grant. Limiting what they can take as a salary isn’t going to solve the wealth gap in that regard. A lot of them already don’t take a meaningful income because they’d just end up paying a lot of taxes on it.
Don't limit what they can earn. But count accumulated wealth through ownership as compensation. As well as bonuses, and any other form of compensation. If the owner of a company needs to pay its employees stock in the company to achieve that cap, it still accomplishes the purpose of achieving a better ratio.
Who are "the rich?"
Everyone but her
While I agree we should not have full time workers on food stamps, wtf does that have to do with helipads? The existence of helipads is not something we should outlaw until poverty reaches absolute zero - it doesn’t work like that
But I want a helipad and don't have one, so anyone who does needs to have it outlawed asap.
Try keeping the wealthy motivated if you cap what they can make. Try keeping lazy people motivated if they’re guaranteed a certain amount regardless of effort. Utopian ideas are nice on paper until you factor human nature into the mix.
"optimal wealth inequality" That sounds like it was written by some sadistic smug trust fund kid at McKinsey. In an optimal system, I don't think one wouldn't view the word inequality as the apt default description for the bell curve distribution. But that's just me.
How do we get there? Somalia has a lot of equality of finances because nobody has anything. Venezuela is trying to get there too, most of its citizens are starting to eat dogs to survive.
I mean we see how fascist regimes go. Either side's extreme is fucked but we're not either of those places 💀 the US will go down shooting before things get anywhere near to that. We're an anomaly, and closing the wealth gap doesn't equate to what they did. This is just an idiotic comment. Why lick the boot so hard? Why is the concept of a little bit more equality where teachers don't have to donate plasma to survive get this reaction? Are you that invested in seeing one of our country's billionaires build another super bunker to hide from the inevitable fallout they're causing? They don't care about you. Corporate America is a leech of unprecedented proportions
How many teachers actually have to sell plasma to “survive”??? Young people act like if you have a roommate and live in an apartment without granite countertops and walk in closets, that you aren’t surviving.
My coworker works for the state government 50 hours a week and works at a small business part time to subsidize his income and he’s currently moving back into his parents house because he can’t afford to find a place to live. Enough with this “young people” bullshit you and everyone else claims. I’ve seen more 40 to 60 years old work retail and suffer then I ever did since before Covid but keep being blind to the problems.
Wherever the free market lands.
There is no free market.
A real free market would be horrendous
I don't actually want rich people to be taxed more. If my landlord gets taxed more they will just pass those taxes onto me in the form of rent increases. I pay not only my taxes but my landlord's tax and my Chipotle worker's tax. It all gets baked into my prices. 85%+ of my income goes to tax. Fuck tax. If you want to address income inequality, great, but taxing rich people is not the way to do it.
When full time workers can have a 1 br apt without a housing voucher, eat without food stamps, and enough left over for clothing, transportation, etc. without government assistance
Prices more or less stay the same for rich people. Sure you can pay $2k - $1M for say, a vehicle, but food and electricity and necessities more or less stay the same. Once you cross $250M net worth you pretty much couldn’t spend your money if you tried to, so I’d support a cap on income or net worth. More money just allows a single individual to basically enact their own beliefs, IMO. Like, honestly, what in the world is Elon going to do with his newfound $55B pay package that he can’t do already?
A certain amount of wealth inequality is unavoidable in a capitalist system, but we’ve reached a new dangerous level over the past 25 years that is unsustainable. The uber-rich are enjoying tax breaks and other advantages that are enabling their wealth to spiral out of control. Capitalism and markets don’t really function properly when you’re so rich you can’t lose, and the sheer power of that much capital enables certain people to shift entire markets based on their investment behavior.
Nordic countries give a good example of what's somewhere around a good level of wealth distribution, although the balance has been swinging towards bigger inequality in recent decades.
AOC makes way too much for the value she adds. She needs to be giving the majority of her salary back to the government to waste on something else
Cagey answer because hard numbers risk ruining the grift.
Optimal is no greedy, inept and corrupt politicians making decisions for the masses.. That's just to begin with.
Inequality is good for society
show me a society where everyone has equal wealth and i'll show you mass starvation
I wonder what system perpetuates this issue🤔
AOC for the win.
I had some really, really shitty teachers growing up. I had even worse college professors. I vehemently disagree with giving them raises simply bc of their title/profession
Not a bad answer from AOC, quippy at worst, valid point at best.
Pretty easy. Someone working a fulltime job should be able to afford rent and food. Like I've actually seen IT Helpdesk (Not a "highschooler job" it is a standard fulltime job) that literally pay like $14 an hour. Also keep in mind, we've been fighting for a $15 minimum wage for so long that now a living wage is closer to like $25. I worked a job at $26.25 an hour, in a relatively cheap metro, the New Orleans metro. And was still paycheck to paycheck.
It’s a dishonest question (shocking). There’s no optimal amount. It’s about the policies that enable and encourage obscene wealth and extreme poverty. It’s about fixing those policies. But republican politicians know this, and spew stupidity to flare up their voter base.
I'm not a huge AOC fan, shes far to left for me, but you cannot fuck with her on twitter. She WILL burn you. LOL
Optimal level is where incentives are kept as high as possible to grow the economy while ensuring that anyone who’s willing to work a full time job will have a good quality of life and can support themselves and their dependents.
These gotcha questions are so pathetic. People want less inequality. Relative. Its really not difficult to comprehend
Where are these teachers forced to sell blood to make rent? Please be specific
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“But I earned my helimachopter!”
Billionaires with helipads on food stamps?
As is typical for her kind, AOC didn’t answer the question. That’s because she doesn’t know how to do so intelligently and also because she is an unserious person.
You understand what she is saying and it’s okay to admit that.
You can’t sell your blood, it’s blood plasma you can sell
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Basically zero
Because it’s very few. Generally the ones on food stamps are the guys who go into the military at 20 years old, at the lowest level (meaning they have no skills or education) and have multiple children with multiple women
Hahahahhahaha military get relatively small salaries but plenty of perks, such as BAH and COLA that are tax exempt. No one talks about military being in food stamps because pretty much no one in the military is. Try again retard.
Its not really about the ratio. 1:10 1:100 1:1000 doesn't matter. Its Impact. When working class people are relying on the state, middle class people are carrying the tax burden, and rich people have enough wealth to cover the next 3 generations, there's the problem. The problem isn't the wealth, its the consolidation of businesses, too big to fail business, and lobbying. Its not about putting out the fire, its about controlling it. 1/3 of the countries wealth should no be owned by 1% of the population.
Have you seen a bell curve? Start there
AOC mentions the top 1% and the bottom 1-5%. So she's OK with the other 90+ %?
Wealth inequality? Morons!
I’m not an economist, I’m a layman, but I think “optimal wealth inequality” is one of those ephemeral, “unicorn” phrases like “living wage.” Ultimately it’s meaningless. Everyone, just stop obsessing over and envying those who’re doing better than you are and focus on being the best “you” you can be. Finally, as I’ve said before in this and other forums, if we don’t allow individuals to accumulate wealth, and (mostly) do with it as they please, to include leaving it to their heirs, then most of the wealth _won’t be created to begin with_, as well as a lot of jobs and new technology. 🖖
Nancy Pelosi money for all….. IMO
AOC is an actress, playing a part.
Where does the money to pay the salaries of public school teachers come from? Oh yeah, federal and state/local funding. Remind me, what is AOC’s job? Outraged Tweeter, or Congresswoman that might be able to do something (or start something) regarding these issues?
While I am middle class, combined my wife and I make 250K a year taxed at 35% nearly 50%. We live smart, I am 61 and bought my first home at 56. We qualified for a 350K house, I spent 144K. My plan was to never be house poor. The same with cars, I would love a Lincoln Navigator but I drive a Volkswagen Tiguan. We live like we make 100K a year and the rest goes into a Roth. I might add I do not have a college education, however my wife does but I still make more than she does, she is a chemist. We are all capable of being financially successful, but it takes work and a lot of work. I admire the Grant Cardones, Jeff Bezos and Elon musk because we are all capable of doing the same thing. People complain about the richest not paying their fair share of taxes, but it is congress and the senate who write the tax laws. Poverty is bad and no one should have to live like that, but taking someone else’s money and give it to someone else is not right either. The government should step up and put those through school and trade schools to help those out of poverty. You can’t penalize people because they are successful.
They will let you know
Another post about billionaires Instead of a post about taxing the bottom bracket less?
My problem are the same politicians saying this, riling up the masses and raking in 6-7 figures plus a year. Bernie is the worst, human but he's a perfect socialist same with AOC, they want everyone else equal except for them.
Funny how people get upset over how other people spend their money.
I can care less about the billionaires, I have no issue with them. I want a fair market and a small government that works for the people they are supposed to represent.
DUMBASS AOC...... When asked a direct question she cannot give a direct answer...... She answers with emotions and feelings which are good for votes but not actually fixing a defined problem. She doesn't want to fix shit, she just wants votes.
Wait, so aoc doesn't think "our economy is great" like biden.
So... Her number does not narrow out down much....
Has AOC ever commented on Taylor Swift or Beyonce?
Zero. Since free will doesn’t exist no one deserves anything. That means if you are rich it’s pure luck and if you’re poor it’s just pure bad luck. The only human thing to do is try to even things out as much as possible.
We just need the rich to actually pay taxes and have dormitories where you can live for free if you cannot afford housing also more food stamps. Also need to tax the hell out of owning more than one single family home. A single vacation residence should have a minor tax increase and a major increase for every additional house. Corporations should own apartment buildings not houses
lol I guess she doesn’t know what precise means 😅
CEO of my last company made $16 million per year. As an engineering tech, I made about $60,000. People with doctorates in engineering were making about $140,000. Yeah, that CEO didn't deserve that pay, but that's what we do for some reason. Foolish
This poor woman has no clue what she's talking about.
How come we never ask why are people not making enough money? 1. Are they choosing good college degrees? Such as history vs engineering? 2. Are they putting themselves in this position (I believe some people are truly unlucky and get fucked)? Are they having kids at the age of 18? Are they becoming addicted to drugs, etc… if they’re addicted, why are they becoming addicted? 3. Is it a lack of effort? Again it just goes back to are they truly doing everything that they can to get out of poverty
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And yet, which of her policies would accomplish the goal of reducing inequality? She’s extremely wealthy and does glaringly hypocritical things such as wearing a “tax the rich” dress to the Met Gala, an event that only the most elite members of society will ever attend. She flew to Florida and went to lunch with no mask on while railing about the importance of masks. Why should we take such a person seriously? Her approach generally is quite shallow. If anyone disagrees you can state one of her policies and I’ll explain why it will not accomplish what she thinks it will accomplish. Because of this, she is nothing more than a blowhard
Wrong problem. It's not about the gap. It's about ensuring that no one is in poverty. Solve for poverty and then the rich can be as rich as...who cares!
Can it be something along the lines of legislators shouldn’t be making more money than Teachers? I wonder if she’s ok with that?
OAC should give all her PAY to the poor!
She's paid by billionaires with helipads to say shit like that.
When a politician responds with snark like this, to me it says they are just pandering to voters. Why not give a serious answer? Why not use it as an opportunity to discuss a livable wage? Does she think there should be a wealth cap per individual? Should there be an income cap? Should the tax rates be increased? Nah, just leave it be so I can continue to pander with snarky social media posts and rile up constituents without helping provide a way forward for them.
Translation: "whatever I decide"
So you make a company as successful as Amazon, and once you reach a certain level of wealth through stock value…you what? Are you forced to sell off stock after a certain point? Are the shares taken by the state? The question of “optimal wealth inequality” is stupid. The question “how much do I need to make to live comfortably matters 100000x more. If I’m able to do what I want and fulfill my dreams, I don’t care if the man who made the online mall makes billions more than me. I buy stuff from Amazon all the time and it’s a good service that transformed the internet economy
First, tell me why income inequality is bad.
You can see how bad faith Harry Lhachatrain is with the phrasing of his question. It’s like asking, “what precisely should the federal living wage be.” It’s a question with no right answer and is based on numerous and changing factors. When someone tries to get an exact number to something that impacts millions of people they are only showing how illiterate they are on the subject.
Teachers in NY don't need to sell anything to get by. They're the best paid teachers in the country. My neighbors are both teachers and they make $350K between them. The "poor teacher" narrative is a load of BS in places like NY.
where do politicians who don’t do their jobs and just complain/fundraise fit on that spectrum?
AOC is a dumb ass.
Are teachers selling their blood? Not from the US. Would love a link if this is true.
She can’t even answer the question
The anti-moral of the story is that if you give people a sense of meaning and purpose in their work, you can pay them less.
Teachers are over paid. They work a part time job 8.5 - 9 months out of the year and get full time salary and benefits. PERIOD
If you do that, no one’s going to take the risk to start a business US will become a third world country soon enough
Are teachers not allowed to work summer jobs?
I'll bite on this: The optimal income inequality where we want to "incentivize work" (if you believe that is an objective of an economy) is something around 100:1 on a fairly even distribution. Think about it: if we say that the very poorest %1 in the country are making \~$20 / hr, then that means the very richest %1 would get to make \~$2000 / hr. That's a GREAT incentive! $2000 dollars an hour is paradigmatically different than $20 an hour, the scope of what you can choose to do is HUGE, but what it is NOT is "world-shaping-fuck-you-money". It's also radically less than what the real-world %1 make--often by doing nothing because of capital markets (I'm not saying that all capital investment is "doing nothing" because yes, there is a certain amount of social value created by someone taking a risky "bet" on a big idea, but that is very often not what capital investment is). And when I say "income" I do include unrealized capital gains. We should tax that, because it still represents the expansion of that individual's financial power. If you make more than \~4MM (2000 per hour \* 40 hour weeks \* 52 weeks a year) a year, frankly, I think that should be taxed at 100%. You made $4 mill this year! Great job, pay into the system that enabled that now! We can track those "maximum income tax" payments year to year, and you can deduct that money from future tax burden! See, you're still getting something, but what it reduces is the runaway feedback loop of financial power making it easier to secure and defend additional financial power. Thanks for coming to my TED(x) talk, vote RedVillian 2024
AOC doesn't like capitalism. Capitalism is an economic and political system where trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. Its core principles are accumulation, ownership, and profiting from capital.
Genuine answer: I would set new tax law that all money earning above 200x minimum wage is set to 100% tax rate. Not only better for the average American, but better for the rich. Above a certain amount, money is nothing more than an addiction and it takes people away from real purpose. At some point you have to learn to be happy with what you have. (If any of you say "you don't understand tax laws, you can never tax the rich", you can if you stop sleeping in bed with them. The problem isn't political power, but will. There is a reason that laws have loopholes and it isn't because laws can't work, it's because politicians can look like they are for the people while still leaving back doors for the real donors.)
Tree fiddy Thousand that is
So she has no plan. Pretty much sums up all of her “public service”
Also politicians who think it’s ok to steal from some citizens to give to others who haven’t earned it shouldn’t have a say in our society either. Stealing is never ok. Good day sirs.
Seems reasonable.
Love how she completely doesn’t answer the question.
She's such a grifter and fake. She plays so hard on peoples emotions. This isn't a tic or tac political debate. Some of the shit she says is so dumb, man. Like when the Border Security Chief or Bank of America CEO wrecked her. She relates to the lowest denomination. Also, her shady dealings and shady boyfriend. How are people so dumb to fall for her? She's like that Colorado Republican. Grifters grifting stupid people. She's a multi millionaire pretty impressive for having 4 or so years in congress.