Not the most fair comparison. Compare it to the richest people in 2012, as extreme wealth ebbs and flows with inflated "funny money" stocks.
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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Edit: also remember the unit on the left side is 1,000,000.
So 10,000,000 is 10 trillion dollars.
So that would show ~5 trillion dollars in net worth to 45+ trillion from 1990 to now.
So they have made 900% increases over 35 years. Note inflation would have been 241% during those years.
Instead of being rich for life and never needing money for anything, now they are rich for life and never need money for anything times 3.73.
Instead of that money going to the people starving while working their ass off.
This is a better comparison than the post itself, and we should also be putting the minimum wage on the graph to compare the gains.
Obviously, those people worked for their money. All the teenagers with minimum wage did was have a job, like some sort of peasant.
And yet most forums will ban you even say the word "guillotine".
Nah. ...Well, don't get me wrong, the rich absolutely should be taxed, sure, but that's a different debate.
We don't have a nationally mandated minimum wage in Finland. Because the unions set their own minimum wages (which they adjust frequently to market conditions) and the unions also have actual legitimate power.
Maybe they should try this stuff in America too. It's fucking awesome.
Americans have been convinced that is socialism and therefore the greatest evil.
Make them pay people more.
If there's a minimum wage, there should also be a maximum wage, but I may be a communist, idk.
Maximum wage used to be a thing. It's how we got insurance tied to employment.
The people in the meme aren't getting their wealth from their wages
Which is why this policy usually goes by maximum income or income cap
Imo, nothing about what you just said is communist in nature, as we are defining terms for a continued labor market.
Individual's wealth vs minimum wage is not a great comparison. It's showing accumulated wealth of an individual who will over time receive pay raises and build up their wealth.
Minimum wage is what it says the minimum. It's supposed to be entry level income at the time. It should be adjusted for inflation.
To make it more accurate, it should show income increase for ech of the billionaires, and compare it to an income of some median individuals.
I tried do to just that, because i believed that it wouldn't paint a better picture for the billionaires, and I also dont like that people have downvoted your comment without providing explanation.
Assuming Musk started working at 18yrs old, which would have been in 1989, 35 years ago. And assuming he started at 7.25 dollars an hour, and never got a raise, he would have accumulated roughly 527.800 dollars by now.
40h * 52w * 7.25 usd = 15080 usd 15080 usd * 35y = 527 800 usd
His net worth (according to meme) is a staggering 273 000 000 000 dollars. Obviously he had to have a pay rise to get there, lets calculate that rise, starting from 7.25 dollars an hour.
273000000000 ÷ 527800 = 517241.37931034
So his pay rise averaged over 35 years, would be an absurd 517240%, or 14778% per year. The yearly average pay rise is roughly 4-5%, its not even remotly close.
All of this assumes that Elon started with 0 dollars to his name, he didn't. So in reality his hypothetical pay rise wouldve been a a bit lower. However the minimum wage wasn't 7.25 dollars in 1989, and I haven't accounted for inflation. Still the numbers would probably be similarly insane.
Even in a somewhat more accurate form, I think the core statement of the meme still rings true.
That's not how exponential growth works. The pay increase would be in the ballpark of 50% per year for that amount of gain in 35 years.
And remember, wealth accumulates in passive investments, so even if you made $7.25/hr for 35 years, you'd have over $1m if you didn't spend any of it and it accumulated at over ~3% per year.
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