Ask Lemmy

I respect some of what they do but they should be taxed more and the top ones a lot more.

in the (translated) Words of Knorkator:

The world doesn't need billionaires imagine how beautiful it would be without you! Empathy and reason instead of greed and scam fresh air, green forests, clean seas.

The world doesn't need billionaires and we will even achieve this without guns: No, we won't kill you and we won't imprison you, on the opposite: you will be millionaires!

Don't know them, don't care about them.

Conflicted. I'll give you my top 4 considerations.

• Pro 1: The reason a lot of these folks become billionaires is because they are able to sell an idea and execute on it. I think that's admirable. I think it's aspirational. I think that is part of the human condition.
• Pro 2: Additionally, they're billionaires because society made them billionaires. Often, they founded a company (or got in on the ground floor), then issued stock to investors. More and more investor's piled on. It's a bit like winning the lottery, only that you (the aspirational billionaire) have some effect in the outcome. Again, I think this is part of the human condition. Civilizations, tribes, companies, whatever you call them, for some bizarre reason that I personally don't quite grasp, prefer to have a leader, or at least will defer to one.
• Con 1: Many people can be millionaires. It's not easy, but with the right vision, gumption, financial know-how, time and a bit of luck, someone pursuing this effort can do so. But, it takes a certain kind of person to be a 100+ millionaire or even billionaire. I think we have enough historical evidence of the type I'm describing - greedy, predatory, manipulative, aggressive, sociopathic. These traits can flourish in business, but I don't think that these are traits that we should encourage in society as a whole. It gives me some gratitude that, for every 1 megalomaniacal billionaire in the world, there were 1000s of lookalikes who flailed.
• Con 2: Rent-seeking behavior and loot dragons. Nothing pisses me off more than a self-entitled dumbass whose entire being is resting on the laurels of a family legacy. I think once the great person's first generation passes, that most of their remaining horde should be returned for the public good. While I do think a certain amount should be endowed to the next generation so that they are equipped to pursue their own marvel, I do think society resources made these people and society should be able to take them back.

Billionaires shouldn't exist.
There should be a hard upper limit on wealth somewhere around the $100 million mark.
An amount where you can still invest your money risk-free at ~1% above inflation and live a life of plenty without lifting a finger, forever.
Any property, company, or thing in general worth more than $100 million should never be owned by one person alone.

If you invest in the sp500, you'll have something around 8% return per year. This is highly variable year by year, of course, but in the long run, that's what you can expect to average out. You can do better than the sp500, but generally not without accepting higher risk.

With those returns, you will double your money every 9 years. Roughly. It's going to vary by decade. 2000-2010 was flat, while 2010-2020 was unusually good.

If you max out a 401k, HSA, and IRA on this strategy from a young age, you should have millions for retirement. If you're a millennial or younger, you're going to need a million or two (at least) to have a reasonable retirement.

How do you turn that into a billion? Doubling every 9 years won't do it in your lifetime. Not unless you started life as a millionaire and never withdrew a dime until you were 90. Starting with $1000 and doubling every year for 20 years, consistently, would do it.

How do you double your money consistently for 20 years? Either extreme luck or doing something extremely shady. Probably both.

In other words, they are not the genius captains of industry that right-libertarians want you to believe. They got lucky or are deeply unethical or both, and they do not deserve your respect. Most likely, they deserve your disdain. Every one of them.

Tax, kill, eat. In that order.

It's not so much the money, the wealth in itself, that bothers me about them, it's the mind boggling absolutely insane amount of power having that much wealth is capable of.

They literally buy elections, they buy media outlets, by their actions they buy the direction entire countries take. They use their money to fund the actions of others that work on their behalf. They can create a literal army of individuals to work for them towards whatever end they wish to achieve. That's entirely way too much power for an individual or a family to have. Just imagine living next to someone who has a 500,000 strong army of militants just hanging out. Maybe theyre good, maybe they want to turn your neighborhood into a warzone for kicks, either way you would have no means to stop them.

Just look at smoething like the "tea party" movement in the US. Grassroots? No, try Koch brothers funded with the intent to install Koch approved representatives into the government.

In terms of scale, from the person at the top making xxx times the person at the bottom, they've likely always been around.

"Robber Baron" is the ye olde term.

Google tells me John D. Rockefeller peaked at around $1.4 billion in 1937. 1.5% of US GDP.

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=47167

The average wage in 1937 was $890 a year.

https://time.com/archive/6760420/personnel-above-average/

So Rockefeller, at his death, had amassed as much wealth as 1,573,034 average people would earn in a year.

In order to hit 1.5% of current US GDP (27.36 trillion), Bezos or Musk would have to hit 410.4 billion. That's how wealthy Rockefeller was.

1.2 Musks. 2 Bezoses.

Their an abomination. An exploitation of a system that values exponential growth more than inherent human values. In a world where public infrastructure is collapsing and there's homeless people on tbe street, individuals should not be able to amass such absurd wealth only for their own self enrichment.

Too much power

Leeches. Fuck em.

Billionaires shouldn't exist; no one needs that much money. They should be taxed until there are no more billionaires.

Kill The Rich, that's my stance.

There's no reasoning with them, getting through to them or anything. Talk time is long over because we've tried over and over again. They're committed to self-serving only themselves and other rich friends, over valuing what could've been, a more prosperous progressing society and world.

I don't know what kind of response you're expecting for this, but all that's going to happen is that you'll get responses like mine, you'll get billionaire ass-kissers and maybe middle of the road responses.

This is a bait folks!

Seems logical if there was a law that the average worker had to be paid a percentage of what the top people get paid. I thought that Japan had something like this.

In the words of the next post on my feed: Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew

Like most parasites, they have an important place in the ecosystem.

Ticks for instance are a source of food for several species.

I'm always thinking about how bad humans are when thinking about numbers rationally. Of course we understand what a "billion" is, we know how many 0's it has and can do basic mathematical operations on it. But how much is it really? One of my favorite analogies for putting it in perspective is seconds.

A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is … 31,688 years.

The analogy already breaks down, because while most people could understand 12 days and a lot of adults can understand 31 years for having lived it (some even twice or more!), 31,688 years is completely incomprehensible again. How many human generations is that? All of recorded human history is only like 5,000 years. It’s utterly, mind-numbingly insane. No trillionaires, ever! No billionaires!!!

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/17/business/elon-musk-richest-person-trillionaire/index.html

This was published on September 17th of this year, after most of the nonsense of Twitter and utter things. He’s still on track, by 2027 no less.

I don’t have an opinion on billionaires specifically. I don’t care if they take home a billion dollars. What I do care about is the ratio of top earner income with median income. It should never exceed 10-30%

Forbes did the math once and determined that Smaug, a dragon embodied by greed and selfishness, is worth $62 billion. There are 17 people richer than him.

Smaug was shot in the heart and it was a morally good act.

Abolish with prejudice

Wealth tax that goes directly to funding a billionaire audit program. It should create a self-perpetuating cycle that means IRS audits for all of them every year.

Wealth tax that goes directly to funding a billionaire audit program. It should create a self-perpetuating cycle that means IRS audits for all of them every year.

Asking this on lemmy is like asking a pack of wolves if they enjoy the taste of lamb. You already know the answer you’re going to get…

They're a cancer on society.

I dont think about them

Same as that guys from yesterday. I would prefer a guillotine, but You gotta work with whatcha got.

Medium rare with a little bit of butter and thyme.

Tax them. Kill them. Whatever order

We should probably deal with them sooner rather than later

Tax them.

Used to think: wow they've got a lot of money. Untill I grew up and realised it's not money they've got, it's estimated net worth. It's hard to turn that into cash.

If they got there by making a company that other people now value a lot: impressive.

If it's a royal family member/inheritance/..., less impressive.

Overall: don't think about it often.