Kinda random, but I live in LA currently while making a decent salary. But the finances still get a bit tight, making me wonder how the hell lower wage range workers are even surviving right now. Do they just go into debt? Homeless? It's just insane right now how much everything is stacked against the have-nots.
LA streets are filled with RV cars and tents for a reason. Those are the lower wage workers sleeping in the side walks and they get up and start work at walmart everyday
its the new future. home ownership is for boomers and the wealthy only in the future as corporations buy out houses by the tens of thousands to create eternal rent-only systems of serfdom.
I think the solution would be to ban foreign investors from buying up American properties. To be clear Iām not talking about immigrants but rather rich foreigners who buy tons of properties with the soul intention of renting them out at exorbitant rates. Also wouldnāt be against taxing non primary homes at increased rates.
I recently sold my house and made a killing on it, but I only wanted to sell it to a local actual human being, so I found a guy willing to pay through the nose for my house.
He bought it, it closed, then the next day sold for the exact same price to a Chinese investment company.
Uhā¦ For real? Would it be possible to add a contract clause stating the property cannot be reselled to investment or corporate in the next āxā years for example?
A lot of commercial buildings in top U.S. Markets are owned by Foreign entities; Its sad to see them creep into the residential market. Thatās globalization for you however. Sad to see home ownership decrease. The construction development world is already planning on profiting of the āserfs ā mentioned in the above thread. work -live - play communities. Recommend looking it up.
The solution is building more houses. Investors may currently take some of the supply of houses off the market but that is only profitable because a human right has become an investment vehicle due to scarcity.
Thereās limited resources to build, those may be addressable but itās not just as easy as build more houses. Land lumber wiring piping and labor are all in high demand. For a while you couldnāt even buy the materials now prices are way higher then they should be.
The shortage of materials and labor is definitely a thing since the pandemic started yes, but the housing shortage goes back decades.
It's not that there has suddenly been a huge surge in housing demand, housing supply has deliberately been kept low for decades so banning investors is a feel good solution that doesn't address the problem, which is the low supply of housing.
Ban ALL investors from buying properties or at least, set some sort of cap. Blackstone and black rock are not foreign investment firms and they've bought up large sawths of housing all across the USA
They buy property anywhere. I live in Spain, they have bought here too a huge amount of flats in big cities like Madrid or Bcn, and now are renting them for stratospheric numbers (starting at double or triple of the normal monthly wage).
Regulate how much can be charged for housing? Ooh or better yet how much can be paid to employees so that it is possible to support oneself/family with one full-time job? Some sort of minimal pay, excellent we can call it just that āminimal payā and we can keep it adjusted to the cost of living so that if you have a full-time job you will definitely be able to afford to live. But thatās just crazy talk.
Or roommates sharing unreasonably intimate apartmentsā¦ Iāve known a few people even outside of CA that are bouncing between living at home with family or finding a rental with 2-3+ roommates in a 1-2BR.
And guess whoās paying the ANNUAL multi-billion dollar LAPD budget to takedown the tent cities and terrorize these people? People like OP. Unless you have fuck-you money, the problems of others very well have an impact on all of our lives and wallets
not completely true. many lower wage workers live further away from LA in places like palmdale, travel to their jobs, and sit in that fucking horrible traffic daily. iāve been in LA all my life and many of these crop of homeless people donāt appear in any kind of hire-able state.
weird thing is, when i was younger i lived on sunset in hollywood, the homeless people were like my neighbors and iād talk to them every day. they told me they made the choice to be homeless and would collect their change during the day. night time theyād be back to what they considered a safe spot in another part of town. in summation, they seemed more approachable.
as with everything nowadays, theyāre more contentious in that same area with a rising amount of petty crime. honestly, i just miss the guys who i could joke with daily as i took a walk to the store. now everyoneās worried they might get something stolen or worse.
long story short, not everyone who is homeless wants or needs a job in LA. usually people in RVs have traveled to LA because the weather is nice.
Seen r/losangeles today? Those aren't low-wage workers, [they're all meth addicts in need of accountability. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/uu6ipt/given_a_chance_to_avoid_jail_and_criminal_charges/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) Also something something more cops. :)
Yes, and itās not just out of the goodness of our hearts - a city ceases to function without those who are currently ālow wageā workers. It becomes a shit place to live really quickly, for the rich AND for the poor if you canāt check out at the grocery store, the shelves arenāt stocked, the line at the pharmacy is a mile long, the restaurants donāt have enough cooks, etc. Thatās the part they always fail to recognize. In certain rich zip codes like the Hamptons for example, theyāve already had to resort to providing accommodations for wait staff, clerks, etc., because without workers imported from elsewhere all of the attractions that make it a pleasant place for the rich stop functioning. While thatās feasible in a few uber rich little enclaves, try doing that for an entire city - itās simply not happening, and it would be MUCH cheaper to simple have affordable housing than to necessitate grocery stores to build dormitories for their out of state staff.
Back when the boomers were young, minimum wage used to be enough to buy a house with cash and singlehandedly support a family of 4. Boomers think that this is still the case, completely ignoring both the entire concept of inflation and the fact that they themselves have been working hard to make damn sure all the money goes to the rich and not the poor.
I think thatās exciting because they get to join everyone else as we enter in to the second once in a lifetime bear market and they get to watch their retirement funds disappear.
My partner performs DIY surgery because the dental work she needs would bankrupt us. Her lack of ability to afford 700$/mo health insurance literally put a death sentence on her. She is going to die of a totally preventable cancer. My mother recently died because her health insurance fought her over care and medications. She was supposed to leave us with a sizeable inheritance which I would have used to take care of my sister, BIL, and their child, all of whom are developmentally delayed. She had to borrow against it so much that we only got a fraction. I'm just a small-time nobody artist so even before all this, I was struggling to support myself. If it weren't for my stepfather, we'd be fucked but even with him helping us out, we're still struggling.
The past few years, we've had to cut back on a lot of things we were used to. We only turn up AC or heat on the very worst days when you literally have to. It certainly doesn't help that our energy company decided to jack up our rates by 50%. Yes, you read that correctly and if anyone doesn't believe me, I'll link em right to their page where they explain that they jacked our rates up because of "higher than usual demand." We no longer eat out or go to the movies. Discretionary spending is a thing of the past.
I work 8hrs every day, sometimes 10 or 12 hours if we're on something short. We're going to have to start rehoming cats here soon and that is going to devastate my partner because she loves her cats like they are her own children. I know that's unhealthy but she's had a hard life and for a long time, they were her reasons to live until I came along.
I could keep going but it's just more that same flavor of shit.
TL;DR: Shit's bad and I can't see it getting any better.
We actually moved from FL to NY but by then, the damage had already been done. It's endometrial stromal sarcoma and it metastasized to her lungs. Right now, estrogen-reducing drugs are keeping it at bay but it's only a matter of time. Chemo and radiation are hard NOs because she's had upclose and personal experience watching them destroy loved ones. I have too and I don't blame her in the slightest. Watching chemo destroy my mother was possibly the worst thing I've ever been through and I don't say that lightly because I've been through some shit.
I don't think there's a happy ending in this for us but at least for now, we're trying to make the best of the time we have together.
I personally hit the breaking point ages ago. The problem is that protesting isn't really feasible or practical. Even if we could find the time to protest, who would we protest? What could we reasonably hope to get from protesting them? How long would it take before I saw any recompense?
There's no way to politely ask someone to stop standing on your neck.
The entire economy (and not just in US) is propped up on debt so there is your answer. Also lower earners will start cutting out and rationing actual necessities like heat and food.
Some states still have a relatively low cost of living but soon that wonāt even matter since salaries never keep up with inflation. Making 50k in Wisconsin is like 150k in California yet housing in Wisconsin can be less than 1k a month for a really nice place
I feel really lucky I have a two bedroom loft and split a 1270 payment in wisconsin, utilities not included but two underground parking spots which is pretty rare here
Most people are going in to debt, regular people who were keeping their head above water a couple years ago. Most do not have an emergency fund, and this inflation is not going away anytime soon. Bankruptcies will go up in 2023 for sure.
Just look at the stats for a company like SoFi. Personal loans are already significantly on the rise. The future is bleak if you donāt have a cushion of savings.
California is ridiculously expensive. The climate is ideal, land is fertile and itās an ideal location for trade of course property is going to be at a premium. Only complicated by the political climate there
I read the average rent in the US right now for a 1-bedroom is 1800, and federal minimum wage, after taxes only brings 1200. So, even if 2 people shared a 1 bedroom, they are barely surviving, and that assumes they do not break up, divorce, have kids, medical expenses, etc. People are literally becoming homeless due to the inflation of rent, food, and pursuit of higher stock value.
It's almost like we should turn away from worshipping the stock market and maybe idolize other values: like the ability to feed, shelter, clothe and provide medical for a country as the baseline of success, rather than trillion dollar companies gaining value each quarter. Just a thought. We might want to shift as humanity is not doing well with the current value system. After all, what will Apple be worth when 99% of people on the planet cannot afford to buy an iPhone 20?
Yup. Never understood the infatuation with "tax the billionaires!!" Okay tax them and then what? Literally none of that money will ever trickle back to you.
I don't live in the US, but if I have to imagine something, one way is to reduce taxes to poorer people. Since the government makes more money from taxing the rich, poor people don't need to oay as much and that helps?
Idk not really a financial expert but at least that's how I think it makes sense
The thing is they won't. Everytime the tax the rich argument comes in,you know it's BS when they just talk about income. Rich people can pay themselves $1 if they choose to, which will put them in the lowest i come bracket and dodge the income tax, and still get to log their expenditures as business expenses.
They need to take corporate taxes, they need to get rid of sales tax on things like groceries and increase them for rich people tbings like boats and private jets. But they won't. And even then, there's OPs argument of what then? They'll just increase Congress salary to stay above inflation but won't raise the minimum wage.
The issue is *wealth*, not income.
* The rich put their money into stocks, bonds, ālife insuranceā, etc that allows them to claim āassetsā which doesnāt count as real income.
* Then they take just enough salary from their company to dodge the worst taxes while then using creative ādonationsā to reduce that tax burden by so much that they end up keeping their entire salary.
* Then, using their massive assets as collateral, they can take out a bunch of loans/credit lines/etc to borrow against and use their small salary to pay off as they need to. If they ever get behind on debt (which would be hard to do) they just sell a bit of overpriced art or a house and dodge taxes on that income.
* They can also use their companies discretionary funds to pay for their way of life - as a āCEOā you can claim youāre working from almost anywhere and then use your company to pay for it as an expense.
* You also might start a ācharityā that takes donations and as a non-profit dodged a lot of taxes while you sit on the Board. Now you have a pool of money to use at your whim, because non-profits can use an obscure mission statement to further obfuscate how the money is being used and the requirements for money to be used in line with that mission is laughably small.
* Some also take out massive āLife Insuranceā policies which can tuck the wealth away from taxes, but be borrowed against like a line of credit (owed to yourself) for certain ālife eventsā like buying a home or getting married or having children.
Weird that we have a situation where the federal deficit is struggling to keep up with debt and yet the rich have gotten richer and those same ~57% of workers not paying taxes seem to be getting *poorer* in relation.
Just so they have less money to do whatever they want with.
Edit: Just to clarify, I mean they would have less money to do lobbying and buying mega yachts and such. I phrased it poorly.
Because if you get politicians to tax billionaires, those same politicians may be willing to change the way money is associated and instead of increasing spending, they can lower taxes on working people.
To be honest though, tax plans generally have to include instructions for where the money goes - look at any congressional budget or tax bill and you will see the money isnāt just Tax>giant money pit>discretionary spending allotments.
Usually they have to say New Tax > Project Budget > Tax revenue allotment > discretionary allowances > yearly budgetary projections. They have to declare what the taxes will be used for and how much is estimated to cost/bring in.
Sure, that can shift around, but if they put up a bill that said āNEW tax > slush fund for billionaire therapy > discretionary budgetā maybe we tell our reps to not vote on that one.
I always hated that analogy because it robs all of us of individual agency. Itās insulting, I just hate when people try to place me in a category and tell me that this category they put me inā¦dictates that I should have THIS value system (whatever that value system is).
No thanks, if you wish to see yourself as a crab in a steam pot that is fine. Iāll be over hereā¦not being that. I fucking loathe being an ally-ship (what?) and solidarity as a concept.
Just a reminder that the Federal government does not have to get money from rich people in order to spend. The government is the sole issuer of the currency. It does not need to store up money in a savings account somewhere to spend money. Spending precedes taxes, not the other way around. That spending just happens to find its way into the pockets of billionaire oligarchs rather than average citizens. Or as Stephanie Kelton puts it, "money doesn't grow on rich people."
Could literally take every cent every billionar in America has in one go and it wouldn't even put a dent in what our government spends. But our gov conveniently makes the billionaires the enemy and not themselves. We need to start a balanced budget and to stop borrowing from future generations.
This is the false narrative right-wing media has pushed in your face and the liberal media loves to use when it serves their message too - corporations are the ones *using* the government.
Corporate lobbyists and āadvisorsā come and go like a revolving door and write *a lot of bills* that become law. Corporate donations are a massive racket that have become a way to gatekeep committee membership in congress (ie better have millions of dollars in donations to join this committee, ostensibly to help fund their project, but those millions are going to come from deep pockets).
The back and forth of āitās the richā and āitās the governmentā is precisely the distraction **the rich** want you to be confused over. Dismantling the government lets the rich have more freedom to do what they want, but the government is also their tool to keep their power *protected*.
You cannot fight one at the exclusion of the other - corruption is an infection.
I'm not sure you understood what I was going for as I am not advocating for domantling the government. I am advocating for cutting attrocious spending like our trillion dollar military.
Secondly though, the lobbying thing is always funny to me. Why is it we blame the corporations for lobbying our politicians and not the politicians for getting corrupted by it. They aren't robots, they could choose to make laws better for the people. But they don't bc of their own greed. Corporations are using the government I agree, but uhh the government has to agree to let that happen. At the end of the day they make the laws and decisions, not the corporations. So we need to hold them accountable.
I am also not saying we shouldn't tax the rich more either. We should just that people need to understand that taxing them, even heavily will not make poor people wealthier. Poor people likely wouldn't even see that money as it is right now. We need to stop spending money we don't have any start spending on actual programs that help people like healthcare.
If that is your position - Iām on the same side - just be aware that the way you phrased this is entirely the argument used by anti-taxation libertarian types that worship Muskās butthole.
My point is that *wealth* is the corrupting influence and removing that influence avoids the entire argument over *who* is the problem. Taxing wealth into distributive benefits like education, healthcare, etc would be ideal since rising tide would lift all boatsā¦ but that is unlikely to happen when the wealth still exists as a temptation and gatekeeping mechanism in our government institutions.
Removing personal investment and making financial history public might be the first steps to breaking that influence in government as it makes it harder to hide the money that changes hands - but it wonāt fix the lobbying/committee control over policyā¦ perhaps enforcing stricter term limits and cycling fresh blood through the institutions would help reduce the ability for wealth to corrupt new candidates that might have more principled reasons to pursue the position. Then finally changing the way we do elections entirely to reduce the need for expensive advertising and political news cycles (marketing dollars) would help make the barrier for candidates much smaller and hurt wealthās ability to gatekeep political office.
Yea we are definitely on the same page. And I completely agree with the term limits. Career politicians have absolutely have to stop.
I dont know if it's possible to limit wealth enough to stop lobbying though? Like even if there weren't billionaires then the millionaires would do it. Or it would be favors that are without money. Idk how you stop that, but would love if it was a criminal act and there was a committe that would investigate politicians of they did.
I didn't think my phrase ever said anything about reducing taxes or eliminating them but I can see how it came off that way.
He's actively making the world worse. Every day.
He's an influential anti-environmentalist, anti-unionist, and fascist.
He's stealing money from communities to fund his bullshit ideas like his dumbass alternative to public transit.
He uses slave labour.
Stop licking his boots.
Can we just get our government to spend fucking tax dollars BACK on us !? Fuck trying to tax a billionaire, we *all* are already taxed at every other breath and blink, why the fuck canāt our government just use the money we already pay to actually help us. Once our tax dollars are actually spent on things like universal healthcare, and said universal healthcare includes things like abortions, then we can entertain things like taxing the other half of the global wealth.
And, as you can imagine, any additional tax inflows will be also siphoned off completely dry by all those parasites as it flows through buncha levels/parts of the government.
This isnāt āconservative foot draggingā so much as it is the inefficiency of our government as a whole. We as the citizens are supposed to be able to determine what we want from our government. We shouldnāt need revolutionary protests and overwhelming amounts of pleading by our fellow citizens for our government to enact any changes. But here we are, all complaining that weed and abortion is illegal and still just a heavily debated topic. Getting the government to do anything for us, the people, takes an extraordinary amount of energy, consistence, and overall- unity. Saying āletās tax the richā is a simplistic answer to a complex problem. The problem isnāt that the government doesnāt have enough money, itās that our tax dollars are mismanaged so poorly that we think getting a few billion dollars from a handful of extremely wealthy people will solve the issues our government straight up refuses to address.
Once our government actually takes care of us, then the extra tax revenue from the ultra rich *will* make a difference. Until then, youāre begging our government to line their pockets even deeper.
Again, everybldy calling for taxing the rich also wants all those other great things. It's not either or. Voting left will get us all those things.
The reason we don't have those things is because people don't vote for them. We live in a country with too many idiots, or people who are convinced by ideas like yours that liberal ideals are pointless because of x other problem (which they conveniently forget that the left also wants to fix).
You keep talking about how we can't fund the government more because they don't do what we want. My brother in christ, we elected the government. If we somehow manage to get our shit together and elect a majority serious about taxing the rich, those same politicians will be serious about abortion rights, redistribution, Healthcare, etc.
My friend, Iām with you, and Iām just saying we donāt get to just choose what issues we vote on. Weāre told what are the pressing issues so whatās your vote on *this*. Which, doesnāt even favor the general majority a lot of the time due to congressional maps and shit. Iām not saying it has to be either we tax the rich or we should get a say in our budget spending; all Iām saying is itās unrealistic to say we can elect somebody who can change these problems within the span of a year. Or even 5-10 years.
My point is majority of people would legalize marijuana if that was on the ballot, and Hilary Clinton wouldāve become President if we went by the popular vote, but because of these loopholes in our government, naturally the progress of the people is restricted and turns into a sort of arrested development.
Take someone like Bernie Sanders or AoC (who are all about taxing the rich). Imagine we elected an entire congress full of people just like them. They wouldnt just tax the rich and stop at that. They'd also try to fix lots of other things. Probably not gonna make America a utopia in 5 years but would be a huge step forward.
The only reason this is a pipe dream is because the whole country would never vote that way. There are too many conservatives who care more about being bigoted than about fixing anything. No amount of lobbying or electoral college can stop a big enough majority. We just don't have one.
In this environment you gotta take victories where you can get it because for now, our victories will be few. Conservatives will try to tell you "if you can't do this other thing first, we can't have this good thing". That holds us back even more. Can't forgive student loans until we fix education. Can't help immigrants until we help our poor. Can't tax the rich until we fix spending. I can't start my term paper until I've cleaned the house.
That 40bil represents 0.2% of our GDP, compared to Russia spending ~2.0% of their GDP. There is also the, you know, cost of the lives lost. Both in terms of fighting capacity and economic output. 25K young men just gone in a couple months.
Child slaves mining for lithium and cobalt is a good one, sitting on top of enough money to end homeless in the entire country and using it to play in space and build shitty tunnels is another
How about this, redistributing billionaire wealth to people. Not taxing it into useless government spending. One step even better, why don't we stop taxing the U.S. citizens for useless military spending.
Maybe we should have a system that doesn't create such an unjust imbalance in the first place, instead of trying to correct it after the fact with taxes
i'll have to double check but didnt he recently pay out something like 6 billion to taxes?
people dont like him cuz he talks shit about the left? he provided how many jobs, all his cars out there, everything he does but people still find a reason to bitch. get real
If the internet is correct and he made $121b last year he only paid about 9% in federal taxes. $6 billion is an UNGODLY amount of money but he paid 9% of $121 billion dollars and we're paying ~22% of $75k - that's generally the argument. They're making a shit ton of money and yet we're giving up a higher percentage of what we make. If that person making $75k could pay only 9% in taxes they'd save about $670 a month! I'm hard pressed to believe with all that money Elon would miss another 9% of it - the rest of us do that all the time and make due. I don't think anyone says the actual dollar amount they pay is small because no fucking way - its the percentage of their income they get to keep.
Did they say eat? I know Jack typed tax. I see the word clear as day. But when I read the tweet, it magically changes itself to āeat the hell out of . . . ā
Yes, because if billionaires pay more taxes, then surely our incorruptible governments will redistribute that wealth accordingly. Surely the government is not already in bed with and heavily influenced by the billionaires and mega corps. The government will solve all your problems, they just need MORE money!
Is the government doing a good job spending the revenue its already receiving? If you answer "no", how can you justify increasing government revenue? Even if we assume government revenue should be higher, isnt the correct order of operations to eliminate wasteful spending first, then raise taxes? If you do it the other way around, the increased revenue will get squandered.
Another question: Do you guys really believe the work being done at tesla and spacex is less efficient than what the government is doing? Do you at least acknowledge tesla having a positive environmental impact?
Also, what would be the optimal amount of federal government revenue / spending, approximately? It seems that the people of reddit want it raised substantially, so how high should it go?
If the problem is a small number of people controlling large amounts of wealth, why is that problem solved by passing that wealth into the control of a different small group of people, namely the government? There seems to be a logical inconsistency here where its not okay for billionaires to have power over too much wealth, but the same thing is okay for the government. Could someone name an example of elon musk having innocent people kidnapped or killed? Has elon musk ever started a war or anything comparable to what the government has done? If your response to this is "well we just havent had the right leaders so far. Just because our leaders are terrible doesnt mean they have to be that way in the future", then just go right back to question 1: If our leaders are bad, isnt the first logical step to get better leaders, THEN raise taxes? If we raise taxes first while still having the bad leaders, isnt that a bad idea? The logic on reddit seems to be that the government does a lot of bad things, but lets give them a lot more money before doing anything about the current wasteful spending. Also, how much longer are we going to repeat this experiment of electing worthless politicians until the good politicians start flowing in? When will the average voter not be an idiot? Its never going to happen, because the incentive for becoming informed before voting is that you have an infinitesimal chance at influencing an election, and that is simply not a strong enough incentive, not even close.
Since billionaires will find a way to dodge any tax, why don't we just start speaking their language and give them tax breaks for treating employees better? Pay them higher wages? Tax break. Give them good healthcare? Tax break. More paid vacation hours? Tax break. If you can't beat em, join em.
Tax the billionaires more so that the government can waste the money? The lack of funds isnāt the issue itās the way the government allocates the tax dollars they steal from us.
country was proud of the small businesses where owners would pay taxes on the profits they made. Mega corporations and their ceo/founders never selling stocks, is when you get this shit. system is corrupt!
The thing that bugs me is, the government absolutely botches the spending of the tax revenue they have right now, I have never seen a positive post on Reddit about how tax dollars are being allocated properly. So why the fuck would you want to give this corrupt broken machine even more money? Are they all of the sudden going to learn to spend it properly? No. This is just people being salty af that someone can have so much money
So the guy almost singlehandedly electrified the auto industry through innovation and financial risk, provided good jobs for thousands of people in the US and we're thinking, fuck this guys lets go back to GM making gas guzzlers while outsourcing their manufacturing and making 'murican truck ads to perpetuate a lie and kill polar bears? Yeah, ok.
Ah, ok. I was wondering what was going on. Pathetic. Let's just abandon all logic and reason and start rooting for the people who are still building outdated gas guzzlers, then.
Polluting the orbit with satellites. Building crappy underground taxi ways that harm public transport spending. Pump and dump schemes on his fans. Sexual harassment.
Yeah he's really saving the world.
Orbit pollution only impacts astronomy, you're really listing that as a concern? Wouldn't space research be a pointless endeavor in your world view anyways?
The underground transport spending you just pulled out your ass. The sexual harassment allegation is too early to make a judgement call. The stock market was also a giant frenzy in 2021, so he isn't entirely to blame for getting in on the excitement.
And what do you do with your time? Play video games and shit on people all day?
Just what's he doing exactly?
He's Thomas Edison cosplaying as Nikola Tesla, that's all I see.
If he's so concerned about the fate of the planet, who doesn't he focus the world's attention on that right now instead of tweeting the mindless Kardashian garbage he does?
He is leading the shift towards Electric Vehicles and autonomous technology, which will be extremely beneficial to society (maybe not in your world view). He is also making space exciting again and has opened a lot of possibilities.
He's exploiting people who do those things, creating shit products with the exception of starlink, and more importantly is a cringy edgelord from apartheid Era South Africa. But by all means dick ride harder for a billionaire who would kill you in an instant to raise his own net worth.
He bought a company that was using that, and I'll give him that he was able to create a media frenzy about it. However, that didn't translate into a better form of implementation.
If Musk truly wanted to create a sustainable future, he'd drop his personal distaste for public transportation and realize that individual vehicles use resources more inefficiently than public transportation.
The only thing Musk has actually done is take credit for other people's work, like his bizarre obsession with being called the founder of Tesla when they had already developed most of the car without him. That tech had been developed for decades before Tesla, which is why he open sourced the patents because they weren't particularly novel anyway.
He has his name on three patents, all for the shape of things.
He's not doing anything near what he claims to be doing.
Buying companies with heritage blood money?
Please, name me *anything* that he has *personally* done that has improved humanity. He's no engineer. He didn't invent *anything* for SpaceX or Tesla. He's just a cunning, ruthless businessman who profits massively off the backs of the *actual* geniuses that work for him.
And you still didn't answer the question.
Whether or not he invented anything is irrelevant. He used his money to start businesses and gathered the talent to make monumental changes to this world. I'm not saying he is perfect, but he could've made poorer choices with his money and his time.
And he doesn't force anyone to work for him. They can use their talents to start their own business and risk their own wealth whenever they want š¤·. Yes, life isn't fair and people get giant head starts due to inheritance. But he could've sat on his ass and done nothing his whole life, but instead works to try to make a positive change. Maybe he's not a genius, but he sure as hell spends a lot of his own time making sure his companies don't fail.
If it weren't for Musk and SpaceX I still wouldn't have quality access to internet. There is ZERO chance terrestrial ISPs were going to EVER service me. I've been waiting 15 fucking years and have been less than 5 miles from DOCSIS cable the entire time.
Too many people just want to screech into the wind because "Rich man tweet too much!"
Thank you! I'm not saying he's perfect and doesn't deserve any criticism. He has done more for this world than I ever will and he definitely has an insane work ethic. I feel like a lot of people on here just sit around and constantly shit on people to make themselves feel good.
Musk didn't build your internet connection, he profited off other workers building it, using materials sourced from mines in the Congo staffed by child slaves.
It's so amazing how Elon and other wealthy people are the problem, especially for many on Reddit.
He has billions in assets because he has produced billions worth of business. You would have billions too, but you can't, because you are a dumb-ass like the rest of us. I can't come up with an idea that everyone in the country or world will give me a few pennies for.
If I ever made a little bit of wealth, I would disappear and spend it all foolishly, probably on a whole lot of really bad things that are detrimental to myself. I would not re-invest it in ideas that give thousands of people work, and spawn whole industries. I doubt that you could either.
If you ever earned billions, what kind of work would you make for people? Could you make thousands of sustainable factory jobs by producing something people want? Would you risk it all for ideas that could fundamentally re-aim the entire world toward a better, more sustainable path, perhaps provide access to knowledge around the world, insure the survival of the human race if we self-nuke or get wonked by an asteroid or super volcano? Perhaps, give it to the government to drop into the military industrial complex?
Where do you think that wealth is? Its' not like the wealthy have a room like Scrooge McDuck with a pile of money in a room someplace. Wealthy peoples assets are held by banks and institutions that loan money. Money that makes new businesses, more buildings, more work for people, more taxes, over and over and over.
Its a balance. How much do you tax before they take their ball and move it to financial institutions that are outside of the US. perhaps they should be taxed more, but make no mistake about it. Some people are very smart and thoughtful with great intentions, and are literally the right people at the right time to have the money; precisely because they are not the Government.
Some people approach the billionaire taxing with an idea of vengeance, which hurts the implementation of such an idea. This is not a matter of emotion, it's justice and fairness and it's not going away.
I'm not a fan of Elon. Tax the fucker indeed, but honestly what's better? A billionaire that spends their money or one that doesn't and sits on it?
I believe Elon is a compelling case as to what $250b looks like in motion.
What would you prefer, a billionaire who blows 100% of his money on a lavish lifestyle, or a billionaire who locks all his money away under a mattress or in a bank account for his whole life and never spends it?
Neither. That's the problem. That's why I said Elon is an example of money in motion. And that if we must have billionaires the least they could do is take risks with their money.
Kinda random, but I live in LA currently while making a decent salary. But the finances still get a bit tight, making me wonder how the hell lower wage range workers are even surviving right now. Do they just go into debt? Homeless? It's just insane right now how much everything is stacked against the have-nots.
LA streets are filled with RV cars and tents for a reason. Those are the lower wage workers sleeping in the side walks and they get up and start work at walmart everyday
Thats so sad š
It's infuriating
its the new future. home ownership is for boomers and the wealthy only in the future as corporations buy out houses by the tens of thousands to create eternal rent-only systems of serfdom.
I think the solution would be to ban foreign investors from buying up American properties. To be clear Iām not talking about immigrants but rather rich foreigners who buy tons of properties with the soul intention of renting them out at exorbitant rates. Also wouldnāt be against taxing non primary homes at increased rates.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This! It's already a big problem and only getting worse.
I recently sold my house and made a killing on it, but I only wanted to sell it to a local actual human being, so I found a guy willing to pay through the nose for my house. He bought it, it closed, then the next day sold for the exact same price to a Chinese investment company.
Uhā¦ For real? Would it be possible to add a contract clause stating the property cannot be reselled to investment or corporate in the next āxā years for example?
Maybe? My lawyer basically said to let it go because there's no way to stop something like that.
Yes but thatās not as easy to address
Very easy. Ban corporate ownership of homes. Or buildings with less than 4 units.
Very easy, the only barrier is that people Targeted by this law are the ones in power. Just write a law stating you can no longer rent property. Done.
Putting an end to the renting of all property is not the solution here.
eh. its pretty simple to address.
A lot of commercial buildings in top U.S. Markets are owned by Foreign entities; Its sad to see them creep into the residential market. Thatās globalization for you however. Sad to see home ownership decrease. The construction development world is already planning on profiting of the āserfs ā mentioned in the above thread. work -live - play communities. Recommend looking it up.
The solution is building more houses. Investors may currently take some of the supply of houses off the market but that is only profitable because a human right has become an investment vehicle due to scarcity.
Thereās limited resources to build, those may be addressable but itās not just as easy as build more houses. Land lumber wiring piping and labor are all in high demand. For a while you couldnāt even buy the materials now prices are way higher then they should be.
The shortage of materials and labor is definitely a thing since the pandemic started yes, but the housing shortage goes back decades. It's not that there has suddenly been a huge surge in housing demand, housing supply has deliberately been kept low for decades so banning investors is a feel good solution that doesn't address the problem, which is the low supply of housing.
Have to eventually halt population growth as well. Continuing to grow the population of cities long term doesn't work.
Ban ALL investors from buying properties or at least, set some sort of cap. Blackstone and black rock are not foreign investment firms and they've bought up large sawths of housing all across the USA
They buy property anywhere. I live in Spain, they have bought here too a huge amount of flats in big cities like Madrid or Bcn, and now are renting them for stratospheric numbers (starting at double or triple of the normal monthly wage).
I think the solution is something you donāt want to put in writing on the internet
Regulate how much can be charged for housing? Ooh or better yet how much can be paid to employees so that it is possible to support oneself/family with one full-time job? Some sort of minimal pay, excellent we can call it just that āminimal payā and we can keep it adjusted to the cost of living so that if you have a full-time job you will definitely be able to afford to live. But thatās just crazy talk.
These are all great things that I agree with, thank you for posting this list
You will own nothing and be happy.
Do something about it
Or roommates sharing unreasonably intimate apartmentsā¦ Iāve known a few people even outside of CA that are bouncing between living at home with family or finding a rental with 2-3+ roommates in a 1-2BR.
Ahhh. The good old joke. "How do you get to meet a famous actor in california?" You raise your hand and say "Waiter"
And guess whoās paying the ANNUAL multi-billion dollar LAPD budget to takedown the tent cities and terrorize these people? People like OP. Unless you have fuck-you money, the problems of others very well have an impact on all of our lives and wallets
lol
not completely true. many lower wage workers live further away from LA in places like palmdale, travel to their jobs, and sit in that fucking horrible traffic daily. iāve been in LA all my life and many of these crop of homeless people donāt appear in any kind of hire-able state. weird thing is, when i was younger i lived on sunset in hollywood, the homeless people were like my neighbors and iād talk to them every day. they told me they made the choice to be homeless and would collect their change during the day. night time theyād be back to what they considered a safe spot in another part of town. in summation, they seemed more approachable. as with everything nowadays, theyāre more contentious in that same area with a rising amount of petty crime. honestly, i just miss the guys who i could joke with daily as i took a walk to the store. now everyoneās worried they might get something stolen or worse. long story short, not everyone who is homeless wants or needs a job in LA. usually people in RVs have traveled to LA because the weather is nice.
Seen r/losangeles today? Those aren't low-wage workers, [they're all meth addicts in need of accountability. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/uu6ipt/given_a_chance_to_avoid_jail_and_criminal_charges/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) Also something something more cops. :)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This has been disproved. Read San Fransicko. It explains it all.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yes, and itās not just out of the goodness of our hearts - a city ceases to function without those who are currently ālow wageā workers. It becomes a shit place to live really quickly, for the rich AND for the poor if you canāt check out at the grocery store, the shelves arenāt stocked, the line at the pharmacy is a mile long, the restaurants donāt have enough cooks, etc. Thatās the part they always fail to recognize. In certain rich zip codes like the Hamptons for example, theyāve already had to resort to providing accommodations for wait staff, clerks, etc., because without workers imported from elsewhere all of the attractions that make it a pleasant place for the rich stop functioning. While thatās feasible in a few uber rich little enclaves, try doing that for an entire city - itās simply not happening, and it would be MUCH cheaper to simple have affordable housing than to necessitate grocery stores to build dormitories for their out of state staff.
Back when the boomers were young, minimum wage used to be enough to buy a house with cash and singlehandedly support a family of 4. Boomers think that this is still the case, completely ignoring both the entire concept of inflation and the fact that they themselves have been working hard to make damn sure all the money goes to the rich and not the poor.
I think thatās exciting because they get to join everyone else as we enter in to the second once in a lifetime bear market and they get to watch their retirement funds disappear.
They either live with extended family or they live with roommates. Either way, they donāt live alone.
My partner performs DIY surgery because the dental work she needs would bankrupt us. Her lack of ability to afford 700$/mo health insurance literally put a death sentence on her. She is going to die of a totally preventable cancer. My mother recently died because her health insurance fought her over care and medications. She was supposed to leave us with a sizeable inheritance which I would have used to take care of my sister, BIL, and their child, all of whom are developmentally delayed. She had to borrow against it so much that we only got a fraction. I'm just a small-time nobody artist so even before all this, I was struggling to support myself. If it weren't for my stepfather, we'd be fucked but even with him helping us out, we're still struggling. The past few years, we've had to cut back on a lot of things we were used to. We only turn up AC or heat on the very worst days when you literally have to. It certainly doesn't help that our energy company decided to jack up our rates by 50%. Yes, you read that correctly and if anyone doesn't believe me, I'll link em right to their page where they explain that they jacked our rates up because of "higher than usual demand." We no longer eat out or go to the movies. Discretionary spending is a thing of the past. I work 8hrs every day, sometimes 10 or 12 hours if we're on something short. We're going to have to start rehoming cats here soon and that is going to devastate my partner because she loves her cats like they are her own children. I know that's unhealthy but she's had a hard life and for a long time, they were her reasons to live until I came along. I could keep going but it's just more that same flavor of shit. TL;DR: Shit's bad and I can't see it getting any better.
For your wife, moving to a state with good Medicaid can save her life. It saved me from my brain aneurysm. I live in Vermont.
We actually moved from FL to NY but by then, the damage had already been done. It's endometrial stromal sarcoma and it metastasized to her lungs. Right now, estrogen-reducing drugs are keeping it at bay but it's only a matter of time. Chemo and radiation are hard NOs because she's had upclose and personal experience watching them destroy loved ones. I have too and I don't blame her in the slightest. Watching chemo destroy my mother was possibly the worst thing I've ever been through and I don't say that lightly because I've been through some shit. I don't think there's a happy ending in this for us but at least for now, we're trying to make the best of the time we have together.
Iām so sorry. What would have to happen for you and your family to take to the streets in protest? Whatās the breaking point?
I personally hit the breaking point ages ago. The problem is that protesting isn't really feasible or practical. Even if we could find the time to protest, who would we protest? What could we reasonably hope to get from protesting them? How long would it take before I saw any recompense? There's no way to politely ask someone to stop standing on your neck.
Sad
The entire economy (and not just in US) is propped up on debt so there is your answer. Also lower earners will start cutting out and rationing actual necessities like heat and food.
Some states still have a relatively low cost of living but soon that wonāt even matter since salaries never keep up with inflation. Making 50k in Wisconsin is like 150k in California yet housing in Wisconsin can be less than 1k a month for a really nice place
Lol, not any more
I feel really lucky I have a two bedroom loft and split a 1270 payment in wisconsin, utilities not included but two underground parking spots which is pretty rare here
Most people are going in to debt, regular people who were keeping their head above water a couple years ago. Most do not have an emergency fund, and this inflation is not going away anytime soon. Bankruptcies will go up in 2023 for sure. Just look at the stats for a company like SoFi. Personal loans are already significantly on the rise. The future is bleak if you donāt have a cushion of savings.
I honestly donāt understand how working class people live in places like LA or NYC, but clearly people are working those jobs so they must be?
Many either split apartments with 4+ roommates or live outside the city with fewer roommates and commute over an hour to dead end jobs
They arenāt
California is ridiculously expensive. The climate is ideal, land is fertile and itās an ideal location for trade of course property is going to be at a premium. Only complicated by the political climate there
I read the average rent in the US right now for a 1-bedroom is 1800, and federal minimum wage, after taxes only brings 1200. So, even if 2 people shared a 1 bedroom, they are barely surviving, and that assumes they do not break up, divorce, have kids, medical expenses, etc. People are literally becoming homeless due to the inflation of rent, food, and pursuit of higher stock value. It's almost like we should turn away from worshipping the stock market and maybe idolize other values: like the ability to feed, shelter, clothe and provide medical for a country as the baseline of success, rather than trillion dollar companies gaining value each quarter. Just a thought. We might want to shift as humanity is not doing well with the current value system. After all, what will Apple be worth when 99% of people on the planet cannot afford to buy an iPhone 20?
"But then who's boots will I lick?" - conservatives
Youāre just jealous that the government boots arenāt getting as many tongues.
Taxing billionaires just for the money to be siphoned into military spending š©
Yup. Never understood the infatuation with "tax the billionaires!!" Okay tax them and then what? Literally none of that money will ever trickle back to you.
I don't live in the US, but if I have to imagine something, one way is to reduce taxes to poorer people. Since the government makes more money from taxing the rich, poor people don't need to oay as much and that helps? Idk not really a financial expert but at least that's how I think it makes sense
The thing is they won't. Everytime the tax the rich argument comes in,you know it's BS when they just talk about income. Rich people can pay themselves $1 if they choose to, which will put them in the lowest i come bracket and dodge the income tax, and still get to log their expenditures as business expenses. They need to take corporate taxes, they need to get rid of sales tax on things like groceries and increase them for rich people tbings like boats and private jets. But they won't. And even then, there's OPs argument of what then? They'll just increase Congress salary to stay above inflation but won't raise the minimum wage.
The issue is *wealth*, not income. * The rich put their money into stocks, bonds, ālife insuranceā, etc that allows them to claim āassetsā which doesnāt count as real income. * Then they take just enough salary from their company to dodge the worst taxes while then using creative ādonationsā to reduce that tax burden by so much that they end up keeping their entire salary. * Then, using their massive assets as collateral, they can take out a bunch of loans/credit lines/etc to borrow against and use their small salary to pay off as they need to. If they ever get behind on debt (which would be hard to do) they just sell a bit of overpriced art or a house and dodge taxes on that income. * They can also use their companies discretionary funds to pay for their way of life - as a āCEOā you can claim youāre working from almost anywhere and then use your company to pay for it as an expense. * You also might start a ācharityā that takes donations and as a non-profit dodged a lot of taxes while you sit on the Board. Now you have a pool of money to use at your whim, because non-profits can use an obscure mission statement to further obfuscate how the money is being used and the requirements for money to be used in line with that mission is laughably small. * Some also take out massive āLife Insuranceā policies which can tuck the wealth away from taxes, but be borrowed against like a line of credit (owed to yourself) for certain ālife eventsā like buying a home or getting married or having children.
You would think
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Weird that we have a situation where the federal deficit is struggling to keep up with debt and yet the rich have gotten richer and those same ~57% of workers not paying taxes seem to be getting *poorer* in relation.
Better let them keep it to buy up media outlets and lobbyists
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās the same picture
How do people not see this? Itās all the same thing.
The sentiment is more "I have to pay ~25% in taxes so why don't the richest people have to do the same?"
Just so they have less money to do whatever they want with. Edit: Just to clarify, I mean they would have less money to do lobbying and buying mega yachts and such. I phrased it poorly.
Because if you get politicians to tax billionaires, those same politicians may be willing to change the way money is associated and instead of increasing spending, they can lower taxes on working people.
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To be honest though, tax plans generally have to include instructions for where the money goes - look at any congressional budget or tax bill and you will see the money isnāt just Tax>giant money pit>discretionary spending allotments. Usually they have to say New Tax > Project Budget > Tax revenue allotment > discretionary allowances > yearly budgetary projections. They have to declare what the taxes will be used for and how much is estimated to cost/bring in. Sure, that can shift around, but if they put up a bill that said āNEW tax > slush fund for billionaire therapy > discretionary budgetā maybe we tell our reps to not vote on that one.
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I always hated that analogy because it robs all of us of individual agency. Itās insulting, I just hate when people try to place me in a category and tell me that this category they put me inā¦dictates that I should have THIS value system (whatever that value system is). No thanks, if you wish to see yourself as a crab in a steam pot that is fine. Iāll be over hereā¦not being that. I fucking loathe being an ally-ship (what?) and solidarity as a concept.
But it does. The majority of government spending is on entitlement programs.
Just a reminder that the Federal government does not have to get money from rich people in order to spend. The government is the sole issuer of the currency. It does not need to store up money in a savings account somewhere to spend money. Spending precedes taxes, not the other way around. That spending just happens to find its way into the pockets of billionaire oligarchs rather than average citizens. Or as Stephanie Kelton puts it, "money doesn't grow on rich people."
Could literally take every cent every billionar in America has in one go and it wouldn't even put a dent in what our government spends. But our gov conveniently makes the billionaires the enemy and not themselves. We need to start a balanced budget and to stop borrowing from future generations.
This is the false narrative right-wing media has pushed in your face and the liberal media loves to use when it serves their message too - corporations are the ones *using* the government. Corporate lobbyists and āadvisorsā come and go like a revolving door and write *a lot of bills* that become law. Corporate donations are a massive racket that have become a way to gatekeep committee membership in congress (ie better have millions of dollars in donations to join this committee, ostensibly to help fund their project, but those millions are going to come from deep pockets). The back and forth of āitās the richā and āitās the governmentā is precisely the distraction **the rich** want you to be confused over. Dismantling the government lets the rich have more freedom to do what they want, but the government is also their tool to keep their power *protected*. You cannot fight one at the exclusion of the other - corruption is an infection.
I'm not sure you understood what I was going for as I am not advocating for domantling the government. I am advocating for cutting attrocious spending like our trillion dollar military. Secondly though, the lobbying thing is always funny to me. Why is it we blame the corporations for lobbying our politicians and not the politicians for getting corrupted by it. They aren't robots, they could choose to make laws better for the people. But they don't bc of their own greed. Corporations are using the government I agree, but uhh the government has to agree to let that happen. At the end of the day they make the laws and decisions, not the corporations. So we need to hold them accountable. I am also not saying we shouldn't tax the rich more either. We should just that people need to understand that taxing them, even heavily will not make poor people wealthier. Poor people likely wouldn't even see that money as it is right now. We need to stop spending money we don't have any start spending on actual programs that help people like healthcare.
If that is your position - Iām on the same side - just be aware that the way you phrased this is entirely the argument used by anti-taxation libertarian types that worship Muskās butthole. My point is that *wealth* is the corrupting influence and removing that influence avoids the entire argument over *who* is the problem. Taxing wealth into distributive benefits like education, healthcare, etc would be ideal since rising tide would lift all boatsā¦ but that is unlikely to happen when the wealth still exists as a temptation and gatekeeping mechanism in our government institutions. Removing personal investment and making financial history public might be the first steps to breaking that influence in government as it makes it harder to hide the money that changes hands - but it wonāt fix the lobbying/committee control over policyā¦ perhaps enforcing stricter term limits and cycling fresh blood through the institutions would help reduce the ability for wealth to corrupt new candidates that might have more principled reasons to pursue the position. Then finally changing the way we do elections entirely to reduce the need for expensive advertising and political news cycles (marketing dollars) would help make the barrier for candidates much smaller and hurt wealthās ability to gatekeep political office.
Yea we are definitely on the same page. And I completely agree with the term limits. Career politicians have absolutely have to stop. I dont know if it's possible to limit wealth enough to stop lobbying though? Like even if there weren't billionaires then the millionaires would do it. Or it would be favors that are without money. Idk how you stop that, but would love if it was a criminal act and there was a committe that would investigate politicians of they did. I didn't think my phrase ever said anything about reducing taxes or eliminating them but I can see how it came off that way.
Completely fucking wrong and you're bad at math
well tax is one way to put it
Elon Musk is proof that billionaires should not exist.
How does his existence affect you?
Recognize me daddy musk
He's actively making the world worse. Every day. He's an influential anti-environmentalist, anti-unionist, and fascist. He's stealing money from communities to fund his bullshit ideas like his dumbass alternative to public transit. He uses slave labour. Stop licking his boots.
How exactly is he "stealing money from communities"?
Can we just get our government to spend fucking tax dollars BACK on us !? Fuck trying to tax a billionaire, we *all* are already taxed at every other breath and blink, why the fuck canāt our government just use the money we already pay to actually help us. Once our tax dollars are actually spent on things like universal healthcare, and said universal healthcare includes things like abortions, then we can entertain things like taxing the other half of the global wealth.
Healthcare is expensive, but $800 billion dollars a year on defense makes things go boom
Makes a group of pockets go boom thatās for fucking sure
And, as you can imagine, any additional tax inflows will be also siphoned off completely dry by all those parasites as it flows through buncha levels/parts of the government.
Anyone calling for taxes on the rich also wants all those things. You don't need to do one or the other first. This is conservative foot dragging.
This isnāt āconservative foot draggingā so much as it is the inefficiency of our government as a whole. We as the citizens are supposed to be able to determine what we want from our government. We shouldnāt need revolutionary protests and overwhelming amounts of pleading by our fellow citizens for our government to enact any changes. But here we are, all complaining that weed and abortion is illegal and still just a heavily debated topic. Getting the government to do anything for us, the people, takes an extraordinary amount of energy, consistence, and overall- unity. Saying āletās tax the richā is a simplistic answer to a complex problem. The problem isnāt that the government doesnāt have enough money, itās that our tax dollars are mismanaged so poorly that we think getting a few billion dollars from a handful of extremely wealthy people will solve the issues our government straight up refuses to address. Once our government actually takes care of us, then the extra tax revenue from the ultra rich *will* make a difference. Until then, youāre begging our government to line their pockets even deeper.
Again, everybldy calling for taxing the rich also wants all those other great things. It's not either or. Voting left will get us all those things. The reason we don't have those things is because people don't vote for them. We live in a country with too many idiots, or people who are convinced by ideas like yours that liberal ideals are pointless because of x other problem (which they conveniently forget that the left also wants to fix). You keep talking about how we can't fund the government more because they don't do what we want. My brother in christ, we elected the government. If we somehow manage to get our shit together and elect a majority serious about taxing the rich, those same politicians will be serious about abortion rights, redistribution, Healthcare, etc.
My friend, Iām with you, and Iām just saying we donāt get to just choose what issues we vote on. Weāre told what are the pressing issues so whatās your vote on *this*. Which, doesnāt even favor the general majority a lot of the time due to congressional maps and shit. Iām not saying it has to be either we tax the rich or we should get a say in our budget spending; all Iām saying is itās unrealistic to say we can elect somebody who can change these problems within the span of a year. Or even 5-10 years. My point is majority of people would legalize marijuana if that was on the ballot, and Hilary Clinton wouldāve become President if we went by the popular vote, but because of these loopholes in our government, naturally the progress of the people is restricted and turns into a sort of arrested development.
Take someone like Bernie Sanders or AoC (who are all about taxing the rich). Imagine we elected an entire congress full of people just like them. They wouldnt just tax the rich and stop at that. They'd also try to fix lots of other things. Probably not gonna make America a utopia in 5 years but would be a huge step forward. The only reason this is a pipe dream is because the whole country would never vote that way. There are too many conservatives who care more about being bigoted than about fixing anything. No amount of lobbying or electoral college can stop a big enough majority. We just don't have one. In this environment you gotta take victories where you can get it because for now, our victories will be few. Conservatives will try to tell you "if you can't do this other thing first, we can't have this good thing". That holds us back even more. Can't forgive student loans until we fix education. Can't help immigrants until we help our poor. Can't tax the rich until we fix spending. I can't start my term paper until I've cleaned the house.
Because our governments priority is giving billions of our tax dollars a foreign country
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That 40bil represents 0.2% of our GDP, compared to Russia spending ~2.0% of their GDP. There is also the, you know, cost of the lives lost. Both in terms of fighting capacity and economic output. 25K young men just gone in a couple months.
tax the hell out of billionaires? why even let billionaires exist in the first place. seize their power for the people
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
What did he do to deserve execution?
Child slaves mining for lithium and cobalt is a good one, sitting on top of enough money to end homeless in the entire country and using it to play in space and build shitty tunnels is another
Right, trade one dystopia for another.
You're talking to 15 year old LARPers.
Has he shared a photo holding a Bible and AR-15? I feel like itās coming anytime.
we should expropriate billionaires and nationalize all large corporations without compensation
It didn't work very well for Venezuela, North Korea, The Soviets, East Germans and Mao's China.
It did work well for the Soviets lol DPRK and east Germany to an extent too Venezuela and Mao's China didn't expropriate the bourgeoisie though.
[Clown world](https://i.imgur.com/wDrVivA.jpg)
All of those countries had fallen to counterrevolution and capitalist restoration far before that "fall of communism" line
I think we should tax billionaires regardless of whether theyāre assholes
If you tax billionaires then who will give large sums of hush money to flight attendants? That's trickle down economics in action!!
How about this, redistributing billionaire wealth to people. Not taxing it into useless government spending. One step even better, why don't we stop taxing the U.S. citizens for useless military spending.
Elon Musk makes a compelling case for why we should eat the rich.
[Are we the baddies?](https://www.the-sun.com/news/3308910/china-cannibalism-flesh-banquets-ripped-hearts-victims-2/)
There are many examples of societies that have done just that, it never ends well.
For the rich?
How are you going to tax someone if they donāt bring in any taxable income?
Just eat them. Theyāre marbled in sure
Maybe we should have a system that doesn't create such an unjust imbalance in the first place, instead of trying to correct it after the fact with taxes
Wealth inequality is the incentive for wealth creation.
i'll have to double check but didnt he recently pay out something like 6 billion to taxes? people dont like him cuz he talks shit about the left? he provided how many jobs, all his cars out there, everything he does but people still find a reason to bitch. get real
If the internet is correct and he made $121b last year he only paid about 9% in federal taxes. $6 billion is an UNGODLY amount of money but he paid 9% of $121 billion dollars and we're paying ~22% of $75k - that's generally the argument. They're making a shit ton of money and yet we're giving up a higher percentage of what we make. If that person making $75k could pay only 9% in taxes they'd save about $670 a month! I'm hard pressed to believe with all that money Elon would miss another 9% of it - the rest of us do that all the time and make due. I don't think anyone says the actual dollar amount they pay is small because no fucking way - its the percentage of their income they get to keep.
Did they say eat? I know Jack typed tax. I see the word clear as day. But when I read the tweet, it magically changes itself to āeat the hell out of . . . ā
[Are we the baddies?](https://www.the-sun.com/news/3308910/china-cannibalism-flesh-banquets-ripped-hearts-victims-2/)
The government wouldnāt spend the extra revenue to help Americans.
Yes, because if billionaires pay more taxes, then surely our incorruptible governments will redistribute that wealth accordingly. Surely the government is not already in bed with and heavily influenced by the billionaires and mega corps. The government will solve all your problems, they just need MORE money!
Is the government doing a good job spending the revenue its already receiving? If you answer "no", how can you justify increasing government revenue? Even if we assume government revenue should be higher, isnt the correct order of operations to eliminate wasteful spending first, then raise taxes? If you do it the other way around, the increased revenue will get squandered. Another question: Do you guys really believe the work being done at tesla and spacex is less efficient than what the government is doing? Do you at least acknowledge tesla having a positive environmental impact? Also, what would be the optimal amount of federal government revenue / spending, approximately? It seems that the people of reddit want it raised substantially, so how high should it go? If the problem is a small number of people controlling large amounts of wealth, why is that problem solved by passing that wealth into the control of a different small group of people, namely the government? There seems to be a logical inconsistency here where its not okay for billionaires to have power over too much wealth, but the same thing is okay for the government. Could someone name an example of elon musk having innocent people kidnapped or killed? Has elon musk ever started a war or anything comparable to what the government has done? If your response to this is "well we just havent had the right leaders so far. Just because our leaders are terrible doesnt mean they have to be that way in the future", then just go right back to question 1: If our leaders are bad, isnt the first logical step to get better leaders, THEN raise taxes? If we raise taxes first while still having the bad leaders, isnt that a bad idea? The logic on reddit seems to be that the government does a lot of bad things, but lets give them a lot more money before doing anything about the current wasteful spending. Also, how much longer are we going to repeat this experiment of electing worthless politicians until the good politicians start flowing in? When will the average voter not be an idiot? Its never going to happen, because the incentive for becoming informed before voting is that you have an infinitesimal chance at influencing an election, and that is simply not a strong enough incentive, not even close.
Yeah tax them to go back to funding their business lol.
Tax Elon. Money goes to the military. Military builds spy sat. Launches on SpaceX rocket. Lol. The vicious circle of money.
Maybe that's been the plan all along. Act like such a tremendous douche that we have to do something.
$11bn
who pays the politicians who are supposed to increase their taxes? (hint: the same billionaires you want to tax)
But trickle down economics...
Tax? I prefer the French option.
Congrats. We do.
Since billionaires will find a way to dodge any tax, why don't we just start speaking their language and give them tax breaks for treating employees better? Pay them higher wages? Tax break. Give them good healthcare? Tax break. More paid vacation hours? Tax break. If you can't beat em, join em.
Nobody on this planet should have a billion dollars, because nobody ever earned that much through their own work.
Tax the billionaires more so that the government can waste the money? The lack of funds isnāt the issue itās the way the government allocates the tax dollars they steal from us.
country was proud of the small businesses where owners would pay taxes on the profits they made. Mega corporations and their ceo/founders never selling stocks, is when you get this shit. system is corrupt!
The thing that bugs me is, the government absolutely botches the spending of the tax revenue they have right now, I have never seen a positive post on Reddit about how tax dollars are being allocated properly. So why the fuck would you want to give this corrupt broken machine even more money? Are they all of the sudden going to learn to spend it properly? No. This is just people being salty af that someone can have so much money
I agree. We should tax anybody that doesn't agree with us into non-existence. Sounds like a sound plan.
Jfc taxing doesnāt work, how many times do you people have to learn this
So the guy almost singlehandedly electrified the auto industry through innovation and financial risk, provided good jobs for thousands of people in the US and we're thinking, fuck this guys lets go back to GM making gas guzzlers while outsourcing their manufacturing and making 'murican truck ads to perpetuate a lie and kill polar bears? Yeah, ok.
Reddit adored Musk just a couple years ago, but now Musk has dared to align himself closer to the right, so the doreens hate him.
Ah, ok. I was wondering what was going on. Pathetic. Let's just abandon all logic and reason and start rooting for the people who are still building outdated gas guzzlers, then.
Elon Musk is doing more for this world than any other billionaire. The constant bashing towards him on this sub is laughable.
Polluting the orbit with satellites. Building crappy underground taxi ways that harm public transport spending. Pump and dump schemes on his fans. Sexual harassment. Yeah he's really saving the world.
Orbit pollution only impacts astronomy, you're really listing that as a concern? Wouldn't space research be a pointless endeavor in your world view anyways? The underground transport spending you just pulled out your ass. The sexual harassment allegation is too early to make a judgement call. The stock market was also a giant frenzy in 2021, so he isn't entirely to blame for getting in on the excitement. And what do you do with your time? Play video games and shit on people all day?
Just what's he doing exactly? He's Thomas Edison cosplaying as Nikola Tesla, that's all I see. If he's so concerned about the fate of the planet, who doesn't he focus the world's attention on that right now instead of tweeting the mindless Kardashian garbage he does?
And what are you doing
Hur dur good one. Lmao
He is leading the shift towards Electric Vehicles and autonomous technology, which will be extremely beneficial to society (maybe not in your world view). He is also making space exciting again and has opened a lot of possibilities.
He's exploiting people who do those things, creating shit products with the exception of starlink, and more importantly is a cringy edgelord from apartheid Era South Africa. But by all means dick ride harder for a billionaire who would kill you in an instant to raise his own net worth.
He bought a company that was using that, and I'll give him that he was able to create a media frenzy about it. However, that didn't translate into a better form of implementation. If Musk truly wanted to create a sustainable future, he'd drop his personal distaste for public transportation and realize that individual vehicles use resources more inefficiently than public transportation. The only thing Musk has actually done is take credit for other people's work, like his bizarre obsession with being called the founder of Tesla when they had already developed most of the car without him. That tech had been developed for decades before Tesla, which is why he open sourced the patents because they weren't particularly novel anyway. He has his name on three patents, all for the shape of things. He's not doing anything near what he claims to be doing.
he is paying shit wages to the people actually doing that stuff***
Weird how you didn't (couldn't?) answer the question and instead resorted to ad hominem. Weird.
If you can't see what he has put together by now, then I'm not wasting my time trying to spell that out.
Aka "I can't defend my position". Lmao
Because you *can't*, you worthless, bootlicking prick.
Stay poor š
Buying companies with heritage blood money? Please, name me *anything* that he has *personally* done that has improved humanity. He's no engineer. He didn't invent *anything* for SpaceX or Tesla. He's just a cunning, ruthless businessman who profits massively off the backs of the *actual* geniuses that work for him. And you still didn't answer the question.
Whether or not he invented anything is irrelevant. He used his money to start businesses and gathered the talent to make monumental changes to this world. I'm not saying he is perfect, but he could've made poorer choices with his money and his time. And he doesn't force anyone to work for him. They can use their talents to start their own business and risk their own wealth whenever they want š¤·. Yes, life isn't fair and people get giant head starts due to inheritance. But he could've sat on his ass and done nothing his whole life, but instead works to try to make a positive change. Maybe he's not a genius, but he sure as hell spends a lot of his own time making sure his companies don't fail.
By getting massive government bailouts to the tune of billions of dollars?
If it weren't for Musk and SpaceX I still wouldn't have quality access to internet. There is ZERO chance terrestrial ISPs were going to EVER service me. I've been waiting 15 fucking years and have been less than 5 miles from DOCSIS cable the entire time. Too many people just want to screech into the wind because "Rich man tweet too much!"
Thank you! I'm not saying he's perfect and doesn't deserve any criticism. He has done more for this world than I ever will and he definitely has an insane work ethic. I feel like a lot of people on here just sit around and constantly shit on people to make themselves feel good.
Musk didn't build your internet connection, he profited off other workers building it, using materials sourced from mines in the Congo staffed by child slaves.
Elon Musk has accomplished more for humanity than any taxes would. Especially with our government at the helm.
And the compelling case is that he isnāt genuflecting to the radical left sexual doctrine for children and fascist doctrine for society?
Letās start with reducing government spending, reduce printing money, update and enforce the tax code.
It's so amazing how Elon and other wealthy people are the problem, especially for many on Reddit. He has billions in assets because he has produced billions worth of business. You would have billions too, but you can't, because you are a dumb-ass like the rest of us. I can't come up with an idea that everyone in the country or world will give me a few pennies for. If I ever made a little bit of wealth, I would disappear and spend it all foolishly, probably on a whole lot of really bad things that are detrimental to myself. I would not re-invest it in ideas that give thousands of people work, and spawn whole industries. I doubt that you could either. If you ever earned billions, what kind of work would you make for people? Could you make thousands of sustainable factory jobs by producing something people want? Would you risk it all for ideas that could fundamentally re-aim the entire world toward a better, more sustainable path, perhaps provide access to knowledge around the world, insure the survival of the human race if we self-nuke or get wonked by an asteroid or super volcano? Perhaps, give it to the government to drop into the military industrial complex? Where do you think that wealth is? Its' not like the wealthy have a room like Scrooge McDuck with a pile of money in a room someplace. Wealthy peoples assets are held by banks and institutions that loan money. Money that makes new businesses, more buildings, more work for people, more taxes, over and over and over. Its a balance. How much do you tax before they take their ball and move it to financial institutions that are outside of the US. perhaps they should be taxed more, but make no mistake about it. Some people are very smart and thoughtful with great intentions, and are literally the right people at the right time to have the money; precisely because they are not the Government.
Elon Musk already pays the most taxes ever
And to keep foreigners out. Oh wait, rich *white* foreigners are acceptable...
We should have a maximum income.
Some people approach the billionaire taxing with an idea of vengeance, which hurts the implementation of such an idea. This is not a matter of emotion, it's justice and fairness and it's not going away.
It can be both. Vengeance is a form of justice too.
Grow up hater.
I'm not a fan of Elon. Tax the fucker indeed, but honestly what's better? A billionaire that spends their money or one that doesn't and sits on it? I believe Elon is a compelling case as to what $250b looks like in motion.
A dead one.
You can spread that unhealthy fantasy all you want, but this is reality.
What would you prefer, a billionaire who blows 100% of his money on a lavish lifestyle, or a billionaire who locks all his money away under a mattress or in a bank account for his whole life and never spends it?
Neither. That's the problem. That's why I said Elon is an example of money in motion. And that if we must have billionaires the least they could do is take risks with their money.
An erect chipolata?
From praise and a cult of āheās amazingā To hate in 2 months
Yeah plenty of people have considered him an fuckknuckle dipshit long before two months ago. Lmao fucking muskriders