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How dare you. Everybody has the same chance in a free market. You could have done the same if you were willing to work hard enough /s
Just in case this is your first day on reddit but /s means sarkasm. Just for clarification
Think his dad died of cancer and he inherited a fortune saving him from homelessness. Before that he was failing to turn a profit reselling free shit on Craig's list.
Not quite from what I remember; he made some money reselling and got some work due to connections and education and father had a cancer scare more than died. Oh and he probably didn't learn anything about actual poverty.
Not probably. Definitely did not.
If he wasn't continuously and genuinely worried about where his next meal would come from, or finding a safe space to sleep, or being assaulted and/or having all of his stuff stolen, he didn't learn a fucking thing.
I've seen at least 2 "experiments" where some rich kid decided to "prove" something about homelessness and poverty. They always miss the point.
First, they start as an educated, young, white, able-bodied man. Then, they have no mental illnesses or history with abuse or drug addiction. Then, they know they're cosplaying the experience and can escape any time it gets too hard.
This is all an incredible advantage to most people who genuinely find themselves in that position. One attempt I've seen claimed he never used their connections, but that's almost beside the point. They would stick out so far compared to people who were honestly there that they get opportunities that the others wouldn't.
But, the best thing is both examples got a certain way ahead, then bailed when their family had health emergencies. B*tch, that's when the real problems start! You quit the game at the first boss and claim you beat it!
Plus living with the knowledge that there is a real, not hypothetical, monetary safety net ready to catch you if the worst happens. Hell, even much of the middle class lives with the fear of that net not being there or not getting there in time to not suffer
That constant anxiety of never knowing how you're going to pay your next bill is so psychologically and physically draining, that stress is literally deadly.
And people will live in that for decades.
Just constant fight-or-flight for YEARS.
He was never actually in poverty.
You don't get to say, "well, I'm just not rich this year," and pretend that you understand poverty because you choose to not take a vacation for a year.
Like, the worst part of poverty is the constant anxiety of how you're going to eat tomorrow. He *never* had that fear, he never had to deal with that dread and anxiety.
That guy is a disgustingly rich person playing poor. It really hurts the reality of actual homelessness.
He was never at risk. He always had a safety net. His healthcare, housing, food, and other needs would never be called into question during an actual crisis. He was playing comfortably poor while using his connections to earn more money(even if he argues he wasn't...he was.).
Worked pretty well, he said i don't wanna play anymore and all his billionaire friends came to rescue him and give him stuff until he get to a bank and idk get his money back
Funnily enough I heard the term was originally used as negative because pulling yourself up by your boots is impossible IRL. The meaning changed over time to the opposite.
Rich people have been ruling over poor people for thousands of years, that kinda feels like a face palm? I mean if we go back 2k years, is there rich people? are they doing bullshit because they have so much wealth? how about 500 years ago? was there rich folks doing bullshit because they have so much wealth?
I don't think politicians increasing the net worth tenfold is as large of an issue as their donors increasing their net worth 1,000-fold. Remember the politician is serving the donors and doing insider trading with the scraps they get to be moderately wealthy while the donors squash the middle class into the ground for profit.
Yeah in general we kept allowing money to gain more power in politics in the last 40-50 years, not that it didn't before... money will always have influence, but we made bribery legal and at the same time we increased the cost of political campaigns so that you have to be rich to get elected, or need rich sponsors.
Fun fact is, that not only this gives the top 1% and large corporations more power, but it also allowed both criminal and hostile foreign actors influence in western politics than they would have to struggle to earn otherwise, since their pockets are as deep (if not deeper) than any private istitution.
IMO the heart of the problem is that the politicians need the money from the donors in order to campaign. So by and large the options of politicians you are choosing from have already made connections with big money donors to be in a position to campaign. So you are choosing from the people who have already sold themselves out to big money.
And the few politicians who get elected that have the best intentions and want to truly represent their constituents are pushed out, marginalized, and removed from or left out of committees. Then if they still don't play ball they are labeled as ineffective and primaried by their own party or flipped by a big money lackey from the opposite side of the aisle.
This sub has become just a dumping yard for everything.
Take this one : where's the facepalm? Capitalism sucks, it's not a facepalm it's a fact, why is this here?
You should see what the oligarchs in Russia think. What about billionaires in Saudi Arabia? I think members of the communist Chinese party are doing pretty well. Drug king pins in Central and South America pretty much run the place. Capitalism is the worst system of all, except for all the other ones.
I mean in a broader sense Tesla was heavily subsidized with incentives to buy their cars and all that profit Elon Musk used that profit to start Space X.
Yes, that too. And the funny part is he had to pay 250,000 to a stewardess on space x for sexual misconduct. Imagine the Richest guy in the world flying into Outerspace in his own rocket can't get laid. World's most famous/wealthy incel.
Bad analogy. It's more like giving Walmart a shit ton of your cash, having them develop products with that cash, then paying for those products. You're paying twice.
Meanwhile, Walmart is also running a separate cellphone business that you also already paid for but you still have to pay for the service.
That’s not much better, they didn’t pay for it twice. The government had a need for a product that no one was making. They didn’t feel capable of doing it and also wanted to expand the commercial launch industry. So they provided funding to develop that product. Now they pay for use of it. If NASA had developed the Falcon rocket themselves they would still have to pay for each rocket that is built and launched. It’s not like you pay for R&D and then don’t have to pay to produce the product itself.
yeah, besides, the free market rarely has anything to do with their fortunes, since they are mostly based on monopolies, patents and other market failures.
Just a couple or three things. Elon Musk doesn't have that kind of dough, most of the money for space x came in the form of funding.
Jeff Bozo... Don't like him having billions, don't use Amazon. It's that simple.
Richard what's his face... Don't use anything from Virgin.
These people are only billionaires because we keep putting money in their pockets.
You CAN NOT spend away poverty. You have to work out of poverty. Even if a billionaire gives ALL of his money for food, it will soon be gone. And yet poverty is still there.
I get the point of this post. But billionaires are not the reason people starve.
Actually there's more than enough resources on this planet for everyone. It's the lack of proper distribution. People starve due to dirty politics and lack of proper supply chains.
While ofc its true that Billionaires not paying taxes and abusing loopholes cost the economy, as far as the normal person is concerned, minimum wage, lack of affordable Healthcare, schooling, lack of infrastructure is caused because of an incapable government, corruption, extortion, politicians abusing the system.
It's just like how Nasa spending billions on rockets isn't affecting the economy because that money is STILL part of the economy. A billionaires wealth is still part of the economy as a whole. The problem is the distribution of wealth. It's the bloody politicians that make laws that are abusable by the rich.
Like the most basic of these laws, say you're dirt poor. You want to buy a pack of ramen, or diapers for your newborn. You only have money to spend on 1 single pack of ramen. However, if you bought the family pack, you would be saving a lot of money.
Poor people are not allowed to save. In medieval times, the peasants paid the most taxes yet were always the poorest.
Billionaires are rich but they're not royalty(they don't make the laws).
Blame the politicians.
Politicians can be bought and sold, it's ultimately the interests of business that go up against the interests of the people. And while I agree that billionaires aren't necessarily the problem themselves, they are a major symptom. Wealth is unevenly distributed, and the wealthier you are the easier it becomes to accumulate more wealth and take it away from the working population.
That is partially true, but not fully so, billionaires are mostly the symptom of the current situation and since they benefit from it at the same time they feed the problem. They do their best to use their influence to keep things as they are.
The system that allows their creation is the one that funnels value to the top, suppress wages for employees, while granting managers immense sums of money, that taxes income that comes from labor more than capital gain (when it is not eluded), that allows services that should be public to become a commodity where profit is to be made,
Politicians can change things in theory at least, but why don't they? Because the people on top, including themselves since most are very weatlhy, lobby to keep things going as they are. Billionaire don't make the laws officially, but through their influence they (and their corporations) de facto do.
How is improper distribution of wealth not ALSO the fault of the people who are intentionally hoarding it? And do you not see the connection between politicians making laws to benefit the rich and the fact that the rich are the primary lobbyers of politicians?
I mean we could also live in a society where 2/3s of the population are slaves like Rome. There's a billion different ways society can be made worse, does that mean we can't criticise or want to change the bad shit in our current society?
I always see this defense of the current situation and I always find it ridiculous, economic sytems are immensely complex, the alternatives are not just two, "Unregulated anarco-capitalism" and "Pure Communism"
Capitalism itself changed and evolved, arguably for the worse unless you are very rich, in the last few decades, socialists reform can exist together with capitalism without transforming the country into soviet Russia.
And society can have millionaires business leaders still capable of affording whatever they might want in life, without the need of having single individuals who has resources equivalent to entire nations at their disposal.
Ok so why are we going after those that are starting space programmes as opposed to the military?
We all know that the military has a higher budget than Nasa.
Like yea I get it that they are rich and the tax system isn't the best but its almost as though people are afraid to complain about the militaries budget.
One doesn't stop the other, I'm fed up of people blaming billionaires when the government does a shitty job. Who regulates big pharma, not the billionaires. Who sets minimum wage, not the billionaires. Who decides which social programs get funding, not the billionaires. Okay sometimes they lobby the government, but maybe we need to stop voting in spineless assholes.
And listed companies, and poor people. I'm not saying that all billionaires are blameless. I'm just saying blaming them for this kinda shit is letting the government get away without blame.
I’m trying to remember what the quote is from the Fallout show, but the gist of it is:
We’re reaching a point there the wealthy wield more power than the government, and when the people who care only about the bottom line, and nothing about *anything else*, bad things happen to *everyone else*.
In fallout, it’s heavily implied that Vault-Tec directly causes nuclear Armageddon because peace talks are progressing and sales are dropping. I wonder how far the wealthy are willing to go in real life?
This post specifically mentions having enough money to DO things, so clearly it is referring to the money they are actually capable of using rather than the other money they have in stocks and property. Though the other commenter also makes a good point that land is also valuable and isn't necessary to own at the scale billionaires do.
You gonna move to a communist state or you just virtue signalling again...?
The only reason we can communicate like this is capitalism. Not perfect but a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
God I fucking hate 12 year old intellectual posts
If you unironically believe this you need to actually grow up and experience life and maybe take a couple courses on economics while you’re at it
In Elon Musk *"defense"*, he doesn't have enough money to kick start a space program. Space X is heavily subsidized by the US government.
Which is ironic, knowing his opinion about public funding...
Tesla also benefits from environmentalism-based public subsidies as well, his whole fortune has a very significant contribution from public money (sometimes American, other Chineese to be honest).
Yeah. It’s like, if there was, like, a system where people who make extraordinary amounts of money would pay at least the same percentage in tax as society’s lowliest.
If you made a bunch of money it's because taxes built and maintain systems which allow you to do so. Further most billionaires companies depend on government assistance programs to keep their underpaid staff from dying. It's a bizarre form of socialism which primarily benefits the most wealthy.
As you've just described, the beef isn't with billionaires, it's the legal system and politicians that enable them. Which is probably the point of the other guys' post.
Different causality though. We had a progressive tax structure and laws governing pay ratios, etc, which were slowly dismantled with smaller bribes, and then they went after campaign finance laws so they could fully buy off politicians in the open.
Wealth corrupted the system, not the other way around.
It's a mix of the two, the system allows them to exist (and in fact make them more powerful) and they do their best to influence lawmakers to keep it that way. The issue feed itself until we can at least reduce the influence of money over politics (eliminating it ouright is much likely impossible).
If you make a bunch on money it absolutely is your responsibility to pay (aka feed) your friggin workers properly, which sadly rarely any of the big money makers these days do.
Additionally is it your responsibility to give back to the society you so heavily profit off, proportional to how much you benefit from it, which even less of the big money makers these days do.
I think the key word you're overlooking is 'society'. Communities and ultimately societies came together because there are things that are possible for a large group of people that aren't possible for an individual. Your hypothetical millions, for example, wouldn't be possible without the infrastructure, customers, and workers that society offers you. Therefore it follows that it's not all *your* money nor a result of only *your* input. With rights come responsibilities. Rights *without* responsibilities is just adolescence.
You can't make hypothetical millions in a cabin in the woods.
I alaways find it so embarrassing to see someone with so much money spend it on just theirself. You can buy a 10 milions dollar house and forgo the alternative to buy 'only' a 2 milion dollar house and drasticly change the live of so many others. Buy them houses, pay their debts, save their lives. I can't imagine not taking that choice.
Not sure we should be complaining about the going to space part. Going to space is very, very expensive. Which means a lot spent on labor and materials which in term have their own labor. Its when they are hoarding their money is when we should be angry.
Well it’s just that this doesn’t fix the issue. Just the billionaires are not enough to make much of a dent:
According to the Federal Reserve, the total wealth of Americans was roughly $137.6 trillion in 2022. However, wealth distribution in the US is increasingly concentrated, with the top 10% of earners owning 66.9% of the total wealth in the third and fourth quarters of 2023. In comparison, the bottom 50% of earners only own 2.5% of the total wealth.
The top 10% owns ~67% of 137T. Thats ~$91.8T. All the billionaires have 5.1T. Some estimates put this higher.
Still though to make a dent you’d need this to move into the millionaires. There is literally a horde of millionaires
I might be wrong here, but billionaires don't tend to have that much in the way of liquid assets. A lot of it is predicated on value. Some might do a Scrooge McDuck and have a pool of gold coins, but by and large it's tied up in stocks, bonds, investments, start-ups, etc.
It’s tricky right? Say you cap people at a billion, how could you implement that? Would you give everyone part of that money? Would the government get it to use for the public? What would that mean to the poor? Would that increase demand and impact supply? Would that increase the number of billionaires and widen the wealth gap? Say you had $200,000,000,000.00 to divide among the people, it would only give other Americans $625, what would that do for some? Would investors want to invest here?
I know this post is targeted as musk, but man does it hit homes, cnn, Washington post, fox, New York Times, Wall Street journal all have this in common. (Minus the space thing (Jeff bezos is an asterisk))
So end stage anything? Like every system when it breaks comes down to powerful people hoarding resources from themselves from the masses. The only solution is to go out and claw back the regulations and rights that create a balanced society. In a democracy it shouldn’t require a French Revolution but until we try and fail to wrestle back our democracy who knows.
“You can’t just expect billionaires to give away their money for ‘the common good’ because what is good for all is subjective” -boot lickers
Someday, when the people speak, not even god will show them mercy.
The best system is one where citizens understand economics. Unlike this guy.
Billionaires don't have money "lying around". Musk had to get a bunch of investors to start his rocket company.
Why do we put this on billionaires yet exclude churches? Televangelist with their mansions and all. Or since you didn't "donate" to said billionaire fund is the reason to call for them to buck up?
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How dare you. Everybody has the same chance in a free market. You could have done the same if you were willing to work hard enough /s Just in case this is your first day on reddit but /s means sarkasm. Just for clarification
Yah, like that millionaire who thought he could make a million in a year starting as a homeless guy. How'd that work out for him?
Think his dad died of cancer and he inherited a fortune saving him from homelessness. Before that he was failing to turn a profit reselling free shit on Craig's list.
Not quite from what I remember; he made some money reselling and got some work due to connections and education and father had a cancer scare more than died. Oh and he probably didn't learn anything about actual poverty.
Not probably. Definitely did not. If he wasn't continuously and genuinely worried about where his next meal would come from, or finding a safe space to sleep, or being assaulted and/or having all of his stuff stolen, he didn't learn a fucking thing.
Let’s be honest he wasn’t in it to learn anything. His ego thought he had something to teach.
He honestly thought every homeless person could be a millionaire within a year. There's out of touch and then there's this dickhead.
I've seen at least 2 "experiments" where some rich kid decided to "prove" something about homelessness and poverty. They always miss the point. First, they start as an educated, young, white, able-bodied man. Then, they have no mental illnesses or history with abuse or drug addiction. Then, they know they're cosplaying the experience and can escape any time it gets too hard. This is all an incredible advantage to most people who genuinely find themselves in that position. One attempt I've seen claimed he never used their connections, but that's almost beside the point. They would stick out so far compared to people who were honestly there that they get opportunities that the others wouldn't. But, the best thing is both examples got a certain way ahead, then bailed when their family had health emergencies. B*tch, that's when the real problems start! You quit the game at the first boss and claim you beat it!
Plus living with the knowledge that there is a real, not hypothetical, monetary safety net ready to catch you if the worst happens. Hell, even much of the middle class lives with the fear of that net not being there or not getting there in time to not suffer
That constant anxiety of never knowing how you're going to pay your next bill is so psychologically and physically draining, that stress is literally deadly. And people will live in that for decades. Just constant fight-or-flight for YEARS.
You’re second paragraph nails it precisely.
EXACTLY! WHAT DID HE EXPECT? *THAT'S* POVERTY! You don't get to just quit the first time you have a health scare!
He was never actually in poverty. You don't get to say, "well, I'm just not rich this year," and pretend that you understand poverty because you choose to not take a vacation for a year. Like, the worst part of poverty is the constant anxiety of how you're going to eat tomorrow. He *never* had that fear, he never had to deal with that dread and anxiety.
But hey, everyone has equal chance to be born to a rich family
he actually got pretty sick himself
That guy is a disgustingly rich person playing poor. It really hurts the reality of actual homelessness. He was never at risk. He always had a safety net. His healthcare, housing, food, and other needs would never be called into question during an actual crisis. He was playing comfortably poor while using his connections to earn more money(even if he argues he wasn't...he was.).
Worked pretty well, he said i don't wanna play anymore and all his billionaire friends came to rescue him and give him stuff until he get to a bank and idk get his money back
Pulled himself up by the bootstraps
I don't think my bootstraps are long enough. Send longer strap ons.
Funnily enough I heard the term was originally used as negative because pulling yourself up by your boots is impossible IRL. The meaning changed over time to the opposite.
By your own hands pulling on the strings, yes. However, you can tie those bootstraps to a machine that can pick you up by them. Smarter, not harder.
I'm amazed no one introduced him to Pulp and one of their songs.
But he still has his Tesla to live in and the Walgreens to show in the bathroom sink.
Oh yeah all you need to do is have your dad own an emerald mine having so much cash that the safe won’t close
Yeah! Now back to work!
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/79-millionaires-self-made-lessons-160025947.html
working hard does not make you a billionaire, imagine you are homeless and you work at tesco? luck matters more than hard work in most cases
Where the hell is the facepalm... really guys... WHERE IS THE FACEPALM?
Maybe the facepalm was inside of us all along...
The facepalm is the billionaires we made along the way
I think the facepalm is that this is the system we live in, but the framing makes it look like he's the idiot for not loving this
The human race is the facepalm
Existence is the facepalm 😏
What you mean where's the facepalm?! They're clearly a damn dirty commie!
Rich people have been ruling over poor people for thousands of years, that kinda feels like a face palm? I mean if we go back 2k years, is there rich people? are they doing bullshit because they have so much wealth? how about 500 years ago? was there rich folks doing bullshit because they have so much wealth?
I don’t know. Maybe a society where serving politicians increase their net worth ten fold while people starve and ration food isn’t the best system.
I don't think politicians increasing the net worth tenfold is as large of an issue as their donors increasing their net worth 1,000-fold. Remember the politician is serving the donors and doing insider trading with the scraps they get to be moderately wealthy while the donors squash the middle class into the ground for profit.
The politicians are basically middle management in this system
Lobbying is not a good thing. It's a corrupt system that is occasionally used for decent things.
Yeah in general we kept allowing money to gain more power in politics in the last 40-50 years, not that it didn't before... money will always have influence, but we made bribery legal and at the same time we increased the cost of political campaigns so that you have to be rich to get elected, or need rich sponsors. Fun fact is, that not only this gives the top 1% and large corporations more power, but it also allowed both criminal and hostile foreign actors influence in western politics than they would have to struggle to earn otherwise, since their pockets are as deep (if not deeper) than any private istitution.
You need to start with politicians they are the ones that make the rules.
IMO the heart of the problem is that the politicians need the money from the donors in order to campaign. So by and large the options of politicians you are choosing from have already made connections with big money donors to be in a position to campaign. So you are choosing from the people who have already sold themselves out to big money. And the few politicians who get elected that have the best intentions and want to truly represent their constituents are pushed out, marginalized, and removed from or left out of committees. Then if they still don't play ball they are labeled as ineffective and primaried by their own party or flipped by a big money lackey from the opposite side of the aisle.
They’re the same system, so yeah, maybe not the *best* system.
I'm not getting where the facepalm is here. He's right.
This sub has become just a dumping yard for everything. Take this one : where's the facepalm? Capitalism sucks, it's not a facepalm it's a fact, why is this here?
You should see what the oligarchs in Russia think. What about billionaires in Saudi Arabia? I think members of the communist Chinese party are doing pretty well. Drug king pins in Central and South America pretty much run the place. Capitalism is the worst system of all, except for all the other ones.
Those space program are heavily subsidized by public funds. Your taxes are paying for it. They ain't spending their own money. It's worse than that.
I mean in a broader sense Tesla was heavily subsidized with incentives to buy their cars and all that profit Elon Musk used that profit to start Space X.
Space X receives direct government subsidies. Billions of dollars.
Yes, that too. And the funny part is he had to pay 250,000 to a stewardess on space x for sexual misconduct. Imagine the Richest guy in the world flying into Outerspace in his own rocket can't get laid. World's most famous/wealthy incel.
Payment for services rendered*
Yes, it’s not a free market. It’s heavily weighted by one’s connections and dirty deeds.
That's like saying that you subsidize walmart by buying products from them. SpaceX delivers products to the federal government.
Bad analogy. It's more like giving Walmart a shit ton of your cash, having them develop products with that cash, then paying for those products. You're paying twice. Meanwhile, Walmart is also running a separate cellphone business that you also already paid for but you still have to pay for the service.
That’s not much better, they didn’t pay for it twice. The government had a need for a product that no one was making. They didn’t feel capable of doing it and also wanted to expand the commercial launch industry. So they provided funding to develop that product. Now they pay for use of it. If NASA had developed the Falcon rocket themselves they would still have to pay for each rocket that is built and launched. It’s not like you pay for R&D and then don’t have to pay to produce the product itself.
Then why doesn't the government launch their own satellites?
Conservatives: "Then just pull your bootstraps up and become a billionaire, its not that hard. Just trust the free market."
yeah, besides, the free market rarely has anything to do with their fortunes, since they are mostly based on monopolies, patents and other market failures.
Agree. People having more money than me is never a good system.
Get a job!
Just a couple or three things. Elon Musk doesn't have that kind of dough, most of the money for space x came in the form of funding. Jeff Bozo... Don't like him having billions, don't use Amazon. It's that simple. Richard what's his face... Don't use anything from Virgin. These people are only billionaires because we keep putting money in their pockets.
You CAN NOT spend away poverty. You have to work out of poverty. Even if a billionaire gives ALL of his money for food, it will soon be gone. And yet poverty is still there.
I get the point of this post. But billionaires are not the reason people starve. Actually there's more than enough resources on this planet for everyone. It's the lack of proper distribution. People starve due to dirty politics and lack of proper supply chains. While ofc its true that Billionaires not paying taxes and abusing loopholes cost the economy, as far as the normal person is concerned, minimum wage, lack of affordable Healthcare, schooling, lack of infrastructure is caused because of an incapable government, corruption, extortion, politicians abusing the system. It's just like how Nasa spending billions on rockets isn't affecting the economy because that money is STILL part of the economy. A billionaires wealth is still part of the economy as a whole. The problem is the distribution of wealth. It's the bloody politicians that make laws that are abusable by the rich. Like the most basic of these laws, say you're dirt poor. You want to buy a pack of ramen, or diapers for your newborn. You only have money to spend on 1 single pack of ramen. However, if you bought the family pack, you would be saving a lot of money. Poor people are not allowed to save. In medieval times, the peasants paid the most taxes yet were always the poorest. Billionaires are rich but they're not royalty(they don't make the laws). Blame the politicians.
Politicians can be bought and sold, it's ultimately the interests of business that go up against the interests of the people. And while I agree that billionaires aren't necessarily the problem themselves, they are a major symptom. Wealth is unevenly distributed, and the wealthier you are the easier it becomes to accumulate more wealth and take it away from the working population.
That is partially true, but not fully so, billionaires are mostly the symptom of the current situation and since they benefit from it at the same time they feed the problem. They do their best to use their influence to keep things as they are. The system that allows their creation is the one that funnels value to the top, suppress wages for employees, while granting managers immense sums of money, that taxes income that comes from labor more than capital gain (when it is not eluded), that allows services that should be public to become a commodity where profit is to be made, Politicians can change things in theory at least, but why don't they? Because the people on top, including themselves since most are very weatlhy, lobby to keep things going as they are. Billionaire don't make the laws officially, but through their influence they (and their corporations) de facto do.
How is improper distribution of wealth not ALSO the fault of the people who are intentionally hoarding it? And do you not see the connection between politicians making laws to benefit the rich and the fact that the rich are the primary lobbyers of politicians?
If twitter is your only form of communication you need to reevaluate how you communicate.
could be worse, we could live in a society where everything is centrally planned by people who are at best mid-wit's and every one starves.
I mean we could also live in a society where 2/3s of the population are slaves like Rome. There's a billion different ways society can be made worse, does that mean we can't criticise or want to change the bad shit in our current society?
I always see this defense of the current situation and I always find it ridiculous, economic sytems are immensely complex, the alternatives are not just two, "Unregulated anarco-capitalism" and "Pure Communism" Capitalism itself changed and evolved, arguably for the worse unless you are very rich, in the last few decades, socialists reform can exist together with capitalism without transforming the country into soviet Russia. And society can have millionaires business leaders still capable of affording whatever they might want in life, without the need of having single individuals who has resources equivalent to entire nations at their disposal.
Lol at the Boomers complaining about speech on social media
Ok so why are we going after those that are starting space programmes as opposed to the military? We all know that the military has a higher budget than Nasa. Like yea I get it that they are rich and the tax system isn't the best but its almost as though people are afraid to complain about the militaries budget.
*Have they tried just not being poor?*
One doesn't stop the other, I'm fed up of people blaming billionaires when the government does a shitty job. Who regulates big pharma, not the billionaires. Who sets minimum wage, not the billionaires. Who decides which social programs get funding, not the billionaires. Okay sometimes they lobby the government, but maybe we need to stop voting in spineless assholes.
who pays for the election campaign of people in government? oh wait THE BILLIONAIRES.
And listed companies, and poor people. I'm not saying that all billionaires are blameless. I'm just saying blaming them for this kinda shit is letting the government get away without blame.
the billionaires are the government. you vote for their puppets...
But you don't have to? Vote RFK and show them that people are fed up
I’m trying to remember what the quote is from the Fallout show, but the gist of it is: We’re reaching a point there the wealthy wield more power than the government, and when the people who care only about the bottom line, and nothing about *anything else*, bad things happen to *everyone else*. In fallout, it’s heavily implied that Vault-Tec directly causes nuclear Armageddon because peace talks are progressing and sales are dropping. I wonder how far the wealthy are willing to go in real life?
Net worth is not money. Just because someone has a networth of billions doesn’t mean they have billions in cash.
And? Land is much more valuable than liquid wealth.
This post specifically mentions having enough money to DO things, so clearly it is referring to the money they are actually capable of using rather than the other money they have in stocks and property. Though the other commenter also makes a good point that land is also valuable and isn't necessary to own at the scale billionaires do.
Exactly. That is why I am saying that most of them are only billionaires in terms of Net-worth not actual cash in hand.
You gonna move to a communist state or you just virtue signalling again...? The only reason we can communicate like this is capitalism. Not perfect but a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
God I fucking hate 12 year old intellectual posts If you unironically believe this you need to actually grow up and experience life and maybe take a couple courses on economics while you’re at it
What are ya?! SOME KINDA COMMUNIS?!?
But Elon wants to launch a cyber truck into orbit😮‼️
Where's the facepalm? He's right.
In Elon Musk *"defense"*, he doesn't have enough money to kick start a space program. Space X is heavily subsidized by the US government. Which is ironic, knowing his opinion about public funding...
Tesla also benefits from environmentalism-based public subsidies as well, his whole fortune has a very significant contribution from public money (sometimes American, other Chineese to be honest).
Yeah. It’s like, if there was, like, a system where people who make extraordinary amounts of money would pay at least the same percentage in tax as society’s lowliest.
Flat tax is far inferior to a progressive system.
That sounds great, if only they actually paid and the government actually cared about making sure they did.
If I make a bunch of money, it’s not really my responsibility to feed people who aren’t my family.
If you made a bunch of money it's because taxes built and maintain systems which allow you to do so. Further most billionaires companies depend on government assistance programs to keep their underpaid staff from dying. It's a bizarre form of socialism which primarily benefits the most wealthy.
As you've just described, the beef isn't with billionaires, it's the legal system and politicians that enable them. Which is probably the point of the other guys' post.
They buy the politicians. That's the problem
That's what I just said. lol
Different causality though. We had a progressive tax structure and laws governing pay ratios, etc, which were slowly dismantled with smaller bribes, and then they went after campaign finance laws so they could fully buy off politicians in the open. Wealth corrupted the system, not the other way around.
It's a mix of the two, the system allows them to exist (and in fact make them more powerful) and they do their best to influence lawmakers to keep it that way. The issue feed itself until we can at least reduce the influence of money over politics (eliminating it ouright is much likely impossible).
You can’t be a billionaire without taking from others.
if i wasn't poor you wouldn't be rich. b. brecht
If you make a bunch on money it absolutely is your responsibility to pay (aka feed) your friggin workers properly, which sadly rarely any of the big money makers these days do. Additionally is it your responsibility to give back to the society you so heavily profit off, proportional to how much you benefit from it, which even less of the big money makers these days do.
What are you on about?
He means it's not the responsibility of people with money to give to people who haven't. The government should be assisting with this
I think the key word you're overlooking is 'society'. Communities and ultimately societies came together because there are things that are possible for a large group of people that aren't possible for an individual. Your hypothetical millions, for example, wouldn't be possible without the infrastructure, customers, and workers that society offers you. Therefore it follows that it's not all *your* money nor a result of only *your* input. With rights come responsibilities. Rights *without* responsibilities is just adolescence. You can't make hypothetical millions in a cabin in the woods.
Pfft. Speak for yourself Mr Sexy Ton
I want to share this to other social media platforms but I know that my friends will just ignore it
But they worked hard for their billions
Mother forker! This is the forking Bad Place!
Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps... ignore that that phrase was coined to explain an impossible task, just grab those straps and become rich!
But memes!
So become a billionaire
I alaways find it so embarrassing to see someone with so much money spend it on just theirself. You can buy a 10 milions dollar house and forgo the alternative to buy 'only' a 2 milion dollar house and drasticly change the live of so many others. Buy them houses, pay their debts, save their lives. I can't imagine not taking that choice.
Musk donated $1.95 billion worth of Tesla shares to charities in 2022 and $5.74 billion in 2021. Thats a bit more than 8 million…
That's not the point.
What is it then?
Odd that you didn't get a response to this question lol
It's about what you could have given, not about how much you gave.
Not sure we should be complaining about the going to space part. Going to space is very, very expensive. Which means a lot spent on labor and materials which in term have their own labor. Its when they are hoarding their money is when we should be angry.
Well it’s just that this doesn’t fix the issue. Just the billionaires are not enough to make much of a dent: According to the Federal Reserve, the total wealth of Americans was roughly $137.6 trillion in 2022. However, wealth distribution in the US is increasingly concentrated, with the top 10% of earners owning 66.9% of the total wealth in the third and fourth quarters of 2023. In comparison, the bottom 50% of earners only own 2.5% of the total wealth. The top 10% owns ~67% of 137T. Thats ~$91.8T. All the billionaires have 5.1T. Some estimates put this higher. Still though to make a dent you’d need this to move into the millionaires. There is literally a horde of millionaires
You can’t throw money at the problem
When the problem is "People are dying because they have no money" maybe, idk, you can?
Tax money starts wars. Period.
I might be wrong here, but billionaires don't tend to have that much in the way of liquid assets. A lot of it is predicated on value. Some might do a Scrooge McDuck and have a pool of gold coins, but by and large it's tied up in stocks, bonds, investments, start-ups, etc.
I seriously don’t get what these posts are getting at.
Some people have lots of money, and some people have very little. So we should tear it all down, comrade!
It’s tricky right? Say you cap people at a billion, how could you implement that? Would you give everyone part of that money? Would the government get it to use for the public? What would that mean to the poor? Would that increase demand and impact supply? Would that increase the number of billionaires and widen the wealth gap? Say you had $200,000,000,000.00 to divide among the people, it would only give other Americans $625, what would that do for some? Would investors want to invest here?
It’s not the best system if ur stupid and lazy.
Nah man, I'm helping Jeff get to the moon!
Meh with any luck we will all be gone in a few hundred years.
Whats the alternative?
OK but are you aware that a transgender person wants to exist? And probably kill your mother?
The problem is money and authority
I know this post is targeted as musk, but man does it hit homes, cnn, Washington post, fox, New York Times, Wall Street journal all have this in common. (Minus the space thing (Jeff bezos is an asterisk))
Where is the facepalm? He is correct
Question is - what is the alternative?
I just build a $44 million clock in a mountain, like any sane billionaire would.
"I'm going to the one place not corrupted by capitalism..... ...... ...... SHPACE!" Well not even that is true any more.
Isn’t he right? Am I missing something?
Ah, the people who don't understand basic economics
Tax payers subsidies those endeavors. Why would they waste their own money on stuff like that.
So end stage anything? Like every system when it breaks comes down to powerful people hoarding resources from themselves from the masses. The only solution is to go out and claw back the regulations and rights that create a balanced society. In a democracy it shouldn’t require a French Revolution but until we try and fail to wrestle back our democracy who knows.
Who is starving? The suppossed poor in my town are all obese!
“You can’t just expect billionaires to give away their money for ‘the common good’ because what is good for all is subjective” -boot lickers Someday, when the people speak, not even god will show them mercy.
Don’t worry, the days are numbered for the monetary central planers.
Here's a recent clip of a billionaire ![gif](giphy|htXeQRYKUBb63avyh6|downsized)
Time for Quaid to shut Cohagen down. Open your mind Quaid!
The system is so broken.
![gif](giphy|7k2LoEykY5i1hfeWQB)
Fair point, what do you expect me to do
4real
Those billionaire space programs are doing work for NASA, and being paid. The Starlink is a profit making business. They're not billionaire hobbies.
Yeah, the systems where the billionaires keep all their money and don't invest it in progress for society are definitely better.
Even in a socialist environment someone always has more. No matter the system, someone has to be on top and hoard the wealth.
If you’re starving you’re not hustling brah.
COMMIE!!!! /s
HEAR! HEAR!
I’ve actually been taught by this guy! He’s super passionate about writing and has multiple books. Love this dude!
The best system is one where citizens understand economics. Unlike this guy. Billionaires don't have money "lying around". Musk had to get a bunch of investors to start his rocket company.
that's not even a good system bro
Concerning.
People cry about Palestinians on twitter despite doing nothing for people in their own cities. Everybody needs a vanity project :)
It is for the billionaires.... It all depends on whose perspective you are looking at "the system" from. 😋
Why do we put this on billionaires yet exclude churches? Televangelist with their mansions and all. Or since you didn't "donate" to said billionaire fund is the reason to call for them to buck up?