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Billionaires 7 years ago:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171004002738/https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/
Billionaires today:
Billionaires are a political choice as much as homelessness. They are allowed to exist because nobody does anything about it.
They are allowed to exist because they can literally buy their own political system
There was an article celebrating the fact that we're on our way to having the first trillionare.
I wanted to die. It's so insanely fucking disgusting
Why would you go around celebrating untreated and ignored mental illnesses?
Look at all our WONDERFUL job creators amassing their dragon hoards!
On the other hand, if we all work really hard, go the extra mile, burn the midnight oil... we can make it happen faster for that special someone.
It’s almost seems like the main thing you need to make money is money
kamala harris' proposed tax on unrealized gains seems like a great idea rn
And that’s just the wealth that we know about
A boring distopia is already even a single person having more than a single billion.
Yup, there was that post a while back, like you reach a billion, you get a plaque that says "congrats you won capitalism" and then they start at 0 again
Not even a billion, as soon as you're in 8 figures you have more than a reasonable person can spend in a lifetime. Cap it at 50 million, every cent more goes towards public infrastructure and welfare
Or we could do away with capitalism entirely. Just saying
For real, like Prestige in Call of Duty
The overall average median lifetime earnings of $1,850,000 for men and $1,100,200 for women. Let's just take the average and say an average American earns $1,475,100 in their lifetime.
The important thing to remember is, in an unequal system where workers have most of the value of their work taken by a single person who the system disproportionately favors, that value is translatable to literal life. They are directly, inexorably going to die having had that value simply transferred to the other person or people who collect that value. Or put succinctly, they are giving up life, and the "owner" of the business is gaining the value of their life.
Another note is that even though most valuations are stock, stock valuations do not exist in a vacuum. The stock market is the realizable increase in productivity value that we all collectively have caused.
So based on that principle, just for fun, let's convert these fortunes to human lives, to better understand just how much (economically-valued) life force these people have taken from people:
Elon Musk: $262,000,000,000 = 176,259 American lives.
Jeff Bezos: $208,000,000,000 = 141,007 American lives.
Mark Zuckerberg: $203,000,000,000 = 137,617 American lives.
just for fun, let's convert these fortunes to human lives
Muh capitalism
To take that farther I wonder how many employees they have. How close is the ratio of workers to their life value obtained by the owner.
That's 18 people who own about a tenth of the US GDP. Something needs to be done, and soon.
That’s 18 people who own about a tenth of the US GDP.
Okay, sure. But that's bad analysis. GDP is annual and net-worth is lifetime total. That's also global wealth, not US-domestic (four of them aren't even American).
Agree with the sentiment, but we should really be talking about global wealth not national income.
Something needs to be done
If my math is correct and we taxed everything over 100 billion at 100% we'd get over 900 billion in taxes. Nearly a trillion bucks if we limited these assholes to a measly 100 billion.
1% tax on all registered securities, payable in shares of those securities. The SEC just confiscates 1% of every position, and conveys them to an IRS liquidator. The liquidator sells them off in small lots over time, comprising no more than 1% of total traded shares. Securities with negative values are returned.
Once completely phased in, natural persons will be exempt on their first $10 million in registered securities. Corporate-owned securities will not be exempt: the are taxed from their first share.
We tax only the problematic portion of their wealth: their wealth-generating assets. We auction those assets off to the general public.
You sound like you know what you're talking about, and convey it with spectrum-like precision. I throw my hat and my heart entirely to making your dream come true. Hoo, hoo (hoo-oo-hoo)
Is this inflation corrected? Cause an arbitrary line across 7 years of inflation is gonna be crossed....
No, thats a good point because its not inflation corrected its just an archived page. A dollar in 2017 is worth 1.28 today. So yes, in today's dollars there would have been 4 people above 100 billion in 2017.
Hey, look, I found the thing the US is still number 1 at!
There are probably several Russian Oligarchs missing from this list because their wealth is mostly dark money. Rumor has it Putin is the wealthiest man in the world and has been for some time.
How has musk maintained his companies’ valuations? Particularly Tesla.
Blatant fraud
If only we could combine Jim, Alice and Rob into a single entity called The Waltronzoid, we could easily defeat all the other billionaires by creating a bazillionaire.
Socioeconomic weeds choking out the rest of us.
Utter ignorance is how we find ourselves with so many morons admiring the thistle in the garden for its pretty purple flower. While economists stand around debating the merits of these weeds by divining dogma to give meaning to weeds natural stubborn deep roots.
Ugh, I hate ladderboards for games with cheaters and exploiters on top. Where are the moderarors?! I demand a refund.
Wow! So things must have gotten a lot better for people over the last 7 years!
Right?
This is a list of people who's creations I'd like to avoid, if at all possible.
It's obvious for several people on this list, but how do I boycott someone like the Oracle guy? As a non-tech guy, it just seems impossible. I don't even recognize several of these people, tbh.
Didn't Bill Gates sign a pledge to give all of his money away? And he is billions richer than last year? Huh.
Yes he signed up to give his money away. To a charitable trust. Which he and his family controls. And can withdraw from at any time.
It isnt a charity pledge, its a plan to avoid paying taxes.
It's all bullshit and marketing so people will regurgitate this lie. Everyone that says that puts it into a charity that they or their friends run.
Their children get high positions that allow them to have high paying jobs from the start. They have huge political influence which helps them with their other companies.
We need to redo our tax system and increase the top brackets. We also need to redo what is considered taxable and what can be claimed as a tax benefit.
Bill Gates a lying piese of shit? Who would have thought?
I went out in the rain yesterday and I got slightly moist. More at seven.
Oil princes are far richer than this
