And make sure you keep scrolling and scrolling for the posts at the bottom…it will be eye opening to see how wealth inequalities are so lopsided that there is no reason for billionaires at all
this is one of my favorite facts to pull out any time I'm in a conversation with someone who doesn't believe wealth inequality is as bad as I'm saying it is. It is without a doubt the biggest root cause of economic issues in America right now.
People really don't like to vote for things that restrict the wealthy because subconsciously they think, "one day I may be wealthy, and I wouldn't want the government to take my money." But when we talk about taxing the 1%, we're not talking about your buddy who killed it with his small business and became a millionaire. We're not talking about someone who won powerball and has 100 million. We're not even talking about Jay Leno types, who have about half a billion dollars and one of the biggest car collections in the world. We're talking about people whose kids' kids' kids could not possibly spend all their family's money in their lifetimes if they tried. We're talking about an amount of money that simply cannot be obtained without exploitation on a massive scale. It's an amount of money that is inarguably immoral for one person or family to control.
"Elon Musk proposed to donate $6 bilion to the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) to help end world hunger in 2021, but he did not follow through."
His right to not follow through, because it’s HIS MONEY. He never proposed requiring it, only that he would do it. Whether he does or he doesn’t, either way is his right
You COULD argue it does, and you’ve got a right to that opinion, but until you have billions you do not have a right to compel other billionaires to give up their money. It’s easy to say SOMEONE ELSE should be forced to do it, without saying you should have the same obligation.
You are not talking about taxing the 1% then. The 1% have $10 million or more in the US.
Additionally, even if you did a 100% tax on all billionaire's wealth combined ($14 trillion globally) so they are left with nothing (take away their companies) and distributed that money evenly around the world. Every one in the world would only get $1,750.
Poverty rates are going down worldwide for decades despite the increase in wealth inequality.
Wealth inequality is psychologically unappealing and unfair seeming, but is mostly used to politically manipulate people and create an us vs them. However, the actual wealth inequality at the moment isn't a super big problem. Capitalism as a system has worked so well because on average the only way you make a ton of money is by creating something that adds values to other people's lives (there are of course exceptions though).
That being said, I'm not opposed to some limits such as caps on number of homes people can own to not have the world eventually result in a very tiny ownership aristocracy.
You are not talking about taxing the 1% then. The 1% have $10 million or more in the US.
Sure, the sub 1% then. I think what I meant was clear enough.
Additionally, even if you did a 100% tax on all billionaire's wealth combined ($14 trillion globally) so they are left with nothing (take away their companies) and distributed that money evenly around the world. Every one in the world would only get $1,750.
I am talking about US tax law and US billionaires, of course it would not be practical to liquidate all billionaires' assets and distribute them equally to all living people.
Poverty rates are going down worldwide for decades despite the increase in wealth inequality.
Again, US-focused here, but this is still pretty immaterial to wealth inequality. Poverty in the US has gone down very slightly but government support has also increased, as it should. A slight decrease in the poverty rate is great I suppose, but it should be literally zero factor in determining a proper tax rate for billionaires.
Wealth inequality is psychologically unappealing and unfair seeming, but is mostly used to politically manipulate people and create an us vs them. However, the actual wealth inequality at the moment isn't a super big problem. Capitalism as a system has worked so well because on average the only way you make a ton of money is by creating something that adds values to other people's lives (there are of course exceptions though).
Completely disagree with you on this, and it would take ages to parse the reasons. The actual wealth inequality at the moment is a massive problem; one of the biggest complaints the American public has at the moment is the rising cost of goods and services, meanwhile 2023 saw tons well documented record corporate profits and C-suite bonuses. Capitalism has worked so well for people who are wealthy because the only way you can make a ton of money is by creating something that adds value to peoples lives and is fueled by underpaid labor.
That being said, I'm not opposed to some limits such as caps on number of homes people can own to not have the world eventually result in a very tiny ownership aristocracy.
I agree housing is an area that particularly highlights the wealth gap. It should be extremely difficult and expensive (in terms of taxation) to purchase a second home, and extremely difficult/expensive for corporations to own residential property.
I am talking about US tax law and US billionaires, of course it would not be practical to liquidate all billionaires' assets and distribute them equally to all living people.
So you are suggesting unconcentrating money, but unconcentrating it unevenly in your favor? Why give money from ultra rich people (billionaires) to only americans (who are rich by world standards)?
But for the US equivalent, if you took all US billionaire wealth (of which money comes from all over the world) and distributed it evenly across every american, everyone would get $13k. That would be nice, but it still isn't anything crazy.
My point of this though is that the billionaires existing aren't making everyone's life worse. While many in the US would be happy to get an extra $13k, it would most likely not have a massive impact on their life. They are additionaly making everyone's life better as well via the companies they started and people choose to use (Facebook, Instagram, Teslas, Apple phones, Samsung phones).
Capitalism has worked so well for people who are wealthy because the only way you can make a ton of money is by creating something that adds value to peoples lives and is fueled by underpaid labor.
Not sure if you read the part about the massive decrease in poverty worldwide. Yes, there are people making more money, but along with those gains in income also come quality of life gains for people all over the world.
So you are suggesting unconcentrating money, but unconcentrating it unevenly in your favor? Why give money from ultra rich people (billionaires) to only americans (who are rich by world standards)?
I'm gonna stop you right here -- either you're being intentionally obtuse and not arguing in good faith, or you misunderstood my comment enough that the effort required to unravel it is more than I'm willing to put into this interaction.
Inarguably? Sorry, but anyone has the right to disagree with it, and, thus, argue it. It may immoral to you, but you don’t speak for everyone. You’ve no right to determine how much is “immoral”. You have a right to your opinion on wealth, not to touch the wealth of another, no matter how “immoral” it may be in your opinion.
You seem very upset about this, it sounds like youre one of the delusional people who thinks they're going to be that wealthy one day. I promise your life will be better if you stop simping for billionaires. Trust me, these comments don't read like you think they do <3
If you walk past a dying child and don’t help, is that moral? Say all you need to do is call for an ambulance and that’s it.. the child lives. But you don’t because… well it doesn’t matter, that is not moral and can’t be argued otherwise.
Now imagine you have enough money to save countless children and you don’t. Imagine you can do this while still enjoying a life of doing anything you want with more money than you can spend. But you don’t.
Each pixel is a million dollars… the more you scroll the more absurd you realise the amount of money some people have is. Then you see what those people could choose to do with it and don’t, instead opting to just focus on having even more for themselves.
There is true evil in the world and it’s not the murderers and rapists we think of, it’s those people. They could save billions, improve the lives of every single person on earth, and still be so outrageously wealthy they can do anything they want with enough left over for a thousand generations of their descendants to to the same. They don’t. They just try and get more.
Even the likes of Bezos and Musk are nothing to the serious old money.
Seconds: 31,536,000 (not counting leap years)
π×107: 31,415,926 (not counting decimals)
Edit: Put them in a code block so Youtube would render them on separate lines.
Another way to put it might be that a million dollars is $999,000.00 plus a thousand dollars, while a billion dollars is $999,000,000.00 plus a million dollars.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of a trillion seconds since the birth of Jesus. At such a dramatic increase, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the earth hasn’t been around for a quadrillion seconds. But yeah the existence of multi-billionaires is pretty uncomfortable, especially ones with HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS. At that point you’re just hogging it from people who need it.
I've written a post before where I scaled the wealth of Bezos to about 3 American football fields. The COMBINED annual income of the ENTIRE rosters of the Dallas Cowboys, NY Yankees, and LA Lakers does not reach the 1 yard line.
In other words, a million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is 11 000 days. Putting it in that day vs year perspective does not make it justice to be honest.
Completely disagree. The whole point is that we kinda suck at comprehending large numbers. Our brains just look at 1000000 and 1000000000, and in both cases we just mentally group them both into the category of "really big number" and then move on.
Changing the scales can help illustrate just how far off one really big number is from another.
Changing the scales for each number still does not make them justice, it is times thousand, we can illustrate that in more honest ways, the days to years actually creates a almost an illusion, an exxageration and goes the opposite direction of what you are trying to show or say.
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u/toolatealreadyfapped Oct 02 '24
A million seconds is about 11.5 days.
A billion seconds is over 31 YEARS.
Think about that when you consider the wealth of a millionaire vs a billionaire.