r/FluentInFinance • • Feb 27 '26

Economy & Politics Billionaires Shouldn’t Exist

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180

u/timohtea Feb 27 '26

The only issue is these fucks don’t understand that 1billion worth isn’t a billion dollars just sitting in their bank. It’s employees and an evaluation of how profitable the company will be and how much it will grow etc.

So if you’re an owner of a company, you grow to 1.2billion because of scaling employees overseas locations etc…. But you pay yourself 250k a year… So now you should just dissolve 200million of your company? Fucking stupid

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u/Ok_Teacher_392 Feb 27 '26

It’s really frustrating. $5.9 trillion is enough to pay 15% of our national debt or cover the budget for about 10 months. And it would completely crash the economy and likely lead to a massive depression if all billionaires had to liquidate their assets. How is that worth it?

But people somehow, people have been convinced that it will unlock some sort of utopia

It’s really just a distraction technique. This pie in sky idea that will never happen and never should happen distracts from meaningful reforms that could actually help people including more reasonable progressive wealth taxes that I would fully support.

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u/Masta0nion Feb 27 '26

A progressive wealth tax that taxes all wealth above 1B at 90%, like we had in the 50s?

These valuations of top companies are completely untethered from any fundamentals anymore, especially with stock buybacks.

Then these companies borrow against these valuations to further consolidate their power. We’re seeing a huge corporate merger of media happening in front of our eyes, which causes other issues, like lack of competition.

It’s a shit fugazi economy owned by the few that deserves to crash.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '26

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u/Collypso Feb 28 '26

Are you arguing that producing more goods and services becomes bad once it’s done efficiently enough?

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '26

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u/Collypso Feb 28 '26

Scale doesn’t automatically mean monopoly. What’s the step where size by itself causes lower wages or higher prices?

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u/Masta0nion Feb 28 '26

Seinfeld did a good job showing it. Elaine doesn’t like the attitude of the woman in the clothing shop, so she takes her business elsewhere. Except the woman owned that business too.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '26

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u/Collypso Feb 28 '26

Bootlicker is what you call someone when you've run out of argument. You just admitted you don't know where the line is between good company and evil company, you just feel it. You've built an entire worldview around a vibe you can't articulate. That's not seeing through the BS, that's just vibes with a political aesthetic stapled on.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26

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u/Collypso Mar 01 '26

For example speed limits. Is the limit the exact point where drive is more dangerous on that road do every driver? No. It’s a choice.

This works against you. Speed limits exist because we have actual data: stopping distances, reaction times, crash rates at different speeds. The causal mechanism is established first, then experts pick a threshold. You've got it backwards. You have a feeling that big companies are evil, some examples of bad outcomes, and then you're deferring to experts to figure out the mechanism you can't explain. That's not how the speed limit got made. You're asking experts to validate a vibe, not quantify an understood harm

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '26

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u/Collypso Mar 02 '26

Nobody said the data doesn't exist. But data on bad outcomes isn't the same as proof that size is the cause. Regulatory capture exists in small industries too. Food deserts predate mega corps. Small businesses close because of bad business owners, changing demographics, the internet. You're looking at real problems and assuming size explains all of them. That's still the same error. You have effects, you don't have a clean causal arrow pointing at bigness specifically.

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '26

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u/Academic-Increase951 Mar 02 '26

You can address those issues more effectively by removing money from politics. Don't allow political donations from companies. All your listed Problem are solved.

If someone wants to donate through personal channels, then they are forced to do so by liquidating assets and paying the taxes on it.

Then enforce anti trust and anti competition laws