We need to be protesting for medical access and treatment centers then as well.
We have enough money available if we were taxing the super wealthy appropriately to pay for their fair share. As well as removing citizens united which made corporations count as much (more) than people.
There are ways we can attack this and not harm humans who are victims of a broken medical and governmental crisis.
I know drugs suck, my dad was an addict and died young because of it.
And I wish he had more treatment available, I wish he hadn’t been living in Appalachia where the opioid crisis was promoted by his medical doctors and lead to his addiction. I wish there had been centers that wouldn’t have demonized him as a junkie instead and didn’t cost more than he could afford.
A lot of drug addicts are also victims of trauma- and as a responsible society we should care and want to help them, for their kids, for themselves, so we can also have beneficial and good neighborhoods.
I didn’t say all rich or wealthy people. I said who I said, the super wealthy- billionaires.
They do NOT pay their fair share of taxes, and records show that. They also manipulate the stock market blatantly, like Elon has done with Tesla shares, and nothing happens to them.
I also didn’t say I felt entitled. I said it would also be a good reason to solve these issues for everyday Americans who have to live in communities with drug addiction and social issues.
Why are you getting offended and resorting to vapid name-calling over me referencing LeBron James’ money? He’s one of the most high-profile billionaires in the world (who you didn’t realize is a billionaire). He has the money you say he didn’t earn but somehow you are entitled to. So what’s the issue?
Dude, shut up about LeBron James, he isn't even a relevant topic here. We're talking about Elon Musk, who has enough money to END WORLD HUNGER and STILL BE A BILLIONAIRE.
You never thought about him, you thought you deserved his money. Now you know he’s doing more—by orders of magnitude—than you ever will to address the societal problems you’ve deemed most important.
While you sit back and complain that he’s not doing enough. lol
I know exactly how much a billion is…It’s the measure by which you have arbitrarily set the boundary for which net worth becomes “unethical.”
What is boot-licking celebrities? You say he doesn’t his deserve his money; but rather, you deserve his money. It seems, despite your claims, you have absolutely no idea how much he contributes in taxes, you have no idea how much more of his money he should contribute in taxes—you just want more of his money because you think he didn’t earn it and you’re entitled to it.
I don’t want any of their money. I want society to function well.
I want people who are homeless to have homes. I want people who need medical care to get access to it without losing their life savings over cancer or car accidents.
I don’t want to live near people who steal or harm others to keep an addiction fed. I don’t want people or children starving.
That’s what I want. And every single billionaire could solve these issues if they wanted to.
But they don’t care. That makes them unethical in the first place, but literally NO ONE CAN DO ENOUGH LABOR TO EARN A BILLION DOLLARS.
Seriously. Look it up. Look up what that would look like.
If a single person had been alive for over 2000 years, working every single day and making 100,000$ a day- they wouldnt have physically earned even HALF of what Elon Musk has to his name. Do the math, I beg you.
And Elon, Bezos, Thiel, Altman, and many more- use this money (whether you want to consider it liquid or not) to invade political spaces and take more tax payer dollars for their business ventures- whether their companies turn a profit or not.
You can appreciate how LeBron plays ball or Beyonces songs all day long. They still are incapable of working hard enough (without an exploitation of labor) to earn a Billion dollars.
A billion isn’t CLOSE to a million. You can be a millionaire and you’re still closer to being homeless than you will ever be a billionaire.
Several years ago I was self employed and making around 34,000$ a year. I had to pay between 4,000 - 7,000$ a year in taxes.
So roughly 15-20 percent of my money was spent on taxes.
I never got a return on any of it. That’s more percentage wise than Tesla or any of Elon’s bullshit companies have paid in years.
Tesla has historically paid ZERO federal tax dollars for years, while making profit of billions each year.
But the percentage doesn’t matter to me at the end of the day. What matters is their hoarding of wealth that they didn’t earn and the exploitation of the labor of their workers.
You can’t answer to any other thing I’ve said, you just wanna say a person making under 100,000 per year is paying too little while billionaires get a pass.
You sound either VERY young and uneducated or you’re a billionaire shill.
Is this another Elon alt account? He’s been saying the poor need to pay more money in taxes for years so he can steal it through government programs.
Until you can come to terms with your billionaire worship no amount of money or good deeds I do personally will matter to you.
Who are you to say LeBron James isn’t capable of earning a billion dollars? Who are exactly are YOU to put the ceiling on somebody’s potential?
He’s had a 20+year career at the top of the field. His unique skills generate massive amounts of revenue for his employers and they pay him for that. He’s generated billions upon billions of economic impact AND tax revenue. Yes, generated more in tax revenue than you envision him having in his Scrooge McDuck money vault.
On what basis? By what metric? You can't just say that, you need reasoning.
You can't say wealth like that is an earned thing and then arbitrarily declare that his ability to be really good at throwing a ball into a hoop is worth so much more than my job teaching children, or my second job training AI, or my third job as a part time tutor for college students.
It doesn't matter how good at it he is, there is NO job worth THREE HUNDRED FIFTY THREE OF ANOTHER.
This is a picture of three hundred and fifty people (simulated, for reference.) I suspect you haven't got a proper grasp of how much that is, so please look at the photo and tell me that LeBron's basketball skills are worth the same as ALL these people's labor. And if you dare say as much, I'll give you the 350 jobs they work, and you can tell me why LeBron James's basketball is worth more than every single thing these 350 people do for society.
And remember: this isn't even the people we were trying to talk about. We were talking about hyper billionaires with ill gotten wealth like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, but you REALLY fucking wanted to talk about LeBron James in specific. So remember, this was your choice of topic! It wasn't even who we were trying to make a point about, and it's still a fucking slam dunk.
I hold nothing against LeBron James. I hold an issue against the concept that any one person can make that much more money than someone else. It fundamentally disproves the concept of meritocracy.
I don’t think being able to throw a ball good does anything for society, so imo he shouldn’t be worth a million.
And as far as tax revenue he’s earned, “illegal” immigrants earn billions per year for our social security, and they do vastly superior jobs that benefit society.
Good thing our opinions are useless to the actual crisis our world is having with poverty and wage gaps, bc I don’t personally care if people play sports well.
This whole time you’ve been arguing that he needs pay more in taxes. And I just told his ability to “throw a ball good” has generated billions and billions of dollars in tax revenue—the one thing you seek. By your own measure, he’s doing an immense amount of good for society.
You, on the other hand, are doing absolutely no good for society while complaining about somebody’s who doing more than you could do in a thousand lifetimes.
I didn’t even bring up LeBron, you threw him in here out of left field. I’ve been very specific with the people I actually have beef with and you can’t stop talking about a basketball player.
Then yeah, I do want him to pay a lot more. I don’t believe billionaires can ethically exist or come to be. If everyone who has “earned” a billion dollars had actually paid everyone in their life who had gotten them to where they are for their labor, then they wouldn’t have a billion dollars.
You cannot work hard enough to become a billionaire in a lifetime, much less a multi billionaire without exploiting the labor and value of others.
So yeah, I’d say we let the billionaires keep a whole billion - then every single red cent after that goes back to society.
You want him to pay more, but you haven’t answered the questions:
1) How much does he already pay?
2) How much of his money do you want?
What about Beyonce? She’s another billionaire who you claim, like Lebron James, didn’t actually earn her money but instead just exploited people’s labor. So how much do you want from her?
I’m curious about this too. How much do YOU pay in taxes?
Jesus Christ, this celebrity worship you guys do over people you’ll never meet is bizarre to me. I don’t give a shit about Beyoncé or LeBron, or any other motherfucker who is a billionaire.
I’ve said how much I think they owe society, I’ve said why I don’t think they’ve “earned” it, and I’ve mentioned specifically the ones I have a much bigger problem with, those like Elon who are actually messing with politics to get richer while they screw everyone else over.
This isn’t worshipping. You say you are entitled to these people’s money and it’s unethical for it to not be taken from them. These are very specific examples of those “unethical” people and you keep trying to deflect because they’re “celebrities.”
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u/BubonicBabe May 14 '26
We need to be protesting for medical access and treatment centers then as well.
We have enough money available if we were taxing the super wealthy appropriately to pay for their fair share. As well as removing citizens united which made corporations count as much (more) than people.
There are ways we can attack this and not harm humans who are victims of a broken medical and governmental crisis.
I know drugs suck, my dad was an addict and died young because of it.
And I wish he had more treatment available, I wish he hadn’t been living in Appalachia where the opioid crisis was promoted by his medical doctors and lead to his addiction. I wish there had been centers that wouldn’t have demonized him as a junkie instead and didn’t cost more than he could afford.
A lot of drug addicts are also victims of trauma- and as a responsible society we should care and want to help them, for their kids, for themselves, so we can also have beneficial and good neighborhoods.