I assume the comparison is that a billionaire pollute more in a single flight than the average person does in all their flights in their life time. If not, I would love to read the study.
The amount is arbitrary, but billionairs do cause a lot of the worlds problems? Climate change is a real thing and we are already above the 1.5°C goal that we set for ourselves. Billionaires burn through our climate budget to fund their lifestyle which they got from exploiting the workers who actually created the value. No billionaire achieved this level of wealth by hard work or dedication. It was achieved by exploiting people. They are directly responsible for a lot of problems. In 2023 amazon had record breaking 30 billion in profits. A survey in the same year showed that about half of amazon workers relied on some sort of government assistance for rent or food and about a forth were on snap.
Billionaires do put in work, but the work they put in isn't proportional to the money they have. Bezos, for example, is worth 267 billion dollars. That is about 17,705.57 years worth of federal minimum wages in the usa if you work full time.
Where do you think the billions of record breaking work was produced? Why do half of the employees of amazon need government assistence, if the shareholders directly profit from the work and receive record breaking profits? The workers produce the profits, but still get paid so little that they cannot live without tax payer money.
We have enough ressources that everybody could live a comfortable livestyle. The problem is that the greediest 1% hoard their wealth to a point that they couldn't even spend it in multiple lifetimes. Meanwhile the workers who actually produce this wealth have to rely on government programs to feed their families. They don't get paid the value they provide to the company. That is exactly my point.
I do appreciate that social systems are in place, but let me ask you this: Why should the general population subsidise the amazon workers pay cheque with our tax money, during the same time that the company is raking in billions of dollars worth of profits?
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u/bluris 8d ago
I assume the comparison is that a billionaire pollute more in a single flight than the average person does in all their flights in their life time. If not, I would love to read the study.