Billionaires 7 years ago:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171004002738/https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/
Billionaires today:
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
Including 14 inn the US.
How many security guards can one of these assholes have on duty at any one time?
Dont y’all have assault rifles and semiautomatics on you at all times and you are all about being against tyranny? WHAT GIVES?
Well when paper money is continually speeding towards zero value, it’s no surprise that the most privileged have an endless supply.
Well when paper money is continually speeding towards zero value
Zeno’s Monetary Policy
Well when paper money is continually speeding towards zero value
Time to start saving bottle caps I guess.
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.
tail -n +2 listAbove | cut -f 2 > DeathNote.txt
Don’t forget you still need facial recognition data.
kamala harris’ proposed tax on unrealized gains seems like a great idea rn
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
Dis pos rel’van to beltalowda intres
How is space an adjective in the first one? Shouldn’t it be a noun?
These Anglo-Saxons again, putting random spaces into compound words.
I think it’s because it’s describing the noun.
It’s not describing the noun, it’s part of the noun.
Quick analogy in German:
space billionaire = Weltraummilliärdär
spacefaring billionaire = weltraumreisender Milliärdär
In German, adjective + noun cannot be written together to form a new noun. To form one, only noun + noun can be used. And English is close enough to Germanic languages for that rule to remain the same, I think.
To be clear it’s not about “spacefaring” billionaires but about “spacing” billionaires aka dumping them out an airlock into space as seen in various “The Expanse” scenes.
That’s for the second one though, for the [verb] [noun] combination. The “[adjective]” [noun] combination implies spacefaring or similar, doesn’t it?
You’ve convinced me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/spelling-using-compound-words-guide
Corrected
Yes, correct.
Nouns can be adjectives in Freedom Language™
Look at all our WONDERFUL job creators amassing their dragon hoards!
Why would you go around celebrating untreated and ignored mental illnesses?
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.
And that’s just the wealth that we know about
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.
I don’t think we had 250% inflation in the last 7 years
We certainly didn’t have a 250% increase in wages or median wealth in the last 7 years
They are parasites and criminals
These sorts of stats are misleading and can erode the footing of the argument you are making. Showing the numbers adjusted for inflation is damning enough.
We’ve had around 60% inflation over the past seven years, does it explain all their increases? No.
But not including that information and saying “but number is bigger!” Just makes your argument look weak when it could be statistically sound.
It’s almost seems like the main thing you need to make money is money
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.
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.
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
Capitalism does have some uses, like which TV you want to buy, but it needs to be heavily regulated.
People can still make TVs without capitalism…
Sure, but what I am saying is it could fit in there.
For real, like Prestige in Call of Duty
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.
A trillion bucks, but not in cash; in shares of those companies. Try to sell it all for cash and you tank the share price. People lose their jobs, pension funds that own shares in those companies lose value.
That’s the trouble with taxing wealth. It’s not liquid like income. All that net worth is tied up in the companies and not easily accessed.
I’d be okay with the govt owning shares, honestly. That way the public would get a voice in how these megacorps operate, and that voice would get bigger the larger the company becomes.
How has musk maintained his companies’ valuations? Particularly Tesla.
Blatant fraud
