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this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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That's your take away?
Yep. A single billionaire funding a war effort is abhorrent.
This one happens to be on the right side, but there's absolutely no guarantee that his will be the case for any of these fucking psychopaths.who horde wealth. They all need to go.
Counterpoint - under the current administration, paying taxes might help Russia more
But would the current administration be the current administration without wealth hoarding psychopaths?
No, it would not.
It wouldn't, but I think that ship has sailed already. I don't see how your current governmental structure would ever fix that. It's been a problem since citizens united, if not before
It has always been up to the people to establish governmental structure. History provides the examples, mon frére.
Except he's not funding a war, he's funding the defense of a nation fighting for freedom and its right to exist.
Ukraine didn't get in this war as a pissing match with Russia. It was wrongly attacked and is a democracy defending itself. It's had its children kidnapped and its civilians targeted. It will cease to exist if it loses. We don't have a greedy capitalist funding an unjust war for profit as you're trying to suggest. Helping Ukraine is the right thing to do. Refusing to help them will simply result in Europe fighting a better-resourced Russia later.
Yet.
If there's one thing billionaires are known for, it is, of course, giving billions to a war effort with absolutely zero strings attached. Totally.
I don't doubt the possibility but that's not the situation here and now with defending Ukraine.
I'm not arguing that these funds shouldn't go to Ukraine. I'm arguing that no single individual should ever be allowed to have so much money that they are able to do this. They all need to be cut down to size ASAP.
Do you say the same thing about Russian billionaires funding the war against Ukraine?
They said :
All being the operative word here, which is inclusive of Russian billionaires.
Are you ByteJunk? Is ByteJunk a name for a group of people or why do you say « they »?
No. I am dependencyInjection.
I said they, as I was referencing ByteJunk and what they literally said (typed, if you want to be a pedant) in the comment you replied to.
Are you happy now? Do you need anything else blatantly obvious to be clarified for you?
Bogus is just doing that new anti-trans-panic performance the nazis do now where they pretend English hasn’t used they/them for unspecified gender for hundreds of years. She’s a troll.
Yeah it’s an odd one. You could say my friend Bob is also going and they will meet you in the reception.
Perfectly normal way of speaking and nothing to do with transgender stuff.
Ah, great idea for progress in English, they have. Not only 'the' for all sexes, but 'they' for all, now they say. Great idea they have, yes. 🤣
Seek help.
Don’t need. You?
Singular they had existed for centuries before your miserable existence.
It's a way to refer to someone in the 3rd person without knowing their gender. If you do know their gender, you can use the proper gendered pronouns.
'The' has always been gender neutral in English because English doesn't assign gender to nouns. Thus grammatically, a gender-specific "the" isn't necessary unlike in German or Spanish where all nouns have grammatical genders. And if you come back at me with "'the' isn't even that old, it used to be spelled 'ye'", well the problem there is that it was only printed that way for convenience, the pronunciation was never with a "y".
"It" is incorrect for using about a person as well, unless referring to a baby or a small child. Why? It's just how English has been spoken for a long time now, and how it's still used. Language rules should reflect usage, not the other way around.
You should not be looking into the mirror too long. It seems that you got a pretty brain damage.
I'm not the one making deliberately obtuse comments about completely valid grammatical constructs to make a political point.
Well, apparently I communicate sufficiently in English for you to address my points accordingly. And it also shows a certain mental poverty, especially a lack of self-reflection, not just to nitpick infantile grammatical errors, but also to stick your nose into things where you know you'll get virtually slapped. But as I already mentioned: I can't turn donkeys like you into a racehorse. This mental effort, if possible for you at all, should come from you.
Please, correct it you want to say, then 'it' say, you must 😂
Ah, ByteJunk, one person it is not, many, it is. Got it. But how they decide what to comment, hmm? Take much time, it must 😂
Ideas transcend people.
Written language transcends you.
I see dependencyInjection clearly would have better used his time elsewhere, so let's learn from his endeavours and tag you appropriately, so we can avoid future waste.
You are right. I cannot make race horses out of donkeys like you two are. Write this sentence on a mirror so that you both are reminded each day.
There's really no such thing as "Russian billionaires", at least not in the western sense. Also not in the oligarch sense, oligarchy implies rule by few, that's not the case in Russia, it's an autocracy, rule by one: There's the Tsar and he doeth bequeath wealth upon loyal viceroys in the form of fiefdoms to exploit. The Tsar giveth, and the Tsar taketh away. Shit hasn't changed since the times of the Russian Empire but this time around it's less about territories and the people on it but factories and industries.
Certainly, the Russian system was and is totally a hierarchical system based on- like everywhere - on power and influence (both intermingle). But this does not exclude that there are very wealthy people in Russia who are funding the war, being it because they are forced to (I hardly believe) or because they make profit out of it. Don’t you think so?
The war is funded partly by the taxpayer, partly by inflation. The viceroys might be making less of a profit right now as they can't engage in their usual level of grift but Putin doesn't, and isn't going to, touch their villas and fancy cars.
Please take a look at these articles:
Le Monde
The Cyber Voice
And even the Moscow Times
That's not contradicting anything I said, on the contrary it's contradicting your assertion that those people would be funding the war. Their wealth is largely unaffected, still making profits (even if a bit lower) because they're still fulfilling their purpose as loyal viceroys.
Like, usually they could e.g. produce ballistic vests out of cardboard, bill the army full price for the things, and pocket the difference. That doesn't fly any more but that doesn't mean that suddenly their businesses are unprofitable.
Among kremlinologists there's generally an acknowledgement that the viceroys aren't exactly thrilled about the war because it's cutting into their profits and they're not seeing any point in it, OTOH they're also not willing to bite the hand that feeds them. Few have armies large enough to march on Moscow, none have armies large enough to face down the actual one, and none of them wants to end like Prigozhin. They also don't like not being able to travel to Monaco. They're assholes captured between a rock and a hard place. Normal Russian circumstances, one might say.
Absolutely. What other reasonable response is there?
Warren Buffet agrees
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/2019/10/15/billionaires-more-taxes-gates-buffett-bloomberg/
It's easy to say the right things when you know you're never going to be held accountable for your words.
That's your takeaway?
Yes. If we lived in another reality, and there was a true progressive about to pass a 100% tax on all wealth over a billion dollars, Warren would be showing is true colors very, very quickly. It's easy to say the right thing on this because he knows he'll never have to pay a dime more than he does right now.
He's a dragon among 700 or so other dragons sitting on unimaginable wealth that he will never spend in his lifetime. He deserves nothing but disrespect.
Here's the first sentence of that article that you didn't read:
It doesn't matter.
He can say anything, anything at all, because he knows tax laws are never going to change.
His words are completely inconsequential apart from serving as good PR.
ABAB
Why would Buffet need "good PR"? He's a trader who just buys and sells shit all day. If anything, something like this would be bad PR as rich people wouldn't want to invest in his companies.
I agree, but I feel you're just swinging at the air here.
And it's easy to make sweeping statements based purely on hypotheticals and your own assumptions. In our reality, he's one of the biggest advocates for raising his own taxes.
Seems like you make your own reality