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Over half of Americans say they're not even close to financial freedom
(scrippsnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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I mean, it's not a myth, billionaires literally have enough financial freedom to live large for 100 lifetimes.
The myth is that they're willing to share their ~~rigged casino gambling~~ "speculative investment" derived wealth/winnings, because reminder: nobody can come remotely close to earning a billion dollars through honest labor.
You need state support to get that rich.
"It's a big club, and you ain't in it!" -George Carlin
Depends on what you mean by state support.
Cause a theoretical ancap hellscape would still have billionaires despite being stateless by definition.
You need power and control to get that rich. The only way that happens today is by the state, but that doesn't preclude other forms of violence and power.
You aint wrong but modern system of "capitalism" relies on state violence and money transfers from taxpayers to our "dear job creators"
100% totally in agreement
Your previous statement was just more broadly applied than our existing capitalist system and I find the distinctions interesting to discuss, as it helps identify the root.
Walmart couldn't exist without exploiting the poor. Even though they could pay their workers enough to live, the majority of them are on food stamps: which is just the govt subsidizing exploitation.
You don't need billions for most definitions of financial freedom. Unless your definition is spend whatever you want, never worry about running out of money, and not have a job, you really don't need billions.
Capitalism requires most people to be dependent on selling their labor to capitalists at a rate less than it’s worth. No meaningful definition of financial freedom can exist for a majority of the population in a system that creates and supports billionaires.
We could, it's kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone's benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner's club at everyone else's further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and "our" government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It's like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it's awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Juuuust smart enough to be a belligerent threat to ourselves and others, yet too impulsive, short sighted, selfish, and stupid as a species to be anything more.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
It wasn't a falsehood. It was stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarchs, while corporate America, led by GE, shifted from the correct "customers first, employees (who were valued!) second, investors third" model to the "investors first, second, and only" rigged market profiteering dystopia we all suffer today.
The citizen's of happiest developed nations of the world, not our gold plated cesspool to be clear, as a rule get months off a year, in addition to innumerable social supports. It's a proven lie that this is how it has to be. This is just how the greediest/most sociopathic people want it to be, and since those traits are what our society rewards, and punishes their opposites, they have all the power.
I hate to shoot this down, as I live the feeling. If one USA President enough to steal it for 40+ years, then we never really had it.
Reagan changed the political dynamics in America. The Democrats were a pro-labor party prior to the 1980s. Afterwards they were pretty much lock step with Republicans, and by extension the oligarchs, into today, because the "Reagan revolution" opened their eyes to the fact that bribes by unions, lets be honest, could never come close to the bribes offered by the owners that hated the unions. And in proudly corrupt America, thats what you become a politician to do, get bought.
Since the 1980s, we've had no opposition party on economic policy. All we get to vote on is divisive social issues, largely exasurbated by our crony capitalist economic system, by design.
Do you want to be a wage slave subsisting in service to the owners until your death with or without gay marriage?
That is the extent of American freedom since the Reagan Revolution. With the side benefit of keeping the peasants at eachother's throats instead of looking up.
Our Democrat Senate and Democrat President literally passed a law to bust a prominent union strike last year. There is no vote an American peasant is offered that would be in their corner, only slightly varying degrees of against them.
I think it happened well before Reagan. The gap between productivity and earnings starts around 1971.
The play by the owners started well before Reagan. Reagan codified it into law in perpetuity, institutionalized funneling all the money to the owners under the lie of "efficient distribution," got his "opposition" to take the bribe money en masse, our modern neoliberals, and basically got America to cheer for their own destruction in the decades to follow with his intentionally divisive and manipulative narrative.
Until Trump, Reagan was still the Republican mascot long after his death, that even Democrats claimed reverence for.
So what do we do about it? What's the answer?
Long term, the only faint hope I see the Ranked Choice voting compact between states, some of which have passed in some states, but hasn't reached critical mass yet. Unlike the Federal government, the oligarchs haven't been able to fully or reliably capture all state governments.
If we keep being presented candidates from the only 2 relevant already purchased parties, there is no hope. Neoliberal Democrats and Fascist Republicans screech over social issues, but are largely the same on economic policy, ie give everything to the owner class and maybe they'll piss on you one day herp derp.
The only other way this ends is overdue revolution, as even the framers admitted would be necessary at some point. The problem is, our people suffer, but they are also hopelessly addicted to opiates both literal and metaphorical: social media, fast food, literal opiates, etc, and aren't willing to risk losing those small comforts even to save their larger situation.
So either ranked choice voting or the eventual, inevitable painful collapse are the only 2 possible salvations. Revolution would be preferable to waiting possibly generations of suffering peope for collapse, but I don't see the will, we're too intentionally divided by our common enemy the oligarch owner class to see straight enough to agree they are our common enemy and the source of our failing society. Too many gullible Americans will blame a political party, or anyone who says something is wrong, or darkly hilariously homeless people and people with nothing, as if our society's many, many victims have any power whatsoever.
Month long vacations? That'll never work. Can you imagine if a developed country took several weeks off in the summer? No one could do that!
Having magic machines that can make anything is the only way a communist utopia ever happens, so it's not that amazing.
You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that's exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
That's why we can never truly go anywhere.
It's no secret that a very large percent of people live well beyond their means when a modest lifestyle with retirement funds is obtainable for the vast majority of the population. One doesn't need a new car every few years, the newest gadget, eating out constantly, and an apartment in a high cost of living area. It's certainly not morally wrong to buy what you want, but just know that not investing in your own future is making life harder for you in the medium and long term.
If you drop the spending whatever you want, a few million should be sufficient. If you get a 5% annual return that's $50,000 a year per million invested. $150-200k a year if you own your house is more than enough to not worry about having enough money. Plus there's millions in the bank for any truly major expense.
So the top 10% of income earners?
The threshold is significantly lower since the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, retire.
If you mean that they eventually got placed on Social Security disability then yes the majority do retire. You should see what the nursing homes for people in the government system are like.
That's not gonna be true for much longer. Watch the Republicans plunder Social Security and Medicaid like they've been hankering after for decades.
Ideally I'll watch them be voted out of power instead.
That's why I said 100 lifetimes charitably. That's 10 million from 1 billion, and even less than half of that is enough for a lifetime of responsible financial freedom.
Most wealth doesn't survive 3 generations, so it's way less than 100 lifetimes.
Billionaires have poured billions into life extension ventures, many of them believe they'll be around to spend it themselves forever.
My definition of financial freedom is not being dependent on an employer. It's being wealthy enough to be able to walk away from crappy jobs however long it takes to find a better one.