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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Billionaires are a symptom, not a cause
They can be both. Let's step away from the disease terminology and put it plainly.
When there is this much suffering and inequality, billionaires shouldn't be allowed to happen.
No one deserves that much power nor that much wealth when around 75% of all human beings are facing such a disproportionate amount of struggle that its difficult to even describe the comparison.
Billionaires live in a utopic paradise while the majority of humans are trapped in an existence that ranges from intolerable to abhorrent, abject poverty to barely surviving, all the while spending the majority of their time working, which contributes to the billionaires wealth...
People in extreme poverty world-wide are less than 10% and lessening over time. The majority of people don't have an intolerable or abhorrent life.
Neither do majority of people work more than 80 hours a week
Ah yes when you state the world extreme poverty level at $2.85 a fucking day. What fucking fantasy world do you live in??
Are you just retarded? The majority working over 80hrs a week are low skilled laborers working multiple jobs to make ends meet, tell me all about there amazing life when 2/3rds of the work week is just straight work which doesnt yeild enough time for a proper 8hrs of sleep when accounting for getting ready, eating, commuting or taking care of family?
That's not the majority of the people, majority of people work less now than in the 19th century
https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours
The amount it people leaving poverty is happening so quickly it's amazing.
Compare abject poverty rates of now to 60 years ago and 100 years ago.
What's the point of being progressiv if you never accept that progress actually happens?
I see you subscribe to the Journal of Rectally Sourced Statistics.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview
9.3%
A fever is a symptom and similarly it is one that must be treated directly to save the life of the patient.
This is the much stronger analogy. Billionaires are a problem in and of themselves, but only getting rid of billionaires will just lay the groundwork for new billionaires
It really depends on how you “get rid” of billionaires.
If you do it in a way that ties a wealth limit to minimum wages, then we won’t have billionaires until they raise the income of the lower class to a point where the economic climate permits billionaires. Tying it to a fixed 1,000,000,000 monies would be a horribly flawed design because it would not be inflation proof and would vary across currencies. After all, a billionaire in dollar$ isn’t the same as a billionaire in ¥en.
Within a socdem or capitalist society, neither of those solutions would be effective at eliminating billionaires or the inequality that comes with their existence. The only solution that could guarantee an elimination of billionaires is to seize their property and wealth (they can only have 1 house) and establish a socialist society.
Not sure how you got multiple solutions out of my comment. I was suggesting instituting a wealth tax (rather than an income tax), which is literally seizing their property and wealth, so I think we are in agreement here that such a solution would be the only way it works. However, I don’t think it should be a fixed monetary limit, rather one that changes based on economic indicators.
We honestly should just replace every single fixed dollar amount in every law with an algebraic formula. It's ridiculous that we design laws to become dated and require replacement.
Minimum wage should be tied to worker productivity, and wealth tax should be tied to the median personal income, including that of non-working adults. Welfare programs should be tied to regional cost of living. Limits on rent should be tied to changes in regional median income.
We're already tracking most or all of that data anyway, might as well put it to maximum use.
Agreed, and it’s not a novel idea. At least a few smarter countries already create policies that periodically update according to a formula.
Fines should scale with wealth. If a billionaire gets a parking ticket, the fine should be tens of thousands of dollars.
Fun side effect is this might encourage the cops to bother the wealthy instead, which might lead to police reform.
I agree because obviously capitalism pre-exists billionaires by default, but there is also no denying that them being means they have so much more power over every aspect of life than the rest of us, that they now completely control our lives and are absolutely making sure that fighting back becomes harder and harder. To abolish capitalism, we must get rid of the billionaires, they are our biggest hurdle (and are only people, after all).
Nope, multimillionaires would perpetuate the same problems.
Today's billionaires are yesterday's multimillionaires, and anyone with that much money has essentially endless weath.
For 10 million and up, you're exactly right.
But let's not forget that the vast majority of multimillionaires are a retiree, out there minding their own business spending down their 2 or 3 million in savings buying breakfast at senior discount restaurants and driving a three year old luxury sedan with heated seats, back to a forgettable house in the suburbs.
Retiring with a couple million dollars is becoming commonplace, and it's about the right number to retire with, in certain places, to leave almost nothing behind at death.
Being a multimillionaire is not "endless wealth".
We need the multimillionaires on our side if we're going to beat back the perversions perpetrated by the billionaires.
It was really important that you highlighted the fact that anyone who has somewhere between 2 million and 999 million is technically called a multimillionaire so you could go on about retirees on the extreme low end instead of the obvious use in the context as someone who has 10s or 100s of millions of dollars. Crucial information that was completely relevant and not a completely pointless side track.
Very important, good stuff. Keep up the good work.
Words matter. You're using yours poorly.
Billions aren't endless either.
Eh musk can show you how you can lose billions in a couple years, what they can spend it on is different from you and I but I do agree they should not exist at all.
They have class consciousness and therefore they can pool their resources together to fuck the rest of us.
capitalism + legal bribery (aka lobbying) = widening wealth gap
You, as an individual or a group, cannot beat corporations.
For more information, please see consumer right to repair.