I think you may be parsing something wrong, or perhaps you're ESL and something is translating weird to your native tongue. Idk friendo, it just rolls off the tongue weird and relies on a different interpretation of the phrase for each panel, it's almost like "anti-wordplay". You hit the nail on the head, but it's a bent nail and it's not gonna drive.

Even knowing about the sentence structure "Do x by today", this post is phrased weirdly.

The top text uses the pattern "effect by amount", which leads people to see today as an amount in the bottom text. The bottom text is also a different kind of sentence entirely; "Shortening the lives of the rich by today" is a sentence fragment and needs to be modified, perhaps like "Me when I'm shortening the lives of the rich" to fit the format, or "Shorten the lives of the rich today" to fit the conclusion of the top text.

In any case, the format of the meme, the top text, and the bottom text do not rhyme, which makes them difficult to understand in relation to each other.

Every comment here says you're in the wrong, and your reaction to that is "No, it is everyone else who is wrong, not me." Learn to take a hint.