this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2024
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But we're told Warren Buffet is the good kind.
He's one of the best billionaires. He wants to be taxed more for the betterment of all. Bill Gates does a lot of good with his foundation.
#BUT.
That's like referring to the "best" serial killer, and I mean that comparison. Billionaires shouldn't even exist, much less be admired and have outsized fame and influence. Every single one is a policy failure and every single one was formed from exploited workers (who actually contribute to society). Billionaires are parasites...
That's either not fair to serial killers, or highly complimentary to serial killers, considering the most "successful" serial killers in history can't hold a candle to a single healthcare insurance corporation, for example.
I'm sure some of them would have loved to be mentioned in the same breath as those who industrialized murder.
Or do you think most would be offended, since they were hipster, artisinal murderers who took pride in the craft of murder only to be outdone by high volume mass production?
you're right, perpetrators of genocide are a better comparison.
So many serial killers are actually doing it out of sexual frustration. They have a lot of emotions they can’t process properly and act on them in downright obscene ways. They are deeply sick and sad people who absolutely, without question, deserve to be removed from society but who I can, at least somewhat, understand.
People like healthcare CEOs and even just most any shitty business owner, on the other hand, are simply straight evil. They are the people who would be fine owning slaves, and essentially do, and who don’t really give a rat’s ass about anyone but themselves. They are the people who go for seconds when not everyone has had firsts and say “should been faster, loser.” They have all the tools to not be monsters, all the freedom in the world, and yet there they are.
Bill Gates Foundation does some good. His foundation is mostly a gigantic tax shelter though. For him, it's like an unlimited IRA. Society would be better if he simply had less money, less influence, and less control.
He's also one of the most highly associated with Epstein. His wife divorcing him after the Epstein records leaked.
And he founded Microsoft, a company that invented EEE.
That's the beauty of it! Nobody will ever see what we lost to the deadweight loss of his monopoly. We only see the profits he got from it, a portion of which he generously returns.
He wants to be taxed more for the betterment of all.
That's why all the biggest and most well-financed lobbyist firms are advocating for a high marginal tax rate. That's why big think tanks have been churning out white papers and bombarding the airwaves with pro-tax policy. I can't turn on my AM radio without some paid shill telling me my taxes aren't high enough.
It's so bizarre that none of this has worked. I thought for sure billionaires had more influence than this. I guess Mr. Buffet is just a small bean me.
Yeah but he’s so obviously fucking not. I have yet to see one Id consider “one of the good kind.” Every time I see one with what seems to be redeeming qualities it always turns out to be at best an outright lie or at worst a cover for tax evasion or a cover up for some kind of horror that’s caused mass death.
Yeah. I don't believe it's possible to make a billion dollars and not be/have been involved in shady shit. All billionaires are criminals IMO.
Arguably you could inherit it. Shady shit was done for the money still, sure, but not by the person with the money.
Then you just wait for them to do new shady shit because they probably will.
Shady shit was done for the money still, sure, but not by the person with the money.
Laundering blood money through a generation will make it clean again. No guilt if you can inherit the sins of your fathers. No complicity if you simply stand on a mountain of corpses that just happened to die for your benefit.
It isn't their fault they won the lottery of life. You can still judge them for their own actions, what they do with all the money.
We all have a duty in this life to do better than our predecessors, not merely to wallow in their misdeeds and plead innocence.
Inheriting blood money simply means you've inherited the obligation to right the wrongs that produced it.
Arguably you could inherit it.
That would also be a failure of policy: namely, inadequate inheritance tax (which was specifically intended to prevent the kind of aristocracy a billion-dollar inheritance would create).
He is!
https://givingpledge.org/pledger?pledgerId=177
There's an Indian parable about a rich man. Every time a beggar asks for money, he gives it, until he has no more to give and is himself a beggar.
You can't give it all up and expect to continue contributing.
The overwhelming majority of contribution in society comes from the working class.
Taking money and then giving it back is the bare fucking minimum a person can do. It's like taking the whole cake and then giving back a thin slice. Hardly commendable.
Every time a beggar asks for money, he gives it, until he has no more to give
Why would the rich man ever run out? Wealth isn't merely a pile of currency, it is a collection of wealth producing assets.
A man who collects $1000/day in rents will never have less than $1000/day to give to beggers.
The harder question to answer is why some of us pay others for the privilege of accessing public goods.
Yup.
The system is working as intended.
If you don't like it.... Well, Luigi set an example there.
GL HF.
- Open the rich like tauntauns
- Live inside them
- Housing crisis solved
Issues with this post/CNN article:
1 - Where is Mark Zuckerberg in the photo? He is currently the 3rd richest.
2 - The article is a year old - Musk's net worth has went up $223 billion just in calendar year 2024 alone.
So, the article is technically right (fortunes have more than doubled) but some billionaires have tripled or more.
Wealth of billionaires almost 5 years ago - Jan 1, 2020
Wealth of billionaires today - Dec 27, 2024
Just in that 5 year period Elon Musk went from $27 billion to $452 billion!
Zuckerberg almost tripled and Larry Ellison almost quadrupled!
Other non-top 5 billionaires like Michael Dell went from $30 billion to $127 billion!
Jensen Huang (founder of NVIDIA) went from $5.73 billion to $120 billion! - so his wealth multiplied by a factor of more than 20!
All of those gains posted above happened in a short 5 year period. So, saying billionaires have doubled
their net worth is technically accurate but it's not showing you the insanity of what's really going on.
So who's going to have the balls for the job?
Not me. However there are 8 billion people in the world. I have my doubts that you can continue squeezing everyone as hard as you can without them eventually getting pissed and fight back.
The number of poor people in the world greatly out numbers these rich fucks. No amount of political posturing or technology will save them. You reap what you sow and what they have sowed is civil unrest.
It might not seem like it today, but judgement day is coming.
Surely completely unrelated statistics.
This is the natural result of decades of sustained exponential growth. At roughly 10%/yr, markets will double every 7-8 years. That's three doubling times in about 25 years, or 2^3 which is 8x. And that's how you get a house that was like $100k-$200k in the year 2000 to turn into a house for like $800k-$1.2m in 2024. It's only going to get worse.
Extreme wealth hoarding is an inherent end result of capitalism, which we could eliminate by capping wealth and channeling all excess income directly to public use. This would not be easy AT ALL because of the political opposition (which is mostly conditioning). But we won't do it, instead we will wait until the problem gets so bad it causes a revolt and then we'll blame the revolters.
This is the official regime policy. Looks everything is working great.
Infinite pie evangelists in shambles.
That money has to come from somewhere.
Hey, look! It's me! I'm a statistic now!