• 3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 hours ago

    Pardon my ignorance. I dont follow these kind of news. BUT, why the hell is musk is no 1? What has he done? Last i heard this manchild is running down twitter, tesla with cybertruck fiasco. Is it from spacex?

    I mean, zuckerberg and bezos basically create meta and amazon.

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
    7·
    5 hours ago

    Wow! So things must have gotten a lot better for people over the last 7 years!

    Right?

  • e$tGyr#J2pqM8v@feddit.nl
    2·
    5 hours ago

    If you have a lot of money

    • you contributed a lot to society
    • you took a lot from society

    If you’re a successful businessman and you want to contribute, perhaps you could lower the prices of your products, perhaps you could give shares to your employees who do all the work. Not only is it efficient for them to have a stake in the company, it’s also only fair. Not doing so is unfair. We won’t celebrate your ‘success’, a successful thief is a thief nonetheless. You doing so-called ‘philanthropy’ won’t do any good either. Money is power, you exerting your power over us isn’t the moral thing to do. It’s still wrong to the core. Sure, people voluntarily giving money to all sorts of causes is a beautiful thing, but only if money is reasonably distributed among people in the first place. If you take money from society on a large scale and then exert this power, than undoubtedly your views and interests are disproportionately represented. Your intentions are dubious, because if you intended well, why did you keep all the money and power for yourself in the first place? It’s likely that you’re a power hungry maniac. But even if you’re somehow naively unaware of this and truly have the noblest of intentions with your philanthropy, then it’s still a ludicrous idea that this would be an efficient way to distribute money. It’s quite obvious that if everyone got a say in where the money goes, that the distribution of assets would better represent what society deems important. It’s only logical that if you get to distribute the money, it will go to things you deem important. If you think that makes sense, it can only mean that you deem yourself wiser, more moral, than all of humanity combined. It means you are a narcissist. It’s not unlikely that you are, people who are successful money-wise, often think that life it a money-game and they’re the winning players. And they have won because they work hard and are clever. The thing is, life isn’t a money-game, people have moral compasses and strive towards others goals than making money. And even if it was a money-game, you’ve not won because you’re so smart and hard-working, it is in a very large part due to your luck. That’s not an allegation, it’s a logical fact. People don’t have the same starting positions. Being a billionaire is morally wrong, even if you give all of it away later in life.

  • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
    11·
    9 hours ago

    If only we could combine Jim, Alice and Rob into a single entity called The Waltronzoid, we could easily defeat all the other billionaires by creating a bazillionaire.

    • bitwaba@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 hours ago

      I think what’s fantastic about it is of they acted just as crazy as the other billionaires like Musk and Bezos where they decided they wanted to go to space. Then we could make fun of people blowing up their Walmart brand space ship and be like “what did you expect?”

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
    172·
    12 hours ago

    1% tax on all registered securities, payable in shares of those securities. The SEC just confiscates 1% of every position, and conveys them to an IRS liquidator. The liquidator sells them off in small lots over time, comprising no more than 1% of total traded shares. Securities with negative values are returned.

    Once completely phased in, natural persons will be exempt on their first $10 million in registered securities. Corporate-owned securities will not be exempt: the are taxed from their first share.

    We tax only the problematic portion of their wealth: their wealth-generating assets. We auction those assets off to the general public.

    • Welt@lazysoci.alEnglish
      6·
      7 hours ago

      You sound like you know what you’re talking about, and convey it with spectrum-like precision. I throw my hat and my heart entirely to making your dream come true. Hoo, hoo (hoo-oo-hoo)

    • TammyTobacco@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 hours ago

      I think it should be legal to murder a billionaire. They either have to pay for private security they can’t fully trust and always worry about being killed, or they can give away their money until they’re under a billion.

    • Obi
      4·
      13 hours ago

      No Japanese on the list, but we could make some nice fois gras with Bernard I’m sure.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
    242·
    1 day ago

    That’s 18 people who own about a tenth of the US GDP. Something needs to be done, and soon.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      22 hours ago

      That’s 18 people who own about a tenth of the US GDP.

      Okay, sure. But that’s bad analysis. GDP is annual and net-worth is lifetime total. That’s also global wealth, not US-domestic (four of them aren’t even American).

      Agree with the sentiment, but we should really be talking about global wealth not national income.

      Something needs to be done

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done

      • Kallioapina@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        7·
        23 hours ago

        How many security guards can one of these assholes have on duty at any one time?

        Dont y’all have assault rifles and semiautomatics on you at all times and you are all about being against tyranny? WHAT GIVES?

        • PixellatedDave@lemmy.world
          31·
          12 hours ago

          My thought too. Don’t they have slogans like ‘don’t tread on me’ and such? I am pretty convinced you don’t get that kind of wealth without standing on everyone you can.

  • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
    1461·
    2 days ago

    Billionaires are a political choice as much as homelessness. They are allowed to exist because nobody does anything about it.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
    1031·
    2 days ago

    There was an article celebrating the fact that we’re on our way to having the first trillionare.

    I wanted to die. It’s so insanely fucking disgusting

  • Brosplosion@lemm.ee
    181·
    2 days ago

    Is this inflation corrected? Cause an arbitrary line across 7 years of inflation is gonna be crossed…

    • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
      6·
      22 hours ago

      No, thats a good point because its not inflation corrected its just an archived page. A dollar in 2017 is worth 1.28 today. So yes, in today’s dollars there would have been 4 people above 100 billion in 2017.

    • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      62·
      1 day ago

      I don’t think we had 250% inflation in the last 7 years

      We certainly didn’t have a 250% increase in wages or median wealth in the last 7 years

      They are parasites and criminals

      • Brosplosion@lemm.ee
        41·
        1 day ago

        These sorts of stats are misleading and can erode the footing of the argument you are making. Showing the numbers adjusted for inflation is damning enough.

        We’ve had around 60% inflation over the past seven years, does it explain all their increases? No.

        But not including that information and saying “but number is bigger!” Just makes your argument look weak when it could be statistically sound.