ITT: Americans brainwashed into thinking poverty is a moral failing.
Don’t comment unless you absolutely agree with this Internet picture.
Scroll down to see which lemmy users simp for the billionaire class. It won’t surprise you.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
I agree. My real abhorrence, however, is for the countless bootlickers who themselves live in near poverty yet loudly support their overlords in a sycophantic and unquestioning fashion. These class traitors, masquerading as real Americans are as culpable as the mentally deranged hoarders they prop up.
I don’t feel like there’s a way to get through to these sheep-like collaborators, so it’s difficult to imagine anything will change in the near future.
Since it seems your use of obesity is causing some concern, perhaps it’s more appropriate to say “financial gluttony” as a more accurate phrasing?
A distinction without a difference. One is the process, the other its outcome.
Obesity is a problematic state for an entity to be in, and attempts to reframe it as normal only manifest as harm.
Where I see potential validity in criticism is the flawed definitions used for medical classification, but that’s an issue for the medical profession to reckon with and address.
For fuck sake, can you keep your fatphobia out of things for five minutes?!
Financial obesity makes it seem like it’s the same as being fat, which doesn’t make sense because being fat is not a specific problem in the same way that being rich is.
I’m sure you just mean it like “fat cat” but it’s a bizarre way to phrase it since it isn’t a good analogy.
Billionaires simply cannot exist without their money coming from the exploitation of the “lower classes”
No capitalist can. It’s definitional to the system.
Over many generations
But they won’t drive you to become homeless because stop you from paying them. They may keep you not rich but never is their intention to keep you so poor that they can’t get a penny from you.
Think about it. Many of them have enough money to end world hunger, build affordable housing, give healthcare to a poor country, etc. But they choose not to. All evil is an active choice.
They mostly just choose to go to Epstein island it seems
I’ve never liked how the pyramid is arranged, as if the ones on top are living the ‘right’ way, or are ‘better’ somehow.
It should be the other way around, with 8 billion people hanging to a ledge, trying to improve the state of the world, while roughly 6.5k are throwing a tantrum, desperately clinging to the ankles of the masses, threatening to drag everything into the void if they can’t get their way.
Okay, well, you draw it to a sufficient enough standard and then we’ll use that one instead.
It’s not “higher = better” but the level above suppresses / deceives the level below. And the higher up you go, the fewer people inhabit a level.
I mean you just made another metaphor but it’s more weird and doesn’t work
Yeah we should totally kill the homeless. Or in fact just kill the poorest 10%
The 1%ers must all die!
100% tax for money after $500 Million. Also, tax corporations the full salary of the worker that is replaced by AI/automation/robotics to fund universal basic income.
the full salary of the worker that is replaced by AI/automation/robotics to fund universal basic income.
ummm… just clumsily worded, or, not getting what universal basic income is? … sounds rather means tested and conditional there, how that’s worded.
I apologize if it could have been worded better.
Here is my train of thought:
By removing a job from the labor market, they are essentially removing an entire salary from the economy. Normally, that employee would be expecting to find another job. With entire industries are removing a crazy number of jobs, the economy would not be expected to be able to provide another job to all of those workers.
I believe there should be a penalty to the company for eliminating jobs from the economy to slow down or prevent it from happening. I would tax the corporation the full salary of the job that they eliminated. We would use that money to fund for UBI.
I understand UBI should not be conditional and it does not have to be in my example. However, there needs to be a way to fund it. Perhaps if the amount of money collected from the “ai tax” is not enough to provide UBI at the level that is fair to everyone, it should also be funded by the wealth tax that I also mentioned.
I hope that clears it up.
Start a little earlier, personal income above 10 million gets a 90% tax without loopholes, and no tax until the cost of living (At least until the government sorts out universal basic needs.)
without loopholes
Implying loopholes are part of every law’s original vision?
I like the later part.
taylor isnt one of the good ones, she just had good pr, up until she started partying with magat influencer.
Very true, she only had a career because her dad bought a record deal for her.
Now, the best producers are writing sabrina carpenter’s songs (as she’ll be made into the next big thing) instead of Swift’s and the quality of writing, such as it was, has plummeted.
Her old record label will now look to bring her down, to bring her fans over to their new projects and the wheel keeps turning until the next one. It’s not a coincidence that bad PR suddenly happens to an act after their record deal comes to an end.
The best way a billionaire could spend their money is to lobby politicians to tax the rich.
I don’t like the long term effects of condoning corruption. That just makes politicians rent seek even more - and might incite jealousy in any politicians who missed out on that bribe. They’ll be back next election getting bribed by a bigger billionaire. I’d think better to try to reduce corruption.
I’m a bit torn on the topic of entertainer billionaires and millionaires. Is it our opinion that they should just retire as soon as they hit 2 or 3 million, and end all contracts with royalties? It’s not really their fault, at that point, that they keep making money.
Likewise with people who bought stock shares before a big merger or bought crypto a decade ago which made their wealth more than decuple in value. They certainly didn’t start at the same low as the majority of people, but that’s also not really their fault.
Let’s say that there can be some, that it’s possible to be, a good billionaire but let’s all agree we should be taxing the fuck out of them.
Taylor Swift released a crap load of different versions of her last couple albums, each one having different songs and artwork knowing that at least her most die-hard fans would buy every single one. It is 100% on her that she became a billionaire.
she also has the power to break the harmful status quo of the industry if she so chose. her concerts are bigger than ticketmaster. she could refuse to do ticketsales through ticketmaster and give a lot more power to audiences and artists in the ticketbuying marketplace. she doesn’t because the status quo benefits her because she’s more entertainer than artist
She may be bigger than Ticketmaster, but, much like Pearl Jam, I suspect she has found out that she isn’t bigger than the contracts that the venues have with Ticketmaster which say that they can only host artists and events that sell tickets through Ticketmaster.
I don’t even like TS, I’m just saying other groups that were just as influential in their day, couldn’t do it when they tried because of those contracts.
A billionaire is 999 times richer than a millionaire, you may end up a millionaire by chance but there’s no way you can magically become a billionaire. Assuming you bought 1000 bitcoins when they were worth a cent you would have sell them at 1 or 10, assuming you win a billion at the lottery you would give some of it away and cease to be a billionaire as a result.
Keep also in mind that these people work hard to secure contracts and royalties, the more investments you have the more work you have to do to manage them.
I am sure the Aryan Goddess is completely unproblematic and earned all her money without hurting anyone. Truly, a self-made billionaire.
Is it our opinion that they should just retire as soon as they hit 2 or 3 million, and end all contracts with royalties
Nope. They are in fact able to spend money to help those that need it, so you can pack away your ridiculous strawman.
It’s not really their fault, at that point, that they keep making money.
It’s their fault if they hoard vast riches rather than meaningfully contribute to the betterment of the people, though.
Let’s say that there can be some, that it’s possible to be, a good billionaire
ABSOLUTELY not. You don’t accidentally become a billionaire in a day. You become a billionaire by hoarding ridiculous amounts of money long past the point where you have enough for everything you could ever need.
Also, it’s always Taylor Swift.
I feel like this is seeing in action the thinking that led to the cultural revolution. “Sure, he’s just a chemistry teacher. But he’s one of the evil ones. He’s in the bad group. Into the labor camp!”
Fixing the awful problems with our society requires changing a lot of things, among them taxes and the power of the wealthy to distort government and public opinion. Demonizing Taylor Swift relentlessly will do fuck all.
Of all the rich and influential people in US Taylor Swift is the least of your problems. She’s an absolute winner for opposing the power grabbing ppl. Take it out on Jeff Bozos or Elon or some other undemocratic capitalist.
I’ll agree with you that Taylor Swift is not a billionaire of biggest concern. It’s not black and white, it’s a scale of grey. That said, anyone with over a billion UD dollars in personal and private wealth is in the you shouldn’t have that much money club. Full stop. That’s black and white. The grey comes in with how much over are you and what did you do to get it. Taylor Swift is not like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, or Peter Thiel, but she does have too much money and probably doesn’t do enough to encourage new talent who would be her competition. She’s a capitalist, just not the worst kind.
You don’t become a billionaire by hard work. You exploited a lot of people, you fucked over a lot of people. If they were a billionaire but literally everyone that worked for them was a multi-millionare I’d shut up. If I made $100,000 (of current USD) for 2,000 years… I wouldn’t have made a billion dollars.
That’s a lot of words to say “I didn’t understand the meme”
It’s your interpretation that the meme is intended to be sarcastic or ironic?
Is it our opinion that they should just retire as soon as they hit 2 or 3 million, and end all contracts with royalties? It’s not really their fault, at that point, that they keep making money.
They don’t become billionaires off of royalties. Taylor Swift is selling tickets to her shows for hundreds or thousands of dollars. She could be paying her staff more, and charging her customers less, but she chooses not to, because she is greedy.
I’ve seen this viewpoint a lot lately, and while I absolutely agree that tickets to her shows are expensive, when my wife bought tickets to the Eras Tour she was able to get them on the primary market for about $300 each for very good seats. The secondary scalping market was selling the same seats for between $2,000-$4,000 depending on the show, and people were buying them at that price. From a supply and demand perspective, Taylor Swift was absolutely selling those tickets below their true market value.
As for paying her crew more, she also paid out $197 million in bonuses to her crew across the tour. That’s about 10% of tour revenue in bonuses. Not profits, revenue. I’ve been tangentially involved in the entertainment industry since college and have multiple friends directly involved, and I’ve never heard of any other performer giving that much in bonuses to their crew.
Additionally, she donated to food pantries in every city she performed in. While the amounts she donated to each food pantry have not been released, people have worked out that it was likely at least $20k/pantry, based on the number of meals the pantries said they would be able to provide with it. That’s at least $1 million across all the cities, which is obviously not enough, but is far more than most other entertainers do.
I know she gets a lot of flack because she’s so visible in our culture, but in terms of how bad billionaires are, she’s significantly better than a lot of others who fly under the radar. There are over 3,000 billionaires today, according to Forbes, and I’m pretty certain most of them made their money through much worse methods than singing songs and selling overpriced merch to fans. 😛
in terms of how bad billionaires are, she’s significantly better than a lot of others
“He was a very gentle rapist”
“He was a very gentle rapist”
That’s not exactly a good-faith argument. You said she should pay her staff more and charge less for tickets. I provided a counterpoint to that.
Going back to the original question that you were asked, should she have retired when she started to approach $1 billion in net worth?
I will point out that the ownership rights to her music, which she purchased with the money she made from The Eras Tour and now owns completely, is probably worth close to $1 billion in valuation alone. Even if her entire liquid net worth was taxed from her, she’d be a billionaire on paper just by virtue of her music catalog & the value of her name.
Ticketmaster actually takes the most from sales to her shows, but yes she specifically could be making better use of her money, such as not renting a super-yacht and not flying everywhere on a private plane.
whatabout Livenation/Ticketmaster
Lmao, you cited prices of tickets but the actual cause for those prices is somehow whataboutism?
Tax is the answer
I don’t think there is a tax authority with the power to do that, not in the west.
Power is the answer, and I’m not sure any current governments have enough of it or the wherewithal to use it, certainly not globally. They seem to be able to find a weak government and lawyer/accountant their ‘wealth’ to appear there.
Maybe somewhere like China can control it’s local billionaire problem more effectively than some others, but I don’t really know.
Tax alone isn’t the answer. if the richest man in the world were to pay 200 billions a year in taxes they would still be a billionaire and if these 200 billions ends up on building a ballroom for politicians not much is achieved.
A billion is an amount of money so ridiculous that it should simply be illegal to have that much.
I don’t think it’s that unwarranted to calculate that there’s a certain amount of money that you could realistically spend in a lifetime, and anything after that might as well be passed on to taxes and other charities/community initiatives to help everyone else.
It’s probably not something us common folk think about, but I’m certain that these people have thought about it at least once before, and their decision to keep the money for themselves is what makes them evil. There are no good billionaires because to reach that level you need to have made that decision long ago; the “good billionaires” are still millionaires.
That’s exactly the point I think anyone reasonable would make.
It’s not necessarily how they got the money, it’s that they keep it. If I won the lottery, and got a multi-billion dollar payout, I could wire most of that money to a DAF, tell it to distribute the money to 200 different charities I like, and it could be done within the week.
Keeping that much money is a choice. Continuing to spend it all on lavish expenses while the poor suffer is a personal choice, not one they’re forced to bear the consequences of due to their fame.
You know who is a good billionaire? Steve Wozniak.
Because he got his, more than he could ever need, and then he decided to stop. Since then he’s lived on his ranch and participated in tech outreach ever since
You could self publish and live in luxury at $100 million. You could keep making music, hell you could do it in complete creative freedom
Why would you want to become an avatar of wealth?
Woz isn’t even close to being a Billionaire
Woz would have been a billionaire if he didn’t sell his shares, which is my entire point. Good billionaires would’ve cashed out long before reaching that crazy level of hoard
Power. At some point money stops being what it is to most people and becomes leverage to do things. The truly wealthy don’t have to worry about having the ability to buy things, they shift to being able to influence and control stuff. Now, that can certainly be used for good, so there’s the difference between the perceived good and bad billionaire.
Now that’s a totally different argument, but it’s bullshit
Being a billionaire means you cease to be a person. Your personal finances are a corporation that does nothing but take
Point to a good billionaire. I’ll point you to a PR firm and probably pictures at Epstein’s Island with half naked children
There are no good billionaires. That’s both prescrive and descriptive, it’s just not a real thing for a whole host of reasons
Mostly agreed, but if Woz had gone billionaire, he’d have more to give. I wouldn’t pursue such a life myself though.
You literally can’t be a billionaire and give it away. You’d start giving long before that if you ever would part with more than slivers of your dragon hoard
Well technically even if they buy a ranch and self publish all their own works with their own studios then their assets are still more welath than most people will ever earn.
The only way to truly get rid of wealth is to give it to somebody else.
So? The world isn’t fair. I don’t begrudge people who have more than me, frankly I’m way more disturbed that anyone has less than me
It’s fine to be rich. Especially if you actually earned it through your own efforts
It’s not fine to hoard so much it destroys the fucking world, and that’s what it means to be a billionaire
I begrudge people sitting on billions of dollars while others starve.
Yeah, and those people are destroying the world
If someone has ten million? Good for them. A hundred? Pushing it, but not so much that their mere existence means others must starve
A billion? No, fuck off, your sheer hoard kills people systematically
No one needs more than 5 million dollars. That’s enough for a comfortable life without laboring every again.
If they make a shit load of money doing concerts, that money needs to keep moving. Tax it so it can go into schools and infrastructure and such. They don’t need a mega yacht. People are starving and suffering from problems money would solve.
I would expect in our lifetime we will see median house price around that mark, it really depends on the country, somewhere it’s enough for a whole extended family but I don’t think that’s universally applicable
Itt:
- reposses the wealth
- homelessness is on the homeless
Both are equally wrong. Homelessness has a great many causes and some people would struggle even with a home due to disorder that had them become homeless. It isn’t just a money issue.
The way Denmark and Sweden tackle the problem very successfully shows that combating homelessness is largely an issue of the right social policies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Finland And it actually saves money too
Many are homeless because of their choices or habits.
surprised to see this downvoted so much. ofc its not ALL homeless ppl are homeless bc of this. but you never said all. this commentsection feels like some comunist echochamber no?
impressively wrong. minimum wage+food assistance+housing support is still not enough for a person to be off the street a lot of places. many of the chronically homeless need access to mental healthcare that hasn’t been available to the poor since the 80s. blaming homelessness on the homeless is impressively sadistic or ignorant, possibly both. if i’m being generous, i’m going to say pure ignorance. go talk to a homeless person. get to know them. listen to them talk about their struggles. if you can still believe homelessness is a personal failure after getting to know some of the unhoused people in your community… well… i’ll keep my thought to myself. i can’t keep it within server rules to be kind and empathetic towards you if you can’t be kind and empathetic to the homeless
No, they are homeless because society has failed them.
In the same society, you can find fewer homeless people than people with residences. Can we use the same logic to infer that society promotes those people to have a home?
Shut the fuck up
Dude, hard working people are at least middle class!
The majority of actual homeless people have jobs.
https://endhomelessness.org/blog/employed-and-experiencing-homelessness-what-the-numbers-show/
All grad students have left the chat
Wild definition of middle class. If you live paycheck to paycheck on a 40 hour minimum wage job you can hardly call yourself middle class. In countries without good health insurance, you can be one infected teeth away from bankruptcy. And you cannot simply choose a better job. You’re working 40 hours, how could you go to job interviews during normal work hours?
That is true but their choices or habits are influenced by the rotten society around them.
