Agree or disagree?

[True Dough]

[JoeOtterbein]

1. Agree 100%...

...thanks for posting!

[Glorfindel]

2. Agree. n/t

[BlueJac]

3. Agree 100%

[EarthFirst]

4. "Louder for those in the back...!" nt

[Hoyt]

5. Agree with sentiment, but doubt any billionaire or group of them could end hunger, homelessness,

etc. Obviously, they could do a lot, and many do.

Most multibillionaires are worth that on paper. If forced to liquidate, their wealth would be but a small fraction of what's on paper. Then, who are we going to tax for bulk of tax dollars?

I do think taxes need to be increased substantially here. But, even then, to achieve all the things we want -- healthcare, child care, end starvation, education, end homelessness, education, jobs, infrastructure, bolster Social Security, increased wages, etc. -- is going to take taxing wealthy and the middle class.

[DFW]

10. It's sloganeering

If someone attains a net worth of a billion dollars, and an angel of death is sent to confiscate every cent at full value, there will be less than $3 to distribute to every man, woman and child in the USA. Even if you distribute the money to every tenth man, woman and child in the USA, they get less than $30. I don't know what country has a cost of living low enough to feed and house people for $3, but ours isn't one of them.

[EX500rider]

27. Sure you had to go and do the math..lol

[uponit7771]

47. There are 614 billionaires in America x 3 I think that will put a dent in the issue

[robbob]

56. Ok, so confiscate every last penny from those 614 billionaires

(under what pretext I don’t know), and now you have 1,842 dollars for every American. And a one time payment at that...

[uponit7771]

57. nah, lets say half of assets or just stop investing in them and implement a progressive tax ...

... structure that's not penalizing to the ultra rich in America.

like we used to have during the Eisenhower administration.

From talking to republicans even they understand trickle down doesn't work and the Uber rich (especially the liberal ones) getting more money doesn't help their bottom line.

[bdamomma]

65. I heard this on Chris Hayes

"between March 18th 2020 and March 18th 2021 the wealth held by billionaires jumped from $8.04 trillion to $12.39 trillion. 54% richer during the pandemic".

Wealth tax please.

[Boomerproud]

6. Agree.

It's a personal choice for those that are Bs. Don't know any and never will.

[StrictlyRockers]

7. Agree 100%

[smirkymonkey]

8. Agree.

The thing is, that most of them could donate the majority of their wealth to solving the worlds most pressing social issues and still have enough money to live very comfortably on for the rest of their lives without having to ever work again.

[Towlie]

9. No amount of money could feed and house everyone. There'd still have to be enough food and housing.

 
?

Money doesn't have magical powers, you can't buy what doesn't exist.

[Wednesdays]

43. So, why try, right?

[spike jones]

11. Wealth is waste. n/t

[bucolic_frolic]

12. FDR invested almost his entire fortune in Warm Springs GA for care of polio victims

It was some phenomenal amount at the time, I think I read $300,000.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. Disagree

First, there are many billionaires doing important monetary thing to help the less fortunate. If they weren't billionaires, they would have to help less.
Second, the slogan is hyperbolic nonsense. Musk is worth $150-180 billion, depending upon whose estimate we go with.
If 20% of people are in food distress, or homeless (both) that's 65-70 million people.
If Musk gave 100%, at assumed face value, it would be $2,500 (at most) for every single person.
That doesn't solve hunger or homelessness.
If all used toward hunger, it would last 18-24 months and we'd be back to baseline. (Bad). And, solves homelessness, not at all.
Flip it, and it provides (depending on location) 3-8 months of housing. But, no food.
Combine the two and we address homelessness for 4 months & hunger for less than a year. That's not a solution. It's a band aid.
The solution should be taxes on gains, realized or not. This has the benefit of increased governmental revenues, a stimulus to the markets, and an increase in the velocity of money.
I disagree that the only solution is to ban wealth. That strikes me as needlessly screechy anticapitalist rhetoric, and facilitates no long term solutions.

[marble falls]

17. It's a danger to let memes express one's outrage, ain't it?

[grantcart]

19. Well the real irony is that all of these folks expressing their outrage are doing so

On hand held computer telecommunication devices that were only made possible by the accelerated investment in computer miniaturization that was directly a result of the Apollo program and going to the moon. Had we not made that investment these memes would likely be spread today by handing out monograph pamphlets.

[Martin Eden]

20. "facilitates no long term solutions"

I agree with that.

[Yavin4]

21. The wealth should be better shared with the laborers that created it.

I'm in favor for greater share of the profits by the employees. I'd like to see Board of Directors have a representative or two from the employees.

[pansypoo53219]

31. ceo pay is way out of whack.

[ProfessorGAC]

34. I'm In!

It's good for morale & retention.
Happy, experienced employees are good for business.
As another reply to your post said, CEO pay is ridiculously disproportionate, and this inflates all other corporate officer pay, and filters down to next level VPs.
I retired from a multibillion dollar company where the CEO made 10x what I did. Not 100x, or 500x; 10x.
Admittedly, I was not getting entry level money, but still.
Also, about 60% of outstanding shares were public. The other 40% was owned by founding family & employees, with around 60% of that being employee owned.
Very low turnover, worldwide. Growth of revenues, profit & stock value all in the upper 10% of peers.
If it worked there, it could work many places.
But, it's not common enough.

[CrispyQ]

46. In all my working years I only worked once for a company that had a profit sharing plan.

Every anniversary you'd become 10% more vested in your plan. I quit 10 years later at 100% & got $15k. This was back in '86 & I worked part-time for most of those 10 years. That's about 37K in today's dollars.

Also, I think too many companies don't realize how much employee turnover costs them. There's not a formula to calculate it so it's never seen on a spreadsheet. I've heard hiring managers say, "If this person doesn't work out we'll just hire someone else." It's a total lack of respect & consideration for the staff you already do have.

[Ka-Dinh Oy]

54. For some, it has nothing to do with loss of money.

It is about power.

I think these companies are fully aware of the cost of needing to replace employees.

I do not know but it would not surprise me if they have some sort of insurance to financially benefit them to fire and hire anytime for what ever reason they want.

[Yavin4]

55. New managers make their bones by cutting costs.

Replacing older, experienced, and more expensive personnel with younger, cheaper labor looks real good on a spreadsheet for a quarter or so. But over time that lost experience comes back to bite the company in the ass. But by that time, the management has moved on to another company, and the cycle continues.

[paleotn]

22. Agreed.

The opposite has been tried. Due a complete misunderstanding of basic human nature, it failed miserably. We need wealth and the pursuit thereof. Given human nature, it's the fuel that drives an innovative society. But wealth and the wealthy are like fire. Controlled, it keeps us warm. Uncontrolled, like 21st century America, it will eventually burn the house down. The real question in my mind is control. What and how much. Tax policy is a good place to start. Getting rid of Citizens United is another.

[AZ8theist]

32. Professor GAC is 100% correct.

The solution is, however incorrect to say it:

Big government. Tax the rich. Redistribute wealth. "Class warfare"..

In short, the dreaded "SOCIALISM"....

The Reich wing has pounded the evils of the above into the populace for so long, citizens are willfully AGAINST their own best interests.

[mvd]

52. I actually agree

I am doubtful that one person can end hunger and homelessness. But collectively, the wealthy can do a lot.

[USALiberal]

53. +1000

[uponit7771]

58. I agree with Warren, get 2% of assets over 50 million and that helps pay for a lot of stuff. We ...

... don't need them to cough up everything.

We can also go back to a progressive tax system where ***ALL** income over x is taxed higher.

[Bird Lady]

14. Agree! /nt

[Upthevibe]

15. Agree 100%! n/t

[YoshidaYui]

16. I LIKE SPACESHIPS HOWEVER....

Maybe we should wait for the 24th Century, we should not be in a hurry to go some where else.

[paleotn]

18. Wealth does weird things to people's minds.

Studies show this irony....the more one has, the even more one wants....only for themselves. I have no problem with working hard and taking risks in the pursuit of financial gain. But rare is the case where someone gets fabulously wealthy without fucking over someone. And it seems how many people get fucked over is proportional to the size of wealth. Gates, for all the supposed good he's done, was a stone cold bastard in the 80's. He probably still is or may be even worse. Giving wealth away becomes a status symbol. A means unto itself and they want their name plastered all over it. The actual good cause is irrelevant for many of them.

[Devil Child]

23. Imagine spaceships plus housing & food security.

Imagine waking not being able to imagine that when crafting memes.

But I'll go with agree because of the last sentence. But disagree on spaceship hate.

[secondwind]

24. AGREE 1,000 times

[Celerity]

25. individual billionaires are small fry compared to the biggest asset management firms and banks

BlackRock United States 49.1 trillion usd assets under custody and/or administration and/or direct management

Vanguard United States 47.5 trillion usd assets under custody and/or administration and/or direct management

Fidelity United States 45.5 trillion usd assets under custody and/or administration and/or direct management

State Street United States 43.9 trillion usd assets under custody and/or administration and/or direct management

Capital Group United States 39.2 trillion usd assets under custody and/or administration and/or direct management

JPMorgan Chase United States 29.1 trillion usd assets under custody and/or administration and/or direct management

Bank of New York Mellon United States 24.3 trillion usd assets under custody and/or administration and/or direct management


those 7 firms have their fingers in the pie directly or indirectly for a total of 279 TRILLION USD in total fiduciary exposure

that is almost 10 times the US national debt




or

1,500 Jeff Bezos's

[True Dough]

26. Good perspective

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the net worth of those investors by groupings.

[Celerity]

29. it's nightmarishly complex, especially when you start to deal w/ OTC, nonexchange-traded derivatives

Those valuations and exposures are often off balance sheet and impossible to get a grip on in terms of real-time oversight.

Synthetic credit default swap contracts, if printed out onto standard business paper, average at times 145,000 pages, if you are talking about the most complex ones.

It is the domain of quants. The most brilliant minds used to go into science and/or massive governmental projects like the nuclear bomb, or the moon shot. Now they go into multinational finance.

in 2019, total Global foreign exchange market turnover was around 2.5 QUADRILLION USD

that is

2,500,000,000,000,0000 dollars



OTC derivatives outstanding

https://www.bis.org/statistics/derstats.htm


Exchange-traded derivatives statistics

https://www.bis.org/statistics/extderiv.htm?m=6%7C32%7C616


Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Over-the-counter (OTC) Derivatives Markets in 2019

Data revised on 8 December 2019

https://www.bis.org/statistics/rpfx19.htm?m=6%7C32%7C617

[Devil Child]

33. Thank you Celerity!

Very informative post.

[calimary]

51. Ahh, Bezos. I bet he'd trade it all for a nice full head of hair...

[pazzyanne]

28. Agree!!!

Unequivocably!!!

[Permanut]

30. The OP doesn't show feeding the hungry as an option..

as some in this thread have implied. The proposal is to "end hunger" which could perhaps be more effectively accomplished by changing the food creation and distribution systems dominant in the world today. I suggest that billionaires could contribute significantly to that effort.

[Hoyt]

35. Good point.

[brooklynite]

36. Disagree...

If a Government made up of not-Billionaires wants to raise taxes to address those issues, they can do so.

[Silent3]

37. The scale of who can pay for what is out of whack here

Even someone as rich as Bezos would only make a temporary small dent in world hunger if he forfeited all of his wealth.

Further, since a lot of his net worth is (I presume) in Amazon stock, he couldn't give it all away without crashing the value of Amazon. The act of giving it away would destroy most of what was being given away.

At any rate, suppose if, from the beginning of time, humanity was always devoted to nothing other than meeting the immediate pressing needs of other humans. We'd still be in the stone age, and a great deal of the capacity we now have to improve everyone's standard of living would never have been developed.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

38. Agree 💯

[Duppers]

39. Ck this graphic ...

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

[PatrickforB]

45. Right. I use Amazon a lot and I like Amazon. BUT...

the warehouse people and the drivers need to make MORE money, and have MUCH better benefits, including structured payment pensions, like in the old days, and

Amazon should pay more in federal income tax. They slid in 2018 without paying anything on billions in profits, and

Bezos should be taxed down to $500 million. That should be the cap, no matter how great the product you've come up with is. No one should EVER be worth - what was it? - $180 billion. No one.

Especially not when the people working for the guy have to pee in jars because they don't have time to make it to the restroom and back when they have to go. That is bogus.

[GulfCoast66]

40. Disagree. I think the upper tax rate should be at least 70%. Maybe higher.

But if a person comes up with a product or service that even with those rates allow them to become a billionaire, I’m fine with it.

[Mr. Steve]

41. Agree

Very much in agreement

[Magoo48]

42. Agree.

[PatrickforB]

44. AGREE ABSOLUTELY.

Billionaires are parasites who have insisted over decades on policies and laws that systematically strip our treasury of money that should be used to materially benefit us, the people - considering we foot 86% of the tax bill and corporations only 6.8%.

I want healthcare.

And there is no excuse for forever wars and other frivolous spending when we can, yes, address homelessness, addiction, and hunger.

There is PLENTY of money - it is just in far too few hands.

[Mr. Evil]

48. They should be made to fund entrepreneurial endeavors

to maintain and/or be allowed to receive certain tax deductions. There are a great many people out there (myself included) that have great ideas and could employ a significant number of people.

In my situation, I spent what savings I had chasing down these people and all I heard was basically each of them wanted to invest in the latest, greatest app so they could get rich(er) overnight. It sucks being creative, smart and poor without any resources. Great business plan. Ready for presentation. Nice ROI and other perks.

Using Jeff Bezos as an example of what people get from billionaires; he built a 10,000 year clock in a mountain and dick pics meant for his girlfriend (not his wife). Just another indifferent billionaire dipshit.

[ancianita]

49. I'm a Democrat. So yeah. Goes without saying.

[arkielib]

50. Agree!

[H2O Man]

59. Agree.

[TraceNC]

60. Disagree. Nice sentiment, but totally unrealistic

and therefore a little silly as a this-or-that choice.

[Passenger]

61. Very simplistic.

Divide Musk's fortune by the number of people in the world and that's less than $20 each.

The cause of hunger in the world is politicians and governments who directly profit from it, not Musk or people like him.

So I'm all for taxing away billionaires on general principles. And how!

But don't be ridiculous about what you could accomplish that way.

[BobTheSubgenius]

62. Remember when yachts and over the top houses were big-time status symbols?

Now it's SPACE TRAVEL??? WTF???

[True Dough]

63. We need to send all the billionaires into space

A one-way trip while we disburse their wealth.

[BobTheSubgenius]

66. As long as their wealth gets redistributed, they are fine to stay on Earth.

As far as I'm concerned, anyway. And, if they're so damned special, they can make another fortune. Rinse and repeat.

[bdamomma]

64. I would really

like to see them in our shoes, they would not know how to survive. Greedy bastards.