“Billionaire” means “person who can direct large amounts of the means-of-production”
The left wants to tax those people and put the MoP back under democratic control.
So if they used their control the way the People would it’d looklike socialism. But that’s a hypothetical because that’s not their self-interest.
How am I supposed to enjoy that?
War. Literally war. And not about the money, but about who has the most power.
More like China?
Like Elon Musk cutting government services to save the US taxpayer money.
…is what some weirdos I know seem to genuinely believe
No billionaires
There are near 800 billionaires in the USA. Assuming all only have $1 billion dollars and it is all invested, applying the “4% rule” gives a sustainable $40 million each per year. With $10 million to personally spend, that gives $24 billion a year for charity and public works.
I failed to find a list of the costs to solve various issues. Homelessness could be solved in a couple years.
The numbers provided are just a starting place. Many problems are extremely expensive. Actually working to solve them would help.
But if you go by net worth Elon alone has like 350-400 billion. Zuckerberg, Buffet, Gates all have many billions. I see where you’re coming from but they could really help society, like curing hunger levels of help and the worst part is… They’d still be filthy rich. So as far as quality of life, it wouldn’t even cost them anything.
So as far as quality of life, it wouldn’t even cost them anything.
That was my point.
Well it was a GREAT point.
Gates and his ex were helping. They have pledged to spend half their wealth on various humanitary things. They were trying to convince other billionaires to follow suit also. Looks like musk and bezos didn’t get the memo
It’s not enough to put him on my favorable list. Have you used Microsoft lately?
No, all my systems are Linux. Work is W11 and I have to keep deleting ai.exe and aimgr.exe from the vfs MS office16 folders or the AI takes most of my processor for no reason and my applications run like molasses.
Bill Gates brought you that so he could be the world’s richest man.
problems arent solved by making up more paper. problems are solved by doing and properly allocating the resources we already have ie not on the whims of billionaires or on the restrictions their money imposes. money is supposed to represent these assets but not when we think in a financialized (?) way like this.
we could certainly tackle the worlds problems without printing a single extra penny, if only we eliminated the parasites stopping us and propping up the fake paper system where they control all of our resources in the first place.
Bloomberg and others are funding the Paris agreement for the US, where the government pulled out: https://www.bloomberg.org/press/un-special-envoy-michael-r-bloomberg-announces-effort-to-ensure-u-s-honors-paris-agreement-commitments/
If billionaire actually helped people it would be pretty much like government spending tax money.
Could’ve be much more efficient by just taxing the billionaires right away.
Yes, it would look a lot more like the 50s when tax was highest on the wealthy
The world would be better if there were no billionaires. That would be a huge help. Nobody should be allowed to amass that much wealth. And a financial system set up to prevent such a thing would ideally also offer more of a level playing field as far as individual wealth goes.
“Billionaires” (multi-millionaires in the late 18- early 1900’s) did help back in the day - they built libraries, schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc… but they were still absolute bastards that were anti-labor, killed people to avoid paying them more or giving them a decent work week, imported, abused, and discarded labor, among many other rich-barely-controlled-asshole things they did.
The Owenites and other Utopian Socialists of old would rise from their graves, vindicated at long last for, against all odds, finally succeeding.
We’d have the flying cars we were fucking promised by the movies we grew up with.
Generally, everything would just be plain better as their dragon hoards are actually spent, and they dont hoard GDP from the rest of us. But you’d probably see a public service boom wherever they invested, and you’d likely see a lot less people struggling with anything from bills to food to even entertainment.
Its not a dragon hoard, its the perceived value of their companies.
That is a big factor, but they also have regular assets and personal imvestments
This is canon in Shadowrun.
For sure wealth should be taxed, but OPs idea that it’s just unused billions sitting around is untrue. People shouldn’t belief in falsehoods. Also if you try to argue for wealth tax, and get something basic like this wrong, the argument is already lost.
Of course it isn’t just sitting around unused, it’s being reinvested to make more money. Billionaires typically put most of their net worth into assets and stocks and then live off of loans, just like the comic I posted alludes to. Just because they don’t have literal piles of cash sitting around doesn’t mean they aren’t absurdly wealthy.
And let’s be honest, if a billionaire wanted a Scrooge McDuck style gold pile they could have it arranged within a week at most.
Paradoxical question, if they truly helped they would never be billionaires.
Contradiction in terms
