The super-wealthy are a cancer on society, and just like cancer, they suck up all of the resources while killing the patient.
Good, I agree.
He has painted a target on his own back though and he should be careful, lest he gets JFK’d or RFK’d.
Billionaires are a byproduct of the capitalist system. People will always try to hoard money. What governments should try is to appropriately tax people according to their wealth, material possessions, assets etc and not merely because they earn money beyond a certain arbitrary threshold. In order to do this governments have to spy on their own people. And this will make many people mad.
I agree with him. there’s no morally good reason to be hoarding that much money
Mera bhai <3
Had anyone ever said yet… Lin Manuel Mayoranda
I hope he goes far and makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Brave man in a moment that needs brave people.
We shouldn’t. And he thinks that too. Cool.
It’s inspiring to see Americans are still fighting the good fight.
Order to eliminate all billionaires confirmed! To the Priuses, we ride!
*lift sword out window
*slowly pull away from curb with loud prius humming noise
/s I dont advicate violence and I agree billionaire level accrual of wealth shouldnt happen. When it does it should be taxed like FDR did it. We’ve never done so well as a country than when we had real progressive taxation. When Maga people talk about making america great agin, thats the era they are thinking about, when a single worker could support a whole family and buy a house and raise kids with a normal job, and a normals job was respected.
BREAKING: Worlds most based man strikes again
He’s absolutely right. Billionaires should not exist.
Wealth concentration is bad for everyone but the wealthy. https://inequality.org/facts/
IDK even they don’t seem happy. Elon seems fucking miserable. I mean, I don’t feel bad for them, but knowing that literally everyone thinks the world would be a better place without you can’t feel great.
And one of the reasons why there’s so much more wealth inequality now is what conservatives have done to the tax code. Take a loot at this chart on the highest tax bracket over time.
Yes! Let’s stop this modern day slavery.
He’s going for the martyr angle already. Shame…
It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to believe that’s a controversial opinion. Most people will never meet a billionaire in their lifetime, let alone become one.
I have met two minor billionaires in my life. They were both clearly involved in some sort of organized crime activity. And both Trump supporters before it was cool.
What is the other sides’ argument for why we SHOULD have billionaires?
Genuinely asking if they have anything tough to contend with or is it just another critical avoidance of theirs?I usually get some variation of “They worked hard and deserve the reward. We shouldn’t take that away from them, they earned it fairly.” Yes, it’s infuriating.
The argument for billionaires is “why should the government be allowed to set arbitrary caps on the amount of wealth you can accumulate” which I generally agree with, but it’s clear that wealth hoarding has become a problem. Maybe we say that the most you can keep is 1 billion. Once per year, any personal wealth over 1 billion is surrendered. So you can earn as much money as you want, but you need to spend it or surrender it.
I can imagine an argument for certain artists that are so beloved that their art sells globally or they entertain at a massive scale. Think Taylor Swift, or LeBron James. You can wrangle over the specifics of any individual, of course, but in theory that seems reasonable to me on the face of it. I can also imagine a persuasive argument for a business tycoon that builds up his workforce along with his own coffers and keeps them wanting for nothing. But the circumstances around that are pretty far fetched as far as the typical sociopathic billionaire tycoon goes.
AFAIK even seemingly successful musicians often don’t really make out with much cash. They incur a lot of costs even under the most “honest” industry contracts. Then there are cases of getting blatantly scammed like the Backstreet Boys or George Clinton.
I’d imagine it’s just the argument for capitalism. You know, profit incentive increasing efficiency and productivity and all that. Now this stuff is true to an extent (though a lot of politically active Lemmy likes to pretend otherwise), but all the good stuff happens before a single person reaches a billion dollars so if that’s the idea it would pretty much fall flat on its face.
What is the other sides’ argument for why we SHOULD have billionaires?
They think they’ll get a chance to bootstrap themselves into being one.
