Only 72%?
friendly reminder, it would take 1,460,714,285 weeks of minimum wage to earn musks net worth. That’s 27 million years.
Friendly reminder that even someone making $1M per year today still has less true buying power than a 10 year old child laborer earning $1 per hour in the late 1950s
It ain’t about “having too much”. Billionaires shouldn’t exist. Ipso facto, their very existence only shows that corruption and greed can influence anything to point that whatever that thing is only serves those corrupted. End it. There should be no Billionaires.
In other words, a billion is too much money for one person to have.
It’s the POWER that a billion bucks holds that’s dangerous. We now have numerous billionaires with enough money to negotiate their own terms with foreign governments, without regard to how it might affect America as a whole. Eventually, world-wide power will be held by the Sociopathic Oligarchs, and instead of countries regulating THEM, they’ll be regulating the countries to suit their own selfish purposes.
And eventually, that will lead to Sociopathic Oligarchs making conflicting demands, and they’ll end up going to war with each other, with countries and citizens caught in the crossfire.
And this is precisely why a billion is too much money for one person to have.
The rich have too much by definition, but billionaires in America have an historically obscene amount of wealth. Wealth inequality in today’s America has surpassed pre-Revolution France.
Why is rich too much? Why can’t we all be rich?
It is a zero sum game. The rich are addicted to power over others despite data showing that even they would be happier in a more equitable society (see TED talk by Richard Wilkinson called “Spirit Level”).
It’s not a zero sum game. If someone is unemployed, they become employed and create some goods or services, they both can spend more money and the business can sell it for more money than they pay out as salary
So you have created wealth that didn’t exist before. It is possible for everyone to be rich, provided we automate enough tasks that nobody is wasting time on menial labor
The money supply is fixed. Government prints money but not to cover new jobs. It is all about transfer of wealth.
We could all be moderately wealthy if Billionaires were not a thing. Basic Income is perhaps feasible too.
Economist Gary Stevenson explains it well. He has over a million views of each video on YouTube.
He is working class as fuck but graduated from LSE & Oxford and then made millions since 2008 betting that inequality will rise and that most people will be worse off. He was the most successful trader for Citibank but quit in disgust and to reveal the scam to the public. Now with a best-selling book.
The government lowers interest rates to increase economic growth and when the inflation is low. Lending increases the money supply because banks are not required to have full reserves. So yes, the Fed actually increases the effective money supply at the correct rate depending on whether they want the economy to grow or to control inflation
The supply in circulation. Bonds are promissory notes. I don’t think the money disappears from ledgers.
The fractional reserve is fixed AFAIK.
Circulation doesn’t matter. Let me give you adb example.
Let’s say my mom sells her house. The buyer takes out a loan from the bank. My mom gets $300,000 in cash to her bank account, the buyer loses 20% down payment so he’s down $60,000. The bank reserves 10% which is $24,000
Suddenly the economy just got a boost of $300,000 - $60,000 - $24,000 = $216,000
When my mom spends that money, it goes to the bank accounts of businesses so it just stays as numbers. Nobody needs to take any cash out, but everyone gets richer
no shit Capt. obvious
72% is way too low given how insane the current wealth distribution is. Fully 1/4 of the population have drunk the kool-aid
I think more than 3% of the population considers themselves rich
Most people don’t think of it this way, but if you live in North America or Europe, you are part of the global 1%.
“I’m going to be rich, soon” they say while they’re considering payment plans for a Taco Bell order.
Where the fuck were they during the election?
Dumbfucks believed the orange guy who was sitting in front of the billionaires. Lets not forget that a third of the us isn’t capable of reading above the 6th grade level.
It’s more about lack of Critical Thinking Skills than anything else.
And yet, about half of voting Americans will actively ignore those impulses and choose a party that openly campaigns on tax reductions while it drums up fears surrounding issues they largely agree with (when presented in a non-partisan context) so does it really matter what they say?
Well to be fair they also know democrats only say they will fix the issue and then immediately do the same things the republicans do because they just cannot do without that sweet corporate cheddar.
I figure their logic is that at least the republicans are honest about it.
That’s the narrative pushed by Russia anyway.
do the same things the republicans
I missed the part where the Democrats were cutting social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And repealing the ACA. And attacking LGBTQ people. And deploying the military against American civilians. And sending people to foreign gulags en mass without trial. And attacking voting rights.
Yep, they sure are the same.
While you are 100% correct, the Dems could definitely fight much harder to get what they claim they want. My son, and his friends, all felt betrayed when Biden’s college loan forgiveness program was shot down, and they just said “Oh well,” and dropped the subject, rather than fight for another way. They felt they had been lied to for their vote, and when they were told they couldn’t have loan forgiveness just before the 2024 election, you can see why they weren’t real thrilled to be voting for the guy who wouldn’t help them, but would gladly help Netanyahu commit genocide.
If only the Dems were as committed to forcing their agenda through as they are to having one of their ancient, old school, neo-liberal losers as president. That seems to be all they really care about.
That was what Trump campaigned on wasn’t it? So contrary to democrats who usually don’t deliver in their promises Trump can at least says that he tries damn hard to deliver on his promises.
I know this will be conflated to me being supportive of what he does. So let me clarify that I’m not endorsing it, I’m just stating the fact that Trump goes so far as to break the law in order to deliver his promises, while democrats work really hard to maintain the status quo even while having legal and political power to make real change. This is part of his appeal, a detail which should not be lost on democrats.
So contrary to democrats who usually don’t deliver in their promises Trump can at least says that he tries damn hard to deliver on his promises.
I know this will be conflated to me being supportive of what he does. So let me clarify that I’m not endorsing it, I’m just stating the fact that Trump goes so far as to break the law in order to deliver his promises, while democrats work really hard to maintain the status quo even while having legal and political power to make real change. This is part of his appeal, a detail which should not be lost on democrats.
We’re pretty much in agreement here. I simply disagree that Democrats do the same things as Republicans when in office. While I may vehemently disagree with most of their strategy, the Democratic party isnt nearly as big of a threat as the GOP.
Same thing in terms of being bought by lobbyists (although Elon’s influence is unprecedented).
Same thing in terms of refusing to reform one of the worst voting systems on the planet.
Same in terms of insider trading (Trump is more blatant and doesn’t mind if he tanks the economy in the process).
Same in terms of ignoring https://patrioticmillionaires.org/
They are literally not as bad as the GOP on all of those issues, and you even pointed that out on half of them.
I stand by my point.
If you can’t tell the difference between Biden and Trump, then you need to quit sniffing glue.
I know it, do low information voters know it? They are the ones that decide who wins.
Dems downvoting you are ignoring why Trump won. At their peril.[Edit: I see in a later comment that you clarified and people here do get it.]
Dems laugh at his meandering speech but the MAGA’s appreciate he is not scripted and one actually can understand what he is on about. It looks demented on paper but it is actually how a lot of people speak. You don’t need to complete your sentence if you have got the message across . MAGA think we are stupid for getting confused with our comprehension.
In the GOP primaries he mocked his competitors on stage saying that he has given many donations to politicians and the favours will be returned, even the ones on stage with him. MAGA loved the openness of the corruption.
What I don’t get is why they thought he would “drain the swamp”?
45% of voting age Americans didn’t even fucking bother to vote
Well, a lot of them decided the genocide half way across the world was more important than the genocide they would help to trigger back home.
How any didn’t vote, and how many were removed from voter rolls or didn’t have the right ID or were gerrymandered or
And they won’t next time either. Stop worrying about them and focus on those who do vote.
Right but not for the reasons you think. I’m not counting on there being a next time at this rate.
This is real defeatist.
There are absolutely people who will not vote no matter what. But folks are being actively disenfranchised and making it easy to vote by a proven secure method has become a political issue because a few who have power wield it without responsibility. Hell, if Election Day was a national holiday (as in, EVERYTHING is closed or by law folks are able to take time off to vote with proof of doing so) you’d probably see a substantial bump alone.
6% said “the poor have too much”
wat
The ones who organized the republicans
Are you not aware that poor people have smartphones these days? Back in my day being poor meant having absolutely nothing. I say we take their phones away and their shoes too for good measure. That way they’ll know what true poverty is like /s
Are 6% of respondents 12-year-olds that identify as “your dad’s a cuck”?
Mentally, about 45 % of the voting population are exactly that.
Fucking reruns. I’ve seen this one before.
This is the one that ends with rich people’s heads in baskets.
No, this one ends with these same people continuing to vote for Republicans because they’re awful people.
I wish but I dunno… Occupy Wall St fell apart, and I think without a dedicated leftist group organization this is bound to fail as well. The red scare broke any chance of a labor party in the country for generations, and assuming we survive the current dictator (and I’m somewhat optimistic so let’s go with that), I think we’ll be back to status quo soon enough. There was a brief period during lockdown where even normies could somewhat tell that money is all just kinda made up, but that’s a distant memory at this point.
I think the absolute limit of what we can realistically hope for during a regime change is better health care, and don’t get me wrong that would be a huge step in the right direction. But otherwise I don’t have much expectation that we’ll stop being wage slaves, let alone be eating the rich any time soon.
In related news, 28% of Americans are complete and utter fucking morons.
Anytime there’s a shitty statistic, it’s often always around 25-35%
So 1/3 people completely fuckin sucks. This tracks with my anecdotal data
In my experience, around 57% of statistics are made up.
28% of Americans think they are billionaires that are just suffering a temporary financial setback.
“If it wasn’t for those Democrats, we’d all be rich!”
Be nice if they fucking voted that way.
There was no voting that way, that’s the whole damn problem. Neither candidate promised to do anything substantial about wealth inequality.
The survey only involved like 950 people and it only defined it as, “the rich” which seems pretty vague. Given the survey also mentions Bezos and Musk it wouldn’t surprise me if that is the group having too much on this survey, not humble millionaires like you and me.
Don’t forget all of the people who will certainly be millionaires in the future! They will definitely not be middle class and delusional for the rest of their lives
Middle-class people will be millionaires.
$1M equates to $40k/year income in retirement at a 4% SWR (safe withdrawal rate). In 2025, that’s not actually a lot, even if you have Social Security on top of it.
If you’re not a millionaire by the time you’re retired, you’re damn near impoverished. The only way for that to count as “middle class” (in the “close to the median income” sense) is if the middle class is destroyed (in the “existing separate and distinct from the lower class” sense).
(INB4 somebody chimes in with “it never was separate and distinct” – yeah, yeah, I know, working-class solidarity and all that. But you get my point, right?)
This reminds me of France back in the day when an Irish revolutionary by the name of Gil O’Tine fixed the rich vs. poor imbalance, at least for a little while.
I guess their solid grasp of racism and bigotry always wins
