discussion how much money you think someone should posess before it become indecent

[User_198006]

if youve earned it ig thats fair but tbh i dont know how it would be possible to be a billionaire without exploiting people or the environment.

 

[lewdcorner1]

99% of financial success is pure luck.

Financial success is a combination of factors, not just luck. It's a mix of hard work, building your talent stack, strategic planning, and seizing opportunities when they arise.

Do you know any successful people? Have you ever asked them how they got successful? It's so easy to hate which you don't know.

Look at Joe Albertson. He opened his first Albertson's store in 1939. He came up with innovative ideas like free parking and shopping carts and money back guarantees. He took enormous risks and we're all better off because of it. Albertson's employs thousands of people and good for them! Now we can all get the groceries that we need to feed our families.

But guess what? He became a billionaire because of it. As he should. He should become a billionaire for the people he employs and for the risks he took and also the good he has done for our cities and the charity that he gives back to the community.

If you go from billionaire to billionaire, you will find similar stories. People who had really good ideas, were willing to risk it all to make those ideas happen, were able to employ 100,000 people, and made a lot of other people rich.

The question you need to ask is not how do you take money and things from other people. That's easy. That's theft. You do that when you are three years old. The questions you need to ask is: How do you create wealth? How do you create a successful economy? What sets affluent countries apart from countries that are struggling economically? Those are much harder questions.

 

[MattShizzle]

Financial success is a combination of factors, not just luck. It's a mix of hard work, building your talent stack, strategic planning, and seizing opportunities when they arise.

Do you know any successful people? Have you ever asked them how they got successful? It's so easy to hate which you don't know.

Look at Joe Albertson. He opened his first Albertson's store in 1939. He came up with innovative ideas like free parking and shopping carts and money back guarantees. He took enormous risks and we're all better off because of it. Albertson's employs thousands of people and good for them! Now we can all get the groceries that we need to feed our families.

But guess what? He became a billionaire because of it. As he should. He should become a billionaire for the people he employs and for the risks he took and also the good he has done for our cities and the charity that he gives back to the community.

If you go from billionaire to billionaire, you will find similar stories. People who had really good ideas, were willing to risk it all to make those ideas happen, were able to employ 100,000 people, and made a lot of other people rich.

The question you need to ask is not how do you take money and things from other people. That's easy. That's theft. You do that when you are three years old. The questions you need to ask is: How do you create wealth? How do you create a successful economy? What sets affluent countries apart from countries that are struggling economically? Those are much harder questions.

Hard work has nothing to do with it. The people who work the hardest make near nothing. The people who sit on their ass and move money around/tell others what to do make the most. Billionaires should not exist and there should be a maximum income gap between the richest and poorest citizens. Most rich were born into it. Redistribution of wealth is needed, especially in the more unfair countries like the US.

 

[lewdcorner1]

Hard work has nothing to do with it. The people who work the hardest make near nothing. The people who sit on their ass and move money around/tell others what to do make the most. Billionaires should not exist and there should be a maximum income gap between the richest and poorest citizens. Most rich were born into it. Redistribution of wealth is needed, especially in the more unfair countries like the US.

You are poor and unhappy. Rather than doing something about it, you want everyone else to be poor and unhappy too.

I get it. It's a rough way to go through life, but I get it.

 

[MattShizzle]

You are poor and unhappy. Rather than doing something about it, you want everyone else to be poor and unhappy too.

I get it. It's a rough way to go through life, but I get it.

No, I want to make it nobody can get too rich and nobody can get too poor. Economic inequality is a very bad thing. Nothing I can do about it being disabled, and you have to have money to make money - also being in the right circles, etc. I don't even know anyone who makes more than about 50K a year.

 

[Icaruslee]

there are no ethical billionaires. a billion is PLENTY.

 

[S7aard]

You are poor and unhappy. Rather than doing something about it, you want everyone else to be poor and unhappy too.

I get it. It's a rough way to go through life, but I get it.

Nobody who is rich is happy, they always want more, more, more at the expense of everyone else

 

[jbk304]

There was a great Ted talk a while ago from a guy that was very very rich. He wants the government to tax him more. Saying he owns houses all over the place. Has fancy cars for himself and each of his family members. Has all the fancy toys. And yet still keeps rolling in money. More then he can spend "I can only buy so many cars".

I think it's ok to be rich. You work hard or get lucky and make something people want to buy. But social programs are important for the health of all. And social programs require government funding. Government funding comes from their version of revenue. Which is taxes. Tax the rich, help the other 99%. When you cut taxes you cut gov revenue which cuts services you use or might need to use in the future.

 

[S7aard]

There was a great Ted talk a while ago from a guy that was very very rich. He wants the government to tax him more. Saying he owns houses all over the place. Has fancy cars for himself and each of his family members. Has all the fancy toys. And yet still keeps rolling in money. More then he can spend "I can only buy so many cars".

I think it's ok to be rich. You work hard or get lucky and make something people want to buy. But social programs are important for the health of all. And social programs require government funding. Government funding comes from their version of revenue. Which is taxes. Tax the rich, help the other 99%. When you cut taxes you cut gov revenue which cuts services you use or might need to use in the future.

Him not being taxed enough isn't an excuse, he could throw almost everything he has at non-profit charities and still be rolling in money, sports cars, private jets, and luxury houses.

If you have over a million dollars, you have too much

 

[lewdcorner1]

No, I want to make it nobody can get too rich and nobody can get too poor. Economic inequality is a very bad thing. Nothing I can do about it being disabled, and you have to have money to make money - also being in the right circles, etc. I don't even know anyone who makes more than about 50K a year.

Why work? If everyone gets paid the same, why would anyone work? Or if you set some arbitrary limit, why would anyone work beyond that limit?

 

[lewdcorner1]

There was a great Ted talk a while ago from a guy that was very very rich. He wants the government to tax him more. Saying he owns houses all over the place. Has fancy cars for himself and each of his family members. Has all the fancy toys. And yet still keeps rolling in money. More then he can spend "I can only buy so many cars".

I think it's ok to be rich. You work hard or get lucky and make something people want to buy. But social programs are important for the health of all. And social programs require government funding. Government funding comes from their version of revenue. Which is taxes. Tax the rich, help the other 99%. When you cut taxes you cut gov revenue which cuts services you use or might need to use in the future.

When your economy gets to the point where people are eating their own pets, people would get second thoughts about this. I'm referring, of course, to Venezuela where many people have lost weight because food is so difficult to find. Meanwhile their "dear leader", Maduro, has probably gained 50 pounds. That pretty much summarizes socialism. The top one percent, in this case, are the government ruling class or the cronies or the friends of government. The 99 percent are the people who starve.

Bernie Sanders likes to suggest that we set up a compassionate, kinder, gentler system like Scandinavia. Except the even the Scandinavian countries have turned from socialism. They privatized industries and repealed regulations. They have learned that socialism is one way trip to scarcity and poverty. In fact, the president of Denmark was in the U.S. recently and admonished Bernie. He said what Bernie is saying about Scandinavia is a lie. Bernie Sanders is even too socialist for even for Scandinavia.

I like a system where people have freedom to choose. I get to choose Target or Walmart, Coke or Pepsi, McDonalds or Panera Bread. There are always going to be winners and losers. As long as there is no coercion, its seems like that is the best way to distribute my money.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it's way better than the alternative. The track record for socialism is Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez, Pol Pot, Maduro. It doesn't work.

 

[MattShizzle]

When your economy gets to the point where people are eating their own pets, people would get second thoughts about this. I'm referring, of course, to Venezuela where many people have lost weight because food is so difficult to find. Meanwhile their "dear leader", Maduro, has probably gained 50 pounds. That pretty much summarizes socialism. The top one percent, in this case, are the government ruling class or the cronies or the friends of government. The 99 percent are the people who starve.

Bernie Sanders likes to suggest that we set up a compassionate, kinder, gentler system like Scandinavia. Except the even the Scandinavian countries have turned from socialism. They privatized industries and repealed regulations. They have learned that socialism is one way trip to scarcity and poverty. In fact, the president of Denmark was in the U.S. recently and admonished Bernie. He said what Bernie is saying about Scandinavia is a lie. Bernie Sanders is even too socialist for even for Scandinavia.

I like a system where people have freedom to choose. I get to choose Target or Walmart, Coke or Pepsi, McDonalds or Panera Bread. There are always going to be winners and losers. As long as there is no coercion, its seems like that is the best way to distribute my money.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it's way better than the alternative. The track record for socialism is Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez, Pol Pot, Maduro. It doesn't work.

Stalin was Stalinism and Hitler certainly wasn't. Actual Socialists and Communists were first in the camps. Capitalism is slavery. What's the difference between "work a particular horrible job or be killed" and "work some horrible job or starve/be homeless?" There's certainly a difference between self-described Communist (did the workers ever actually own the means of production anywhere in history) and simply not allowing the extreme excess of people being billionaires (or soon, trillionaires) while people in the some society starve or go hungry. Look at countries by GINI coefficient - the best countries have more equality the worst have the most inequality.

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[S7aard]

When your economy gets to the point where people are eating their own pets, people would get second thoughts about this. I'm referring, of course, to Venezuela where many people have lost weight because food is so difficult to find. Meanwhile their "dear leader", Maduro, has probably gained 50 pounds. That pretty much summarizes socialism. The top one percent, in this case, are the government ruling class or the cronies or the friends of government. The 99 percent are the people who starve.

Bernie Sanders likes to suggest that we set up a compassionate, kinder, gentler system like Scandinavia. Except the even the Scandinavian countries have turned from socialism. They privatized industries and repealed regulations. They have learned that socialism is one way trip to scarcity and poverty. In fact, the president of Denmark was in the U.S. recently and admonished Bernie. He said what Bernie is saying about Scandinavia is a lie. Bernie Sanders is even too socialist for even for Scandinavia.

I like a system where people have freedom to choose. I get to choose Target or Walmart, Coke or Pepsi, McDonalds or Panera Bread. There are always going to be winners and losers. As long as there is no coercion, its seems like that is the best way to distribute my money.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it's way better than the alternative. The track record for socialism is Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez, Pol Pot, Maduro. It doesn't work.

Why is everything you post complete and utter nonsense?

 

[lewdcorner1]

No, I want to make it nobody can get too rich and nobody can get too poor. Economic inequality is a very bad thing. Nothing I can do about it being disabled, and you have to have money to make money - also being in the right circles, etc. I don't even know anyone who makes more than about 50K a year.

If you don't make more than 50K, then you did something wrong. Horribly wrong.

Did your parents not read to you? You had 13 years of free education. What did you do with your time in school? Did you study hard or did you just stare out the window?

I know two kids who are going to school to become airline pilots. They both come from dirt poor families. One of them is getting a free ride from the Air Force. I know another kid who is learning a trade. Do you know how much a good plumber or electrician makes? If you can't afford college, a lot of schools will pay your way, especially if you are a top student.

Doctors, engineers, bank managers, accountants, they all make more than 50K. The good ones make way more than 50K. Why did pick a profession that makes less than 50K?

You have the power to make your life better. You need to stop drinking, lose weight, and spend less time on porn sites. Several colleges offer online courses for free. You can literally get on YouTube right now and learn a foreign language or how to program or how to fix your garbage disposal.

The American Dream is available to everyone. Quit your whining. You are not a victim. If you failed at life, you don't have to stay a failure. Being a failure is a choice. Make better choices. Look in the mirror. That's the person who can fix this for you.

 

[MattShizzle]

If you don't make more than 50K, then you did something wrong. Horribly wrong.

Did your parents not read to you? You had 13 years of free education. What did you do with your time in school? Did you study hard or did you just stare out the window?

I know two kids who are going to school to become airline pilots. They both come from dirt poor families. One of them is getting a free ride from the Air Force. I know another kid who is learning a trade. Do you know how much a good plumber or electrician makes? If you can't afford college, a lot of schools will pay your way, especially if you are a top student.

Doctors, engineers, bank managers, accountants, they all make more than 50K. The good ones make way more than 50K. Why did pick a profession that makes less than 50K?

You have the power to make your life better. You need to stop drinking, lose weight, and spend less time on porn sites. Several colleges offer online courses for free. You can literally get on YouTube right now and learn a foreign language or how to program or how to fix your garbage disposal.

The American Dream is available to everyone. Quit your whining. You are not a victim. If you failed at life, you don't have to stay a failure. Being a failure is a choice. Make better choices. Look in the mirror. That's the person who can fix this for you.

I have a degree, but could never get past interviews as I go into complete panic in them. You are completely out of touch with reality with how things are for the average person. I never made more than about $10/hour and now get about $1000/month Social Security. Trade schools are only good for those good with their hands. You are also talking about jobs that most people would never be capable of getting. Since the 1980s things have been getting worse in the US for everyone not rich, and now the US is 100% a Fascist country. I wish I could move to another developed country with sane politics.
And I said I don't even KNOW anyone who makes more than 50K a year - I don't move in those circles.

 

[BerryJ]

You are poor and unhappy. Rather than doing something about it, you want everyone else to be poor and unhappy too.

I get it. It's a rough way to go through life, but I get it.

This is one of the stupider takes in a thread full of stupid takes.

I'm neither poor nor unhappy. I was fortunate enough (yeah, mostly luck) that my first career path came into favor shortly after I got into it and started paying extraordinarily well. When I switched career paths through no fault of my own (was supposed to be bad luck, punishment even, at the time), I happened to get proficient at it and then it became one of the most sought after professions and paid even better. I've since retired and currently make enough in interest that I'm putting off social security until I'm forced to take it and my wealth actually grows faster than I can spend it. I'm still allowed to call Elon Musk a waste of fucking space. He happened to be hanging around rich (and evil, Hi Peter!) friends and made a shit ton of money. Then he forced his way into a car company (he did have good taste in where to spend Thiel's money) and rewrote its history through lies. When that wasn't enough, he continuously lied to investors about the current state of his technology, but was, by that point, apparently rich enough that the SEC doesn't seem to want to touch him. Elon was rich to start, was made richer by his friends, and got lucky multiple times along the way. Bezos isn't quite the idiot that Musk is, but he's pretty damn cruel and makes money off of the backs of his exploited employees. He was also lucky. AWS was originally just left over computing resources from running their retail site. Now it's probably the most profitable part of the company. Seems like a stroke of luck.

Regarding your Albertson's example, he got today's equivalent of $175,000 from his wife's aunt to launch his first store. Not sure everyone has such an aunt. Maybe he was just lucky. I'm also pretty sure he never was a billionaire, although his wife might have hit that mark or come close since she died a decade later.

If we have to have billionaires, can they all just be like Gaben?

There are hard working poor people, and people like myself who sit around and argue on porn sites while making money. I for one wish for everyone to have a good minimal baseline, plenty of food, shelter, medical care, etc. THAT would make me happy.

If you don't make more than 50K, then you did something wrong. Horribly wrong.

Or he/she lives in a country where 50k will buy you a mansion. Or they got into a field that went to shit for reasons beyond their control. Or they couldn't finish school back in the day because their sick mom needed full time care. Or they don't value money, but enjoy their work greatly. Or a million other things. You (and I) have no insight into their private life, other than what they actually share, and what happiness they may or may not enjoy.

 

[lcflex]

What can a person reasonably "earn" through their own efforts, without exploiting others? Any more than that is obscene. I don't know where that line should be drawn. Definitely before $1M US per year in income, from all sources, labor, rent, interest, capital gains. Wherever that line is drawn for income, 20x that for total accumulated wealth.

 

[BerryJ]

What can a person reasonably "earn" through their own efforts, without exploiting others? Any more than that is obscene. I don't know where that line should be drawn. Definitely before $1M US per year in income, from all sources, labor, rent, interest, capital gains. Wherever that line is drawn for income, 20x that for total accumulated wealth.

While I agree with the principle of finding the line above which exploitation is required, there are some simpler ways of at least making a decent amount of progress in raising the baseline:

Tax loans that are secured with unrealized capital gains. A dirty secret is that long-term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than the equivalent income would face. If I make a billion in capital gains, I still only pay 20%. A single taxpayer hits a marginal rate of 22% at only 48K and it just goes up from there. It's not really fair (I benefit from this, but it's still unfair). What gets worse is that many rich people don't even want to pay that measly 20% because they are greedy fucks who got theirs. They take out loans secured with the profits that their investments have made, thus getting cash to work with, but not having to cash out those investments which would trigger capital gains. Then, when they die, their estate pays back that loan, but due to "stepped up basis" laws, their inheritance is not hit with a capital gains tax. There is no world in which this should be legal. If you take away that loophole, you get quite a bit more tax money to work with. If you make capital gains be treated as income, you get a metric shit-ton more in taxes.

You'll hear people argue that if you treat capital gains as income, people will stop investing. Those people are stupid fucks and should not be listened to. As I tell my wife, I'd much rather pay 90% of a billion dollars than 20% of a million, so I will happily keep on investing as long as I make more over time than I would by putting in under my mattress.

The other quick fix is to remove the FICA max. FICA is that bucket of taxes that pays for Social Security and Medicare. All employees pay 6.2% of their income and all employers match that, so 12.4% of your gross income is taken for that. The problem is when I said all employees, I was not completely correct. People who make over $176,100, which is roughly 10% of the population (yes a shit ton of people make good money) only pay 6.2% of $176,100 in tax. If they make $176,100 they pay $10,918 dollars. If they make $5,000,000,000 they pay $10,918 dollars. So this tax actually becomes regressive, i.e. poor people pay a higher percentage than the rich. Eliminate the cap and all of this talk about Social Security and Medicare insolvency gets fixed real fast.

 

[BerryJ]

Nobody who is rich is happy, they always want more, more, more at the expense of everyone else

I don't really agree with this. I do agree that money doesn't necessarily buy happiness, but plenty of happy people do have money. In the other direction, having little money certainly takes some happiness away, but many families do seem to do a good job of trying to find the little joys where they can. I also think your cap of a million might be a bit low. An excellent data scientist today can make that in a year without any employees under them to exploit. I'm okay with them making that, I just want them to pay appropriate taxes to fund a better society.

Why work? If everyone gets paid the same, why would anyone work? Or if you set some arbitrary limit, why would anyone work beyond that limit?

If anyone in this thread has made the claim that all jobs should pay identically, show me the link so that I can call them out. Since I haven't seen it, in the meantime I'll assume you just made it up and my response is that the Gini Coefficient isn't an integer limited to 0 and 1. The current US number is around 0.42 or so. I wouldn't mind so much if we got that down to 0.2 or so. For the record, a hell of a lot of people work without needing the money. I mean, even the Cheeto-**** could have just fucked off to some island (I hear one might be available in the US Virgin Islands) and gotten "massages" from 13 year olds for life, but he chose to keep "working" instead.

Yes, I get the irony of calling out the Cheeto-**** on a smol-oriented website, but the vast majority here understand that they are just fantasizing and have no desire to take that back to reality.

Bernie Sanders likes to suggest that we set up a compassionate, kinder, gentler system like Scandinavia. Except the even the Scandinavian countries have turned from socialism.

That's not really how that all went down. Bernie Sanders likes to use the word socialism but has never actually proposed a true socialist system. He's just a bit sloppy with his verbiage at times. What Bernie really wants, and what the Danes actually have is a market economy with a very strong social safety net. They didn't turn away from socialism as they were never there. They don't seem to have any desire to eliminate the social programs that they have in place either. That very strong social safety net is the primary thing Bernie has been pushing for most of his life. Universal Health Care, for instance, doesn't make the government socialist, even though it's a socialist policy. The US has many socialist programs already in place, such as public schools and the interstate system. We could have Universal Healthcare, Universal Basic Income, Free College. No one claims we're a socialist country because of them. If you really want to learn more, there are books about this stuff. Getting your viewpoints off of 4-chan /pol or reddit /conservative is not really helping you with your understanding of government.

 

[lewdcorner1]

If anyone in this thread has made the claim that all jobs should pay identically, show me the link so that I can call them out.

Post #65: "Economic inequality is a very bad thing"

No one said all jobs should pay the same. What is being argued is that all incomes are the same. That is what it means to get rid of economic inequality. In other words, if you make $100,000 and I make zero, we should both get $50,000. It's an absurd proposal but I can understand why it might sound attractive to the person making zero.

There are other people who are arguing that government should redistribute SOME of the money. So, if you make $100,000 and I make zero, maybe you get to keep $75,000 and I get $25,000. You might see a difference but I don't. It just depends on what degree of tyranny you want to impose on people.