The point is that 1 million is a big number (or a lot of money), as is 1 billion. But 1 billion is so big, it makes 1 million seem small by comparison. 1 thousand is not a big number.
Honestly, probably the only way to save the Environment and Democracy. Too much power in the hands of the few leads to perpetual effective monarchy. It's why the Founding Fathers were against large amounts of inherited wealth, particularly inherited wealth that creates dynasties in perpetuity.
I know people don't like the Founding Fathers that much lately, and I see why, but conservatives really don't understand them, and deliberately misrepresent them, because not doing so would undercut all conservative "policies".
World's a mess because of inequality and the concentration of almost all wealth and power into the hands of a small amount of sociopaths. I honestly think the only way to solve this permanently is to cap the amount of wealth and power any individual or family can have.
I’m actually ok with wealthy people being wealthy, but when they took over the government as a way to make even more money at our expense is where I draw the line. We need to take back regulatory power, it’s the only thing that can compete at today’s scale.
Wealth is power. If you allow a tiny sliver of society to amass society warping levels of it, this is the outcome. There need to be limits and controls, or this will always happen.
We need to recognize that janitors are also integral and valuable. An MBA large company well paid executive doesn't provide value to society in general, only private shareholders.
You ever see those comments on youtube that describe themselves as future entrepreneurs or whatever and absolutely slobber over shitty companies and rich people? Makes me cringe so fucking hard
Many years ago, I used to work in infosec. One of my employer's clients was a big and famous brand well-established in the luxury sector. One day, a colleague of mine was sent to test their POS. Inside one, he found a single transaction for around 6M € from a credit card swipe. It wasn't a payment made from a bank transfer or a check, just a single credit card swipe! At the time, I couldn't even dream a card with such a credit allowance would exist. I had a pretty good living then, with money for the rent, daily expenses, and even some savings. Still, for an instant, I remember feeling like a poor child living in a house made of mud.
I agree. Seeing stuff like that and how, more often than not, the clients treated their employees and consultants was just bad for the soul. In such contexts, you understand why workers aren't called people but "resources." In the end, I got burned out and quit the job.
None of this, anywhere, exists by any other means than chance. The entire universe has no reason to exist. It has no reason to not exist.
It also showcases the most unique thing about awareness of the human problem - If the meaning of life isn't a thing, what is it? Well, maybe it's not a question to be answered, but a journey to be experienced.
So we can say "well, fuck, we'll be miserable forever." Or, we can individually ask if we are ok with that, and if we aren't, how can we influence this journey to be worth experiencing?
i feel you, but i keep living just in case this ever changes. getting a job is unironically one of the best things i did for my mental health. helps paying for my hobbies too, still not enough to move out though. my solution is to endure and wait until i can sustain living on my own.
it's hard, i lie in bed every evening unable to sleep thinking about how everything's rigged against me. seeing no reason to live is perfectly rational.
but i don't want to end up in a statistic no one's going to do anything about. that's not what i do. i have a few things that distract me from the thoughts, but it's a constant flow of reasons why i don't want to live here anymore.
Depression is one hell of a mental illness. unfortunately, the cure is normal living conditions. and that's not happening anytime soon.
hang in there, and maybe you can look back on your life and say "i'm glad i stayed".
you're pretty much the only one who can do anything about it. don't seek immediate success, make little steps. next time you get a productivity boost, go for a walk. clean up your room a little.
and most importantly, prove life wrong. giving up is not why you exist.
If you can afford it, may be worth trying to get a check for mental health, because lack of willpower may as well be because of depression or other issues. For me getting treatment had changed a lot (even though rn it is kinda bad again but not that bad)
Thanks for replying. I don't think I'll get checked up not only due to financial struggles right now, but also not having strength to do anything. I'm just going on with life, day by day, month by month, year by year. If I'm correct with my terminology, I'm burnt out.
I recommend visiting Gapminder. For example the Dollar Street, where you can get an inside how different life around the world is, depending on income.
Also, it's various other statistical tools like this animated graph, where you can see the billionaires running away to the right. Also interesting is the short blip of people having more wealth at around 1980 - 2010, which immediately got sucked back into "slightly right of extreme poverty mountain".
I truly applaud your mental fortitude. I honestly had to stop scrolling through your info graphic after passing the malaria part. I simply couldn't take it all in at once. I will come back to it tomorrow and take in another chunk of it, I'll see how far I get then but I intend to take it all in albeit in bite sized chunks.
Keep it up and I'll be looking for more of your projects later if I can handle it. The world is truly broken but I'm a firm believer that eventually we the common people will open our eyes to it and enact change. I don't know how and I wish I knew how to contribute to that in some way even though I don't believe I have the power within the current system.
I have a friend that used to be super into watching morbid stuff like gore and snuff videos. He stopped a few years ago and last time I asked him he told me that he can't handle them anymore, same goes for another person I know.
In my case I've never been able to watch too much of those things, but I know I'm able to handle situations where blood and stuff is involved as I've studied anatomy with dead human bodies and also worked with injured people. I like to think I've had a bit of a healthier relationship with the effects of violence on humans.
"It has to stop" I agree. But how do I make it stop? There's a lot of talking about what is the issue and its consequences, I say this also for climate change. But they don't say what can we do about it
See, this is the fucking problem right here. You are a commoner. The person you replied to is a commoner. Compared to the ultra rich anybody but that tiny tiny subset of people are commoners. As long as we keep name calling and pointing fingers at each other this shit will never change and we'll be rolling around in the mud until we all fry under the sun.
I understand your frustration, we all feel the same way. Let's direct that frustration at the people and the system that is telling us to turn on each other simply so we are blind to how we're all being played for fools.
A possible solution could be to limit the personal (family?) wealth, fortune, possession, etc. to for example 100 million.
That should be enough to live a luxury lifestyle and give your children’s children a ‘care free life’.
Everything above that amount goes to the aid of the less fortunate, public and social improvements, energy transition, solving pollution problems, etc. (worldwide).
In exchange you get a certificate with: “Congratulations you won capitalism!”
P.S.
When you ‘cheat’ you get 1 dollar (or equivalent) and may start over.
In addition and not exclusive of all possible legal proceedings.
P.P.S.
The above is just an example to illustrate that there are possibilities. But this doesn’t solve all problems of inequality or everything else that is wrong on this planet.
P.P.P.S.
Too many people think the have the possibility to also collect wealth above the 100 million ( or think they are entitled to an amount above that). They will protest and vote against any such solution.
(I’m not talking about those 400 Americans from the website graphic).
Reminder that the money is printed out of thin air and it's not really that we need anyone's stored wealth. Not even liquidating a mansion or ten from a billionaire, or from all billionaires, is going to solve our problems. Sure they are worth a lot to one person, but how much is a mansion worth to society in effect? Not much really.
The system is designed to have poor people. It must so that there is incentive to work. Otherwise we would have to force people to work. I'm not trying to justify the ways things are, I just don't see going after stored wealth as solving the problem especially when it is not their assets we need or their made up currency.
Not to be fatalistic deliberately, but what can we do about it? If we try to take on the system individually, we face the Plucky Ninja problem. If we try to coordinate, it's too big a movement to keep secret, so the rich and powerful can subvert it before we get anywhere. (They're doing a pretty good job of it already.)
I think their question is more about how we would implement that. Marx believed that proletariat uprising would be the "how," and that it is an inevitability of end stage capitalism. But the nature of capitalism keeps people from attempting that. This is a system that we are forced to participate in if we want to survive. We need food and shelter and we don't want to get arrested and/or murdered by cops for revolting. With that in mind, we have to get to a point where we collectively have nothing left to lose.
As a Discord user, I am sad if this person took the username of the real spez, it means spez cannot use his username anymore :( no one would ever do that, it must therefore be the real one
::: spoiler Spoliers! You owe it to yourself experience it first without anyone else's comments, it only takes a few minutes.
An extremely powerful infographic, well designed and well sourced. I love how after they said everything they said, they leave you to keep scrolling the last third of the 3 trillion. No more commentary, just letting the scale of it sink in.
Though, something I wish they touched on in the infographic itself is rebuking the argument of "all that money is tied up in stocks! they don't have that much money sitting around!" There are plenty of issues with that rebuttal of course and it's not actually a valid defense of the ultra rich, but it's a common enough counter that I think it warrants being mentioned to cover all your bases so to speak.
:::
That's actually the best argument I read against this. I will be honest, I was thinking the same while scrolling, but this page made me think differently.
I went to that link and it was horrible, no the site is simple it's just when it went to Bezos ... then look at all the things we could have to make things better (free healthcare, free college, etc) just sickening.
And actually he does not have any money because its just his assets and what other people think they are worth but he is actually quite poor because he immediately spends all the money he makes to invest into new ideas to make the world an even better place for everyone.
Comparing myself to the ultra rich doesn't affect me any more than comparing myself to super athletes. It's the people around me that matters and they're not significantly more wealthy than me. You'll never be content in your life if this is the bar to reach.
Except pro athletes don't earn more than the rest of the world combined. Pro athletes don't control the prices of everything you've ever bought or rented. Pro athletes don't supply the politicians with enough legal bribes in a corrupt system that they're effectively in charge of the country.
If you don't think billionaires sucking up all the resources and political power matters to your daily life, you're either delusional or wilfully blind.
I wasn't talking about the wealth of pro athletes but their athletic capabilities. Your workouts will be miserable for the rest of your life if those are the people you're comparing yourself to.
The point is that the astronomical levels of income and wealth of centimillionaires and billionaires aren't possible without ruining society in thousands of ways that DO affect YOU directly and profoundly whether or not you're actively comparing yourself to anyone.
I think that the comparison is a bit flawed in the way that comparing pretty much any of us to one of the super-rich is more akin to comparing a patient in a state of clinical death to the Warhammer 40k™ top-tier warriors, not just pro athletes
If I were to dedicate all my life to sports I would maybe make it into the pro level during the lifespan, even if that would mean that I'd have to choose some sport that allows old people 🌚
I I were to continue working the way I work today and get a hundred times raise in payment, it would take me about 60 thousands of years to get what Jeff has and that is if I don't eat or rent a flat anymore.
That's quite a bit of difference, don't you think?
Yeah, it's the lifetime theoretical reward for highly skilled work vs what someone has right now.
You might think "that's just on paper", but cut it by 10 and it's still a nonsensical comparison. The scale is insane
It's a moon base built ASAP. It's build a floating country in the Atlantic the size of Delaware. It's buy a prefab house for everyone in the US who is renting or homeless. It's give everyone in the world a plane ticket to anywhere they want, round trip. It's build a maglev train network across a continent. It's wake up every day, go anywhere, and buy a new house at such an insane price the existing owner would agree to leave within the hour. It's build something the scale of the Washington monument at every rest stop across the US
These aren't things that would use up the wealth, these are things individuals could do, then go on to live the most extravagant possible life. Sure, a lot of these things would require careful planning and take decades if you actually wanted to do them, but that's the scale we're looking at - it's choose an issue and affect global change kind of money.
Yeah, wealth, income, and lifetime projected income are all very different things, it's apples and oranges. Except it's more like a single apple against every orange ever eaten - the sheer difference in scale makes any comparison meaningless. Simply spending their wealth, in any way, would drastically change the lives of countless people for the better
If they spent their 'wealth' they'd have to convert their assets into cash, making it income, their wealth is shares in the companies they built. If they sold their shares the prices would tank
Those companies employee millions of people who receive income and pay taxes on it
They also get stock options regularly and dividends...plenty of people have started successful businesses after gaining sufficient wealth.
So, if we convince billionaires to sell all of their company slowly it'll all be fine? That's your logic?
A, why the fuck would they do that?
B, the shareholders via the board make the decisions, you think they'll be happy with a CEO who has no skin on the game? And would have to be compensated by fuck tons of cash, which would hurt the business
My logic is that not every "successful business" is worth billions. And maybe there's sense in doing something with ones that are, like split them into several businesses that are not owned by a single person
Otherwise you might have known that repeating something that is blindingly obvious to everyone and also completely besides the point is not an effective counter-argument.
If you earn 10m over your lifetime, spend 3m on living, buy a house for 1m, pay 1m into a index linked pension you'd end up with wealth as well as income. I.e. > 10m
That's why it's always important to compare like for like.
Wealth is not income, income can create wealth. Wealth can create income, they are still not the same thing
But seeing as this place has more than its fair share of tankies, I'm not surprised at the economic illiteracy on show.
Do you know what the difference is between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion.
A million seconds is 11.574 days, a billion seconds is 31.7 years
I always think it as the difference between a nice vacation and a whole generation.
I'm saving this one 👍
Do you know what the difference is between a thousand and a million? About a million.
It's almost as if there's a pattern in how we name large numbers 🤔🤔🤔
The point is that 1 million is a big number (or a lot of money), as is 1 billion. But 1 billion is so big, it makes 1 million seem small by comparison. 1 thousand is not a big number.
Unless you're talking about the number of spiders on your face
That's great
It’s interesting that the wealth bar of the 400 richest Americans is about 6-times as long as the author needs to say some interesting points.
I’d argue that’s another good argument for seizing their assets and making them pay for their asshole behaviour.
The owner's deluded peasants would never allow that.
Honestly, probably the only way to save the Environment and Democracy. Too much power in the hands of the few leads to perpetual effective monarchy. It's why the Founding Fathers were against large amounts of inherited wealth, particularly inherited wealth that creates dynasties in perpetuity.
I know people don't like the Founding Fathers that much lately, and I see why, but conservatives really don't understand them, and deliberately misrepresent them, because not doing so would undercut all conservative "policies".
World's a mess because of inequality and the concentration of almost all wealth and power into the hands of a small amount of sociopaths. I honestly think the only way to solve this permanently is to cap the amount of wealth and power any individual or family can have.
I’m actually ok with wealthy people being wealthy, but when they took over the government as a way to make even more money at our expense is where I draw the line. We need to take back regulatory power, it’s the only thing that can compete at today’s scale.
Wealth is power. If you allow a tiny sliver of society to amass society warping levels of it, this is the outcome. There need to be limits and controls, or this will always happen.
We need to recognize that janitors are also integral and valuable. An MBA large company well paid executive doesn't provide value to society in general, only private shareholders.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html
Our society's values and incentives are perverse and self-destructive.
You ever see those comments on youtube that describe themselves as future entrepreneurs or whatever and absolutely slobber over shitty companies and rich people? Makes me cringe so fucking hard
You put that perfectly. Thank you.
Many years ago, I used to work in infosec. One of my employer's clients was a big and famous brand well-established in the luxury sector. One day, a colleague of mine was sent to test their POS. Inside one, he found a single transaction for around 6M € from a credit card swipe. It wasn't a payment made from a bank transfer or a check, just a single credit card swipe! At the time, I couldn't even dream a card with such a credit allowance would exist. I had a pretty good living then, with money for the rent, daily expenses, and even some savings. Still, for an instant, I remember feeling like a poor child living in a house made of mud.
When there are so many that don't have their needs met this is pretty disgusting
I agree. Seeing stuff like that and how, more often than not, the clients treated their employees and consultants was just bad for the soul. In such contexts, you understand why workers aren't called people but "resources." In the end, I got burned out and quit the job.
Now This is Doom Scrolling.
I've lost the will to live. Why do this place even exist?
There is no reason
That's the best part!
None of this, anywhere, exists by any other means than chance. The entire universe has no reason to exist. It has no reason to not exist.
It also showcases the most unique thing about awareness of the human problem - If the meaning of life isn't a thing, what is it? Well, maybe it's not a question to be answered, but a journey to be experienced.
So we can say "well, fuck, we'll be miserable forever." Or, we can individually ask if we are ok with that, and if we aren't, how can we influence this journey to be worth experiencing?
That's quite lovely.
It's just mindless competition
i feel you, but i keep living just in case this ever changes. getting a job is unironically one of the best things i did for my mental health. helps paying for my hobbies too, still not enough to move out though. my solution is to endure and wait until i can sustain living on my own.
I don't see the hope you see, unfortunately.
it's hard, i lie in bed every evening unable to sleep thinking about how everything's rigged against me. seeing no reason to live is perfectly rational.
but i don't want to end up in a statistic no one's going to do anything about. that's not what i do. i have a few things that distract me from the thoughts, but it's a constant flow of reasons why i don't want to live here anymore.
Depression is one hell of a mental illness. unfortunately, the cure is normal living conditions. and that's not happening anytime soon.
hang in there, and maybe you can look back on your life and say "i'm glad i stayed".
That'd be awesome. I wish I had willpower to actually change some things in my life
you're pretty much the only one who can do anything about it. don't seek immediate success, make little steps. next time you get a productivity boost, go for a walk. clean up your room a little.
and most importantly, prove life wrong. giving up is not why you exist.
it's going to be worth it. i believe in you.
If you can afford it, may be worth trying to get a check for mental health, because lack of willpower may as well be because of depression or other issues. For me getting treatment had changed a lot (even though rn it is kinda bad again but not that bad)
Thanks for replying. I don't think I'll get checked up not only due to financial struggles right now, but also not having strength to do anything. I'm just going on with life, day by day, month by month, year by year. If I'm correct with my terminology, I'm burnt out.
I feel this. Fuck it's dark.
I don't like how American - centric this is but otherwise very... impressive
I recommend visiting Gapminder. For example the Dollar Street, where you can get an inside how different life around the world is, depending on income.
Also, it's various other statistical tools like this animated graph, where you can see the billionaires running away to the right. Also interesting is the short blip of people having more wealth at around 1980 - 2010, which immediately got sucked back into "slightly right of extreme poverty mountain".
Imagine showing this on a linear axis
Also an inflation adjusted graph would be really nice.
It also seems very American to me that there is not a single mention of climate change in there
I truly applaud your mental fortitude. I honestly had to stop scrolling through your info graphic after passing the malaria part. I simply couldn't take it all in at once. I will come back to it tomorrow and take in another chunk of it, I'll see how far I get then but I intend to take it all in albeit in bite sized chunks.
Keep it up and I'll be looking for more of your projects later if I can handle it. The world is truly broken but I'm a firm believer that eventually we the common people will open our eyes to it and enact change. I don't know how and I wish I knew how to contribute to that in some way even though I don't believe I have the power within the current system.
Thank you.
There are a bunch of other languages and countries here https://github.com/MKorostoff/1-pixel-wealth/blob/master/README.md
Because America is where most of the world's wealth resides
Ok Google, look up richest country PPP
Holy shit
I have a friend that used to be super into watching morbid stuff like gore and snuff videos. He stopped a few years ago and last time I asked him he told me that he can't handle them anymore, same goes for another person I know.
In my case I've never been able to watch too much of those things, but I know I'm able to handle situations where blood and stuff is involved as I've studied anatomy with dead human bodies and also worked with injured people. I like to think I've had a bit of a healthier relationship with the effects of violence on humans.
They are so rich that my browser crashed while I was trying to speed scrolling the page to the end
Same on my iphone lmao
On Android - it just kept resetting back to the left again...
"It has to stop" I agree. But how do I make it stop? There's a lot of talking about what is the issue and its consequences, I say this also for climate change. But they don't say what can we do about it
Ok tankie
See, this is the fucking problem right here. You are a commoner. The person you replied to is a commoner. Compared to the ultra rich anybody but that tiny tiny subset of people are commoners. As long as we keep name calling and pointing fingers at each other this shit will never change and we'll be rolling around in the mud until we all fry under the sun.
I understand your frustration, we all feel the same way. Let's direct that frustration at the people and the system that is telling us to turn on each other simply so we are blind to how we're all being played for fools.
Aye the rich are likely very nutritious
"Derpa derpa dankie"
A possible solution could be to limit the personal (family?) wealth, fortune, possession, etc. to for example 100 million. That should be enough to live a luxury lifestyle and give your children’s children a ‘care free life’. Everything above that amount goes to the aid of the less fortunate, public and social improvements, energy transition, solving pollution problems, etc. (worldwide). In exchange you get a certificate with: “Congratulations you won capitalism!”
P.S. When you ‘cheat’ you get 1 dollar (or equivalent) and may start over. In addition and not exclusive of all possible legal proceedings.
P.P.S. The above is just an example to illustrate that there are possibilities. But this doesn’t solve all problems of inequality or everything else that is wrong on this planet.
P.P.P.S. Too many people think the have the possibility to also collect wealth above the 100 million ( or think they are entitled to an amount above that). They will protest and vote against any such solution. (I’m not talking about those 400 Americans from the website graphic).
Reminder that the money is printed out of thin air and it's not really that we need anyone's stored wealth. Not even liquidating a mansion or ten from a billionaire, or from all billionaires, is going to solve our problems. Sure they are worth a lot to one person, but how much is a mansion worth to society in effect? Not much really.
The system is designed to have poor people. It must so that there is incentive to work. Otherwise we would have to force people to work. I'm not trying to justify the ways things are, I just don't see going after stored wealth as solving the problem especially when it is not their assets we need or their made up currency.
Not to be fatalistic deliberately, but what can we do about it? If we try to take on the system individually, we face the Plucky Ninja problem. If we try to coordinate, it's too big a movement to keep secret, so the rich and powerful can subvert it before we get anywhere. (They're doing a pretty good job of it already.)
I think their question is more about how we would implement that. Marx believed that proletariat uprising would be the "how," and that it is an inevitability of end stage capitalism. But the nature of capitalism keeps people from attempting that. This is a system that we are forced to participate in if we want to survive. We need food and shelter and we don't want to get arrested and/or murdered by cops for revolting. With that in mind, we have to get to a point where we collectively have nothing left to lose.
We have had the solution for hundreds of years. Most people, however, don't want to hear it.
Yeah, this is gonna end really well.
Visited the site, and holy fucking shit
holy shit it's spez
fuck you
/s
I don't hate spez
The fact that the account has his name proves that it really is spez. This is exactly how the internet works.
Thanks Abe
As a Discord user, I am sad if this person took the username of the real spez, it means spez cannot use his username anymore :( no one would ever do that, it must therefore be the real one
Of course. Nobody would lie on the internet.
HOLY CRAP ITS SPEZ
WTF, bro, what are you doing in Lemmy?
“Congratulations you have won capitalism! Here is your signed certificate.”
::: spoiler Spoliers! You owe it to yourself experience it first without anyone else's comments, it only takes a few minutes. An extremely powerful infographic, well designed and well sourced. I love how after they said everything they said, they leave you to keep scrolling the last third of the 3 trillion. No more commentary, just letting the scale of it sink in.
Though, something I wish they touched on in the infographic itself is rebuking the argument of "all that money is tied up in stocks! they don't have that much money sitting around!" There are plenty of issues with that rebuttal of course and it's not actually a valid defense of the ultra rich, but it's a common enough counter that I think it warrants being mentioned to cover all your bases so to speak. :::
That actually is directly addressed on that website https://github.com/MKorostoff/1-pixel-wealth/blob/master/THE_PAPER_BILLIONAIRE.md
That's actually the best argument I read against this. I will be honest, I was thinking the same while scrolling, but this page made me think differently.
Also, there's another one on the page about prison incarceration in the US, you should check that out as well
I went to that link and it was horrible, no the site is simple it's just when it went to Bezos ... then look at all the things we could have to make things better (free healthcare, free college, etc) just sickening.
BuT hE's A pHiLaNtRoPiSt! He HeLpS SoCiEtY...
...to maintain the status quo of undertaxing rich people and letting monopolies rule industries.
And actually he does not have any money because its just his assets and what other people think they are worth but he is actually quite poor because he immediately spends all the money he makes to invest into new ideas to make the world an even better place for everyone.
We know he can't quickly withraw the money at a good rate bit that does not make him not rich AF.
Comparing myself to the ultra rich doesn't affect me any more than comparing myself to super athletes. It's the people around me that matters and they're not significantly more wealthy than me. You'll never be content in your life if this is the bar to reach.
Except pro athletes don't earn more than the rest of the world combined. Pro athletes don't control the prices of everything you've ever bought or rented. Pro athletes don't supply the politicians with enough legal bribes in a corrupt system that they're effectively in charge of the country.
If you don't think billionaires sucking up all the resources and political power matters to your daily life, you're either delusional or wilfully blind.
I wasn't talking about the wealth of pro athletes but their athletic capabilities. Your workouts will be miserable for the rest of your life if those are the people you're comparing yourself to.
Again, the comparison itself isn't the point.
The point is that the astronomical levels of income and wealth of centimillionaires and billionaires aren't possible without ruining society in thousands of ways that DO affect YOU directly and profoundly whether or not you're actively comparing yourself to anyone.
I think that the comparison is a bit flawed in the way that comparing pretty much any of us to one of the super-rich is more akin to comparing a patient in a state of clinical death to the Warhammer 40k™ top-tier warriors, not just pro athletes
If I were to dedicate all my life to sports I would maybe make it into the pro level during the lifespan, even if that would mean that I'd have to choose some sport that allows old people 🌚
I I were to continue working the way I work today and get a hundred times raise in payment, it would take me about 60 thousands of years to get what Jeff has and that is if I don't eat or rent a flat anymore.
That's quite a bit of difference, don't you think?
Starts off with median income and then switches to wealth. These aren't the same things.
Edit. Lol, check out the idiot counter
You didn't scroll as far as the "total earnings in your lifetime" and "total earnings of a doctor in their lifetime", then, I take it.
Total income is not wealth either.
Sad cunts moaning that life isn't fair is soooo edgy.
Yeah, it's the lifetime theoretical reward for highly skilled work vs what someone has right now.
You might think "that's just on paper", but cut it by 10 and it's still a nonsensical comparison. The scale is insane
It's a moon base built ASAP. It's build a floating country in the Atlantic the size of Delaware. It's buy a prefab house for everyone in the US who is renting or homeless. It's give everyone in the world a plane ticket to anywhere they want, round trip. It's build a maglev train network across a continent. It's wake up every day, go anywhere, and buy a new house at such an insane price the existing owner would agree to leave within the hour. It's build something the scale of the Washington monument at every rest stop across the US
These aren't things that would use up the wealth, these are things individuals could do, then go on to live the most extravagant possible life. Sure, a lot of these things would require careful planning and take decades if you actually wanted to do them, but that's the scale we're looking at - it's choose an issue and affect global change kind of money.
Yeah, wealth, income, and lifetime projected income are all very different things, it's apples and oranges. Except it's more like a single apple against every orange ever eaten - the sheer difference in scale makes any comparison meaningless. Simply spending their wealth, in any way, would drastically change the lives of countless people for the better
If they spent their 'wealth' they'd have to convert their assets into cash, making it income, their wealth is shares in the companies they built. If they sold their shares the prices would tank
Those companies employee millions of people who receive income and pay taxes on it
A top band Amazon dev is earning 1m a year...
Regarding the last point: so it will take said dev just another 185 thousand years to get to Bezos level
Regarding the first, there is a link to explanation about why this is not correct in the infographic
They also get stock options regularly and dividends...plenty of people have started successful businesses after gaining sufficient wealth.
So, if we convince billionaires to sell all of their company slowly it'll all be fine? That's your logic?
A, why the fuck would they do that?
B, the shareholders via the board make the decisions, you think they'll be happy with a CEO who has no skin on the game? And would have to be compensated by fuck tons of cash, which would hurt the business
My logic is that not every "successful business" is worth billions. And maybe there's sense in doing something with ones that are, like split them into several businesses that are not owned by a single person
Damn bro you got them good. Great contribution to the discussion. Thanks.
The irony
You're not that bright, are you?
Otherwise you might have known that repeating something that is blindingly obvious to everyone and also completely besides the point is not an effective counter-argument.
Fuck off poor
Brilliant, such wit
You really think you're tough and right about anything, don't you?
Whooooosh.
Do you realize, that that makes it even worse?
It's just not comparing like with like.
If you earn 10m over your lifetime, spend 3m on living, buy a house for 1m, pay 1m into a index linked pension you'd end up with wealth as well as income. I.e. > 10m
That's why it's always important to compare like for like.
Wealth is not income, income can create wealth. Wealth can create income, they are still not the same thing
But seeing as this place has more than its fair share of tankies, I'm not surprised at the economic illiteracy on show.
Lol, I'm just a pedant not a boot licker