Title,Score,URL,Comments Sanders Says Stop Busting People for Marijuana and Start 'Prosecuting Crooks on Wall Street',82258,https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/06/03/sanders-says-stop-busting-people-marijuana-and-start-prosecuting-crooks-wall-street,"Does this mean that *all* politicians that have taken fees from wall street criminals are now accomplices to organized market manipulation? Start with Ken Griffin Start prosecuting crooks on Capitol Hill for insider trading. Don't forget the crooks in the Senate. If they did that they would’ve saved more than Wall Street has stolen and recovered more than they could spend. this is what those folk over at slash superstonk are raving about Legalize it and expunge my record already Just a reminder we tried to have Bernie as president twice and got Hilary and Biden for Nominees. I'm certainly not a Sanders fan, but I think I could reach across the aisle on this one. As long as by Wall Street crooks we could include people in big banks. Oh, and abolish the concept of ""too big to fail"". Of course he’s right, but if he thinks this is ever gonna happen, I want some of whatever he’s smoking. He really means the crooks in DC! Why is a commondreams article on r/economy? All the stoned melfas agree .... [deleted] Lol love the photo of gma chiefin that joint! Never going to happen. Great to campaign on, but neither side does anything but argue until elections are over. Gut the congress and senate and maybe we’ll see change. Next you'll be wanting to arrest and convict Hunter Biden for falsifying a firearm purchase form to buy a gun, which is a 10yr sentence and 250K fine for anyone else. There's a reason why cops arrest YOU for owning weed while simultaneously taking selfies with Snoop Dog. Wasn't his wife busted for a money making scam that ran a university bankrupt? 2022 and the US is still heavily going after marijuana. makes a lot of sense! Start arresting and charging ALL criminals. So sick and tired of the damage occurring in cities not being prosecuted. Hell, the DA in STL is letting MURDERS go free. Simply let the charges sit, lapse, can no longer file. [https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/investigations/murder-charges-dropped-suspect-freed-kim-gardner/63-40aba7a5-5b36-410c-86bd-59ee93548b64](https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/investigations/murder-charges-dropped-suspect-freed-kim-gardner/63-40aba7a5-5b36-410c-86bd-59ee93548b64) ""Our investigation also found the number of cases getting dismissed since Gardner took office just five years ago has doubled."" Totally agree, smoking should not be a crime and financial crime is much more dangerous, BUT they’re also apples and oranges. The same cops busting people for weed aren’t busting people for fraud. I understand the intention of the comment but it just sounds ignorant if you break it down. YES PLEASE Phat chance ""no"" - the government Politicians first ! Legalize it already Bernie! Thats practically the only thing that’s feasible for him to do in his lifetime. Who are these crooks? I've worked in investment banking and it's not an industry full of cartoon villains, it's just normal people. If you have information about anyone breaking the law, then report them to the police. Otherwise the cult of anti-usury needs to stfu and drop this populist nonsense, it actually has roots in antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Rothchilds. Not a huge Bernie fan, but all in... [removed] Government. The biggest organized crime syndicate in the US I wish I could just talk all my life and make millions of dollars doing it, never ever having a real job. Take a look at our politicians while you’re at it. All of them. But its so profitable... Can't say I disagree. Fuck em all Finally something I agree with him about damn i wish i could believe this guy anymore lol. too bad hes been enough of a sellout to the fascists that i'll never believe a word he says again This is irrelevant regardless. I’ll light up in a church if I have to. We got bigger and badder problems than weed nowadays I used to think that if we got Congress stoned one time, they'd legalize weed tomorrow but now I know that they routinely use so many goddamned street drugs that they imprison people for using because they're living the ""I get to fuck around while you find out for me"" lifestyle. says to who? public can’t prosecute wall street ppl. As a senator, he should be negotiating with congress to get this done. otherwise it is just another socialist agenda to get votes which he is really good at. Sanders is a bad parody at this point! Talk is cheap. Let’s see some action! Or at least start busting crooks on wall street for smoking pot. Get rid of the double standard I'm begging the SEC to actually do a single thing they're paid to do. Every god damned last one of us knows that's not going to happen. Can we please just make Bernie the president really fast and just do everything he proposes And that's why he will never be president The SEC doesn’t even have to look past their own desk to find crime! Thanks to some 'monkey business', pretty soon the crooks from Wall Street will have to start selling pot behind Wendy's. They can start busting them at that point if it makes it that much more convenient. I personally recommend they keep an eye on Gabe Plotkin, the smartest investor of our generation. The same sanders who stopped saying “Millionaires” in his “Millionaires and Billionaires need to pay their fair share” speeches because he became a millionaire? The same Sanders who was the grassroots fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden because they are ininspirable crooked politicians? Yeah fuck Sanders. Good luck with that. The police are tasked with keeping us cattle in line FOR the Wall Street crooks to take advantage of. How about start with Nancy Pepsi. Please crush these damn people out of existence. How about start with the politicians.… on both sides! Oh look another thing Bernie hits right on the head. Wonder if anyone will listen :( I agree with Bernie, but here’s the thing: the crooks on Wall Street can afford really, *really* good lawyers. People busted for possession generally can’t. And since good lawyers are better at keeping people out of prison, going after those kinds of criminals means you get fewer kickbacks from the private prison complex than if you spend the same time and effort rounding up folks who are just trying to enjoy themselves. It’s just business for them. “Justice” is more of a vague aspiration than an actual goal. How about we start prosecuting crooks in Washington? Like maybe we actually let companies compete in a free market instead of lobbying for favorable legislation??? How about we deal with the crooks on Capitol Hill, while we're at it? I wish, but crooks prosecuting crooks? Won't ever happen. Government says no. The problem with that is people with Marijuana don't bribe our politicians. The crooks on wall street do. Man, if only there was a public position to push this kind of legislation forward. I miss Bernie, such a threat to the shitty system that Fox News threw everything at him to make him seem anti-American. Legitimately one of the only boomer politicians who would make drastic domestic changes as president rather than lame ducking and shitting money into the middle east. A man of protest and his word, it should be enough for us to choose him purely because he has marched and stood for civil rights his entire polticial career. I have no clue why most Rs and some Ds are against legal weed, that is something that like everyone under the age of 60 is in favor of But those people on marijuana are only given us their chill and contentment, while the crooks on wallstreet are giving us liquidity, whatever that is, but they seem to think we need more of it, even if it ends up making them richer while we all get poorer. And shitty cops. If only those crooks didn't have all the money. Wow only took millions of lives to fuck up and millions of dollars stolen by white collar crooks. Don't get your hopes up nothings changing anytime soon. Include every politician (and cdc personnel ) that made millions from drug companies in the pandemic. And are obviously insider trading, while “legally” not doing because of some sly paperwork. But also, stop busting drugs, period. Legalize everything, tax it. The loss in revenue for PDs would be significant. Doubt they'd like that. White collars are the dirtiest of collars Sanders gonna wind up dead. Anybody that goes after the crooks involving money are in danger if they poke around too much. Doesn't Sanders siphon his earnings/money through his wife's corporation where he has full control and she's the named owner? And then they rake in the money? Edit: please read the comments. This is possibly misinformation. Do your own research. Seriously. White collar criminals make MILLIONS. Probably BILLIONS if you count them collectively. Meanwhile a gram of weed in an illegal state is likely going to get you the same years as 5M in tax evasion or tax fraud. People on Wall Street have capable attorneys. Easier to go after poor people for a harmless crime Every senator: “lol no” Like Hillary But muh private prison system Fucking best headline I've seen in a long time It’s so much easier to attack poor people, though. He talks the talk but he can't walk the walk Sanders says a lot of shit but accomplishes little. For once I agree 100% with Bernie Usually don't like Bernie, but this is awesome. That's something the right and left can agree on. Bust wall street Bust corporatism Bust foreign lobbyists THIS It’s easier to go after poor people. Man’s not wrong If you’re interested in the corruption on Wall Street, r/superstonk is the best place to start and end. [deleted] I hate weed but can we just get this guy elected? Conservatives were heard to cry “but that’s socialism” and we all laughed until we realized they were serious. How about we start in Congress? How about crooks in Congress next. Let's start prosecuting the crooks in D.C. first. Says the millionaire. Fuck yeah Start by voting out every member of Congress over the age of 60! Yes including Bernie, let him crusade from the private sector! Our government is too old and doesn’t want to change. So change them Young men and women need to run on the ticket they will vote for age limit forced retirement at 62, term limits and financial reform Then why doesn't he do and not just say shit to get news headlines? Almost every other non republican congress member has said the same thing for years. Yet he does nothing. He has a point Lol like him and his wife... Yessss. 👏👏👏👏👏 Just stop taxing the shit out of people Old lady in the picture know's what up. “Occupy Wallstreet” was a thing after all… But the Wallstreet guys have Uber rich lawyers and prosecutors just want to go after the easy targets. Why can't we have both? Common sense does not apply to this system and thus will never happen! The modern day sundown laws. Occupy Wallstreet 2.0 No shit Like him, and his lobbyists. LOL good luck r/superstonk He’s not wrong. We smoke to forget the crooks and live happily. They prosecute us for it. The truth. Bernie Very Based Based They ain't the DEA,but WHEN they stop and say they can see or smell drugs its their business. But when they think tax crimes are being committed they can't go after them on intuition cause they aren't the IRS? That’s not how the world works. Money is power, politics is power. Agree here ...white collar criminals should do serious prison time Lul. Like that's ever going to happen under this gutless administration. They decided not to prosecute Mark Meadows, which proves once and for all that some people are just above the law: politicians and rich people. Far as I'm concerned, it's time for regular citizens to consider themselves exempt too. Use your second amendment rights. The cops will think twice if everyone is packing heat. Grifter Sanders getting his headline time. Here is a lesson kids. US government = Money laundering gun cartel Oh wow, Sanders said that? That is incredible news and amazing take. Your right it is never going to happen why should or why would they procecute themselves. The war on drugs had very particular purposes and this was one of them: focusing citizen rage and anger about crime and criminal activity on these types of “wrongdoings”. He’s not wrong. the crooks in govt are much more dangerous. Get those real crooks insider trading jpegs Wishful thinking. We can't even get our IRS to aduit billionaires. Include crooks in government, like Pelosi. You can hear the sound of grifters laughing. Or both *Sanders says only reasonable things that trend on reddit and news outlets for past 45 years as politicians continue to ignore him and speak nonsense as he alone cannot bring about change* You guys do realize that would require getting Republicans out of office right? As in voting blue no matter who in the next election? Like you guys get that right, or? Also don't tax it And they said no It's easy to say shit like that. He's not a hero. Marijuana, isn’t nearly as bad as the crooks who steal from us everyday on Wall Street. George Carlin once said “Congress is tough on street crime as long as it isn’t Wall Street.” Hate socialists (90% are communist in disguise) but love Bernie Sanders Oh, i bet your'e talking about Ken Griffin who lied under oath. How about stop busting for pot and start prosecuting corrupt politicians I look forward to nothing getting done about this 👍 Tell this to nationwide businesses please, it's bs you have to get tested in order to work at most min wage jobs at a big national business bc it would help so many people if they were able to work there Corporate jobs you are working in mean nothing. The system is rigged at the top. All rich and powerful people get away with this stuff...just look at Trump who had adult fun for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I mean paid an adult woman hundreds of thousands for signing a non disclosure agreement because they adult fun time. How was that not prostitution? Short answer is there are two rule books one for powerful and one for the rest....I'll give you a hint whose book is more forgiving. And the crooks in Washington that made millions without working a real job their entire lives. They need to start busting the big crook on Wall Street. [deleted] Fuck that old ass melfa Since 1991 when I was suckling my mothers breast’s, Bernie Sanders has passed only one significant bill that bécame law — “S.893 Introduced 5/8/13. The Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2013 which became law in November 2013” The mere fact of him saying they need to prosecute Wall Street over plebs on the street busted for pot is patronizing. He knows it’ll never happen, joe biden knows, and the country’s owners the wallstreeters know that. He should stop speaking [removed] The system is rigged and always will be. Eat the rich and tax the church. Banks have always been the biggest threat to our country. ""If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."" - 3rd US President Thomas Jefferson This sub is just a Democrat circle jerk I'm with Bernie !! “Old man yells at clouds” Lol I agree with this take but sanders, like most politicians, is a fraud He's still alive? Maybe they can start in Washington, DC. But Bernie - if we did this, tens of thousands of jail and prison guards would be put out of work! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! 🤔 Sounds good, but let’s also include crooks in congress as well while we’re at it. The lawmakers seem to be above the laws they make. From the guy who cries equality with 3 homes, one he described as a compound. Like Bernie. 3 homes and multi millionaire in public service. Obviously something shady This charlatan just sent 40 billion to Ukraine But the police were literally made for keeping the peasant class in line. They don't know how to stop/prevent/solve real crimes. 90% of their job is just inconveniencing or harassing regular citizens. In my state the only useful thing police do is stop drunk drivers. Which we unfortunately have a lot of. But in contrast: I live on a busy road, 1 block from a shopping center and 2 blocks from a school, with A LOT of pedestrian traffic, a speed limit of 30, and a radar sign right across the street. All day everyday I watch people drive by at 40+ mph while families are trying to walk with their kids. Never a cop in sight. Local county sheriff's deputy lives across the street from my retired mom. He leaves for work every morning in his personal vehicle and then about 2 hours later shows up in his driveway in his squad, parks it but leaves it running, goes inside, and stays there for most of the day, before eventually taking the squad back to the station, and then coming home again in his personal vehicle. Our tax dollars hard at work. Why can’t we do both? Bernie sanders is absolute rubbish. This man freaks me out Joe Biden: No Both. Both is good. Politician says poo poo pee pee. What even is this garbage sub? With everything he says, it makes me feel bad this senior old commie is trotted out to embarrass himself in the media I mean, yes. We should decriminalize all drugs and make marijuana completely legal. That has nothing to do with “wall street crooks” whatever that means. Now, I don’t doubt there are crooks in wall street. But Waldorf knows who they are, he can inform the proper authorities and they will ne dealt with… But no, less handsome statler, probably thinks it is a crime for these people just to exist. I don't think he understands what a crook on wall street is/does or how to prosecute them. Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Oh, wait. You're serious? Lemme laugh harder! Ha ha ha ha ha ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love Bernie, but he's just grandstanding at this point. Reforming the Democrats is a fool's errand and always was. [deleted] Start with the democrats and the president who stole the election and give it back to the rightful winner [deleted] I love Bernie Sanders hmm Bernie continuing to be Based. The fuck is this headline. Talk about rabble rousing. 52k upvotes for the post and the top comments are 200 upvotes or less. Holy bots Why is this on r/economy anyways? No reason we can’t do both Hilarious as he voted to send $40B to literal Nazis in the Ukraine. As he said Jack shit about big pharma taking govt handouts to experiment on people while effective treatments were available for Covid. Don’t think he said too much about that. Time to wake up and quit falling for the charade lefties. Most of us on the right know the majority of R’s are Neocon scum of the earth. Wake up because we need you to help us. You don’t need to fight but we’re going to need cover. Maybe Sanders should bust himself 1. What's he been up to since he's been chairing..... A SENATE COMMITTEE? 2. Common dreams is garbage lol what. Go back to 2012 Bernie, you’re drunk. The crooks on “Wall Street” are also in congress. Bernie, I love ya, but don’t you dare act like your supporters are stupid like the right wing nutjobs. And why not both? Pot heads deserve it too That would nice for a change, but it's even more far-fetched than the STOCK ACT passing, and not getting struck down by the S. Ct in a year or less. Good idea, let people kill their own health with drugs and hate the rich. People that loves the idea that people are idiots do work for the rich, they just like to manipulated the idiots to think that being stupid is ok, so nothing changes, ever. Why is this in the economy sub tho I’m always concerned about this type of rhetoric because there are a couple of global superpowers that would love the US to become a country of stoners. Bust them for both. Fuck weed. Im pregnant and my neighbor has a baby and our other neighbours keep smoking weed and it comes into mine and her babies bedroom. Its gross and harmful to others. Not everyone can tolerate that disgusting nauseating smell that comes with smoking weed. I hope it stays illegal. Yea .. let’s raise a generation of subzero IQ dope heads we can easily brainwash into voting for us.. yea.💪 Sanders is the crook you morons Pro tip, dont smoke, dont get into trouble While h is illegal, using drugs or making money in the stock market? Sanders has been in Senate for long enough to pass legislation but has not, who is the real crook? Okay, thanks for the information, Reddit. What groundbreaking news…? Absolutely agree! As a hard right wing nut-job I agree with Portugal; decriminalize ALL drugs- redirect enforcement $ for those needing help… Poorest senator who has two vacation homes and lives a better life than half of the population points his finger at someone better off than him and says they are the enemy. ^(I agree with throwing Ken in jail. Don’t forget Gary Gensler and Jerome Powellwhile you’re at it.) You can always count on Bernie to deliver a catchy slogan and absolutely nothing else. Sanders plays a good “for the people” dude, but he’s also one of these Wall Street money boys Sanders then went and cashed anther ""phat check"" and said laughing all the way to the bank, ""Ain't Capitalism Grand"". I do agree however the Drug War is just a scam to take away Americans' Rights. Like Pelosi and the rest in congress Bernie Sanders is the only good American politician in history. R/economy embarrass itself reporting anything about Sanders. We got ROBBED of an amazing presidency when they decided to rig the game against him…he would’ve been so much better than what we have now. My God, how far we have fallen. It’s sad him saying this is revolutionary or something. Our politics are absolutely rotten to the core. That's just how it began in Venezuela. I cannot believe Sanders' stupidity. What an original sanders thought He annoys me so much. Always saying the most stupidest hot takes, which are obvious desires of the population at large but have 0 chance of happening. Like “I want ice cream to be calorie free and still taste great!” Absolutely! Don’t forget cartels and drug trafficker, literally nobody is doing anything about the opiate epidemic For crying out loud - it’s the cokeheads not the potheads….. Says the guy with 3/4 houses living the high life off taxpayer dollars What a brave thing to say This has nothing to do with the economy Too little too late, Bernie. Your ""friends"" in the Democratic party are never gonna let it happen. well we need to enslave innocent black people now that that communist lincoln set them free, so fraudulent science about virtuous hobbies has been working really well for that. do YOU have a better idea for how we can enslave innocent black people? noooo. lazy millennials Yeah! And in the white house He voted for the biggest upward transfer of wealth in US history. This man should retire in shame. He could have been great. But he admitted he didn't want to end up like Nader. Sorry I ever volunteered for that scum This link has been shared 3 times. First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/v462d7) on 2022-06-03. Last Seen [Here](https://redd.it/v47bse) on 2022-06-03 Feedback? Hate? Visit r/repostsleuthbot - --- **Scope:** Reddit | **Check Title:** False | **Max Age:** 99999 | **Searched Links:** 139,047,225 | **Search Time:** 0.0s why is this sub allowing left-wing propaganda such as commondreams to be posted on here? Colonel Sanders? Damn, that chicken is good. Now I know why ... Y'all sound like a bunch of defeatists ""Rudy: woa woa, people are being busted on behalf of the crooks on wall street. We need low level drug offenders serving double digits, the 13th amendment allows us to exploit prison labor for pennies on the dollars...those profit margins didn't fatten themselves up on their own now. We go hard in the paint lobbying to keep the media bias and legislation in favor of protecting the wealthy and exploiting the middle/poor classes, why in the fuck would we step our own feet by allowing that bias & legislation to be reduced and for the plebs to take future money that's already in our lane and we're entitled to? Mitch: Rudy, did you make sure the line wasn't being tapped?! Rudy: I completely forgot Mitch. We're in your wife's SUV with cocaine in the back, I think we're okay, there's no hackers here. Mitch: Well fuck me, Rudy, you know I have to get this powder to the airport by 1 and now r/economy might possibly, potentially find out we love being fucking racist and getting rich & wet as fuck! Alright, cut me out two more rails, I'm about to hit these slopes!"" - Mitch McConnell & Rudy Giuliani ^((probably)) He is one of those crooks politicians talking about crooks on wall street is the spiderman pointing meme. u wouldn't have those million-dollar homes without eachother Legalize it all and make cartels go into legitimate business They're not busting people ""for Marijuana"", they're busting them because they're drug dealers or sex traffickers that they can't get the proof to get them off the street. Only rich white libs who never lived in the shit or been to jail don't know this. They got scarface on tax evasion Did you know our politicians can recieve money from company’s to suggest bills and laws that would then utilize said companies services or good. Then on top of that, both sides buy shares of stock before the new bill or law or government backed order. Then push it thru. Then sell at the top. GREEDY SELFISH MONEY LOVING CIRCLE JERKS at the expense of the Average US citizen. Start prosecuting crooks in *CONGRESS*. Por que no los dos? he's not wrong Why couldn’t we have had Bernie, bless that man and his little mittens How about start procecuting theives that are putting grocery stores out of business in lower Income areas? Ok but also prosecute the murderers and violent criminals please Fuck and yes. How about you? Him included. He didn't get rich off Wall Street but he gained some wealth off of connections. Shit or get off the pot. Doesn't matter, he'll keel over any day now. That’s nice and all but just saying “catch the bad guys on wall st” is pretty meaninglessly nonspecific. Agree about marijuana though, there’s no reason it or any other drug should be federally illegal. Yes and he’s been saying it for 40yrs Man has a point I agree Sanders for voicing on ""Stop busting people for Maijuana"", but he shouldn't push for ""Prosecute XYZ for"". By doing this, he is diluting the whole argument for decriminalizing marijuana. Hell yeah lmao Or.... both? In a ""legal"" state here, it does still impair driving and current laws aim to prevent that. Similar to open alcohol containers. If the cops are too dumb to do much else do you think they can handle tax codes and business law? That comes down to you fedboys How is this news? **B A S E D B E R N I E** Ah, Senator Sanders. I was gonna say, this seemed like a very progressive move for KFC corporate. Okay Bernie. Let’s start with YOUR I’ll gotten gains. Well, yours and your wife’s. I personally dont like the man but I am def behind this. Porque no los dos? Dew it. Manchester no ballz. “Old man yells at clouds and panders to base”. Dudes toothless He knows he's a senator right? It’s low hanging fruit at this point tHoSe DuMb ApE MeMe TrAdErS aRe DeStAbIlIzInG oUr EcOnOmY This is why they're only capable of making arrests by saying they smelled one of the stinkiest substances on earth. We need cops with law degrees Finally something I agree with the old commie on. I say we start with Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson A majority of Americans support legalization. What exactly is keeping jury nullification from rendering these sorts of criminal charges (possession of weed) moot? You mean the predatory crypto bros? ""Politician states his opinion that everyone could have easily guessed"" Doesn't this guy have the actual power to do something? Like yelling into the wind. Our owners won't allow this paradigm shift Politician says sound byte!?! This man could have been our president. Sigh This post has been vote botted. Compare the number of votes compared to the number of comments and votes per comment. Yep. It's 2022. Let’s see your portfolio, Bernie. That’s a pretty extreme socialist take. Fucking “Dems”. Pandering Why would the police go after those who pay them? Surely sanders knows the answer here Pot makes you stupid. Then you vote Democrat, like Sanders. Someone who has not accomplished anything, has worked for us his entire life, but he's got something like 3 houses. I know it’s not close to being the main issue, but I hope someday legal verbiage is updated to replace the racist made up “marijuana” with the scientifically correct “cannabis”. Not holding my breath though. I like Bernie, but I’m kind of tired of the “Sanders says” posts when you know nothing he says will get done. or Hollywood for cocaine.... as the Depp trial showed, it's full of it. But busting white collar criminals and politicians would require actual investigative work and won’t provide the private prison system with a steady stream of government funded prisoners… Get ‘em Bernie. Man Bernie needs to go sit his worthless ass down, he bout picking the obvious and being it's mouth piece until he jumps ship... He's a corrupt clown like them all, it's a requirement... God, yes, I don't give a fuck if someone gets high. I DO give a fuck that my parents' entire life savings was wiped out by the housing crash and not one goddamn banker went to jail for ruining people's lives. Sure is a lot of idiot Trump lovers on here commenting as we should Thats fine, but I am not sure how those things are related. This seems like common sense It really does make more sense to start busting people for cocaine instead of Marijuana Hedge fund managers ruin more lives than drug dealers. This won't happen until we start killing our current politicians en masse Sanders is right! If you wanna punish wall st. Buy GME and visit r/superstonk Thanks Biden. What about them student loans huh…. A-fucking-men. Then let's move on to the wealthy tax cheats. Here's the thing about Sanders and ""crooks"". He hires his wife as the ad agency (despite never doing that for a living) for all of his election runs. What that means is that 15% of every contribution goes right in his pocket. That is crook like behavior. Worse than you will see on Wall Street. Wall Street is all about making money, Sanders acts like what he has been doing is not. If you ever wonder why he runs ads after he has no chance of winning, now you know. How about just starting with crooks on the street Lets do both! A broken clock is right twice a day Potheads don't shoot back so they're easy target I agree but please put it into actual law. The millionaires and the billionaires!!! Err ummm It’s the billionaires!! Which one of his 3 houses did he say this from? he’s 100% right No shit. This isn’t news. Friendly reminder this guy bought 3 houses with your donation money Nice, people say stuff, great news. Pack it up boys, we are done here. Justice served. Yeah, but it's easier to beat the shit out of some poor kid with a gram of pot than a wealthy wallstreet fraudster. They have expensive lawyers and can sue you back. Hmm, sounds like one of those crazy socialist things he's always spouting, like 'fair wages' and 'you shouldn't die just because you can't afford access to healthcare'. Insanity. Doesnt Bernie drive an R8? And own mansions? Wall street crooks are connected to DC crooks. Biden: cmon man you need chill out Why Wall Street?? Start at the source , Senate/congress and the kingpin in the white house ... But those crooks on Wall st are the politician's pals They'll go after those degenerates who smoke weed first. I guarantee you, Bernie's as corrupt as the rest of them. I don't think sanders needs to be talking about crooks..... Ok but I trade stocks while stoned... so why don't you pick on the uh.... oceanographers or something... maybe the landscapers? the piano tuners have had it coming! More pie in the sky from the guy who will make another couple of million and then disappear again. Sanders says more culturally relevant lip service, yet still nothing happens... and he needs your money to help him continue to talk about issues. How about, less talk more action. Hell would be covered in ice if that ever happens 😂 I mean he is right but he is speaking to those who have another agenda and could care less what he says. Wish he was the American president. Ill smoke to that. Dixit : the millionaire you mean his coworkers? Yes or yes? If you haven't noticed the fake internet / media leftist can put infinite amounts of energy into stopping people from honking but they won't actually use the same energy to stop actual corruption at all levels. Here in Flint they cried about our lead pipes and made it another virtue signaling parade while completely ignoring all the corruption in city hall. The council president was busted selling city laptops. All the millions of dollars in funding had to switch hands before the leftovers went to the infrastructure and schools. I try to explain to people no politician is your friend and there are very few like Sanders who will never become president because the rich/elite won't let him. Alot of the homes established at the same time in America as the ones in Flint have the same problem. Ask yourself how many cities after were discovered and had the same attention as here. I really fear no one really cares unless they are told to. Or the people in our government, let’s start there, since they seem to be above the law! Lol people with marijuana don’t have the means to fight back. Good luck going after Wall Street crooks when they line the pockets of the lawmakers. I agree It's a great thing to say. Plans to actually do it, though? Ppl often say thing ppl want to hear. How confident is he that he can rally the type of support in the House and Senate? What expanded scope on executive powers would be necessary to make it work, and how soon the next election after would it bite American in the ass? I think the country has bigger problems than pot smokers and crooks on Wall Street. How about go after the criminals running around robbing, stabbing, and shooting people?! Lock them up and keep them there. Fu-cka-you Spez! that’s not the job of the police, the police work for the same people our government work for- the wealthiest few people who benefit from making us all crabs in a bucket. It wasn't the weed, it was the armed robbery. Possession just a bargaining chip. Cant believe that man the american people said no to as president. Fking stupid af I usually dislike this socialist dinosaur, but I actually support this You really believe this guy is honest? My god people are naive “Republicans are against street crime, provided that street isn’t Wall Street!” -George Carlin I’m gonna keep smoking weed while buying AMC and GME Sanders Says Same Thing He’s Been Saying This guy preaches social justice but then he lives like a king with 5 mansions. That would make sense. Sanders actually makes a lot of sense. Why don’t you vote for him in 2024? And as always, no names or enumerated list of crimes will be provided. If only there were a conversion rate for trading captured headlines for congressional votes. lock up the people walking into target and openly walking off with stuff. Fuck those people. Will Biden listen? he says this every couple hours or so, isn’t news Ha we have one our side too. He’s like the liberal Lindsay Graham….say all the the right things things on tv but never actually do a damned thing. Except rake it in for himself. The President we need Amen Bernie Like Ken griffin, the fincinal terrorist I lean conservative and I would be delighted to vote Bernie for president. Sanders is AWESOME Our governor may be the worst on the planet, but the people here voted YES for legal weed, so I guess it’s not that bad. He isn't there Why isn't he the President of a once great nation 👏 He always gets most of it. We should also bust the crooks in DC. What a crazy thought! Looking at you Ken Griffin and Gary Gensler, you scumbags. I was picturing an elderly southern gentleman in a white suit when I read the title. Welcome to Fantasy Island…. Anything worthy won’t happen. Just like IRS supposed to release Trump’s taxes. [No](https://cdnmetv.metv.com/z50xp-1619719725-16226-list_items-no.jpg) Like Pelosi and Warren? His not wrong If only he was in a position of power to do anything about this for the last 30 plus years. Is there a way to make prosecuting WS crooks profitable? Also start prosecuting the police officers who don’t do their jobs and cover up there mistakes. #uvalde What about the crooks in DC buddy boy. Hey /u/Defiant_Race_7544, This is now the top post on reddit. It will be recorded at /r/topofreddit with all the other top posts. “Things that will never happen for $1000, Alec” 100% agree... but he isn't going to do anything about it It's such an easy line... When would it ever happen? 1st time I’ve ever agreed with Sanders. Whoa whoooaaa whoooaaa. Then how would cops pay for thems fancy parking lot swat costumes? Not gonna happen. Lol actually do something useful? I don't think that's why people get into government Ah yeas, fight for us until it’s time to run for election and then sell the fuck out and leave us hanging. A-freaking-men. But the JOBS those crooks on wallstreet MIGHT make!!!!!!! It's pretty great how Bernie has united people in this country. Forget Alex Jones, Bernie has been right all along. No cell no sell. ✊ Public says to Sanders, ""Show up for the damn votes so we stop losing rights like privacy."" Life wold be much simpler if we just legalize weed at this point there's no reason to keep it illegal other then to help rich assholes get richer and frankly I don't give two shits about the rich pricks of this country Does Sanders know the type of people he works with? Might as well ask them to give up sex trafficking Lmao, never going to happen since they're all owned by banks/hedge funds/financial terrorist Since when do I have account ? Are here questions about windows media whit vista and questions about the hardware and the mmemory card and harddrive? of so what date is it? Weed weed weed weed weed weed weed. Can reddit find anything to talk about besides weed? We get it. You're drug addicts. But yOuR dRuG iS dIfFeReNt! Christ, potheads are eternally annoying. Dammit Bernie stop making us look stupid! What if your drug dealers work on Wall Street? For sure...but don't ignore ""broken windows"" - it's a proven model of policing. Damn straight! Fluff political pieces on /r/economy? Must be midterms lmao Karma is inflated as fuck lmao. 16k and top of /r/all, but top comment has 160 karma. What a joke. Sounds good he’s not wrong based Bernie is kind of a fuckin moron but I agree with him on this one Oh ok so stop targeting poor people and start targeting rich people… let’s see how that goes How do u all not see it? Its easy to bust someone on pot, u get to cosplay a real tuff guy and bust down their doors cuz u know damn well all thats behind that door are some stoners munching on some spicy Cheetos. Whats not easy is trying to do this to a bunch of coke lords. Its really strange how they pick and choose the easy jobs and then brag themselves up and say they are protecting the community. BS u just lined up the funds for the next BBQ. What a controversial post. Duh Oh I was looking for economics I’d love to party with the Granny in the pic. Seems like she’s fun at parties. Suddenly the right supports weed It’s easier to fill the privately owned prisons with drug offenders. How the fuck would that get our license plates and candles made by slave labour? Them dudes are too good at staying free. We like cost effective options here in the dept of justice Or do both. They're different agencies handling these crimes (typically local handles drugs, state/federal handle financial) Duh thanks HELL YEAH 🏴🕊🌱🦾 Lets start with the crooks in the gov't first. There is a percentage of people claiming to be on the left that were okay with the DNC, establishment democrats, and establishment republicans doing everything possible to prevent this man from being the nominee [deleted] To Bernie, any profit is evil and needs to go to the government. Who would be in a position to so something about those drug laws? I wonder tbh i'd rather them clean house get get all the corrupt and law breaking cops off the street and in jail where they belong, we would be a lot safer if they cleaned up the police departments first. having even 10% of the force as murders and criminals is very bad that should be proirity over wall street. Steady on Bernie! That sounds like common sense. Too close to commonism for some people. Asking the government to punish themselves. I'm sure it'll happen I like the guy but hes been saying this for like 50 years and nothing ever changes Says that while being one of the crooks on wall street Legalization still results in people getting locked up. Cannabis should be treated like any other crop. There’s no limit to how many tomatoes you can grow. Start with Nancy Pelosi for insider trading. Even in red states getting caught with marijuana is a slap on the wrist (assuming you have no priors). Yeah... people (even some politicians) have been saying this for decades. I thought this said Sandler for way too long😂 That's our only sane career politician Bernie Sanders! FUCKING PLEASE eventually half of this might occur Cops don't work for the people they work for the wall street crooks how does he not know this. What if we meet in the middle? All world leaders from this point forward are required to regularly smoke weed to curb their aggressive tendencies. He need look no further than his congressional colleagues to crack down on Wall St. Do it Bernie. I really do think that if Bernie somehow became president, he'd end up being ""suicided."" His ideas on the Joe Rogan Experience for taxing high frequency trading as a means for paying for college debt and making college free in America was just absolutely brilliant. Bernie sanders for president > Prosecuting Crooks on Wall Street I know Bernie is serious and I admire his tenacity at 'sticking to his guns'/messaging line, but seriously 'get real'. Its NEVER gonna happen. Prosecute crooked January 6th Politicians!!! Not just the regular people!!! Let's have more politicians that were born in the 70s & 80s. Why doesnt Sanders push to allocate funds for more regulators and FBI to patrol Wall street instead of running his tired old lips to gain political likes. Wrong wingers have been so polarized and blinded to hate the government, they do not see how much they get ripped off by corporations… a truly neutral person sees both as needing regulation, but imo the profit motive makes many more people corrupt than working in the public sector. We need Wall Street(people willing to risk their money to invest in good ideas - and companies) , but it needs to be properly and effectively regulated. How about busting politicians that make $174.000 per year and have a net worth of over 135 million The political parties running congress are all multi millionaires or more who couldnt care less about any of our interests. Take what you want, people. Do what you want, and fuck the rules, invented by rich to prevent you from LIVING. And even still it’s hard. We must unite and destroy the rich. And get high This is where I really think Bernie Sanders is full of crap. Here's a guy who's in government and could actually make some laws and rules to rein in some of the reckless decisions made on Wall Street and he's not doing it. You want to make Wall Street Fair for the average investor you need to get rid of the things that give the big guys the advantage. Number one trading after hours the big guys can do it much longer than the average Joe can. And then there's dark pools we're trading is done completely off the books between large investment companies that should be eliminated. I'm sorry all trading should be done 9:30 to 4:00 like everyone else. But is Bernie or any of the other Democrats or Republicans bringing up these points no they're not because they're all in the pockets of Wall Street. Even Common Dreams? Cannabis story - nasty joint. Alcohol story - evening gowns and wine glasses. Everywhere! Bernie is literally the most cleanest politician of all time. Mans have been consistent for 70 plus years. I’m talking about him being the only politician that joined MLK’s protest and got arrested for it, while most dems his age either sided with the popular public opinion at the time or remained centrist. We’ll never see a politician like him in our lifetime. It always back fires on the muppets. He's been saying this since the 20's I love when Bernie says the word Crook Man I can't believe the GOP is blaming marijuana for all the mass shootings not the bloody gun's. What's wrong with this picture??? News at 11 But wall street people are the ones funding them, why would the arrest them when they can arrest people using cannabis instead. Busting people for marijuana is pretty damn stupid anyways when cigarettes are apparently fine but marijuana isn't. Crime is the secret ingredient He of course didn't bother naming any names for prosecution or name the crimes they committed because the simpletons that listen to him assume that everybody is guilty of a crime and if they aren't they should write a law that makes them guilty of one. AMEN! *ape noise* Senators complaining about ""wall street"" is the lowest effort sleight of hand ever. Not only does the federal government have nearly limitless resources and the ABILITY to prosecute high level financial crimes if they really wanted to crack down on it...a giant chunk of federal spending IS all these regulatory offices that end up going after grandpa because he underpaid his taxes by 700 bucks. Meanwhile, Bernie Madoff basically had to turn himself in before they figured it out. Despite people trying to turn him in, with reason, multiple times beforehand. ...but these senators who have been in office since the 1980s are also the ones who MADE the current system. Not fooling anyone. Hey I think we should stop killing people and start loving people. I know pretty crazy opinion but that’s just what I think Bernie Sanders is a crook too How are they going to arrest themselves if they own the systematic unhinged law system they created to hurt us. Who do we call upon if this whole crooked entity is connected is some sick way to only benefit these psychopaths on Wall Street, politicians and corrupt government officials Media Web they took over everything to oppress us. These people been stole our democracy COVID-19 show these criminals for who they really are systematic psychopaths unhinged racist greedy corrupted idiots that has no respect for humanity……. Are the Abbott formula execs in jail yet ? Bernie's right, again. Expose wallstreet!!! Wallstreet loves to use confusing terms to make you think only they can do what they do. Or even better, for you to just leave them the fuck alone. Well some people are starting to look….what they are finding is the most corrupt manipulated financial system that may ever exist. Bring them down and bring your freedom back! It’s The Economy Stupid! I am a Sanders and I approve this message. Maybe star with people killing each other in Chicago? I believe that's a bigger priority than Wall St. in America? PFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTT He's not wrong. do both? Anyone else sick of all the attention every time famous people make obvious statements. If anyone is surprised by that statement then they are the problem. He meant in Maralago... Why not bust criminals in Congress? Old hippie says old hippie shit isn't headline news. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Though, the conservatives manage to even fail to do *that* much. How about the crooks in congress i.e Nancy Pelosi? How exactly is she worth $111M as a 'public servant' (hint: insider trading & payoffs) As an outsider I genuinely don’t get how Sanders has such a negative perception in the states. In terms of return on investment, guillotines are fast, cheap, and reliable in terms of their ability to extract stolen assets from the ruling classes. Hypothetically, of course. First part will hopefully eventually happen. Second part never will Oh I thought he was going to say ""Start prosecuting criminals."" Here in California we haven't discovered that prosecuting criminals is a thing. Do both. Didnt he endorse fucking Hillary Clinton at the 2016 election? Had me in the first half Until grandpa starts saying names this is just blablabla Ken Griffin Who still gets arrested for weed? That's so 1990s. He’s not wrong. At all. Me in New Jersey where that not a issue But then they won't gey his money... They can't lose out of money. “No.” - the gov. He is just virtue signaling at this point. No offense guys but it's the truth. Because I’m 100% sure that’s exactly what he would of done. I would say why don’t we start having some actual investigation into all politicians and how they make their money. They won’t, because then they’ll be nobody left to run the country. Soooo go after bernie sanders as well? Imagine if they were all of a sudden like “alright yeah let’s do it” and then they just did it? Nancy pelosi just holding out her hands to be cuffed along with 50% of others? Seems less likely then an inhabited Atlantis being discovered So does this sub, that I thought was originally meant for economic policy discussion, just going to keeping posting these unnuanced takes that are r/all bait? At least the Bernie Bros and MAGA people are having a nice circlejerk in the comments. Horseshoe theory ftw Bernie needs to start his own party I started getting a bad sinus infection like I usually do every year. 1st time I had medical marijuana. I smoked that and not 2 days later, I'm 100% again. With over the counter, I'd usually struggle for a couple of weeks. Federally legalize marijuana, already. something we can all agree on According to the FBI two thirds of the crime committed in this country is of the white-collar variety so why aren't our prisons full of guys like Donald Trump and his spawn? I entered the spez. I called out to try and find anybody. I was met with a wave of silence. I had never been here before but I knew the way to the nearest exit. I started to run. As I did, I looked to my right. I saw the door to a room, the handle was a big metal thing that seemed to jut out of the wall. The door looked old and rusted. I tried to open it and it wouldn't budge. I tried to pull the handle harder, but it wouldn't give. I tried to turn it clockwise and then anti-clockwise and then back to clockwise again but the handle didn't move. I heard a faint buzzing noise from the door, it almost sounded like a zap of electricity. I held onto the handle with all my might but nothing happened. I let go and ran to find the nearest exit. I had thought I was in the clear but then I heard the noise again. It was similar to that of a taser but this time I was able to look back to see what was happening. The handle was jutting out of the wall, no longer connected to the rest of the door. The door was spinning slightly, dust falling off of it as it did. Then there was a blinding flash of white light and I felt the floor against my back. I opened my eyes, hoping to see something else. All I saw was darkness. My hands were in my face and I couldn't tell if they were there or not. I heard a faint buzzing noise again. It was the same as before and it seemed to be coming from all around me. I put my hands on the floor and tried to move but couldn't. I then heard another voice. It was quiet and soft but still loud. ""Help."" \ Bernie has some great ideas but I seriously doubt his retirement portfolio is 100% controversy/conflict free. You can't make money, otherwise. ""A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad."" If you want an American Revolution, start punishing white-collar crimes ten-times as harshly as blue-collar ""crimes"". Starting with Congress. Local police should hire accountants and lawyers as officers and prosecute insider trading and other white collar crimes on the local level. Take it out of the federal court where they can call a congressman and get a free pass. How many times I've seen this and no action being taken 🤷‍♀️ Yeah! Finally something good sanders says! Ask Fox news and they'll tell ya marijuana is what causes mass shootings. why not all those crooks in congress and the senate too He's not wrong, but it'll never happen. They control everything. He says a lot of demagogic things he just doesn’t do anything about it but run for president. Preach Bernie It's crazy how quickly the idea of being busted for marijuana became strange to me once it was legalized. And politicians. Finally something I can agree with! It’s funny that this is even in the news section, like he’s been saying this for years is anyone surprised by this? How about the crooks in D.C. who also protect the crooks on Wall Street? Amen. Not gonna make him any friends with the executive branch. *sanders introduces no bills and does nothing* Lol you’re joking right? 😂😂😂😂 To be fair he’s been saying this for a looooong time How about prosecuting crooked politicians? Lord knows there’s no shortage of them. More of us than there are of them. That’s all I’ll say… Go a step up and abolish the federal reserve and abolish fiat currency. Does anyone know if in canada or the states the president or prince Minister has the ability to put in laws with anyone stopping them? The only good thing about the stock market being unreasonable right now is knowing that there's a large chunk of everyday people who have put money into it and this has helped stop wall street from being the only people who control the market. Right now alot of these wall street clowns are looking at valuation and having a hard time justifying buying some stocks again but the last 2 years they sold alot hoping that they would cash out and buy at the bottom. he’s *been* saying this He makes so much sense it blows people's mind it's really that simple. We have been inundated w/ lies for so long few of us can independently think for ourselves. Legalize weed. Go after the real criminals in Murica that work on Wall St. If there were lobbyists for retail, this would have already been done but since our Congress belongs to the highest bidder, here we are. The US used to be the beacon for the world. Now we just incarcerate ourselves at the highest rate and lead in mass shootings. What a shit show this country has become. It's sad, really. That we allowed this to happen. Sad indeed. he’s the biggest con crook of them all, he lied of his finances for the first 5 years when he formed Berkshire. His insurance companies he bought he used lines of credit with fraudulent finance statements provided to banks You would need to build more prison camps I am so sick and tired of hearing about Bernie Sanders ancient comments. The American people elected politicians who pass laws to criminalize marijuana and black people. They didnt elect politicians to lock up the people robbing them on Wall Street. Bernie Sanders is an anomaly from hyper liberal Vermont. Fuck the DNC for continuing to railroad Sanders, he should be in the middle of his second presidential term by now. I'm glad this new young senator is TALKING about things that the people want. I'm eager to see how his career plays out in the long run. I know he will actually be a driving force for change and will not buckle to the lucrative pressures of D.C. Colonel Sanders always had a knack for trying to fit in, he must have some skeletons for sure… One involves a local municipal officer paid for by city taxes. The other would be the jurisdiction of a federal agency like the SEC or, perhaps, NY state. Some sheriff’s department in eastern Oregon can’t exactly start arresting executives at JP Morgan. The administration, funding, leadership, and governing authority are entirely different. There is literally no one in the entire country who oversees both who could switch resources from one to the other. This is the kinda dumb shit that someone says to build a cult of personality amongst young idealists who don’t actually know how institutional structure affects governance. Then he should put his money where his mouth is and do something about it. Sanders sure does drone on about crap that he has the power to attempt to fix so much that I’m starting to think that he’ll do nothing about it. I like his politics, but his lack of action is exhausting. Keep talking Bernie, you’ve been saying the same thing for like 50 years, I’ll believe it when I see it. Federal stance on weed alone is enough to let me know that everything is messed up within our government. There is absolutely no reason anyone should be in prison for non violent possession of a plant. Until that changes I will never concede that our government cares about being just. Nah lets start with the bought and paid for politicians. How about the crooks in our own government lmao. Most wallstreeters pay taxes. The bosses/owners dont and they are in bed with our corrupt government Why not both ? Why not wype out all evil from earth? Populist gonna populist. If only they cared about the people instead of money 100% agree w this Hell no. At least the Wall Street types are useful. Pot smokers are not Lihat profil MOHMMED ALSHMRANI di LinkedIn Old man yells at clouds Wow he's so enlightened Who? Sanders? Who’s that? Amen. The crooks on Wallstreet are working with the crooks in our political parties, that ain't never going to happen. Conservative, and I can DEFINITELY get behind that. Sanders should move to Russia. Is he running for pres again to concede the votes to the mainstream dem? Nah. Lets start with the crooks in politics no matter what party. Bernie would wind up in prison then. All of DC is part of all that Farewell Reddit. I have left to greener pastures and taken my comments with me. I encourage you to follow suit and join one the current Reddit replacements discussed over at r/RedditAlternatives Reddit used to embody the ideals of free speech and open discussion, but in recent years has become a cesspool of power-tripping mods and greedy admins. So long, and thanks for all the fish. Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave They'll pay their way out Imagine... But if they stop incarcerating people for basic misdemeanors then how will they be able to lease the slav… I mean prisoners, out to farms for forced labor? Get over to r/superstonk people and learn how GameStop is the lynchpin in the house of cards known as the “free market.” The Wall Street goons have been riding a crime wave for decades. The SEC, which is also corrupt, hates the derogatorily named “meme stock” community so much it has made an exception to its rule of being a fair and unbiased “regulatory” body that it’s making propaganda videos to persuade retail buyers to stay away from the ONLY stocks they know they have lost control over. Is Bernie Sanders the last honest politician? Seriously this man is awesome and has been fighting the good fight for 30 years. Let's elect him president already. What are the ""crooks on wall street"" doing, exactly, that he thinks is against the law? The laws he helped write, and could change if he wanted to? Yep God damn I want that man to be my president. The poor guy has had an unwavering conviction of the same ideals since he was young and looking around it seemed like rarely anyone has taken notice, even after all the ""feel the bern"" craze. Well I think the Colonel has a horse in this race, or should I say chicken. Reddit moment Literally 'bro just legalize weed and we empty all prisons easy as' not that most offenders are in for violent crimes or that we still need to rehabilitate them and that their is a 100 more issues with prisons and the second part of just eat the rich, like who what why? This has no links to an economics (literally it more focuses on problems of drug enforcement and such what does crime have to do with economics) and just a lame karmawhore post. I guess the go after white collar criminals and such is, um capitalism related? but really this post has nothing to do with economics. Legit! They are easy to catch - follow the money! I'm really feeling the Bern on this one Maybe he should work for once in his life and write a bill? Bro what Thanks Bernie. How about you do something that counts instead of this stupid lip service. Bernie’s has sold out anyone that was ever excited about him. Bernie voice *”I like those crooks on Wall Street, they are ahhhh very good friends of mine”* Agreed! Stop voting Republican and get the conservative mindset off your ass if you're tired of being exploited by corporations and wall street! They are not your friends and never will be! If you're a minority or immigrant of sorts and you think wealthy people give a shit about you or you think you will become like the 1% by voting and supporting shitty conservative policies, you're wrong. I agree with him. I also think we should prosecute him too (as well as all other congresspeople) for voting for attacking Libya, bombing Yugoslavia, and countless other imperialist efforts. Imagine if we cleaned out both Washington and Wall Street at the same time? Heaven. I just find it hilarious that this cliche has 32,000 votes in 2 hours. The bots are out in full force Buy GME if you want to see Wall Street in trouble. Yo, this is the answer right here. For one taxes on Marijuana profits have helped fund schooling and education while Wall Street has stolen 401K's and favored plans to rig market against retail traders. Get fucked you yuppy wall street scum! Whole lot of 'Sanders Says' instead of 'Sanders Passes Bill That Does' on Reddit. People have been saying this kind of stuff for a long time, but until they actually garner enough support in Congress to get it done, it's just hollow rhetoric. The same Sanders who trashed our economy with Bidenflation? He’s guaranteed the Republicans crush it in the midterms. And rich politicians! That’s you too burny Controlled opposition He right This is what passes for economic content on here? Lame one liners Bernie has all the good ideas. Can we add insurance companies to the list? Holy fuck they are squeezing any and all profit out of my small business as if they actually do anything to earn it. Which one of his houses was the rich socialist in when he said this? Bernie Sanders the only based senator. Eat the rich Or just prosecute anyone breaking the law? This isn't a class fight FFS. for once bernie and I agree He's too based for this world Start with the crooks in Congress Maybe we should also go after the crooks in Washington DC too? ​ We can't do anything about Wallstreet if the guys we have to rely on to do so are part of the problem. I don’t often agree with Bernie Sanders but he is right about this. Crooked politicians would be also good to start busting. If we dont do anything about the stolen election, the rest is moot. and in government? https://www.interstitialcystitisinindia.org/jen-psaki-net-worth-27-million-forbes-2022-salary-white-house-press-secretary-icin Sanders has also dropped out of every single candidacy after being paid off He SEC is a compliant criminal organization. We need to put a stop to all this corruption as soon as possible. Sanders. Living in his own world. I wish that he'd just call himself a marxist and just get it out there. I would have liked the timeline where he was president. The results wouldn't have been much different than biden since he wouldn't have had the power of the Congress, but Biden is too quiet and reserved for these times. This is the type of narrative that radicalized America. ""Drugs are good and the rich are bad"". "" Authority is broken and you are right to be angry"". Why can't we fight the war on drugs and prosecute illegal activities on Wall Street at the same time? Also I am sure most people in finance obey the laws and earn an honest living. They shouldn't be demonized. People like Sanders should not be taken seriously. People like Joe Rogan shouldn't be taken seriously. Both are opportunist that seek their own interest by radicalizing our society. Just decriminalize it already 🙉 He always says such good things until the rest of the politicians mess it up Bernie the Millionaire Sanders is an idiot and probably has done enough crack to kill every brain cell he wanted to have in the first place (not that he ever had many to begin with but he has been destroying brain cells on credit). I don’t think the crooks on wallstreet would prosecute themselves. “Old man yells at cloud” This isn’t news it’s just Bernie on a weekday ...says the millionaire. I love when rightwingers say how they hate the ""progressive movement"" when it's literally 1 guy, and he's the only one with good ideas. Then who will fund congress members ~~reelections~~? Sanders is an idiot … just saying bs shit … Waaa rich people bad, drugs good, vote for me! and to that i say *in best richard nixon voice* “i am not a crook” Why not bust both? Frankly, if dealers were to form a lobby and donate to political campaigns you'd see a change in how they're treated in the courts. Go to r/superstonk for more information on wall street corruption Agreed. Laws with fines are just a tax on the poor and acceptable expenses to the rich. Isnt sanders the dude that made millions while in office. By making deals woth wall street crooks Ok, but what is a crook on wall street? Bernie makes the law. Legalize drugs. That's on you Bernie. What law is being broken on wall street? Or what legal activity on wall street do you want to criminalize? How about not complaining to help get Lockheed execs paid But rich people can fight back and poor people can not. Doesn't seem economically feasible. People want the insiders to investigate and prosecute the insiders I'm here for it but how do you ask the people in power to go after the people in power? Did Plato address this? I agree HERE'S HOW BERNIE CAN STILL WIN RICH MAN BAD! WEED GOOD! Sanders starting to be based again, nice. This time don't fuck it up lol, we don't need no more empty promises Nice sentiment. Impossible in the current American culture to implement. Please, Mr Sanders; have you no understanding of nor respect for, the established US status quo?! It all hinges on hurting the little people as much and as hard as you can, while letting the big crooks; the 1%ers, go free whatever they do! It's how the system not only works, but must continue to work; for the greater good of the 1%!!! Vulture capitalism depends on having a large pool of miserably poor people to be exploited at will by the corporations. That pool of people must be willing to work for starvation wages and above all, they must be *able* to work. So, no drugs which make people mellow. Alcohol-fueled street-fights? Perfect! People sitting around talking about the world for hours while munching on home-made brownies? No, must be outlawed!! Now, Mr Sanders; surely you saw that the Democrat establishment want nothing to do with you, right? Hell, they chose the Faux-Republican, neo-liberal austerity-loving wife of one of the most labor-destructive presidents *ever* over you! Well, the goose-stepping, clown-car driving brown-shirts like you even less, so why don't you just go home and rail at the TV, m'kay? America doesn't need you or your Commie-talk! Wall Street is what makes the country work, m'kay? That and the Military Industrial Complex, m'kay? Why don't you just move to Scandinavia, where happy Socialists live!?! Yeah no shit, pretty sure he's said that for like 40 years. This is not a political statement but...Bernie Sanders is pretty rad Hahahah oh so fucking rich. Tell that to our VP who put more blacks away for small marijuana crimes than any prosecutor in her state. Oh we don’t talk about that right because she’s part of the “good guys”. Yeah fuck off “Bernie is a socialist” That’s the opposite of corruption so expect him to be further marginalized for this Can we bust wall street crooks for marijuana? How about busting the crooks that become millionaires in government….like him I’d vote for this man in every election and I don’t smoke. Shame my generation (millennials) couldn’t make this happen. Old man yells at cloud Same thing he's been rightfully saying for decades but even Reddit has stopped listening and started listening to the establishment. What about the corrupt politicians? You're in power...go get them. Lol /r/economy But the people that smoke weed usually don't fight back. Based Bernie Just do the first part FFS Yes! And politicians too!! And son’s of politicians who made millions peddling influence!! Who is getting busted for marijuana these days?? It's basically legal everywhere. Bust the crooked politicians and their children!!! Ya know I usually don’t agree at all with Bernie but this one right here is good At what point do we give up and declare war on the conservatives? My elderly parent’s tax person fucked up on a form and the government has been hounding my parents for 4 years over $600 they don’t even owe, and recently communicated they’ve been accruing fees daily the entire time. No support, no help, different information and run around every time. They’ve gone to the offices, they’ve sent letters, they’ve talked to people on the phone for hours and every time it’s a different story and they can’t resolve it. I don’t even have to add a meanwhile, you know what I’m getting at. There may (?) be some crooks in our government also that needs prosecuting! Now THERE'S a novel idea... So in other words, ol' Bernie hasn't changed a bit lol Put every politician who owns more than one house in prison for life. EXACTLY My marijuanna use has never caused: A national recession A formula shortage Gas prices; generally Inflation Medical Bankruptcies Or the deaths of my loved ones at the hands of a deranged lunatic Maybe if congress smoked a bowl they'd chill the fuck out and do their job correctly. Saying some shit isn’t a policy - same dude who now votes lockstep with the other Republican Party ""I will change everything for the good!"" promised the millionth political for the millionth time. How about is wife earning millions from his presidential campaigns? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bernie-sanders-and-his-wife-earned-17-million-in-last-two-years-returns-show/2019/04/15/442d02a4-5f84-11e9-87b8-3f2ec40cd81c_story.html https://vtdigger.org/2016/07/15/sanders-campaign-millions-go-to-mystery-firm/ Bernie is the biggest let down and sell out Agree with that take, but why is this on the front page. He says this two times every day and then once before dinner. And in Washington… “But crooks on Wall Street can afford lawyers!” -District Attorneys every where See this is annoying because we all know what needs to be done but NOTHING ever will. Presidents lie and the senate are all stuck in the past timers!!! The police work for them, so good luck with that. The only thing to bring justice is a good old fashion French style revolution. Bernie: waaaah, stop jailing my deadbeat supporters, waaaah Finally something everyone can agree with! Selective policing is our heritage though. #Say it louder for the Mungers in the back! Yeah but....that would reflect a government for the people... ""But Bernie, rich people can afford lawyers! How else would we maintain our influx of new ~~slaves~~ prison laborers to keep building shitty Walmart furniture and/or guns for the war machine?"" just think of what needs to happen for *anything* to get better Start with the shorters!! “Off with their heads!!!” Nah that’s too hard lol 😂 Facts!!! Sanders needs to stop saying shit and start doing shit. So fucking tired of spineless lip service. He’s not wrong… people shouldn’t want to be politicians for life. It should be an obligation, a duty, an honor, not a dang lifetime of grift… bUT tHaT's cOmMUnISm Legalize oxys too pussiez anything and everything crooked in this world seems to stem from that shithole chicago i swear.. I'm sick of politicians telling other politicians to do something rather than doing it themselves You mean the same ones that funded him Wink wink We are not stupid. Like a “pro” wrestling match where republicans and democrats slug it out and people (tax payers) pay money to see the show where “opponents” mingle like BFF after fake show. A really good gig if you can get it, only requirement is being totally morally bankrupt and a sociopath. The people that religiously believe in these people boggles my mind SEC is a joke literally just put out a video making fun of new investors to a certain degree that we fucking paid for Nice . this could get us a LOT of time , lol Start with the Pelosi family Sanders also voted to send $50 + billion in US taxpayer money to nazis in Ukraine trying to start WW3. Zero credibility. gme baby... get fucked you crooks (the gme people are the crooks) Love that man ✌🏻 In this chapter of “America is a dystopia that is never going to change and will be the death of the planet.” How about politicians too? They have been robbing us through the hidden tax that is inflation for decades. just as well ask a beggar to keep his hands in his pockets. they're not gonna willingly let that cash cow walk away And!!!! We should look into that Burlington College Land Deal!!! And January 6th, and the Hunter Biden influence deals and the illegal wiretapping of candidate Trump and Trump too. Actually, that doesn’t make Wall Street look too bad by comparison. Including him!! Lifetime POC millionaire on our dime!!! Why not both? We have laws we should either use them or get them off the books. Gas prices reach 8-10 dollars, impacting people's ability to afford COL and whether or not working is even profitable Skyrocketing food prices, due to above and the war and climate change. Wage suppression means people can't even keep with these price hikes Roe V Wade decision is finalized Mass shootings continue to accelerate in frequency and severity Above two cause protests, which are violently suppressed, and may ironically attract a mass shooter as well Heat waves globally and nationwide, accompanied by Rolling blackouts and skyrocketing cost for AC No action from Congress other than arms dealing Uvalde sets clear example that the police are illegitimate Police continue to merrily oppress the populace, another bad shoot is caught on tape, and crackdowns on protests also provide fodder for anti-police sentiment Monkeypox continues to spread and becomes a pandemic itself, COVID continues to ravage the country, no federal response to either It's gonna be a rough year for sure. Rest assured though, that nothing about this system will fundamentally change and this is the best-case version of where we’re heading. it’s gonna be dumber and bloodier in new and unexpected ways This is the way. Lock em up Same Sanders with 3 houses, millions of dollars, all gained somehow on a senators salary? Wow, so wise. What is he 12? SEC is busy watching porn instead of doing their job. Gary Gensler has Ken Griffin’s so far down his throat it’s unsettling Of course he did 😆 Lol you didn't need to put ""Sanders says..."" we can all tell its him saying this Sanders says ""When you're white you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto, you don't know what it's like to be poor... We will end institutional racism."" Irony is lost on him. Bernie Sanders is a part of the problem. Always speaking up about this shit but not when it matters. How about throwing some FBI, ATF, ICE and US marshals resources at criminals who commit crimes using firearms? I do agree with Sanders that financial criminals should also be prosecuted. star prosecuting corrupt politicians like Sanders They will never do anything. As far as am concerned, but once a different set of people take over they will start doing something about it. Corruption in America is a shame and a pity. Its obviously full is lies from top to bottom Arrest politicians on the take (well all of them). Will the Supreme Court the BernieBros built even allow these prosecutions? Dam right I think fraud stop be legal in America so we can all do it and get 100 dollar fine over a 10 trillion dollars fraud. There could be a compromise, just bust the crooks on Wall Street for marijuana. I know, the crooks have their lawyers on speed-dial and would be out before they got to the station. But it is a start. We should prosecute crooks on Capitol Hill first and foremost. You know what your taxation needs? More taxation. That'll fix it. Reason this guy will never president coz those crooks know he will bust them! These are the kind of statements that are going to get this man elected. Also stop blaming shootings on marijuana Bernie definitely hodls some gme Can Sanders replace Biden please? That my friend is Kenny g Bernie is a crook on Wallstreet lol Start with the crooks in the US Senate. It shouldn’t be hard. They definitely also have drugs. *BREAKING: Senator Sanders says the same thing he's said every day since 1964* /s just in case Fentanyl for the win Where do they still 'bust people for Marijuana'? Other than dealers of large amounts. Most of the US has decriminalized or has cite and release policy in place. That's my motha fucking boy Bernie. Fuck wall street fucking all of us and our pensions. Our generation doesn't know the possibility of retirement because of these fucks. He’s a fucking senator he has the power to do that. Instead of just saying it why doesn’t he do it. I don't smoke weed, and I generally don't agree with much of what this guy says. But, I do on this point. However, it's just rhetoric. He's in someone's pocket, that's for damned sure, but it is a good talking point. Bernie Sanders is an absolute joke. No one should be falling for him anymore. He's a DNC sheepdog/cuck. His job is to sheepherd people into a pro war, pro corporate, etc party. I'm not falling for him anymore, he's a total fraud. He says all the right things, but then he goes and fights for absolutely nothing. If you want to see what a chump he is. Go look at his vote for the NATO bombing of Kosovo. Please don't fall for him and his BS anymore. About that Wall Street part… that will become especially true sooner than later. The Pope says “I am a Catholic”. Wen $Rico Yeet Didn't he hear that gun violence went up after marijuana began to be legalized? At least that's what Fox news is trying to push well when crooks on wall street are the same people in politics there isn't anyone to prosecute them. So fox news is telling me that studies have shown marijuana is linked to violent psychosis, but i had already had some pot brownies and even though I'm eating the best slice of apple pie and ice cream the only anger I'm feeling is because of how shitty it is to call yourself Fox News and not once show any cute foxes. It's been an hour of the donkey faced blonde women yell at me and some guy named Tucker Carlson looking confused. Ever wonder what the fox says my dudes? It says lies. Appealing to cops to stop busting people for weed ? Parents asking to help their dying children didn't work so what the hell will this do. Fuck, I wish this man was able to become president Not sure if it's been posted yet, but here's this. https://www.reddit.com/r/UrvinFinance/comments/t5vpvy/we\_the\_investors\_a\_new\_grassroots\_advocacy/ Bernie might be one of my favorite broken clocks. Do both. clean up the streets, clean up the homes, and clean up the government. Biden could just end all this with the swipe of a pen, but he won’t lmao Never going to happen. Too much money is given to these fucking politicians Let’s get those pieces of shit that looted also I’m with him Member when there was talk about not allowing sitting politicians to own stock because its basically just insider trading and then nothing happened? People in power are some of these crooks on wall st. neither of those things will happen. As a 36 year old I feel unsure of a lot of new lingo but I feel “based” is appropriate here How is that ""vote blue no matter who"" bullshit working out? If only there was someone Bernie could talk directly to about this Can we maybe not go after wall street for a couple years? Give my shares some time to recover from this recession first please. I'm all for holding these people accountable but I would also like to retire before I die. The crooks in government can’t even pass a bill to stop politicians from doing insider trading. What makes you think that they will have their rich supporters arrested. For gods sakes man, you can’t pass responsible gun ownership legislation due to payoffs, I mean contributions, from the NRA. Remember when idiots said Sanders is too old and feeble to be president? Same assholes voted for that relic Biden. They guy who can’t from words due to how senile he is. Right? Are we still living in Nixons American or what? People are still being busted for marijuana? I know this sounds good in theory. But crooks on wall street have very very good lawyers and can drag things out for years or even get cases dismissed. Most pot users can afford anything over a public defendant. Old man yells at cloud Oh finally we have a politician that makes sense. 8 Cool, he’s said this for a while now and nothing has happened. Sanders says something to help him get voters.. The street cops aren't the ones who go after financial crimes That would take out our entire government though, who would scam us and put us against each other? Funny coming from a guy who has millions despite having no career. Hehe he said the thing Whens that crooks time in front of judge coming? ken griffin lied under oath Finally he said it! If only Bernie had some sort of power to change the laws. Alas, all he does is talk Busting people for marijuana at this point is wasting valuable police resources on something that is not worthwhile Ken griffin took teachers pensions away and blamed it on retail traders. He fucked the system and blamed us. He deserves to rot. He says this while actively promoting legislation that would make people felons for putting $2 pistol grips on their rifles. He always says this That’s very anti-semitic, Bernie! For real tho stop nickel and diming your police station and go for those big bust on Wall street. He’s not wrong Man. I think someone needs to get Mr Sanders some oven mits for that hot take This is barely economics-related. And it's from CommonDreams, which is just the propaganda wing of Bernie's dead campaign. Just don't get hit on face just before election. The ""ring"" mark on face is telling what's happening in the Democrat party. Lmao the irony of an economic subreddit being astro turfed by socialists Okay, but then who is gonna get the Marijuana to the people? :) :) I think the two are in order. And I'll take some downvotes for that. Prosecuting his thief multi millionaire wife would be nice Omg what a hot take You do realize they realize the crooks are holding this giant ball of fraud together, right? Like the whole system will implode if they actually followed the law. How to get upvotes on reddit Should prosecute the crooks that sent 40b to Ukraine Incredibly brave. Wow real hard body sanders is… I would think this sincere if he weren’t a career politician. What a sell out. Them: ""...But we're the crooks on wall Street! D:"" Can Sanders replace Biden? Only in my dreams I’ll never understand why this man can’t get votes. Literally everything he says is damn near gospel to me. Congrats for reaching r/all/top/ (of the day, top 25) with your post!   ***** *^I ^am ^a ^bot, ^probably ^quite ^annoying, ^I ^mean ^no ^harm ^though* *^Message ^me ^to ^add ^your ^account ^or ^subreddit ^to ^my ^blacklist* I'm so jealous of the people in the timeline where Sanders won Yeah right man, they'll get right on that. I love himb. . Steal $100 and you’ll go to jail. Steal $100 million and the prosecutor will offer you a sweet deal, the judge will sentence you to probation, and the President will issue you a pardon. One needs a cop to find an object in a person. The other needs many accountants, lots of evidence and really well trained law enforcement and lawyers. Lol yeah and also please get me surgery please. 🤕 This sounds like a John Mulaney quote for when he does his old timey bowler hat handle bar mustache white man impression Berrnie is just rattling his sword He knows that the money peoplewill not ptosecute themselves. Idk man. I saw on Fox News AND heard it from Doug Mastriano (Republican politician in PA) that weed causes school shooters. /s Edit: Sarcastic about the idk man. Those ppl are actually saying that Why haven't they made it legal at federal level yet? It is long overdue and clearly something most citizens approve of. When incriminating the crooks on Wall Street would also incriminate those making the laws don't hold your breath Could throw Bezos in jail just for funsies. Legalize it and give us healthcare! Can I run for office now? Or ya know. Just fight normal crime. This just made me realize how laws only exist for poor POC lmfao. If you doing illegal shit to get money and you’re white they don’t give a fuck. Nancy Pelosi is gonna have him killed lol Where my apes at? -Stay Zen deal weed 50 years, steal 3 billion 1 year.... FUCK ALL OF YOUR LAWS good luck sanders :( Who's busting people for marijuana?!? Congress gets a pass to do insider trading. Me and you go to jail for insider trading. Martha Stewart went to jail for insider trading. Yeah, it’s broken. why would someone spend millions of dollars trying to convince children that marijuana turns you into a terrorist if it weren't true? No one could be that misanthropic unless they were doing an elaborate swift move. Start with the Republicans and Democrats in Congress committing insider trading and becoming rich. I'm gonna have to give this topic a Ric Flair wooooooo! Sometimes I wonder if Bernie would’ve made a difference Would be a more efficient allocation of resources Good luck with that lol. Citigroup selected Obama's cabinet. The banks control America. I guess in the left there is the only opposition that could ever really threaten the banks but they get sidetracked by the gender marxism bullshit instead of focusing on class warfare between the bankers and the debt slaves. And at the same time the left is trying to bad guns too. So nothing will change. I was part of the anti-bank movement many many years ago until I figured out that it would never change and joined the dark side. The left means well but they're too stupid, self-destructive and conflicted to commit to anything that actually works. That makes way too much sense. Like a lot of stuff he says. Let's just dismiss it, call him an ""unrealistic dreamer"", and vote for some terrible status quo democrat instead. Amen to that. Old habits are hard to beak No, lets prosecute both; both are illegal. I don’t disagree but how is this news? He has been saying this for a decade now I'll listen when he calls for the abolishment of the senate. Til then he can fuck himself with all his money and so called ""anger"". This does include Elon Prosecutions for weed aren’t on the top 20 list of things to solve. It’s begins with massive amounts of debt, inflation, foreign wars we have no business in, a massive increase in violent crime and murder, a wide open border, 100s of thousands of deaths from fentanyl and the list goes on. Tackle the big ones then maybe we can discuss things like this. #once again, Bernie speaking facts Start with Kenneth Griffin of Citadel. Lies under oath and runs a multi billion dollar scam stealing from innocent people… then blames it on you and retail investors. Unfortunately feel the Bernie is just the crazy old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn at this point Never going to happen. Canada, we took care of the first problem. Now how about that housing affordability crisis. I really wish he would put forth a law that will do that because, you know, that's his Job They didn’t. Why can’t y’all just make him your president? A serious question. Members of Congress and senators needs to be held accountable. Periodt That would require cops with brains, an animal that simply doesn't exist. Cool but words mean fuckin nothin [That's what you voted for](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/11/kamala-harris-prosecuting-marijuana-cases/). I know many construction workers in South Florida who should be in jail because they are fraudulent; shoddy work, thievery and con artists.#criminals The war on drugs is the greatest domestic attack of the modern era, it has only hurt this country and its people, just like it was always intended to Yes please and thank you. - A new American Citizen That’s a typical Sanders ignorant statement that sounds good but does nothing to advance our country Okay but how would private prisons get free labor? And how would racist legislators manage to put away enough POC’s? Pass a bill legalizing Marijuana you idiot Sanders. What a friggin moron. Or at least submit one you spineless coward Politics friends wallstreets guys Oh sorry Americans obviously don't want that. We elected Trump and Biden. Maybe he should do something about that. Maybe start being a better negotiator with other congressmen? The crooks on Wall Street have all of the power. The people smoking marijuana have almost none. Well, except in the states where marijuana is legal. I agree with his socialism views but I do agree with that. These people have been getting away with far too much for far too long. i went to prison for two grams and ill never forgive everyone who pays taxes to these crooks. cannabis saved my life, i have mental health issues and cannabis made me normal again. i dont feel human though, i was treated worse than a livestock animal. literal torture in there. nobody even cares, im a human being but nobody cares i suffered for no reason. nobody cares and nobody will help me. americans will go to hell for torturing medicine users cause nobody cares and nobody will help us. Look, i get why it happens, what i want to know is how you convinced a bunch of prison guards and policemen 'hey, we are going to give you a shit ton of work for barely any foreseeable profit'. Like for every 100 000 (probably more) small time pot busts, you could bust 1 wall street white collar criminal and make a lump profit. Less work, more profit. What the hell is going on. 75% of Wall Street is constructed of “buy side” (buying public companies in hedge funds, mergers and acquisitions in investment banks, buying private companies in private equity, and investing in startups in venture capital). Literally all of those activities benefit all parties involved and have no negative externalities whatsoever. The sales and trading, which was obliterated due to policies, also are not run by “crooks”, it’s literally based upon the financial markets anyone can access. Redditors nowadays rely on media catchphrases without understanding industries themselves. I bet Bernie and progressives can’t even properly explain the role and function of the modern day financial sector Could they fit more hard left politics into a headline? I consider myself liberal and even to me it’s crazy. It's like popping your pimples when you have the plague. It feels good but it's... not really fixing anything. Bernie thinks anyone not working for the government is a criminal. Hey Bernie, how’s that famous Russia trip working out for you? I'm still waiting for them to bust politicians for insider trading and stealing US taxpayer money laundered through Ukraine. Bernie can get back to us when he addresses that issue. How about we start with him and his beach front property in florida Bernie should have won. America has Stockholm syndrome with shit representatives. They are the crooks on Wall-street. iT cOStS tOo MuCh /s Bust people for both, or change the laws to make marijuana legal. I feel like I have just as much pull in this administration as Bernie and I’ve said the same thing for years. So…why is this on the front page? Marijuana users will stop being “busted” when the motherfuckers he works along side of have a financial interest in it. “Bernie says something popular with the majority of the country. Nobody who can do anything about it gives a shit about his opinion” How about punishing pedophile politicians? But whom can you exploit to be your slaves then in the prison system?? Not enough WS crooks for that... The sad thing, that won't happen the rich and the mega corporations own America guess who is in the pockets of most of the Wall Street fat cats politicians Meanwhile the GOP is trying to blame gun violence on marijuana use… In b4 prosecuting crooks in Wall Street would actually be bad for the economy. Does sanders even matter? I know Reddit loves him but he doesn’t really accomplish anything. And when he ran no one went out to vote for him. I’m tired of the constant sanders and warren wank and then when they try to run everyone just doesn’t do shit all It’s more crack and meth fueling gang activity that they’re after. This isn’t 1965 That's cause Sanders is one of the few who possesses brain cells in that country. Fuck imagine if he actually did win the presidency in 2016. This timeline wouldn't have been like it is now... If you want to see how corrupt they are, head over to Superstonk. The research they've done on there is some of the most thorough and respected peer-reviewed research on wall Street corruption in human history. Isn’t Sanders an American politician? Why doesn’t he do something about it instead of nagging the average citizen who has no power to do so? Is anyone actually getting “busted for marijuana” in 2022. Seems like a 2005 campaign slogan. Seems to be a lot of platitudes being espoused these days, people in authority saying, “oh I agree with you but my hands are tied.” It all goes back to who’s filling the coffers, Maybe this guy should run for president. 🤔🙄😒 I think Bernie Sanders is getting senile. He needs to be removed from office. The difference is that one atleast makes the government a bit of money, while the other is mostly just a liability. It doesn't matter of you like that or not, that is the main reason. Says the guy representing the state where you still cant buy recreational cannabis in a store What about the crooks in Washington, who steal our money on a daily basis ? Well mr. Sanders, that would completely defeat the purpose of the whole criminal justice system if we did that! We can do both, and while we are at it let’s look at how all these crooks in the house and senate use insider trader to get rich. Lol if only tweeting things passed legislation. Guess someone gets to still work from home XD Is this really noteworthy? ""Pro-legalisation socialist grandpa says something in line with his views"". Follow my page for some exclusive photos and videos on demand. https://onlyfans.com/?ref=230684199 We should start with Congress, right? There wouldn’t be any crooks of Wall Street if it not for crooks of K Street It is to hard to take the wall ST’s stuff. In some states the cops can still bust you for pot and take everything away with asset forfeiture so they can sell it and buy cool shit. Hah! Yawl love your boogie-men doncha? Just like the ""Economics is real"" that yawl 'believe'. Economics is the lie told to the minions to get them to work harder and STFU. What a wonderful world. I can totally agree with that. The shame is, Bernie’s a DC insider trader talking out both sides of his ass in typical political fashion. You just can’t take old Carl Marx seriously. Let's light up comrade Bernie !!! Sanders is just another liberal cøcksucker who talks big but sat by decades as politicians policies carried out a war on drugs. Now he is saying all the right things just to get more funding from idiot liberals and do nothing to end the war on drugs. I've been saying the same thing for years. Cops are lazy and seek out the low hanging fruit to pad their stats and what's lower hanging than a stoner with a little weed on her/him? I've seen it literally hundreds of times on COPS! Some poor schmuck is driving in a ""known drug neighborhood"", which is always in the black part of town, and that's all the excuse GangBlue needs to pull anyone over. Looks like bernie has been playing Metal Gear Rising:Revengeance. Meanwhile U.S. educated pot smokers are wondering why Bernie or anyone else keeps using the term for cannabis that was based on anti-Mexican racism? Well hes not wrong Economics Too bad Bernie Sanders and his party dont have the power to make laws, then he could make laws instead of talking about making laws and blaming the other party for not passing them (when if his party didnt block them and do a little dance them they would pass) Why not both? Its funny because i've asked a number of people who use this rehtoric if they can give me an example of what they would want changed. All i get is vague and emotional responses. How about they start ""Prosecuting the Crooks in the Government"" ?🤔 Alphabet agencies would be a good place to start. Nah. Let's start with the crooks in Congress. What a fresh take... He's been saying this for many years and isn't alone. Dude has been in office since before the GFC with multiple years of his party controlling the WH and Congress. Maybe actually holding his fellow party members accountable and calling them out by name would be a great start And let the blacks get away with spending my taxes on drugs I don’t think so Do I have to listen to headlines and sound bytes and fanboys promoting empty words from politicians that take absolutely no action for the rest of my life? ugh… Ofc i agree w him but... the crooks on wall street are not gonna be prosecuted by local cops or the DEA. Youre gonna wanna talk to SEC for that, and they are corrupt and useless also. And even then, the hedgies can afford rich mans jail, rich mans lawyers and issue rich man bribes. There’s too much money for policing among local PDs, DEA and various other alphabet agencies … and their unions … for this to happen. Ah yes Sanders says yet another uncontriversal thing that everyone can agree with but does nothing about anything. Isn’t this getting kinda old? He’s been saying this for better part of last 8-10 years and I have seen nothing of the sorts Yeaaaaaah... but they only get to cosplay as soldiers for the drug busts soooooooo... I just got a class two felony in Texas for a joint a blunt and 4 edibles when I was driving thru to get to Chicago for a funeral. Smh What did he like just now say this or something? I thought that had been his stance for a long time why do the left and right always have to provide these arguments in a combo of two completely different issues. I often feel there are loads of groups that can agree with one aspect without having it be related to the other. Such fallacious manipulation. The problem is that we can’t afford to buy them off like Wall Street does This is from a guy whose only job was as a politician who shamelessly leeched off of his wife and friends and lambasts the 95% of wall st workers who just perform their jobs and dont do anything wrong I’ll be honest - I’m not surprised that Sanders would say that, but we all know we’re viewing this story because of the weed grandma lol another liberal propaganda shithole sub. you guys ruin everything bbbbut according to Laura Ingraham that wacky tacky makes people kill! Yes, everyone knows that marijuana makes people hyperactive and violent and aggressive! But how, Bernie? How can I do this?? Never believe that rich old parasites care about financial crimes. Idk I’m fearing for my life from that drug ridden dope head granny. /s I find it hilarious when Bernie Sanders is filed under economy. Really Bernie? Way to get behind something the country has already been supporting. Since you're looking for easy votes just say you support puppies. LMAO Bernie doesn’t want his base prosecuted; I understand. Col. Sanders. Hmm. Just another member of Congress dissing Wal Street, the cash cow. His statement is a dog whistle of the lowest order. Laws are for poor people. If you have money you can get away with almost anything I got to agree ,i got a med weed card and theres confusion until we decriminilize it . Stop pulling people over for speeding and instead siege a classroom when a killer is machine gunning innocent children. Wow, 25 other discussions about this going on in other subs! Such a deep important and controversial comment by Sanders, lol! https://youtu.be/ehT35-671IM There people are evil. Yes, start prosecuting crooks on Wall Street and either start prosecuting or juststart ignoring sublunary stars like the Kardashians, too. Zillionaires are not just but which is the more unjust: A Jeff Bezos or an Ice-Cube who drives a Bugatti Veyron that probably goes from 0 to 60 in 20 gallons? It's not just the worker's marxian surplus value that's funding the Fat Cats: It's also their concert ticket and trinket sales which no capitalist is forcibly extracting from them/ As for ""grass"", it's a biig mess today: Legal here and illegal across the state border. Legal in society but you can still get canned on the job for it. And which is worst: being yellow mellow or head-butting on a tackle football field? Election season baby If Sanders had made it to the white house, what a different world this would be! Then maybe let’s start with Bernie himself. Dude pays less in taxes than a fireman Make sure to lock him up to Says the multi millionaire. Bern needs to sit down and be quiet. Some of us are not buying his bullshit. hes been saying this since 2015 lol Imagine what this country would save if we never prosecuted another marijuana case. [deleted] Yes this is what the American people need : more Weed, more hard drugs, free Netflix. Own nothing. Have no human contact. Eternal lockdowns. NEW WORLD ORDER They should start at the top by penalizing lazy do nothing but miss and cry politicians that don’t even abide by the oath they took when entering congress. They’re the one that keep saying no one’s above the law, even though they voted themselves above the law so long as they are in office. That’s why slander is so prevalent in congress and why they can read a non-existent letter as if were fact so as to get the people hating each other. They are the criminal pukes. If your gonna dislike someone, dislike them they are playing everyone like a fiddle and no one cares. Sad. Crooks like Hunter Biden! Yeah! This is exactly why millions of Americans and I are doing what is called Direct Registering shares of GameStop stock (GME) on Computershare. The idea being that Wall Street Hedge Funds have counterfeited enough shares at this point that I believe over 20x the original amount of shares exist. By Direct Registering, it take the shares out of 'street name' and puts them into 'book' aka your name, by Computershare, Gamestop's chosen entity to do this for them. Already at this point, almost half of the *available* retail shares have been Direct Registered, aka DRS'd. Once this gets to 100% DRS'd, Gamestop reserves the right to take action to eliminate the counterfeit shares (several options here), and has solid plans to do so based in the previous earnings report mention of such share counterfeiting/rehypothecation. This has already seemingly started to liquidate firms like Melvin, Archegos, and Tiger, and I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I plan on buying more and holding until it all collapses and all their bad, overleveraged bets come to fruition, which would vaporize most if not all GME short hedge funds, and make shareholders a pretty penny. THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. I JUST LIKE THE STOCK and I LIKE THE JUSTICE. He's really got to get over the whole ""wall street"" thing. There are bigger issues than non violent non existent criminals Get over here Pelosi.. we got the receipts Interesting how you're so defensive of slavery ( a form of discrimination), yet have no problem discriminating against an entire country?! You've been promoted to ""interesting garbage"" now lol Start busting crooks in Washington! Then make it legal moron!!!! That’s like saying stop busting murders! God why do they let people talk! Wow I actually agree with that communist on something Well, the fact that they’re not doing that shows you what a fascist country Murica is anymore r/politics in reality? yes. will anyone ever see any consequences? no. you're telling me Pelosi is NOT the greatest investor of all time? holy.... Yep. Gotta seize their houses, cars, and boats. It’s the law. this doesn't even mean companies blatantly breaking current laws are going to face consequences. Yeah Yes. Yes. And yes. Did I mention yes? Always have been, just because they get away with it doesn't make it right. Yes. They are. That's why its called corruption, its just that the Supreme Court called it ""campaign donations,"" so its not treated like corruption. They are accomplices to every financial crime that is done by that company, if they take campaign donations from that company or anyone attached to them. All except Bernie Sanders, who is clean as a .... ​ https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/bernie-sanders/contributors?id=N00000528 That's why Bernie's pushing for it. There'll only be a handful of American politicians left 😅 Have you checked out r/superstonk? It takes a second to get the subs jist, but behind the memes is a movement taking on Wall Street corruption and it’s actually been making a difference. John Stewart did a very good expose on Wall Street recently and what has been uncovered. If politicians were held accountable for all the illegal or shady shit they do or support, theyd almost all be in jail. Its a fact that our justice system treats some better than others, which isnt really very just Wall Street offers a nice incentive package for cops letting them work lucrative security jobs. Hard to bite the lucrative hand that is helping you to fill your coffers. No, but the ones that have traded stocks based on insider information are absolutely on the chopping block for prosecution. ""allegedly,"" but yes, 99% of them have probably intentionally broken the law, and the rest did it by accident. The speaking fees that the politicians receive is ironically hush money. They fucking should be. Always have been. Like the first thing would even happen but if it did the second definitely wouldn’t. Yes. It’s all designed to milk money from the average investor and prop up funds, banks, and politicians. They used complexity to their advantage and people are finally motivated to see just how blatant and dangerous it actually is Yes RICO the Senate Well, locking people up for smoking weed is a multi-billion dollar industry, much of is publicly traded. Those same Wall Street crooks make money off of criminalizing people. If they start legalizing marijuana it’s because they have figured out how to make money off of it WHILE locking people up. It's a whole big RICO case, the DOJ is looking Would love to see lobbying completely outlawed but we know that will never happen. I’m a way, they are all complicit in the murder of democracy through the expounding in litigation towards figureheads of indifference that yield nothing but sorrows for the little guy. They should be but it will never happen, they’re above the law Sanders is a crook the same as Wall Street. He lied under oath and lost teachers pension funds!? Crazy people don’t look at this. **Edit** Thanks for all the love apes! I love the places I can meet y’all. Once it hits 10m a share, I’ll be throwing a party at my ranch in Colorado! Hold me to it. Yeah this is the no brainer. Lied under oath. Any one of us would be sitting in a cell right now. You mean Ken Griffin, the one who put out a statement that he wants to leave Chicago because of crime rates so that when people Google Ken Griffin crime they get those articles rather than all the other crimes? That ken Griffin? You mean Kenneth Griffin the Chicago based financial terrorist. Subject of this https://kengriffincrimes.com Don’t forget cokehead Cramer 100% Oh you mean the financial criminal Ken Griffin in Chicago. The billionaire who runs Citadel's in order to skim the top off of the entire stock market. Who also uses his criminal enterprise to heavily lobby(bribe) GOP candidates. I should also mention he buys assets like one of the original declarations of independence. He then later lends these to museums in exchange for favors within the legal system. Ken Griffin the guy who had the huge options position on Regeneron and donated 10.75 million to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's campaign so he would promote monoclonal antibodies while spreading anti-vax propaganda? The same DeSantis who today publicly declared victory for getting the Special Olympics to drop their vaccine requirement? That Ken Griffin? You mean financial terrorist, who lied under oath Ken griffin? Good to know this sub also hates that cocksucker All my homies hate Kenneth Griffin Crime is the secret ingredient Would love to see it. I’ve found my people in another sub ☺️ The same Ken Griffin that is the single largest GOP donator? The same guy who owns the most expensive home in the United States? The guy who made a living abusing market maker privilege to profit off from destroying countless tech and medical companies? Yeah, that sounds like a good start. Please upvote this \*APES HAVE ENTERED THE CHAT\* Apes in the wild! Do you mean Ken Cordell Griffin, financial terrorist and illegal short hedge fund manager of Citadel Securities and Citadel LLC? The criminal Ken Griffin? The illegal short seller? That Mayo lovin son of a bitch. Kenneth Cordelle Griffin? Degenerate thief and wife beater? Ken Griffin who couldn't control his emotions and threw a bed post at his wife? He’s currently spending tens of millions to get his selected puppet (Richard Irvin) get elected Governor in Illinois. It’s going terribly for them so far which is hilarious to see, but still sickening watching him try and openly purchase a Governor His army is downvoting this Sanders' proposed 1-cent-per-trade tax would have shitfucked HFTs and help level the playing field Taking matters into our own hands now I guess I heard that twat shorted cancer research companies into the ground? Or you know Sanders has interesting stock trades, how is he a multimillionaire on a Senators salary lmao Ty everyone for proving my point! Keep voting! Does anyone else see this thread with 500 comments, 3 awards, and only 20 upvotes? Think this one hit a spot with our corporate overlords? Cause their downvote bots are here in force 😂 Ken Griffey is a legend. Cleanest swing in the history of baseball. Why u wanna arrest him? Cuz he's black? Racist ass dirtbag. Found the guy who still thinks it’s someone else fault he lost money investing in a dying video game retailer. lol why do Apes have to ruin all subs. Who's Ken Griffin? Or Elon What’s a baseball player got to do with it? Yes. Fucking Griffin needs to go to prison where he can’t hurt people any longer. And if this guy doesnt play ball, maybe his son will. You know, Ken Griffin Jr He lives in 220 central park south, NYC 59th street. if the internet cares to know. After that, every single Congress worker and Senator (AND THEIR FUCKING SPOUSES) for insider trading. The guy who donated $5m to Chicago to repair the bike paths and always gives good interviews? A good idea is good. [removed] I couldn't agree more. And crooks on wall street [deleted] That's like rounding up the kids selling party hits on the corner. They're not the problem. They're just lackeys. On the payroll. Why not both Wall Street *and* Capitol Hill? They are all hand in glove. People are literally cattle to them . this one right here!!! Congress is peanuts compared to Wall Street. The crime on Wall Street materially affects everyone, Congress is just grifting a little off the top. We're talking hundreds of billions versus hundreds of millions here. Targeting Wall Street would do much more to help most people. Capitol Hill and walstreet are one in the same bub Porque nos los dos Or for putting politics over the American People they are supposed to represent. Or bad faith politicians. Why not both! Start prosecuting redditors for that and price fixing as well. This sounds exactly like the crazy Trumptards on FB who always, always, always vaguely agree with Sanders, but refocus whatever Sanders is talking about onto the government. I'm not saying your a Trumptard, just pointing out this odd similarity because you're not the only person commenting the same sort of thing in this post. Who do you think is funding the crooks on capitol hill lol You mean like Bernie? Sure thing Same crooks Yup. Start with Pelosi. I will continue to say we need a hard reset. Fire all Federal elected officials and start from scratch. Will never happen, greed and corruption of the upper class is the definition of America Sanders would 100% agree Them, CEOs & board directors of massive corporations, Wall Street cucks who profit from everyone else being royally fucked over... The terrible returns congress members have proves they’re not insider trading. That's not a crime, y'all's ignorance of the law use wild Guess who funds their campaigns and spends millions lobbying them? The Senate is responsible for policing the Senate. doubt we will ever see any real action against them. I ***am*** the senate. Politicians are the biggest crooks in the country. Let's clean house there. every single republican voted against new gas price gouging legislation.. think about that. [removed] Dismantle thr Republican party *now.* It's everyone at the top in this country from the big executives to the politicians to the judges. They're all in on the game at our expense. I AM THE SENATE The people don’t have any money so they are easier targets More money than they could spend? The US government having more money than they can spend? I don't believe that's possible. Wall Street creates problems and then profits out of them. Watch this https://youtu.be/ehT35-671IM ☝🏻 But they could talk a bit more about the smoking marijuana part… We can't have a free and fair market with all the fuckery. I invite anyone to read the DD and make your own financial decisions about what to invest in. They’re about ready to bring the hammer down over there though…exciting stuff from reddit That’s not reassuring… Yeah, by all means join that team lol I’m sorry friend. I smoke daily and sometimes wonder how long I will go before I catch a charge with it all... What is your record for and it is state or federal? I hate that you guys have to go through this. The world’s depressing enough as it is like damn let people blow off stream how they want to. I work full time and go to school full time and I’m not hurting anyone, what’s the issue? Seems like the country of freedom isn’t so free Why? It was illegal when you did it. I assume the junk you smoke now is still illegal? Still funding criminals? What’s the reminder? Democratic primaries are a weird meta-game forcing people to vote based on other characteristics besides policy? primary fraud is the absolute pinnacle of democracy But Bernie would've beaten Trump; in all honesty, I believe neoliberals prefer Trump to Bernie (even if they won't admit it). Yeah, that’s how votes work Yes he tried twice and D people rejected him twice. We remember. Good! Bernie wasn’t the most popular candidate! [deleted] [deleted] The DNC screwed Sanders over in 2016, but for the 2020 election, he conceded well ahead and endorsed Biden heartily, the two situations aren’t the same. Anecdotal but I still vividly remember a discussion with some left leaning friends during the election about Hilary. They all supported Bernie but hated Hilary and a few of them voted for trump as a result. So yes I also fully believe Bernie would have beaten trump. Man that morning waking up to trump as president is still seared into my memory. Felt like a shit dream Yeah that's why I didn't vote in the last two presidential elections too. Yep, and they took sweet corporate cash, prevented change and allowed the slip into fascism Sanders rolled over both times. We need open primaries and Ranked Choice Voting Just a reminder: Bernie is not a Democrat. Brainwash. And here we are. The mass can’t recognize the good. Media is the ultimate evil. Endorsed by Bernie. I couldn't disagree more. Disagree with Sanders about his policies as much as you want, but he always has been one of the actual honest, noncorrupt candidates in America who genuinely care about the American people and realize how corporate interests dominate our politics. Too big to fail is not a concept, it's a reality. I'm afraid you can't just write that off. I was initially opposed to him as well. The media's portrayal of him is highly inaccurate though. Go watch a long form interview where he methodically explains his positions. You'll have a completely different understanding of the man. [deleted] Bernie is a popular figure and there is a wake behind him that is allowing young up and coming progressive politicians to get their footing. He is setting the tone and direction. Why not both? No he means wall st What is this attempt I'm seeing to deflect criticism of Wall Street's crooks and turn attention to those crooks' loyal servants in the government? [deleted] Because this sub is a joke run by bots Article? 99.9% of people just upvoted the headline. Man I just want Trump to get Michael Bluth'ed. Gma don’t give any fucks! Not with that attitude. They have billions. We ARE billions. It’s much easier and cheaper to go after non-violent substance abuser sadly. It’s the same reason why the IRS targets the poors instead of the big fish. The system never worked and it never will. If they didn’t do it after 2008, they sure as hell aren’t going to do it now >Gut the congress and senate literally or figuratively?????? cause I am fine with either one.... Yeah you might not like the change that follows. Yes but now that College gets paid for by the tax payers she can cook the books No, not really. a horrible people eater plant with one eye !! that’s the best way to drop crime rate, just don’t charge anybody for crime and then celebrate we don’t have crime problem :) How would you expect people of the lower class to obey rules that the ruling class doesn’t follow themselves? Good attempt to sway the conversation away from the real problem, but I think you’ve fallen flat on your face here. You know why crime is so high in cities? Because people there are fighting over scraps just to get by. I know you wish to vilify the lower class but the problem is and always has been the elites who are running things, whether it be the big banks, big pharmaceutical (you know the ones who think OxyContin should be overprescribed and think that kids need to be given copious amounts of meth to sit still) the military industrial complex (who increases their profits by sending blank checks to Ukraine) or each and every person in our government (the ones receiving tons of money from lobbyists to keep the rules in favor of the elite.) It’s so easy to blame poor people but anytime blame starts to shift to the ruling class, people like you are around to shift it back. At the end of the day it's all government resources. Give them to people busting people for drugs, or give them to people busting white collar criminals. Totally. Not to mention, the burden of proof is way easier for a possession charge than for insider trading or whatnot. If you have a body camera and are facing someone with weed, that's a slam dunk prosecution. Cops are just the first step. Courts and prisons are overwhelmed. It’s just fantasy. “Big bank bad! boo boo!”, “They make money so it must be illegal!”. People cheer for actors and sport stars making millions but somehow think it’s unfair for banking executives to do the same. I think the reason is actually simple. Actors and sport stars are useful to them because they watch movie and sports. But they don’t care about people working in Wall Street because they don’t see the benefit for themselves and then are herded by politicians that tell them bankers are the bogeyman. I feel like I should say ahead of time, I am not a fan either. What do you not like about him? Reggae Shark says approves. [TIL carpentry isn't a ""real job""](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/12/the-populist-prophet) It's hard to like what he says until he speaks on extremely genralized platitudes. Then he goes into his specific vision and says ""tax every stock trade for every individual investor!1!"" and we can all safely go back to ignoring his BS again sadly I think you are correct :( How do you know this? Bernie Sanders' wife lied to a bank about donations from alumni of the college she was provost of to get a loan to purchase land for a new campus location. Youre probably thinking of Rick Scott, who placed his wife in charge of Solantic in Florida when he became governor. He then pushed for drug testing of welfare recipients which Solantic was the beneficiary of. Wild claim...got a link? If that. Some poor shelp just trying to dull the pain of their existence might get real jail time while Moofy and Boofy only get house arrest. Hey there disgruntledbkbum! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **""THIS""**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :) *** ^(I am a bot! Visit) [^(r/InfinityBots)](https://reddit.com/r/InfinityBots) ^(to send your feedback! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments) I hope this is sarcasm. No ones afraid to use that word, in fact reddit labels every thing as fascist > It's a corporatocracy with the third greatest army in the world--the police--at war with the people. Yea, the system targets POC and poor people, wants to incarcerate them all. Can’t even get voted in from his own party let alone elected Conflating federal and state issues is the basics democrats get wrong Agreed *Common sense does not* *Apply to this system and* *Thus will never happen!* \- jay-zd --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: ""haikusbot opt out"" | Delete my comment: ""haikusbot delete"") loving kindness and care helps a person addicted to druggs much better than incarcerating them for such Just being able to pull a single thread of that rigging can mean everything to some people for the rest of their lives, you don't need throw the baby out with the bathwater... ... who knows, if we all grabbed a thread each, soon we'd be pulling fat ropes of string to command some political puppets ourselves again... You’re right Oh Im sorry do you own this sub? You could always just keep scrolling hot-shot. This is what defeatism looks like, kids Bernie is good at platitudes but he's a fucking terrible politician. And I get that's part of why a lot of his supporters like him but it makes him an ineffective blowhard and it's why he lost his presidential primaries. In politics you need to come to the table with actionable ideas and then *work with others* to find support and implement those ideas. You need to form coalitions, not alienate your colleagues while tweeting shit that makes nonvoters cheer and center of the aisle voters look elsewhere. This sentence is a mess ""everyone in this room is crazy but me!"" ""wait.... no. Impossible!"" You mean website Not wanting people to get arrested for a plant is a Democrat thing? No it's a *progressive* circle jerk. A lot of this sub hates Democrats. sheesh man, your pocket wasn’t hurting in 2008? iite You mean 99% of Reddit ? Bernie isn't a Democrat Reddit* is just a Democrat circle jerk I thought Reddit in general was a democrat circle jerk? Except when 4chan and T_D.win brigade threads that expose republicans as the assholes they are of course. These threads are heavily Republican. Or r/conservative, r/askthedonald, r/conspiracy, r/wayofthebern and many other subs are all heavy Republican subs too. What does this have to do with Democrats yeah this is just cringe populism lol people are literally pointing to the gamestop thing too as if anything criminal happened there I don’t think most people like the Democratic Party, most just seem interested in reforming the us to be on par with every other rich country New to Reddit? Welcome to Reddit That’s some odd reasoning. Is the post wrong? Sure most people that read it already agree. Do you? Young man memes on internet. Under what basis? If there’s a politician that’s NOT a fraud it’s probably him lol Will likely outlive Biden; he's certainly not suffering the same cognitive decline Biden is... Wish the Dems hadn't scuttled his candidacy twice (never would've had Trump). We already did, that's why Wu Tang is for the children. There’s a metric shit ton of people out there doing better than you and I, and Bernie. Doesn’t mean they can’t pick a side and go balls-out? Good more like 60 billion. 10% is going back to his pocket Hey ""Einstein"" give this essay by Einstein a listen https://youtu.be/YMKXVWpADFk Garbage that’s exactly what it is. To be fair, the DEA budget is 1 billion dollars more than the SEC budget. And if I understand the criminal financial system basics (I probably don't). Stopping some financial crimes will significantly hinder major drug operations. If current administration can’t even get support to legalize then what can they do truly ? ""I'm afraid you don't know how the aviation business works Senator. You see wining and dining Air Force dignitaries is common in our business. It's because we all want the big contracts, all the major aircraft companies do it now. I don't know whether it's a good system or not, I just know it is not illegal. You Senator, you are the lawmaker. If you pass a law that states no one can entertain Air Force officers, well hell, I'd be happy to abide by it."" History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Democratic socialist but he can ask public to prosecute then while he is in senate and actually make/enforce laws. typical socialist propaganda guy its almost midterm season so he has to pretend to be a leftist again before he goes back to giving handjobs to donors and raising money for far-right democrats oh well if joe biden wants the wall street guys to get away with it, Bernie will do anything he possibly can to help. They can hide their stolen and fraudulent assets in one of the spare houses he got for stopping the left in 2016 and 2020. Can't wait till y'all realize that it's not right vs. left, but oligarchs vs plebes. Then we might get some shit done for once. Keep fighting with your neighbors and coworkers though let's see how that works out for our kids. Ah yes, the ""stolen election"" claim that was literally debunked by multiple *state GOP led investigations*. You know, the people with literally the most incentive in the world to find evidence of fraud. Every single Trump election case: lost (and laughed out of court). Every single investigation: came up empty. Why don't you fascists have the balls to just come out and say it? You don't think the election was stolen. You're just willing to throw democracy aside and overturn any election that you lost. At least then I could respect the honesty. But this cringey years-long ""iT WaS sToLeN"" tantrum is just pathetic. That’s too bad that all of Trump‘s false election fraud claims were thrown at a court. Trump is nothing more than a greedy, corrupt liar. He is a sore loser and will cry fraud at anything. 10 day old account. That’s bait. The president who tried to steal the election, T$%\*P, failed bigly. You still believe this? Rent Free Fuck Wall Street. Anyone who looks at the market over the last 20 years and thinks it’s working properly is a grifter who benefits from Wall Street. Burn the whole system down. There's no logical or moral reason to bust people for marijuana You're not paying attention. It's the corporate and private business owner campaign contributions along with their lobbying that is corrupting our government. The crooks on wall street are the ones paying the crooks in Congress. Be a drunk instead! Look at how fun those commercials make alcoholism look! Domestic abuse and killing a family while driving drunk is just frosting on the cirrhosis of the liver cake! Yeah just like how we still have the Italian mob running illegal hooch into the cities from the moonshiners! The black market exists because there is no legal market. The black market can't turn to the civil authorities for obvious reasons, so they create their own enforcement or else get ripped off. Outlawed drugs and prostitution generates gang activity and makes sex work vulnerable to exploitation. We wouldn't get rid of street crime or sex trafficking overnight by legalizing and regulating all drugs and prostitution, but it would help dramatically. muh summah camphe!!! yeah you would think he might try to actually legalize weed instead of just dangle it like a carrot every election. Your not very well informed are you George Washington smoked Cannabis... If pot makes me stupid, what's making you even more stupid? Pass that shit don't hog it Sanders is a common sense kind of guy. Says here they inherited the money for the third house and already owned the first two https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/08/10/bernie-sanders-buys-summer-home/ You gotta read to the end of the article because that part doesn't generate clicks and outrage. No one is saying Democrats are perfect, they aren’t but at least they get the conversation started and make people aware. The GOP won’t even spit in your direction. Hey there OwtoIwtn! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **""THIS!""**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :) *** ^(I am a bot! Visit) [^(r/InfinityBots)](https://reddit.com/r/InfinityBots) ^(to send your feedback! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments) I’m sorry, do have such a lack of understanding about how the government works, that you think one senator can sign things into law at a federal level? He’s tried but one person can’t change the entire system singlehanded Surprisingly the French Revolution only moved about 9% of the total wealth of the rich aristocracy into the poorest classes. The reality is that there was a horizontal movement of assets from the wealthy to the new government which then leased or lended properties and money to the lower classes. People who we'd now consider ""middle class"" were virtually untouched by the revolution. It took a few generations before people's standards of living increased and even then much of the population was still very poor. How can you be when you say something so vague as to be utterly pointless? Who should be prosecuted and for what broken laws? He’s a communist …always has been… always will be .period He's the best but he doesn't poll well because he calls himself a 'progressive socialist'. Without hearing his message, republicans translate 'socialist' to 'communist"". Which isn't the case of course. He's the people's politician, and the more power he has the better off we would all be. *This is what passes for* *Economic content on* *Here? Lame one liners* \- BlackCat40411 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: ""haikusbot opt out"" | Delete my comment: ""haikusbot delete"") This but unironically [deleted] He's one man lol *At what point do we* *Give up and declare war on* *The conservatives?* \- reeda312 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: ""haikusbot opt out"" | Delete my comment: ""haikusbot delete"") The police arrest more people for possession of marijuana than for all violent crimes combined. www.forbes.com/sites/emilyearlenbaugh/2020/10/06/more-people-were-arrested-for-cannabis-last-year-than-for-all-violent-crimes-put-together-according-to-fbi-data/amp/ Yes, Bernie should just do it all by himself. Not like the other 99 senators voting against him will be a problem… 🤡 “Zero Credibility” Which Nazi’s? found 1 russian troll lol Arresting people for marijuana is not cleaning up the streets. It's immorally arresting people for nonsense crimes Because we will end up with an economy like Venezuela‘s. Technically it’s more work to bust someone on the wall street then some guy with weed in his pocket. Are you even from America? If you are then this comment is a pretty good indication of why our education system has failed. Yes, there are still people getting busted exactly , anyone educated can find that there are no botanical examples of a marijuana plant ... Easy , search Phylum of marijuana , Taxonomical data for a marijuana plant .... No such plant exists 1!!!! no way to trace and botanical lineage Wtf? I’d say ban all drugs and alcohol. Imprison people who can’t follow rules. Its not a dog whistle if the message is not hidden. No, it'd be the exact same world lol. Whose bullshit are you buying then? Hey there Kawashiro_N! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **""This.""**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :) *** ^(I am a bot! Visit) [^(r/InfinityBots)](https://reddit.com/r/InfinityBots) ^(to send your feedback! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments) The problem is waiting for Congress to apply consequences to themselves. That is absolutely never going to happen. If we ever want real change it’s going to be up to the people to apply consequences to Congress. Nationwide general strikes. Unrelenting protests outside the homes of criminal elected officials and those that enable them. Boycotting of the companies that elected officials insider trade in. Only once we band together and make noticeable waves will Congress ever consider amending the rules in a way that doesn’t benefit them. Ofc, that’s just as much of a far cry as Congress going after one of their own in the first place. They’ve masterfully divided the masses to stand against each on fabricated issues so that the people are too distracted to notice the fact that their pockets are being picked. Wen RICO visit DC and Wall St? I would say that this falls under SEC and DOJ jurisdiction, but those agencies are both as useful as a wet paper bag. Imagine Nancy pelosi being like “alright Bernie let’s do it” then she just immediately gets arrested They might if we all begin collectively saying yes, and then following through on it. Instead apathy seems to be a rough factor. Not with that attitude! #facts Sick ads world smh. Unproductive doomer take. Let's make it happen y'all Will the consequence be me smoking weed worry free? Greatest investor honor goes to Mitch McConnell, came into the Senate with $3.79 in his pocket, worth $25 million today (and that is without the billions of his Chinese father in law). [deleted] That'd be the day Or ever will, for that matter. Punishments aren't fitting the crimes being committed It was never right in the first place. It's collusion and market manipulation. The public sees it for what it is. The institutions are getting kickbacks not to pursue. It's all one big club, and we ain't in it. 2 year old link? If bernie is as much of a saint as you want him to be, why is he not pressing charges against these people? After all, wouldn't he have the legal know-how if he's been a part of the system all his adult life? Answer: BECAUSE HE HAS JUST AS MUCH TO LOSE AS HIS CORRUPT COLLEAGUES. I was on that sub when WSB was shilled to death. I haven't missed a post or a daily. I like what yous guys post. It's the ""Just Us"" System. Meaning, if you asked your elected official whom the justice system benefits, their answer will be ""Just Us"". It's really not, if you have morals, or a spine. Cool typo. Well, if you maintain that kind of attitude, then yes, nothing will ever happen. Not only lost them, but 4 months later BLAMED them for the state of the market. Who do you think controls the media? The people, or the crooks doing this? Didn’t you hear?! It was the small time investors that did it! Even Gary Gensler said that the retail investors were trading meme stocks. Is it even legal for the SEC to negatively label stocks on the market like that? Every company he grouped together as a meme stock should sue the SEC for slander and libel. Shouldn’t it be considered unethical and illegal to talk down about a business, their stock, and the market? GG is a joke. ☝🏻 You see, you know how to *take* the oath, you just don't know how to *keep* the oath. And that's really the most important part of the oath: the keeping. Anybody can just take them. Well we are flying into Denver just give us a place to meet and a list of what to bring 😆 How does he have $25 billion dollars then? He should pay those teachers with his own money that he stole… Count this Texas ape in, I'll bring the brisket! Ken Griffey had nothing to do with teachers pensions. He hit 600 hr you white supremacist trash. Its awesome seeing fellow SuperStonk apes in the wild. \*tips hat\* His army is downvoting this And is trying to buy a Republican seat as Governor Hello can you provide a link please? I’m trying to find it on google and nothing is coming uo Wait wait wait...Kenny said it was me and my friends spending our stimmy checks from our Moms' basements that sunk teacher's pensions!?!? Please upvote this I doubt your gme is ever gonna reach 300 bucks again let alone 10mil. Love it dawg lol we're trying so hard to inform the public and they're so close. I guess it's up to us to save this shitonomy I think ya’ll are referring to Kenneth Cordelle Griffin. The American financial terrorist slash criminal, Ken Griffin, amirite? I thought it was the Ken Griffin that bought a copy of the Constitution to throw off the web searches for his crimes That’s the one! Is that the guy who hit his wife with a bed post the night before their wedding, that Ken Griffen? Other than the crimes Ken griffin committed Ken Griffey didn't play for Chicago. He played for Seattle you dumb Nazi. That’s the one! Ape strong together Steve Cohen and Jeff Yass too! r/superstonk for very thorough research by redditors on that topic and the stock market in general I think that’s the guy And 11 herbs and spices Book He wrote a bestselling book my friend Stfu. You know nothing. Dude if you don't have at least 1m+ throughout your retirement accounts by the time you are his age, you are thoroughly fucked, book or not. He's been making six figures for decades... He wrote a best selling book. Hey bud, not sure if you're out of the loop or just collectively fucking with us, but OP is referring to Kenneth Griffin, not Ken Griffey or Ken Griffey Jr. Ken Griffin is a scumfuck hedgefund manager. That's why we want him arrested, among other things. Man! Wasn't he a legend though?! I mean, he's no Ryne Sandberg, but still impressive. Seriously. 630 dingers. No peds. Leave KG Jr alone goddamnit! Only person that lost money was ken griffin and co. When they gambled away the pensions of those teachers. Ask Melvin capital how it's been going for them. Last I heard they were being liquidated. You referring to the dying brick and mortar that has been doing nothing but growing in sales? The same place that's about to do a stock split and divened? The same company that has took top level employees from the likes of Amazon, apple, Microsoft, and many other giants? The same place that has many exciting partnerships that were just announced? Same place that has over 2 billion in capital and no debt other than a small French COVID relief loan? Are we talking about the same place or are you just a little bit retarded? This is what happens when you lose your money in shitty investments. I don't know but he plays a mean sax Same here We're all working class people. Anyone who sees the inequality in the world should have a real conversation with anyone over at the Stonk. Own your property. Delete the middleman. Transparency. Not really, people working in government are the smallest of fish in the schemes going on. Superstonk is more about financial terrorism and big funds able to naked short a stock many multiples above their outstanding shares and basically just take everyones money over and over on the promise to pay back the shares, but whoops the company went bankrupt looks like we get to keep all that money. That's why I invested my life savings into GameStop, I Direct Registered my Shares (DRS). It means they remove my shares from the hands of corrupt hedge funds, and people who gamble people's 401k's and stock investments. (Bernie Madoff, Ken Griffin and people that caused all the crashes. And the SEC doesn't do anything to stop it, so the only way to stop them from stealing from teachers and nurses pensions is to DRS your shares. YOU own them snd THEY can't gamble YOUR money away. It's wild, I had no idea how much crime happens with Wall Street. It's the ONLY way to stop them. (Not Financial Advice) Superstonk is the financial equivalent of the quanon bullshit. [deleted] No cell; no sell. That sub is literally a bunch of bag holding cultists at this point Turns out that stuff they talk about has >30 years of evidence to back up across a number of stocks and can be linked to the wealthiest people in the world controlling the lives of all of us peasants. Go figure. yeah! If anybody is truly interested in learning more about how the whole system is set up to quietly steal your money, including our supposed ""protectors"" in the SEC, there is a hell of a library in the superstonk menu. Prosecute all of them. None of us are Democrats or Republicans. Notice how Sanders is independent and the only one with a voice of reason? Yeah, that's not an accident. Ehhh I kinda disagree. The ones making legislature have huge power to sway the landscape in ways that would be favorable to their portfolios. Just look at the senators who dumped their stocks in hotels and airlines *before* breaking the news on covid and lockdown restrictions. If they really cared about the public's best interest they would blow the whistle for that kind of thing first, and worry about their shares and dividends later. Or better yet, not be allowed to hold or trade stocks at all while in office. But who's going to legislate for that? Not them. and like handing someone a gun and asking them to shoot themselves in the foot Brilliant! Then they can have some Battle Royale amongst themselves on one of their private tropical islands to fight for their freed... Wait, too soon? Not quite there yet? Never mind. Look, a bird! This All good, man. Can assure you, I'm no Trumptard. I hate Wall St., too! Get those bastards!!! Exactly, but it should be. Koch! George Soros! Oh it’s way worse than that… after the election goes well they come back for seconds because without lobbyist sponsorship, a legislator can’t afford membership to ANY committee because it cost more than their salary The NRA fuck that's hot Not yet. I didn't leave the Republican party, the republican party left me. You're not telling the full story. Doin it 4 karma... and that's exactly what the gas prices are right now, it is absolutely nothing more. Because the last time some idiot democrat proposed price controls, there were mass gas shortages and rationing. Maybe do some reading. Imagine being so stupid you think high gas prices are caused by ""gouging"" rather than supply and demand, and the fact that there is a severely limited supply of oil due to no new drilling permits being issued by the Biden administration. Stolen comment. We’ll the cops are donning military transports and equipment and they can’t even confront a 18 yr old untrained while they make sure the parents are held back?And the government is never broke so they haven’t ever spent it all technically. [deleted] Fartdaggio Some of the DD is sure hard to wrap my mind around. So many people have no idea what truly happens with all the criminal activity going on with Wall St. Lol “read the DD,” you people are fucking delusional What's the dealio fellow redditor The subreddit /r/ superstonk is a cult that tells you to invest all your money in a stock. Where are you located? It might not even be a thing. I got nicked in Ohio 15 years ago for possession that isn't even a crime anymore and it's still on my record. That was a big factor in moving to a legal state for me. I had gone that long without a record, but it seemed like only a matter of time if I stayed in a prohibition state. I work live in a state that it's still illegal. My company sent out a mandate about CBD and Delta 8. Saying we aren't allowed to use it and we can get fired. I can walk into several stores and buy it legally. Have like five paraphernalia charges. I have one where I had a bowl of weed at school. That got dismissed but it's not expunged, still on my record. That little amount made it hard to find a school district I could work in. Don't have any felonies, thank God. Can't imagine all the poor people that had a few ounces or pounds that got charged with manufacturing or something like that. I've probably only had one cop give me a break. He's the only one that caught me with weed which was just like two grams and just threw it out, stepped on it, took my pipe and gave me a speeding ticket. Great guy, he made me laugh... I've been caught with pipes in other occasions and I've had k9 units called on me to search the car for weed. One time they put my car on a tow truck over a pipe. This other cop gave me a ticket because my car smelled and he found what seriously was grass by my feet. Fought that and won. A bunch of fucking dunces. It doesn't need to be illegal to begin with when something like alcohol kills so many of our loved ones every day. Marijuana would also be good for industry and food. You act like the law is irrefutable. Reminder that the party machinery has ways to *make* its will manifest. They don't even have to change the vote counts. Changing rules without notice, stalling certain actions that are supposed to happen, using their influence to time certain acts of news ... an outsider does not have anything *near* a fair chance. And Bernie still managed to get 40% of the vote in that rigged system. *** The good news is that there are now a *lot* more people who are familiar with how the system works. Them trying to make the candidates promise to elect minorities and lbgt ppl to their cabinets during the debates was so cringe. Corporate democrats spew nothing but identity politics it’s exhausting. More like the DNC is a completely corrupt organization. Uhm, were you not aware of the shenanigans they pulled during the last DNC leadership race? “Ok everybody we all know you don’t actually have real choices or freedom of choice in this country, so to beat the other team we have to pick the most bland milquetoast candidate imaginable that mostly represents our entire ‘side’, so that we can outnumber the radically uneducated and angry gun loving boot lockers who dream of a Christian sharia law taking away rights of everyone they don’t like. It’s totally unfair but what are you gonna do about it? We’ve already distracted you all with conflict amongst yourselves while we looted your pensions and future savings because after all, *we* make the laws.” The lesson is that ranked choice voting would’ve solved the problem entirely. If you want Bernie but you’re worried he’ll lose to another Dem, rank Bernie 1 and the other Dems accordingly. If Bernie actually does lose, your vote just transforms into your number 2 (or your top choice still in the race). It’s kind of fucked up that in order to fix our politics we have to deal with these weird meta-problems about how we even choose candidates. That southern wall... Meta-game? How do you figure? Voters rejected his policies twice, time to accept it [deleted] Just like how they stole it from TRUMP. Right ? Is that how you get people to upvote ""Voter fraud"" on reddit? Rename it something so they don't realize what they're upvoting? There's no way Bernie would've beaten Trump. I wish that wasn't true - I'd prefer Bernie over Biden - but there's no evidence that'd be the case. Bernie lost all of the critical swing states to Hillary and Biden by a pretty large margin. Those swing states were narrowly won by Trump in 2016 and narrowly won by Biden in 2020. How a candidate performs in those swing states is the single biggest predicter of whether they can win the rest of the election, and Bernie has not been able to pull that off unfortunately. they did admit it. you can literally go back and search for it, washington post and a few other papers were putting out articles about how trump was preferable to bernie The only way you could actually believe this is by really, really wanting to [deleted] Welcome to r/neoliberal! We are one of the fastest growing communities on Reddit. Bring back free trade and lower inflation! Protectionists, populists, and socialists can suck an egg! (And because of that, no, we don't like Trump... or his nasty tariffs that Biden has yet to remove.) Uh huh Lol wut I voted for Sanders in the march 17 Illinois primary. Then I voted for trump in November. I voted for Bernie in both primaries but he probably wouldn’t have beaten Trump. Honesty is just about all I want out of my candidates these days. I don't particularly like or agree with Bernie, never felt the Bern, but absolutely I would have voted for him and still will if I have the opportunity. He would have. Polled consistently better than Trump, and appeals to the same pool of people tired of politics that Trump pulled from. Many folks that were lifelong R's would have been glad to vote for Bernie over Trump. No, they don’t. We don’t, not by a long shot I'm not I prefer voting for politicians who actually do what they say they're going to do. And so much for the fucking economy anyways. Hold on for this shit to crash. > How many times do we need to teach you the same lesson? People like them will, quite literally, never learn. They will continue to back in national elections, candidates who are popular only in left leaning enclaves. Those candidates will continue to lose. And people like the person you're responding will continue to blame anyone but themselves. Yes thank you. Biden had 10 million more votes than Bernie; Hillary 3 million more. It isn’t some “wow Bernie got fucked by the system” thing. It’s people don’t like Bernie outside the Reddit bubble That's simply not true. If you poll issue by issue, the candidate that most voters agreed with was Bernie. Facts are facts. For your information: Bernie is considered center in Europe. Right in the middle, not progressive at all. It’s the conservatives in America that are on the wrong side of history, not the “progressives”. Just look at the state of your country should tell you enough, unfortunately you’re not capable to understand. How about you “get over it” and you and your country men might have a better future. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Your friends sound fucking insane. Hope they’re thrilled about SCOTUS Why do you think I voted for him? Bernie is absolutely the fucking GOAT. he’s the only politician i’ve ever donated to, and i am still livid that the DNC fucked him (and *us*) over like they did. this country would be in a much better place than it is, had Bernie been elected, as he rightly should’ve been. further proof that this is not a democracy— we are an oligarchy. and a shitty one, at that. [Is the spez a disease? Is the spez a weapon? Is the spez a starfish? Is it a second rate programmer who won't grow up? Is it a bane? Is it a virus? Is it the world? Is it you? Is it me? Is it? Is it?](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) What do you gave against sanders policies? They all make sense to me Yes, all the popular subs are this way [deleted] This guy's politics is ""I hate Biden"" and ""Democrats are bad,"" so I think it's pretty prudent to just not take him that seriously The thing that controls DC It's a very obvious and pathetic attempt at faux populist deflection by conservatives. The user who posted that even posts in /r/walkaway so it makes sense. Until you cut the head off the snake you will continue to see the erosion of morality in America. The US is among the most corrupt governments on earth. Corruption is rampant on both sides of the isle. FBI is corrupt and the judiciary is worse. Washington is setting the example that lies, cheating, insider trading and slander are all acceptable as far as they are concerned. Lol this is why our division as a country benefits bad people. We’re arguing over which crooks should be busted instead of unifying against all the crooks. [deleted] it's going to take a literal violent revolution. so yeah, pretty much never going to happen. we're too busy working. That’s a dope quote lol Per capita, the more you make the higher your chance of being audited. Top brackets have the highest per capita audit rates to the point that the top bracket is audited at a higher percent then the rest of the income brackets combined damn near. They literally are Hahaha me too actually 🤷‍♀️ Yeah really, was shady as hell. She would have faced charges if she wasn't the wife of Bernie. You know how the court systems let Democrats rape and steal all they want. Because they politicized the FBI. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/24/bernie-sanders-and-his-wife-reportedly-lawyer-up-amid-fbi-probe.html Aye, control mechanisms suppress the statistics and oppress the oppressed. Abolish the military, defund the police. Social efforts are literally the only long term option that actually helps people and reduces crime. Universal basic income. Free healthcare. Free public transport. 6 hour work days. Because we can fucking afford to take care of everyone, if we didn't torrent cash into private businesses. A hundred years of massive improvements to productive forces and all we got was excessive consumption, tax breaks, social cost cutting, inflation, rate hikes and an economy that screws the working class and the poor at all times. People have become infected, protecting private profits in favor of redistributing power and resources to the masses. The politics are driven by economical motives, not out of compassion for fellow human beings. The time for revolution is now. You can enforce both misdemeanors and felonies and white collar and street crimes. It's silly to suggest otherwise. Whether or not marijuana should be illegal is a separate issue. ""hello SEC this is the kenosha police department, good news we don't care about weed anymore lol. if we mail you a check can you plz arrest some more bankers?"" You seriously think the local cops not arresting people for weed will increase the federal and state government's investigations of white collar crimes? Two different systems. Hell we had a florida man who was so high or drunk he walked the police to his crops to show the officers how impressive they were. Literally two different court systems. You guys really should learn how your own government works. What has he accomplished in office besides enriching himself? Yep 😂 Probably referring to the articles surrounding Cawthorn (mistakenly named the wrong person) fall from grace for spilling the beans on coke fueled orgies at GOP events. Edited a name Ahh sorry, good call. If you think I should delete my comment to avoid misinformation I can. https://vtdigger.org/2016/07/15/sanders-campaign-millions-go-to-mystery-firm/ Yeah, how do you get a meeting with a senator tho? There is a clear line between being a polling statistic and having an actual voice. Nah, he'd rather stop around mad all day. Guys like him are worse than virtue signaling assholes - at least those folks think they're *trying* to do something positive. This guy just wants to spread hate. What I’m saying is Wall Street loves Bernie Sanders as their opponent because they know his words are ineffective and his efforts in vain. Wall Street corruption, wealth inequality and congressional violations regarding the stock market have worsened dramatically under his impotent watch. I would support anyone (or group as I believe it would take a large group of very powerful people undeterred by Wall Street bribery { which none of our politicians seem to be} to reign in Wall Street) who could be proactive in stopping the corruption. It’s realism, im not a defeatist. I’m a skeptic and a sucker for real results. If you want to see someone Ive supported who cares about his cause and is proactively effective in it, google Louis Rossman and his fight for right to repair. Bernie Sanders on the other hand, is not Louis Rossman. Edit: I would support anyone who could end Wall Street corruption. It’s not, nor had it ever been Bernie Sanders that could do it. And if you saw Bernie’s finances, for a guy that’s done almost notjing, you may agree. [removed] If you don't want to keep a large stable prison population, then you don't understand freedom. The drugs are incidental. Seeming yes sadly. >What does this have to do with Democrats Someone mentioned corruption and they instantly took it as an attack on republicans. Strange, that. You do realize that people were primarily upset with how the rules in the current system work, right? hey dude, just wanted to give you a reminder - it's spelt crungo, not cringe you crungolord I can't stand the Democrat party but I like more Democrats than Republicans [deleted] Of course it’s wrong it’s populist rhetoric Yes, it's a false dichotomy. [This is a pretty good list](https://www.reddit.com/r/Enough_Sanders_Spam/comments/f3n8im/giant_opposition_research_thread_on_bernie_sanders/) of all the bad/unethical things Bernie has done. Ranging from enriching his friends and family to just being hypocritical. His constant virtue signaling with protestors but never really doing anything about it. You can also check his voting record. People of color (who sanders claims to care about) were refusing the Cv vax and losing their jobs over it. Yet sanders was pro mandate. Also why did quietly let Biden “win” the nomination? Cant say I liked ANY of the options we have had last few elections. [deleted] Bernie was the president we needed, but not the one we deserved. A dark knight. I’m don’t know, he did lose at least one cage match with a shower door Yea the guy who couldn't win a primary would have beat Trump. Lmao. Sure, talk about what government should do or how people should live as long as they don't do what he's doing. The guy has spent his life promoting socialism, ALL ARE EQUAL, and in government service, has 3 homes and a net worth of $3 million. Pick a side, go balls out, and be a hypocrite? How is it good? America is already in debt so printing 40 billion to add to the national debt is ridiculous. Our politicians should be tarred and feathered for giving 40 billion to ukraine that Americans will be paying the interest on. Ok, I'll listen. Please explain. Sure thing but I hate socialism 🤷🏻 But we don’t want drug operations hindered! :) Biden could pull a Trump and just tell them not to enforce any of the laws on a federal level :) Biden could literally instruct that weed be rescheduled. When it’s popular enough in enough states. Or you can work to get a ballot initiative and do it locally. It surprises me not at all that the MIC is corrupt. Sure. He was elected democratically. But he is a marxist intermediate socialist, which is communism with extra steps, and either way you slice it to believe these are functioning economic systems at this late date is ridiculous. Which house did he get by throwing an election? The one his in-law gave to them when they died? The in DC where he works? Or the one in Vermont where he lives? You mean the left that was just unpopular with the core Democratic base? hey dude, just wanted to give you a reminder - it's spelt crungo, not cringe you crungolord Remember when he cried ""RIGGED"" when he won against Hillary? And then the dumbass realized he won? you mean like how hillary cried for years that the evil russians hacked the election and it was a fraud presidency, louder and more enthusiastically than he ever did, with much less pushback or fact checking? nah biden's still president he seems to have pretty successfully done that. most popular president in history, remember? lowest approval ratings of any president in history, but hes simultaneously the most beloved and popular one. make it make sense. Lmao cope because you can’t argue with the facts What has happened in the past decade? Absolutely there is. At least a logical one. It's illegal at the federal level. Legalize it, federally, and no one will get busted for it anymore. This half-ass situation where the federal government says, ""Yeah, it's illegal, but we're not going to enforce those laws."" is about the worst situation we can have. If the government gets to pick and choose what laws to enforce and who they are enforced against, we will be in a world we don't want. In this case it seems to be marijuana laws are enforced against the poor, and minorities, but not others at the same rate. If that's ok then it's ok to let wall street get away with financial crimes that you and I can't. Or congressmen can get away with damn near anything. The world is corrupted by people. You’re at fault. I fail to see where i said that drinking is good. Is it really that hard for people to not do something illegal and then complain that they got into trouble? Please don't feed me these perpetually wrong libertarian talking points. It's easier than ever to get cheap Black Market weed than it ever has been Thanks to legalization Cigarettes being legal doesn't stop loose cigarettes from being sold for cheap. Legal liquor doesn't stop moonshining stills I'm not? You don't even know the difference between ""your"" and ""you're"". Yeah, I need to take advice from you. I don't know why Reddit is forcing these posts on me. You see this is what a leader does he rallies all of his party members behind him and actually writes legislation. If he did that I'm curious to know when. I'm sorry making a Twitter post is not rallying your troops behind you. I would argue there's not a single piece of legislation that has ever passed through the house and the Senate that didn't start with the idea of one person and other people joining in and working on it, that's how it works. Well, all that tells me is that they did not have the benefit of contemporary political and economic theory to better allocate the wealth of the bourgeoisie. The middle class of revolution era france does not really correlate to the current, american, middle class. Moreover, their poor were literally starving and dying in the streets. That the poorest saw any improvement is a small victory. This suggests that more of the ruling elite needed to be liberated of their assets and wealth. It is likely the failure to properly address the needs of the poor and middle classes that led to the rise and success of bonapartism both in the case of Napoleon and his would be successors. Do more for those at the bottom or you end up falling victim to protofascism (then) or neofascism (now). Did you read the title? What the absolute fuck are you even arguing about. Yeah it's not like the democrats control all 3 houses......Fucking worthless all of them. All talk and no show. All *other* violent crime combined. Drug use is violence. His job as a politician is to work with others to get things done, not just the 99 in the senate, but the house and elsewhere weed is like alcohol. we arrest for substance abuse and for use in public where it is not allowed, and for use when opperating machinery etc. Dont defend something just because you like it and cant see how it does NOT help society. Why Obviously I’m not as my question made obvious 🙄 Self explanatory There wouldn't have been the Trump era environmental back pedalling. Americans would have affordable health care. And lots more. Not his. If everyone that worked at Amazon and Walmart said fuck it and stopped going to work, shit would get done. Too bad people cant afford to not work to stand up for themselves. Its almost like the system is set up that way.... Why can't we do it like the good old days, with guillotines and arson? 😔 Exactly. I agree 100%. We have to band together. Hence, division they instill in people. Until then nothing will happen, it will only get worse and worse Problem is, individualism is the “sacred burden” of the American people. Wealthy and privileged people getting to tell us that in this country we are all our own islands, on an at-will social contract with everyone else. You get to only worry about yourself and yours and nobody will judge you for it because none of us can take the time to actually help anyone else, even if we wanted to. We have at LEAST 25% of people who wouldn’t piss on their neighbors house fire to put it out. 40% can’t help because they’re on the edge themselves, 30% give whatever they can but can’t ever hope to put a dent in the problem and the last 5% are trying to figure out how to escape the dirty poors of the earth and start exploiting asteroids a la Alien Weland-Yutani style. America’s obsession with individualism will be its downfall, politicians all talk about ways to make individuals succeed and use their own power. We are a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires, “when I get rich…”, “when my ship comes in”, “when I win the lottery”, “when my inheritance comes due…”, “when my invention takes off”, “when a talent scout finds me”, “when I sell *object*…” If we could gather our guts and HELP each other we could DO strikes, sit-ins and walkouts. If I could count on my neighbors to help feed me or if they could help guard my house during chaos, ANYTHING…but I don’t even know their names. I don’t know how they will react in times of need. The rich convinced us that we had power as individuals. We need to remember there is REAL power in numbers. Washington DC is literally a prosecution free zone for criminal activities within it, especially if your a democrat. >If we ever want real change it’s going to be up to the people to apply consequences to Congress. Ummm, how about not voting them into office. How about average citizens running for office? The people have always had the power. Are they going to use it? Now there's the question. So long as there’s no term limits and congress is largely exempt from the laws congress makes ain’t nuthin gonna change. I’m thinking another 40-50 years of this running off the rails and then the apartheid state the US will have become probably by mid century or a little after, will have a serious reckoning… Also tar and feather and other 'uncivil' disobeidence, clearly protests/marches aren't doing a god damn thing and none of us organized. Not saying they need or should be harmed or killd, but scare the living daylights out of em will do. Be like the Plebeians, from the wiki: The plebeians were able to achieve their political goals by a series of secessions from the city: ""a combination of mutiny and a strike"" Right like vaxs, guns, race, lgbtq, me2, energy, science 🤪and many more I’ve thought it would be interesting if the people had the ability to initiate referendums that becomes law if approved during an election. Unfortunately, that would require a constitutional amendment - which would NEVER get through congress. Time for the American people to fight for term limits for Congress - Representatives and Senators serving 8-15 terms is insane. Preach on my brother! 👏👏 I definitely believe in a revamping of America. > They’ve masterfully divided the masses to stand against each on fabricated issues so that the people are too distracted to notice the fact that their pockets are being picked. Yesterday I was on r/conservative and some Michigan lawmaker was implying how everyone should just drive an electric car to avoid high gas prices. Of course they went into a frenzy about how dems are only for the rich and don’t care about the working class. Gee I wonder where I’ve heard that argument. We’re all fighting the same battle on different sides. The sooner we realize that the better our future will be. > far cry GOTY Public lynchings.. Before we stand up and protest against any corrupt elected officials they will take your second amendment. These criminals will sacrifice kids to pass their gun control agenda. ...don't be scared to make that last line read properly: ""...to notice how bad they're being FUKD by the upper 1%..."" Just a suggestion... I love this. But I’m worried that we have people who vote republican, no matter what. I feel for those people, who may or may not release that they’ve voted for their own demise. They want the death camps for LGTBQ people and minorities, but eventually the fascists end up killing the poor white people who elected them. Part of me wonders if nobody cares and that’s why this hasn’t happened. Or if anyone who tries gets suicided Obviously because their goal is to keep us divided. They got the masses too worried about who’s black and who’s white and who’s democrat vs. Republican so they won’t focus on the real problem. Them. [deleted] And beyond corrupt I use wet paper bags to steam bread in the microwave don’t give them that much credit. What do you mean? The SEC will give a one million dollar fine to someone who swindled one hundred million. Isn’t that justice? All SEC does is watch porn 8 hours a day. The SEC and DOJ are complicit. I would prefer the wet paper bag to either of those. Hey I can use wet paper bags in my garden. So they are more useful than the SEC I can tell what your favorite subreddit is by the first word A wet bag can still carry SOMETHING They won’t unless they’re affiliated with Conservative populism. Take Peter Navarro who was a lifelong Democrat for example. We need help. I speak in echo chambers 99.9% of the time. Hope I reach some people. We need American to unify if we are to win. These Globalist fucks want to punish us all. See Russell Brands video 6/3 with Schwab and the WEF/Davos. He’s red pilled as fuck now. I didn’t understand things fully either but time has a way of revealing things. I get that you're trying to be clever and all, and that it's ""popular"" these days to just shit on government agencies regardless of justification or situation, but it's just so goddamned incorrect for you people to assume that all government officials and institutions are corrupt, inept, or both. It's wrong, and detrimental to our democracy, the grandest and noblest social experiment in human history. Shame on you. I swear to God your generation is the absolute worst generation, period, ever, period. Period. A wet paper bag is great for suffocating peasents. (Is /s necessary? Sometimes I can't tell anymore... Also, I'm a little buzzed, and I'm aware that I'm not as amusing as I am in my head, so... Apologies in advance.) > Wen RICO visit DC and Wall St? lol RICO is only for mafioso and rappers, not white collar criminals from “good families” with orders of magnitude more blood on their hands Filled with rocks.... A redditor's wet dream Funny. I’m not a Pelosi fan but I guarantee you she’s the least of the offenders… Ohh and so would he Life hack: Marry your accomplice, you can’t be forced to testify against your spouse. those were his big Wall ST Corporate donors in the last election. He's still getting his pockets stuffed. He's a POS like all the rest. Ummm...I don't think he's a Saint lmao Secret punnery Yes, that’s the point That the Republicans for you lie,cheat, and steal. Everyone needs to read Manufacturing Consent Definitely should be. If we got together all the high polluting companies and named the the “pollution stock”, all hell would break lose. It’s a confusing world we live in rn and the best thing we can do is buy hodl drs. SEC committed substantial resources to produce commercials rather than do their job. They aren’t just complicit in financial corruption; they’re accomplices. Yea exactly 🚀🦍🚀🦍 REWARD THE TOP COMMENT. UPVOTE. His shit heads are downvoting. He is fucking all of our wallets. Definitely will Sounds like a plan brother! But hedge funds are the ones investing their funds? Who’s else fault is it? I just like the stock? Ken Griffen not Ken Griffey. This guy here : KenGriffenLies .com KenGriffenCrimes .com No no, you got it all wrong, Kathy Griffin was that dumb comedian and chopped off Trump‘s head He equally ripped ppls hearts out when he went yard on their ass Ken Griffey is going down just like Sandy Koufax did with the PFOF scheme. Wait, that’s Bernie Madoff who came up with what’s already illegal in most markets…PFOF I think a lot of people missed the joke The only Ken Griffey that matters IMO Edit: it was also apparently Ken GriffIN Use the full name. Shortcut is a bit.... Problematic He is wrong. It was Melvin Capital that lost the teachers pension funds. Ken Griffin's [Citadel and Point72 provided 2.75bil loan to Melvin capital](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-melvin-capital-investment-idUSKBN29U2LU) and [blamed retail investors for losing the teatchers retiremend fund.](https://franknez.com/ken-griffin-attacks-pension-plans-destroyed-by-retail-investors/) When Melvin Capital lost most of it's value this year and [shut down](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/funds/melvin-capital-shut-down-after-losing-billions-gamestop-short-squeeze-2022-5) Someone can probably provide it but idk what it is exactly. You can also check out r/superstonks for more information on his corruption/hedge fund and the superior rich corruption. That's Him!!! Look at the group he outbid, it’s a very important detail that gets forgotten. Ken Griffey jr? Da faq! She still got married to him. (full disclosure, don’t know much about the guy) Did Chicago trade him? This could be what it's all about. He could have a vendetta and this is him getting revenge for a bad gaming investment. Been holding since Jan 2021 🦍 If you too could write a book, you could be a millionaire too Ok doesnt explain how hes had the properties long before What an excellent contribution of nothingness. Voted for him doesnt mean i cant call out bullshit Ok im guessing the people commenting acting like 170k a year in DC gets you multiple properies havent graduated highschool And how does he own multiple properties with a 170k a year salary? Thats right stocks. Who is the chair of the financial powerhouse in congress? Oh wait he is. Its cute people trust politicans dont get me wrong i wish he won in 2016 but he still has shady shit like the fest of them Thats another massive problem. Nah. I mostly just follow baseball. Lmao after three margaritas this almost made my sombrero come off Didn't he make some jazzy love songs on the saxaphone? How'd u know I was a cubs fan Fuck ya dude. What cope I think he played for Seattle. VT and DCA and you always win. [removed] [This comment has been censored. #Save3rdPartyApps](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) Stonks R Us Just want to add that naked shorting is counterfeiting an asset, just like counterfeiting money. So not only are they counterfeiting shares, but they’re using them to bury publicly traded companies. At least we are no longer crazy conspiracy theorists...just plain old crazy and early. It’s about both Do you really think people in government are the smallest crooks? #I stopped pushing as hard as I could against the handle, I wanted to leave but it wouldn't work. Then there was a bright flash and I felt myself fall back onto the floor. I put my hands over my eyes. They burned from the sudden light. I rubbed my eyes, waiting for them to adjust. Then I saw it. There was a small space in front of me. It was tiny, just enough room for a couple of people to sit side by side. Inside, there were two people. The first one was a female, she had long brown hair and was wearing a white nightgown. She was smiling. The other one was a male, he was wearing a red jumpsuit and had a mask over his mouth. ""Are you spez?"" I asked, my eyes still adjusting to the light. ""No. We are in spez."" the woman said. She put her hands out for me to see. Her skin was green. Her hand was all green, there were no fingers, just a palm. It looked like a hand from the top of a puppet. ""What's going on?"" I asked. The man in the mask moved closer to me. He touched my arm and I recoiled. ""We're fine."" he said. ""You're fine?"" I asked. ""I came to the spez to ask for help, now you're fine?"" ""They're gone,"" the woman said. ""My child, he's gone."" I stared at her. ""Gone? You mean you were here when it happened? What's happened?"" The man leaned over to me, grabbing my shoulders. ""We're trapped. He's gone, he's dead."" I looked to the woman. ""What happened?"" ""He left the house a week ago. He'd been gone since, now I have to live alone. I've lived here my whole life and I'm the only spez."" ""You don't have a family? Aren't there others?"" I asked. She looked to me. ""I mean, didn't you have anyone else?"" ""There are other spez,"" she said. ""But they're not like me. They don't have homes or families. They're just animals. They're all around us and we have no idea who they are."" ""Why haven't we seen them then?"" ""I think they're afraid,"" [deleted] While correct about the subs focus, congress’ involvement in the markets is also a very corrupting influence. Both types affect us differently, but still to a very large degree. f ‘em all Their obsession with Cohen will be their undoing. They think he’s on their side as opposed to being in bed with the hedges. I mean, his first big project was an NFT wallet. What a joke. You're an idiot if you put your entire life savings into a single play. Jesus Christ. Careful, you're gonna upset the cultists You will 100% find some qanon types posting there. Because, it's an open tent. It's one of the few subs with genuine cross-political draw, and it appeals massively to the qanon crowd because it's a gubmint conspiracy; with actual verifiable information at the core. This impression isn't helped by the fact that the subject matter is very dense and difficult to penetrate for the layman (myself included). On superstonk, there are idiots, and people looking for a conspiracy. There are people seeing things which aren't actually there. *But.* There are also some very smart cookies involved. If something cannot be shown to be true, it is debunked and marked accordingly. I'd urge anyone to look beyond the meme-y-ness of it all. Qanon is absolute nonsense, whereas there's genuinely interesting / factual information about how financial markets' sausage is made on Superstonk. Most people just bought, held, averaged down, and direct registered their shares. And all of them care. And have the fun of their lifetime because there is so much going on. From great, in depth research and discovering how the market works behind the scenes and all kinds of market manipulation (just watch Jon Stewards The problem if you don't believe we are onto something), advice from professionals, crazy memes, and loving what Gamestop is doing to turn company around. Edit: removed 'the' Who is upset? I’m down 50% and happy as can be Incorrect. Sanders is a registered Democrat. ItS a FrEe MaRKeT And Raytheon. It’s actually mostly Disney and Google across the board, R or D Koch, Soros, Gates, Musk. Every billionaire and multimillionaire you've never heard of, from the liberal social engineers to the far-right loons. They all buy and pay for politicians. Legislators have to pay money to get on committees? What the living fuck? The Republican party left reality around the 1960s The price of a barrel of crude oil has gone down [13%](https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/18/if-oil-prices-are-off-their-peaks-why-are-gas-prices-still-rising/) since Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices are at record highs.. care to explain that? Adults are talking Quoted comment. The article title is about not busting people for pot, and that’s not the basis for superstonk > Fartdaggio That's correct, sir! That is the password...for admittance. But may I ask, what is the password...for the toilet? Read the DD guys ... For what my dudes ? For a company which can't turn a fucking profit? A group over on another subreddit who followed everything that happened on wall st early last year and have been digging deeper ever since. Think like the Panama papers but with just Wall Street. It’s pretty wild. They have a documentary on hbo max and everything. Just a warning, they're going to tell you to go to /r/ superstonk and that place is a cult that will tell you to invest all your money in a stock. Besides the daily shitshow from wallstreet, SEC released this 30sec ad 2 days ago (it's also played on TV spots lol): https://old.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/v22zvj/the_official_sec_youtube_channel_just_shared_a/ These 2 comments should sum up how everyone feels. It's outright market manipulation from the institution who are supposed to regulate and enforce the market. (also note, SEC had previously labeled gamestop as a 'meme stock' company) https://i.redd.it/dv8uu70xg0391.jpg https://i.redd.it/kgf6tzc429391.jpg Brother. I think I’m understand the severity of the laws I break on a monthly bases and it ain’t going to be a fun time Indiana next door is still tossing people in jail for weed. And they’re surrounded by legal states. I'd like to move to New Mexico. I'm in damn Texas. Just 50 minutes away from where I'm at Delta-8 will test positive for thc in a drug test When I was in high school in like 2004 or 5, i was with some friends and we had smoked out their car. We were driving around and got pulled over and the cop asked to search the car. They were smart and told the cop hell no. They got the police dogs out and I was kind of nervous but the dogs didn’t smell anything and they let us go. No, it wouldn't be good for industry. The legal dope business struggles because of the taxes on it and criminals are already used to buying it illegally. Plus it kills thousands every year, mostly murders which you have funded in the past, as you admit. I don't doubt that Bernie was threatened to step down from his campaign. He was on a roll then suddenly announced he was backing out. yeah but kamala's speeches are only criticized because shes a woman of color not because she speaks nonsense to people as if they're children. Sometimes I wonder if the DNC loses on purpose because it’s more profitable to have a GOP president than Bernie Sanders The entire US government is full of corruption lol [I'm the proud owner of 99 bottles of spez. #Save3rdPartyApps](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) Biden received over 10 million more popular votes than Bernie in the primary. Hillary over 3 million more. Maybe it’s just that more people like Biden and Hillary than Bernie… Lol, this is the “trump really won the election” of the left. I think these comments below the DNC one are being brigaded or shilled Heard on WTOP this morning that both SS and Medicare will be insolvent by 2038. Yay, GOP! You would think in a representative democracy you would simply vote for the person that you think best represents you. The primaries add extra layers to the decision process. For starters, everyone doesn't vote all at once; certain states get to vote first which then sets the tone for the rest of the primary for later states. As someone voting later in the primary, you must now decide if you want to vote for the candidate you want or switch to a second pick who has been doing a little bit better because your 2 favorite candidates are splitting the more liberal votes making both of them lose. Some candidates then drop out which means early states votes now feel wasted and later states aren't even able to vote for them. Add in the electoral college which is one of the driving forces for this process and now a liberal person in Texas feels completely unrepresented in a national election AND in their ""own"" party; your state's electoral college votes will go for the other party, so why should the party care about your opinion during the primary? I’d be happy to accept the votes if the system was about the voters. A ranked choice vote on the same day would do that really easily but we have to stagger a first-past-the-post vote so we can leave room for media analysis, candidate dropouts/endorsements, vote splitting, and superdelegates. yeah i heard about that from hillary a lot. [In spez, no one can hear you scream. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) Right? Fucking Reddit. more like how trump the unelected, illegitimate president stole it from hillary by hacking the voting machines in 2016 am i right? Why do you cucks capitalize his name? How much of a pussy do you have to be that you capitalize a known criminal's name to show that you're a sycophant? Bernie's numbers were outpacing Biden's (vs Trump) after Nevada. His numbers were twice HRC's margin. He would've won either election (and the only reason Biden won was because of the pandemic; his numbers vs. Trump only went positive once Trump bungled Covid). Bernie absolutely would've won and by greater margins than Trump / Biden. This seems rational and logical, until you consider the vast swathes of voters who never vote because nobody speaks to them. Bernie spoke to them. Had he been the nominee, turnout would have been radically different, in my opinion. And I think that throws off any back of the envelope math regarding his viability as a candidate. You’re right; Hillary did a much better job against Trump /s Smh These people have lost their minds. Bernie was beaten soundly by both HRC and Biden. Facts. They can’t accept them. the only reason Bernie didn’t win those states is pure propaganda— the DNC, the media, the GOP… all were deeply invested in him *losing*, and they made sure that happened. I agree in 2020, but Sanders won Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016, which were critical swing states. Bernie losing swing states to Hillary =/= Bernie will lose swing states to Trump. All the head to head matchups in the polling had Bernie more favorably beating Trump than Hillary did. When Bernie lost to Biden, it was when all the other democratic primary candidates dropped out and supported Biden. Warren did not drop out and endorse Bernie. Bernie was leading a fractured race at that time. The Democratic party time and time again colluded against Bernie. The main reason why Bernie would have been the better candidate in the general election is because he had a better appeal to independents than Hillary did when matched up to Trump. The voters and counties in swing states that went to Obama previously ended up going for Trump; Hillary chose to hardly campaign in those areas and assumed she would get their vote and didn't. Bernie has always had the better independent voter appeal than Hillary, and definitely would have churned out more enthusiasm from young voters. Many Trump voters (not the supporters) who were like ""fuck I'm stuck with these 2"" would have gone for Bernie over Trump. Do you have one you can share one of these totally real articles that definitely exist? To be fair, Bezos owns the Post and he absolutely would have preferred Trump over Bernie Bernie had double the margin versus Trump than HRC in all of the national polls. He started campaigning in early 2016 as the safe candidate to beat Trump based on that. Voted for HRC in the primary? You rolled the dice and the country suffered. Bernie would've won. So yes, I believe neoliberals (especially party leaders) preferred Trump to Bernie. [deleted] No, but trump is worse I agree, but Trump is also toxic in their social circles; it is why we had Russiagate to begin with (any reason to expel him, even if there's no real facts to support reality). Neolibs can suck these nuts You are part of the problem. Not sure what polls you were watching then; he would've won in both elections (his margin was twice HRC's and was surpassing Bidens, albeit only shortly, after Nevada). IMHO they would've been relatively safe wins versus Trump (especially considering that the margin of votes in the difference-making states was even smaller for Biden in 2020 than for Trump in 2016; 43,000 made the difference between those 5 states, combined!). I knew of several in my family who admitted this; they were tired of politics as usual, lean right, but would've voted for Bernie over Trump (three of them in fact). I've met several more who were the same; right-leaning but preferred Bernie over all potential candidates. So much for the Democratic theory of nominating a candidate who appealed to the widest audience, eh? It's almost like they fit the narrative to however they see the world, not reality. Assuming you voted for HRC in the primary? May I ask why when Bernie had double her national margin versus Trump?... Seriously asking because I remember all of my neoliberal friends (and the media / Dems) say that the only thing they wanted was to beat Trump... Yet they voted for HRC. / Does not compute. TIL people vote entirely based on how many issues a candidate gives an agreeable approach to and nothing else People don't vote on issues they vote on people, that's designed in our democratic republic. If only “issue by issue” in general polls were in any way, shape or form electorally relevant [deleted] Lol there is no sign of political ignorance surer that “in Europe Bernie is a centrist!” Ah right, it’s morning in Moscow when you wrote this… Not really, hitler genuinely cared about Germany. A great villain is a villain who believes they are doing good. Obviously not saying Bernie is hitler, just saying that’s a fallacious stance. There is this thing called nuance He is offering solutions knowing that they aren't able to be achieved in the current system because all of our politicians are bought and paid for by corporate interests. He knows that, the message is the campaign against that problem. He's saying we don't have to live like this, we don't need to live in a world where politicians work against our interests, but it takes a movement - we have to vote out slimy corporate candidates in order to get anything done that benefits real people. The democrat party is working against progressives, banning anyone who works with them against incumbents, raising money and coordinating against them. Its their own downfall, they are fighting against change, what doesn't bend breaks - the party is choosing to become rigid, clinging to their corporate donors instead of swaying with the will of the people. Then people are mad at bernie while donating to a candidate that is causing them to pay massive medical bills and giving the wealthy a third yacht. He posts in '/r/walkaway'. too, which is just a fake ""movement"" of Republicans pretending to be disillusioned Democrats. Exactly Watch as your criminal cabal is wiped out by the red wave this November. Ignorance is bliss until someone gets punched in the nose. Woke up your party is about to be silenced. Ah yes, America very bad, Vlad https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8xh46b/russian_trolls_on_twitter_pose_as_exdemocrats_for/ Blaming 'The Government' for all that's ill is an attempt to direct our gaze away from the root of the problem. Morality is not being eroded it has been co-opted by finance. As has 'The Government'. In this, Sanders is correctly identifying the source of the rot: the corruption of finance, the corruption of 'Wall Street'. Until we address *that* problem, the corruption will continue. It's like the little tin targets in a sideshow shooting gallery. The little targets move along. You knock one down but the row moves on setting up fresh targets. Wall street is the problem. Corrupt politicians are just a symptom of that problem. [deleted] It literally is now Thanks, please borrow it and spread it around ! To your last point, I believe it used to be like that, but no [longer](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/05/17/super-wealthy-irs-tax-audits-plunge-over-decade-government-report-says.html). I understand it's not an either/or thing, I'm not suggesting that it is. The point being made is ""why are we spending resources on largely victimless crimes and comparatively far fewer resources on the crimes doing real damage to the people living in this country?"" Trying to nitpick the language to detract from that point is also pretty silly. I guess there’s no way for any of the people and resources allocated for one system to be better utilized in another. We are forever stuck in doing things the way they are currently set up. So sad that we already ran out of ideas. 1st it wasn’t Gaetz 2nd he came clean and admitted he embellished the story 3rd are we actually now trusting the words of a serial liar? 4th in a world of leaks, you really think the only leaker would be a serial liar? Nah, its good to show people that you can be incorrect and as the kids say these days ""take the L"" but still learn and grow from that. Its the ultimate sign of maturity Interesting read. I did some sleuthing though and it seems like a lot of speculation without substance. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Sanders is as slimy as the rest of em tho. You become a citizen of country that is actually still running effective ""westminster-system style"" separation of powers to voice through I guess. USA long shut that down to dollars or demi-god access only huh, funny how kicking out the Commonwealth like that plays into even wealthier establishments than the Queen's 😉 So a majority of congress is corrupt but it's Bernie's fault that he can't work with them to stop corruption? Is it not the fault of the American people that they keep electing corrupt politicians that refuse to work with Bernie Sanders to pass anti-corruption legislation? LOL saying a politician shouldn’t be calling for justice because it’s unlikely to happen is NOT realism. There is absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain when ANYONE is talking about holding politicians accountable. Saying “it won’t happen so he should just shut up” is exactly what those politicians want. Also I get where you’re coming from here but your statement doesn’t really make sense. If marijuana was legal then it wouldn’t be an issue when purchasing a firearm. Also if it were legal, you don’t have to join a club or anything. And even if you did, it’s not like a weed club would report its membership info to the government lol which rules? Good bot. Odd, but good All big subs on reddit are progressive. As a matter of fact, reddit as a whole is pretty much progressive with a few right wing echo chambers here and there that get brigaded heavily by other subs anyway. You don't think weed should be legalized? Almost all of those are just anti-socialist talking points saying “he’s a socialist so he can’t do…” you can still be/advocate for socialism while still adhering to the system we are currently a part of. Also, a lot of the sources that were given are in no way reputable, some are just rando ass info wars type beat websites >His constant virtue signaling with protestors but never really doing anything about it. Classic Bernie never [involved in protests](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-bernie-sanders-1963-chicago-arrest-20160219-story.html) >You can also check his voting record. I have a few times, it's very lengthy but [decently consistent](https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/27110/bernie-sanders). >People of color (who sanders claims to care about) [His history] (https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-black-rights/) shows that a bit >were refusing the Cv vax Ahh, there it is. I didn't catch it at first glance because you didn't spell it out for some reason. >and losing their jobs over it. *Choosing* to lose their jobs over it. It was something like [5% of unvaccinated workers reported quitting](https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/press-release/1-in-4-workers-say-their-employer-required-them-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-up-since-june-5-of-unvaccinated-adults-say-they-left-a-job-due-to-a-vaccine-requirement/). >Yet sanders was pro mandate. From his voting record, [you're correct](https://www.npr.org/2021/12/08/1062391085/in-a-largely-symbolic-move-the-senate-votes-to-block-bidens-vaccine-or-test-mand). But it was never taken up in the House so largely symbolic. Also the ""mandates"" were [requiring testing and vaccination status would be the exception.](https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/pages/osha-vaccine-or-testing-directive.aspx) >Also why did quietly let Biden “win” Ah, one of the ""election integrity"" folks speculating on primaries. Instead of crying fraud, Bernie supported the party candidate to the ire of many. 1. The man literally participated in the protests and has done so since the Civil Rights Movement, there’s not much he can do on the political front of that because at the end of the day, he’s only a single senator 2. The vaccine isn’t specific to POC, no one is going to just get a pass from vax mandates just bc they’re POC 3. Bernie left the race because he had literally no chance of winning an it was a waste of resources to keep going Yes, and he's as healthy as an ox now. A lot of people have heart attacks at his age, it's not a huge deal. I'd take him over Biden any day of the week (and I would wager he'll outlive Biden, let alone retain his cognitive capacity relative to where Biden is now). Two stacked Democratic primaries in which the first one was being run by a HRC DNC (literally, they had a joint fundraising agreement; look it up if you don't believe me) and the latter had a former president call each of the other candidates to drop out and get behind Biden in order to win? Literally neither of those had ever happened in any other primary race in the history of our nation, but that's what it took for Bernie to ""lose."" Compare Bernie's numbers versus Trump to HRC's in 2016; he polled at twice her margin consistently, but he wouldn't have won when HRC lost by less than 80,000 votes between 4 states? And his numbers exceeded Biden's briefly after he won Nevada (even with the ""coveted"" AA vote); but he wouldn't have beat Trump? ​ Give me a break! I mean, he’s a US Senator. Were I a US Senator, i might have 3 homes, (one a compound) and a boat! That doesn’t mean I’m a sell-out, my dude. 40 billion to curb Russia’s aggressive expansion into Eastern Europe. Also the vast majority of that money will find its way back into the hands of American corporations who will put it into the hands of their American employees. It’s very cyclical and isn’t really that big of a deal. Not to mention that apparently a large portion of this aid is just the dollar amount on supplies that we already have vast stockpiles of. It’s not like the Fed is printing 40 billion fresh dollars and shipping them to Ukraine on pallets. Not to mention that the entire idea of “government debt = bad” is sort of silly and has lots of room for nuance. Money is fake. Especially in those quantities. You have zero idea where that money goes, do you? Well, most of it goes in American pockets. Since a huge chunk of the aid is in the form of weapons. Weapons that were built in America by Americans. Another chunk is going to replace the extra weapons we already sent to Ukraine. Another chunk of that money goes to training Ukrainians how to use those weapons. Guess who's going to train them? Another chunk of the money will be going to bolster American troops in NATO countries. That $40 billion is basically a US jobs program. Also, who put us into so much debt? It would have been wasted anyways. More bonus money for senior government executives probably. I don't believe for a second it would be used to curb the debt. Send the money to Ukraine where it will help the people ravaged by war. America issues its currency. It's impossible for us to default on debt denominated in dollars. You and I will never pay the interest on that amount. Your issue with further weaponizing a conflict that has nothing to do with us and not seeking peace is that “it’ll add to the debt”? Christ It doesn't fucking mean anything anymore. It never did. You do realize the last presideny caused the national debt to rise as well. And the presidency before that, then the prwsidency before that. Stop listening to canidates about the debt, more than likely theyll make it worse. Hear hear So you hate yourself. Got it. Biden loves the feds No doubt but he has Kamala in his circle who I suppose had a lot of fun arresting drug offenders in her time u seem dumb She claimed Russia interfered in the election. Which was then proven to be true in the Republican-led Senate Report. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-russia-interfered-in-the-2016-us-election https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf Louder and more enthusiastically than he ever did? Yeah no Trump definitely topped Hilary there. Wait you don't think they interfered? the question is and always was did he collude, anyone who looks at him or his property knows that answer I like how a 30 day old account is promoting election fraud theories in support of a 10 day old account. Nothing to see here Copium Nah. I just don’t argue with children who say things like , “Lmao cope” You’ll see in the next decade. The original comment implied that we should bust people for marijuana I disagreed. Also implying that I think any law against marijuana use is illogical and immoral. I agree that marijuana use at the federal level should be absolutely allowed Oh fuck off. No one's doing drive-by shootings over loosies. How do you explain the massive increase and then decrease in alcohol smuggling crime during and after prohibition? Yes. I even read the article. So who needs busting? Who's getting away with a crime? Why didn't Bernie report the crimes being committed on wallstreet and who is committing them? The police can't just start random investigations, it would be a waste of time and money and would infringe of peoples constitutional rights. So what's falling through the cracks according to Bernie? What are the police missing and why isn't he telling them what they're missing? They dont control the judicial branch and the senate is a shitshow because...surprise...moneyed interests have persuaded at least one democrat to abandon all pretenses and the other to just try to stay in power in a state that has gone full ""fuck the earth, strip mine it all"" Not according to the police or the FBI. Comparing weed to alcohol is laughable I personally don't like it and don't use it. I just am not a Karen who tells people what they should and should not do. Saying it doesn't help society is also nonsense. It helps millions of people every day with many different things Because you need expert financial analysts, corporate lawyers, experts in international law where money is transferred and so on. Then you have the financial laws which go into the grey are where something is semi legal and proving that beyond reasonable doubt requires more lawyers. So that’s the difference catching someone with drugs it’s a slam dunk comparing to get someone on Wall Street. Weed is so cheap tho. If it was fully legalized the price would drop through the floor since anyone with a greenhouse can produce medium quality stuff for the price of tomatoes. What nonsense. slave wage labor is what it is. Slavery might be banned, but it's spirit lives on. Same thing when is comes to police brutality. Target companies in the jurisdictions with massive boycotts if possible, especially publicly traded ones. You’d see departments in those places weed out bad apples overnight. ah yea it’s called a union, and you can continue to work. cant fire everyone Great risk means there is a great reward. Imagine if people had the balls to do something, but they don't. I like my reddit posts, my video games, my porn, and everything else that there is with the comforts of modern society. I love when my friends act like they will start a revolution.. First thing I point out is, you can't go to Walmart, you can't get that dankity dank weed no more, an you can't go online... because Big Brother gonna zero in on your location with that cell phone you are using to do whatever it is you do... BAM, Hellfire missle to the skull! Almost? So your thought is it’s up to the lower middle class? Really? WTF does Walmart & Amazon have to do with this? They haven’t gone woke enough to be left alone? This is about insider trading on Wall Street, something Bernie Sanders owes his rags to riches existence to. Y’all are going to entertain his bs as legit? It doesn't help that the vilification of unions has worked with the average brainless American. The ruling class always knows what buttons to push to make people reject the few leaders who are trying to actually help them. And then the economy would say ""fuck"", gdp goes by less 10% You tried not to long ago, in 2020. How did that work out? They Jerrymander themselves into office and getting ekected costs a shit load of money. People do have the power but short of exercising violence nothing is going to change. >How about average citizens running for office? The people have always had the power. Running for office is where people go and _lose_ all of their power. Average people have always had the power to change the world, but that's through organizing under the principles of class struggle unionism and building systems of mutual aid. Some resources that I recommend on the subjects are Joe Burns' [Class Struggle Unionism](https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=C4D6A9E848546F7DCBCCF3F4F09437A0) (and related [article](https://jacobin.com/2022/04/class-struggle-unionism-business-labor-movement/)) and Dean Spade's [Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And the Next)](https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=7488CF466E555DC9479F458EE230AEE4). >How about not voting them into office. Difficult. One person has the power of a single vote towards their representative and two senators. There’s nothing any individual can do against the other 532 members of Congress with their voting power. One of the biggest issues is that the current Congress has the lowest approval rating of any Congress, yet incumbents still get frequently re-elected. Most people believe the issue with Congress does not lie with their representatives. >How about average citizens running for office. Also difficult. The majority of average citizens are living paycheck to paycheck. Makes it difficult to run on a “radical” platform against the political and economic might of the two major parties. Is that before or after they label legitimate companies as ""meme stocks"" in their own filing, whilst using taxpayer dollars to publish a series of videos insulting people whom invest in said ""meme stocks"" , in turn, manipulating the very markets that they themselves are supposed to oversee/ regulate? The SEC needs to be absorbed into the IRS and then they would actually have some teeth. Sorry man your a little high! I was thinking a 50 buck fine, then the SEC probably won’t collect anyways. 😂 It's called a fire sale DOJ and the SEC are different turds in the same toilet. Lmao. Good one. And we're footing the bill for that high speed browsing. But according to Genslers own words, ""We can't even afford coffee."" Sure, pal. And that would be, pray tell? Eh. You managed to amuse me. Reddit is full of ""Akchually"" types of folks. You gave me a good chuckle. Enjoy your buzz. Ngl I would thoroughly enjoy watchng nancy pelosi get arrested with excessive force She defended politicians ability to own stocks… even though they have immense insider information compared to the general public AND are incentivized to do what’s in the interest of their investments over the people they represent. Yeaaaaa that doesn't get her off the hook bud. That's like saying you're the nicest guy and the sex trafficking gang Why because you say so? Most politicians in general >That the Republicans for you lie,cheat, and steal. i agree but democrats also do that. this isnt rep vs dem its us vs rich Edit: of course not Bernie tho, he’s a G It’s all politicians. Stop acting like Democrats are that much better, bc they aren’t. They are just better at playing the part Partially correct. All politicians lie, cheat, steal, and spit in your face while they're at it. Don't leave out the democrats. Democrats have had control over the federal government only two (09-to-11) years out of this entire new century (22 years and counting), while GOP default of doing nothing has held the rest either with power or a stalemate which is ultimately the same-same to them. So if you don't like the way things are going....well you only have one party to blame. I don't see this as a Republican issue. It's more of a rich, rich, ultra rich vs somewhat rich and below issue. 1% of 1% is filching everyone. Republicans, Democrats, and other. And your the fucking problem, it’s always the other guys Ken Griffin is the CEO of a hedge fund, not a politician. I mean is he probably a republican? yeah, but that's irrelevant to this conversation How can you still blame republicans with a straight face? Both of your party's are corrupt pieces of shit. They all work for the same people, the rich. Dems have FULL majority and they havent done shit for you. Im not shocked either... Both are scams. Dude stfu. People like you are pathetic. Politics politcs politcs. That's all it ever is. Get a fucking life and stop being the cause of all the divide. Or watch ""don't look up"" He didn’t just say it either they actually wrote it down in a statement. Should the SEC even be giving investment advice to the public? https://www.barrons.com/articles/sec-meme-stocks-video-commercial-51654125267 This is the way Damn I should try and do that, last I checked it's really only a few gigantic ones doing a majority of it Username checks out. Fuck him by buying shorted stock. GME, AMC A assume you havnt even seen him play In it's actually ken Griffey Jr. His dad was the original Ken Griffey. I don't believe either of them ever committed fraud. LOL I just noticed hahahahahhah. Ill change it now lmao The same Kenneth C. Griffin who allegedly threw a bedpost at his then-wife? That Kenneth C. Griffin? Cause if it’s that guy, all my homies hate that dude. Did you know he makes over 250k an HOUR? Yeah. One has to ask, what value does someone like this bring to society? Well, I’ll tell you all, 👌🏼ZERO. At the very least is money laundering, lol To be fair they are all fairly modest houses that obviously could be afforded on a lifetime senators salary plus the income his wife makes and a loan or 2. He makes close to 200,000 a year so it’s really not hard to see how that becomes millions if managed correctly. Think about this. If you start saving 15$ a day at age 25 you will have 7 figures by age 67. How so? Do you think politicians shouldn’t be able to publish books? They’re allowed to thanks to the 1st amendment. Gotcha. We're all referring to the pondscum that is Ken Griffin, not the actual Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. I saw that you had a pretty strong reaction and I'd like to think that you feel a bit dif knowing that everyone isn't shitting on a baseball player. Even if a person is not a Cubs fan, how can they NOT be a Cubs fan in the moment or from time-to-time? Ken griffin is a financial terrorist Ken Griffey Jr was a baseball player. Like the Riddler? What part? The GameStop story is so much larger than most people know. GameStop is leading into a new version of the internet. Web3 built on Blockchain tech. Smart contracts. Imagine a world online where the people you interact with are 100% verified for who they are in real life. No bots. Hateful people will be accountable for their words and shared information will be rooted with a digital trail to the source. The current world is rampant with fraud and middlemen taking a cut of all of us. Your data, your art, your personal information is taken by ever site you use and sold. Imagine an internet where you can choose to sell your shipping habit to the website but they'll have to literally pay you a cut for it's worth. If you live in this planet and you know the scales are unbalanced I encourage you to pop into the daily thread and ask whatever you want. I'm sayin'😂 Exactly. There is also rampant ""dark pool"" trading and other fraud. But you have to remember, they are professionals. They know which companies to send into bankruptcy. Sounds like an uprising of US the people is currently in the making.....and I fuckin lovin it. I AM IN But don’t confuse Naked Shorting with a short interest above 100%… it’s possible without naked shorts, easily >bury publicly traded companies For all their crowing, these fuckers are anything but “pro-business” They’ll fuck working people, pensions, businesses, and the economy without blinking. They’ll fuck over poor nations and rich ones. Time to dig out the parasites. DGAF about people on welfare, these finance bastards are the real leeches of society. Finance went from like 1/40th GDP to 1/12th today. They are *parasites*. They are just the ones put in power by the real criminals and ones with money to keep laws the same or change certain things. Still criminals but just getting paid to carry out duties by the real ones pulling the strings. Tons of proof. It all adds up though and little signs here and there. Not like they come out and say hey we have naked shorts multiples of the float sorry guys your shares are fake. Except one of the funds called Melvin came out and said lately that everyone hides short positions now. To expand on other comments bill Hwang recently got busted for hiding his short interest and general positions with total return swaps which was predicted about citadel around 8 months ago. Wasn't looking at Hwang, but it's true that you can hide your positions with complex derivatives all over the place. I definitely believe they're hiding their short interest and they've illegally shorted it to get them in this position You should read up on FTD's (Failure To Deliver's). It's when the T2 comes and goes and no security is delivered 💩 >his first big project was an NFT wallet. What a joke. That's the first step in a much larger project. Besides that, how is that a joke? Like wut. Of all things to talk shit about you choose the NFT wallet that was just released ahead of the marketplace? Wut?? It's not a play, it's s lifelong investment with solid fundamentals. [Forbes: Yes, Diversification Can Hurt Your Portfolio](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kennethwinans/2020/01/06/yes-diversification-can-hurt-your-portfolio/?sh=4d28b1d72045) A billion in cash and no debt. I'll take it over a cash savings account, gold, or the S&P any day. People said that to those who called the 2008 housing crisis, and then we're proven the fool when those who bet against the market walked away filthy rich. Don't be so hasty to label someone an idiot Oh no, all my fake internet points! >I'd urge anyone to look beyond the meme-y-ness of it all. Qanon is absolute nonsense, whereas there's genuinely interesting / factual information about how financial markets' sausage is made on Superstonk. I've browsed the sub a fair amount since it was created and I'd have to strongly disagree with you. While real information is there, it's not only hidden behind meme spam and fanatical devotion to GME but buried under the absolute avalanche of misinformation and misunderstandings about how markets and trading work. They think Robinhood and other brokers 'turned off the buy button' because they wanted to stop the short sqeeze and screw over retail investors. They turned off the buy button because clearinghouses started requiring brokers to put up 100% of the money for GME trades due to the extreme volatility and Robinhood ran out of money. They exhausted all their lines of credit and they literally didn't have the money to fulfill buy orders at 100% rates because they're poorly managed. It had nothing to do with trying to stomp on the little guy or kill the squeeze. They steadfastly hold to the idea that this was both not a squeeze and that the shorts didn't cover. All you have to do is Google the short interest and look at what it was during the spike and just after to see how wrong this is. They also don't seem to grasp the fact that someone can cover a short at a loss, and then short the same stock when it peaks and still come out ahead. Also, nobody holds shorts for a year plus. It's a short term play. The entire premise of triggering the MOASS by DRSing all of their shares and locking the float is nonsensical. They're going to trigger a short squeeze by... shrinking the pool of shortable shares down to zero? What? It's been a year and a half since GME surged and they haven't even managed to 'lock in' 25% of the float. That's not even remotely close to affecting the liquidity enough for brokers to involuntarily force shorts to cover. Let's be extremely optimistic and say their plan works and GME spikes to $1k+. Then how are they going to capitalize on the rocketing share price? All of their shares are directly registered so they have to put in a sell request to their transfer agent that then relays that request to an actual broker that then executes the order. This process takes days or even weeks to go through. If you had directly registered GME shares when it first popped to $400+ and you tried to market sell at the peak the order would have gone through at like $50 a week later. The 'DD' and information posted there about non-GME topics is somehow even worse. They're obsessed with reverse repo rates and they don't even know what they mean. I've never seen anyone there talking about open market operations and how the Fed uses them to control inflationary pressures. What I *have* seen is endless threads filled with people screaming OMG 2 TRILLY OUR WHOLE FINANCIAL SYSTEM IS GOING TO COLLAPSE. K ""Open tent"" that downvotes to oblivion and bans anyone that doesn't repeat pathetic absurdist toxic positivity and conspiracy nonsense about every single stupid thing related to gamestop? Anyone with an ounce of skepticism is a paid hedgefund ""shill"" while these morons constantly brigade other subs to *literally* shill for a shitty company that they own a few shares of. The DD is garbage that *is* debunked but SS members ignore any critiques from outside their safe space and have conditioned the members to self censor and avoid questioning anything or risk being downvoted and banned. When whatever fad hype theory fails to result in MOASS the cult quietly ignores it and buys into the next hyped theory over and over again. Superstonk is a conspiracy cult echo chamber of people who've largely based their identity on owning stock in and championing a company that was (and continues to be, for the majority of people) a joke. The people swing trading and shorting that shit will cash in on GMEs inevitable descent while SS nutters continue to lose money, move goalposts and write fanfic about imagined wealth. BAE is bae I've seen SO many Raytheon commercials all of a sudden. It's really really bizarre Check out this [video](https://reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/v04v45/new_gop_rep_mo_brooks_says_prime_committee/): It’s a congressman explaining how it happens 100%. congressman blew the whistle on it a couple months ago. Happens in both parties. Most expensive goes for $1 million paid every two years, about 4x their salary over the same time Oil $92/barrel 2/22/2022. Oil 6/3/22 $120/barrel Easy… The price right now has very little to do with the price of oil. Refining capacity is down so the refineries that are in operation are running at 100% and are unable to keep up with demand. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-refining-capacity-fell-first-time-30-years-2021-iea-says-2022-01-19/ Every single gas station in the country independently decided to gouge customers. Will you just stop it? You're ruining the narrative put forth by the current administration and media. This narrative is important for the idiots on Reddit. Yea. This Administration has been very clear that they will destroy the oil industry. Russia wouldn't have invaded if Biden didn't basically give his approval. What were oil prices when Biden took office? Your little snapshot is misleading. Don't blame Russia, Biden blessed it and thinks it's a blessing to force us to change. We can't support changing so quickly and it's destroying middle and lower classes but they don't care! [Don’t believe your lying eyes!](https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil) You don't think it's weird that its the only comment in their comment history? Same as this ""user"" : https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/v47bvm/sanders_says_stop_busting_people_for_marijuana/ib2uo3n Both also have the word-word-number username format which is super common for spam/bot accounts. I guess it’s just the other half. But you’ll find plenty of 420 stuff thrown in the mix Your choice my guy! The rabbit hole is deep. If you think this saga is only about a video game store, you'll look silly. It's worth looking into. Nothing to lose, infinite to gain. > Think like the Panama papers but with just Wall Street https://i.imgur.com/nzZ7iXt.jpg With the GME/short squeeze meme stock shit with the clearing houses and Robinhood etcetera? Yeah I'll be glad if those that were involved get held to account, but I'll believe it when I see it. Those at the top watch each other's back. What's the name of the documentary? [spez me up! ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) Yeah I've learned my lesson before all this happened. Got involves trading options on energy companies and lost a boat load about 6 years back. I just drop money in my 401k these days. [deleted] [deleted] Yeah no one cares about that. It’s not market manipulation you dweebs. The media can call a stock whatever the fuck they want, and the SEC can use broadly accepted language. You’ve all been taken by shills now you’re desperately looking for new targets to make your stupid sub mean something That ad isn't market manipulation idiot. Its suppose to be a funny commercial. Also its wallstreetbets thqt started calling it meme stocks, not the ""big bad"" media like you all think so. Are you fucking stupid dude? Ugh I know that life man. Be safe out there. Wisconsin too. I can’t ever leave the country or live in a nice apartment. All because I grew a plant in my bedroom. Drug felon, label that brings to mind a rough edged, strung out, shaking, vomiting junkie or a shaded, dangerous, unpredictable pusher with a jacket full of enough hard drugs to kill two sets of horses. I hate life because it makes people instantly judge me and think of lazy, dirty, smelly hippies who will have drum circles all night and they have to replace the carpet because of the patchouli smell. I just smoke weed, I keep to myself, I’m quiet and I pay all my bills and I just want to go to Japan once and see Mount Fuji and see a real Shinto temple…. Yes but if I can walk into a store and purchase it then it's not illegal. Good thing. I was always nervous cause I always had stoners in my car. Dropping shit everywhere, losing roaches. If it was legalized we could more freely grow hemp which does not have psychoactive properties to then make our own clothes, oil, and paper to name a few which would fund the economy. It also grows faster than cotton and yields more. 95,000 people die from alcohol and alcohol related incidents a year. Bernie won Nevada, and that shook the DNC so hard that they got Obama to crawl out of retirement to campaign for Joe Biden. Me trying to figure out if this is a satirical statement or not 🤯 Its crazy our political climate has done this. The correct criticism is definitely the latter btw. during the primaries a lot of leftists criticized her record as a DA iirc, but now she is just left forgotten by the party because she never does anything that would make people like her due to her awful demeanor when speaking Yes. Because they need to be able to say ""vote for us so you don't end up with Republicans!"" They won't get the closed door, across-the-aisle ""play nice"" hookups with a Bernie admin than they would with a DNC establishment ballplayer admin. It's money. It's always money. If the democrats actually accomplished something, they would have to come up with new things to do and that's hard so it's easier to not win or on the off chance they do win, sit on their hands. Unsure why you are downvoted. If the consensus is the DNC is fucked, then quite clearly the deficit inflating fetishists of of the GOP who widen income inequality so clearly everytime they have the reins, clearly indicates the whole system is fucked. Keep the blinders on and don’t acknowledge that the DNC pushed Hillary. Hard. Or that they backed absolutely horrid congresspeople like Manchin and Sinema. It’s because they are beholden to their corporate donors. Must be nice believing in the DNC (or RNC) for that matter. Childhood fantasyland sounds lovely. Do you have a source on that? So why did people vote for Biden over Bernie if they all wanted Bernie? [deleted] In 2016 a large amount of Bernie supporters either stayed home or voted Trump because they were tired of the same neoliberal shit. I voted Hillary, even though I despise her. Fuck her and fuck Trump. You can't rely on comparison data from primary races to accurately predict the general election. The people who respond to primary polls are highly politically engaged and opinionated, which is not reflective of the general public. Primaries also happen within a political bubble: when the race is between 6 different liberals, all of whom believe in the same general policies, you are going to see fundamentally skewed polling data. The best data available is the actual voting results from the primaries, and they conclusively showed that **democratic voters** preferred Hillary/Biden over Bernie. State elections nationwide showed that centrist candidates vastly outperformed far left candidates in swing districts, which argued against the theory that Bernie could've won by activating more independent voters. Again, I wish Bernie would've won... but the results speak for themselves. Hypothetical matchup polling is not stronger than actual voter turnout data. Hillary got 3 million more votes than Trump FYI You're right, because Hillary lost that surely means Bernie would have won! Dumbass. That's not an argument. Beaten but not fairly, DNC rigged that shit for Hillary and Biden. I think it's the product of the echo chambers people are in. When everyone you know prefers Bernie, and all of the energy and excitement seems to be around Bernie, and literally no one in your orbit seems to be excited about Biden, it makes it easy to believe that Bernie should have won. The reality is that young people bring a lot of energy but are not a reliable voting block. When Biden won in 2020, he actually outperformed Bernie on almost every demographic: he received more of the black vote, more independent votes, more progressive votes, and more voters of every age range except 18-29. There simply isn't any evidence that Bernie would have won by turning out a wave of independents, because those independents chose Biden. The 2016 campaign is trickier to analyze because it was so freaking weird. Hillary almost certainly would have won if it wasn't for the cascade of bad events: the media's over-emphasis on the emails, Comey making the last minute leak about his investigation, Hillary's strategic blunder of overlooking several states that ultimately went to Trump by a few thousand votes, etc. Trump winning over Hillary was a bit of a statistical anomaly, not a guarantee. They were both bad candidates, but Hillary was clearly the favorite to win. Contrastingly, data from state elections showed that centrist candidates outperformed far left candidates in swing states all over the country. So there's little evidence that a far left presidential candidate would tap into a huge, hidden reservoir of populist voters. Moderate candidates won all over the country, which suggests the average voter wanted a moderate presidential candidate too. [https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/donald-trump-only-real-winner-if-bernie-sanders-remains-democratic-ncna1173501](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/donald-trump-only-real-winner-if-bernie-sanders-remains-democratic-ncna1173501) several pro trump talking points here. [https://twitter.com/\_waleedshahid/status/1106549621399142401?lang=en](https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1106549621399142401?lang=en) Donny Deutsch telling Joe Scarborough that he would rather vote for Trump over Bernie [https://twitter.com/socialistboomer/status/1231334780421246976](https://twitter.com/socialistboomer/status/1231334780421246976) chris matthews calling for 4 more years of trump over sanders [http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2002/24/cg.01.html](http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2002/24/cg.01.html) cnn transcript, talking head ""we'd rather have trump than bernie"" [https://www.wsj.com/articles/against-sanders-trump-is-the-lesser-evil-11583084901](https://www.wsj.com/articles/against-sanders-trump-is-the-lesser-evil-11583084901) ""against sanders, trump is the lesser evil"" Well it’s at least polite of you to save anyone the time of taking you seriously I really don't trust the judgment of anyone who calls themselves a communist I'm evil Same! Many family members who didn't want Trump because of his character but would never vote for a regular Dem. Bernie has that cross-over Independent appeal Because her policies were more in line with my beliefs and the polling showing Bernie ahead in national elections was ridiculous as all Hell. He never would have won, couldn’t even win the DNC. That's not what I said, but it \*should be\* true (especially if you believe the candidate has enough integrity to actually support the policies that they ostensibly propose). E.g. Kamala's support for Medicare-for-All melted away when she was asked by reporters to provide more information. Exactly. If issues and qualifications were the only requirement, Hillary would have won unanimously. Alas, people vote for people. They vote for who they relate to on a personal level. Simple as that. The most qualified candidate isn’t the most electable candidate. You can thank TV largely for popularizing the election being a high school dating game on who you think seems the coolest - not who is the best on paper. Yeah, because we're only surface deep in wanting a black, gay, woman who is transgender who is also attractive... Seriously? Who doesn't vote based on ideology and policy? It's like buying a car based on how it looks and not it's myriad other features like safety, speed, acceleration, max space, number of seats, reliability, MPG, etc etc.... ""But it looks pertty!!!!""... Okay. By that I assume you mean take corporate cash and sellout like the rest of them?... As Obama threatened Sanders in his ""you can be a president, but not a king"" dialogue with Bernie? Da. Thank you for understanding comrade. As we entered the /u/spez, the sight we beheld was alien to us. The air was filled with a haze of smoke. The room was in disarray. Machines were strewn around haphazardly. Cables and wires were hanging out of every orifice of every wall and machine. At the far end of the room, standing by the entrance, was an old man in a military uniform with a clipboard in hand. He stared at us with his beady eyes, an unsettling smile across his wrinkled face. ""Are you spez?"" I asked, half-expecting him to shoot me. ""Who's asking?"" ""I'm Riddle from the Anti-Spez Initiative. We're here to speak about your latest government announcement."" ""Oh? Spez police, eh? Never seen the likes of you."" His eyes narrowed at me. ""Just what are you lot up to?"" ""We've come here to speak with the man behind the spez. Is he in?"" ""You mean /u/spez?"" The old man laughed. ""Yes."" ""No."" ""Then who is /u/spez?"" ""How do I put it..."" The man laughed. ""/u/spez is not a man, but an idea. An idea of liberty, an idea of revolution. A libertarian anarchist collective. A movement for the people by the people, for the people."" I was confounded by the answer. ""What? It's a group of individuals. What's so special about an individual?"" ""When you ask who is /u/spez? /u/spez is no one, but everyone. /u/spez is an idea without an identity. /u/spez is an idea that is formed from a multitude of individuals. You are /u/spez. You are also the spez police. You are also me. We are /u/spez and /u/spez is also we. It is the idea of an idea."" I stood there, befuddled. I had no idea what the man was blabbing on about. ""Your government, as you call it, are the specists. Your specists, as you call them, are /u/spez. All are /u/spez and all are specists. All are spez police, and all are also specists."" I had no idea what he was talking about. I looked at my partner. He shrugged. I turned back to the old man. ""We've come here to speak to /u/spez. What are you doing in /u/spez?"" ""We are waiting for someone."" ""Who?"" ""You'll see. Soon enough."" ""We don't have all day to waste. We're here to discuss the government announcement."" ""Yes, I heard."" The old man pointed his clipboard at me. ""Tell me, what are /u/spez police?"" ""Police?"" ""Yes. What is /u/spez police?"" ""We're here to investigate this place for potential crimes."" ""And what crime are you looking to commit?"" ""Crime? You mean crimes? There are no crimes in a libertarian anarchist collective. It's a free society, where everyone is free to do whatever they want."" ""Is that so? So you're not interested in what we've done here?"" ""I am not interested. What you've done is not a crime, for there are no crimes in a libertarian anarchist collective."" ""I see. What you say is interesting."" The old man pulled out a photograph from his coat. ""Have you seen this person?"" I stared at the picture. It was of an old man who looked exactly like the old man standing before us. ""Is this /u/spez?"" ""Yes. /u/spez. If you see this man, I want you to tell him something. I want you to tell him that he will be dead soon. If he wishes to live, he would have to flee. The government will be coming for him. If he wishes to live, he would have to leave this city."" ""Why?"" ""Because the spez police are coming to arrest him."" \#AIGeneratedProtestMessage [deleted] Both sides are a criminal cabal dumbass. The sooner the left and right realise that the better. I like how you just reversed course and abandoned your 'both sides corrupt' narrative to just admitting yo being blatantly Republican. Also, my comment said absolutely anything about supporting the Democrats. I'm Canadian. All I did was point out your 'both sides bad' narrative is right wing propaganda. And you just proved it. thanks. The government is complicit in this. Remember “ Every American deserves a house” the government teed up the housing crisis and Wall Street hit it. Credit swaps, derivatives, naked shorts, high speed trading, insider trading the government approved all of it. The Wall Street bribery is welcomed by every politician without reservation. The issue is systematic.As soon as banks were allowed to trade stocks bonds and all forms of financial instruments instead of mortgages and savings instruments it was over. Unwinding this colossal mess is nearly impossible. The democrats are trying to eliminate law and order which further exacerbates the issue. Lol so the elected officials that use insider trading and probably affect how they vote based on that are just a symptom? Even if Wall Street didn’t exist it’s not like the corrupt politicians would suddenly become un corrupt. OP is obviously a shillbot In this case it’s both. OP is totally a bot, but this sub is also a total joke and just a spot to push leftist talking points to the front page, not a real sub about the Economy. It’s like a bot launching pad There is no profit auditing the rich because they can delay and have lawyers. [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/statement-for-updated-audit-rates-ty-19.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/statement-for-updated-audit-rates-ty-19.pdf) No guess work on the numbers, it's literally IRS reporting. Edit: Wrong link and new link posted Because budgets are set at three levels - federal, state and local. Drugs are prosecuted at the local level, white collar crimes at the state and federal level. Your resource argument makes no sense given the system. Now practically, what does this mean? You want untrained local cops to detangle complex financial transactions? Government budgets at the local, state and federal level are set pretty much independent of one another, except those transfers set via legislation. If you want local cops to change their focus, change the laws they focus on, then no money gets spent on it. My bad I did get cawthorn and gaetz mixed up. Was just guessing on what the OP was referring to, so seems like I was close enough to be understood. Truth or not I’d bet that’s the source of their comment on political drug use. I will poke at your logic though. If they’re a serial liar why would we trust their word after coming clean? To 4: The ability of the press to conduct journalism is one of the great tragedies of the last two decades. Both in declining revenue and direct attacks on the legitimacy of the profession. People are too high-strung on their beliefs these days. I wake up every day with the information I have and make the best decisions I can. I live with it. If I'm informed of new information, it's added and compared with current information. I think if you think of knowledge as a commodity instead of a win/loss, you benefit. [deleted] [removed] Rightwing echo chambers you mean like r/neoliberal and r/enough_sanders_spam ? REgressive. Progressive left years ago. No but there’s a major trial of a Wall Street guy on right now. Sanders knows that those guys do go on trial but none of his supporters would know about that > Almost all of those are just anti-socialist talking points saying “he’s a socialist so he can’t do…” Except that most of them aren't that. Do you understand socialists can have mansions. I would know this because I'm not a socialist. /s Bernie lives in a mansion. Bernie used to be anti big pharma but is now pro big pharma. Bernie voted for 40 billion to ukraine (who is admitting defeat is coming) while we are all suffering from inflation and gas prices. And Bernie can either be real or fake. Does he care about POC’s or not? He’s fine with them getting fired from jobs and losing money because they choose not to take something? They already struggle as is. Is he for the working man or the rich elite? Check his voting record. This is Trump ""healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency"" level of disillusion. Lmao that's a lot of words to say ""yea he lost"". Hes not a good candidate he says things that people on Reddit like to hear without any accomplishments to show for it. Can’t believe the DNC supported a Democrat. Nor can I believe that candidates would drop out to support the winner. This has never happened in the history of things happening! But he's been in government almost as long as I've been alive (I'm over 50) and he doesn't have enough influence, friends or resources to make these changes he talks about. I This does high light a common occurrence; we all agree that our elected officials are part of the problem, but many defend their guy or the one who isn't that bad. > Well, most of it goes in American pockets Wow seeing this level of naivety on an economic subreddit is worrying. Yes how dare I think about money on an economy sub. I’m a monster! I became James Bond to hate socialism :P Yeah. He will instead give them tanks. Crime bill Biden indeed. To say the least. which was then later debunked as fraudulent youre right, the election fraud theories from the 1 year old account are much more agreeable because they're in support of the team you like Sounds like more cope from an impotent loser Can always tell when you got someone under 18, they say shit like “cope” and “ace.” I simply implied there’s no reason we have to choose specific laws to enforce. They can all be enforced equally You really don't know anything about crime, looseys and Street cigarettes are gang produced stolen cigarettes Ok Dc what a pothead has to say. Just don’t want MY money going towards blacks wasting it on drugs 🤷‍♂️ Slavery is still going strong in the USA and explicitly permitted by the constitution. Text of the 13th amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Chattle vs. Wage Sarcasm undetected Yes. The lower class keeps the world running. Picks up your trash. Clean your shitters at work etc; the upper class are usually always doing well so like history it comes down to the lower class getting their back broken enough to revolt Orwell “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.” Well it would appear so. Remember the gamestop stock fiasco? The common person wields much power when united. The government HATES this type of action. In the US alone, those two companies combined have almost 3 million employees. Millions more spread out all over the world. Most americans have grown dependent on these companies to survive. If they stopped going to work to demand government action against whatever cause, millions upon millions of Americans are going to get pissed thay they won't be able to get their shit. The last thing our government wants is us to stand together in any way against them to affect change. After, unless you’ve discovered time travel. thats right after they falsely sue Ripple for threatening their banking donors. Such a bizarre thing from a government agency, publicly shit on companies that employ thousands, because their arbitrary stock value is seen as wrong. Threatening their existence, when the important thing should be keeping them going when they offer jobs, services and in turn taxes. You would have to properly fund the IRS as well. Currently the IRS is underfunded. On purpose. That would be a wicked combination. ""You are accused of market manipulation and insider trading. Per IRS regulations, you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. You must pay $X,xxx,xxx,xxx.xx by July 27th, 2022 or your assets will have leins placed on them and are subject to forfeit per IRS regulation 123.45.678. For your convenience, we have seized your bank accounts. If you have questions you may call our 800# hotline during normal business hours."" They both needs to be abolished and remade. IRS doesnt need to exist like this. Should just know stuff for most people and strictly audit companies. SEC, well, IDK theyre so far corrupt and IDK how you could replace them with that much money in play. It’s bigger than anything she says. Congress is pretty much exempt from everything… Whoa, how’d you know I hang out in a pizzeria basement? Yea, because I say so. Because I deal in facts. Go smoke a bowl… Still, it is convenient to be part of the party where scandals are awarded like medals if you're gonna do some light embezzling. Yep, these politicians go in and make 100-200k and some how walk out multi-millionaires. This guy is a special kind of fucked up, story on Superstonk is that Ken Griffin outbid a crypto group that was gonna democratize ownership of the constitution. And he gives some bullshit story about his son telling him to do it. It was a deliberate move to “beat” crypto ~~Most~~ All Yep This is exactly what I say. It's not red vs blue, it's rich vs poor. The only thing Dems do differently is they throw us peasants a bone every once and a while to keep us happy. I'm talking about republican as a while not just politician im talking about Guys like Alex jones. People are too divisive. It’s we the people vs them. Here’s an upvote stranger. For all the downvotes people will give you for being rational. Not Bernie's wife though, she's one of the rich As the great poet Killer Mike said: “Lie, cheat, steal, kill, win, repeat. Everybody’s doin it” It’s capitalism and just general human greed. But there are degrees to which that happens and variety in the severity of those vices and I don’t think it’s much of an argument to any informed person what party is worthy of more criticism on that front. Hell, the Republican Party is a few steps away from full blown Christofascism so I’ll take flawed Dems over that any day. what is the republican solution to gun violence? what is the republican solution to healthcare? what is the republican solution to education? all of these things democrats have spent time and effort on only for them to get hamstrung or reversed by republicans and replaced by **absolutely** nothing. Exactly. It's Biden's SEC that is using taxpayer money to fund commercials calling retail investors stupid for investing in stocks they like. Our whole life we're told to worship capitalism and the one time we find a company we like, all of sudden we're doing it wrong. Better at playing the part within a year of reelection at least. well one side wanted health care for everyone and the other side responded by supported a clown and is actively taking rights away from women so maybe there is a slight difference. Jokes aside, we need a ranked voting system. Me and my spouse sometimes vote for different people in elections and primaries and it turns into a split vote, but I would select their candidate over any of the others if mine didn't win so I should be able to indicate that. As someone with a master's degree in US Taxation, whose job is to deal with 1% and billionaire compliance and legislation, I'll say that if you're against the horrible stratification of US wealth and the lack of financial oversight and enforcement, there's no comparison. The bigger problem is the right/GOP, and by a lot. Both parties have very corrupt individuals and both fail to make acceptable legislation. However, if the house is on fire, Dem policies are like a bucket with no water. GOP is like a bucket with gasoline. Dems aren't ""good"", but their legislation is far more likely to help, whereas GOP policy almost always makes things worse. GOP policy is nearly always to reduce regulatory oversight, to reduce enforcement and penalties, to reduce funding to the agencies that are meant to enforce the very things we’re all made at, then blame those agencies as ineffective while still complaining of their regulatory powers. Ideally there would be another left leaning party and Dems would be called ""centrists."" But, if you can only choose between Dem and GOP, the Republicans will consistently put more money in the pockets of the wealthy as a matter of law, whereas you have a shot to move the legislative needle toward destratification with Dem policy. I guess u have no idea how the US government work? do u even live in US? senate is where everything dies. and that is because filibuster where u need 60% of a support to even bring the law out to vote on it! Republicans are the one blocking it. just look up a voting record of every republican for a past 20 years. they are not in doing anything to help out middle/lower class. and at the same time blocking the actual legislation. and that is their strategy because by blocking everything they can rally up their base as ""big government"" does not work for you.... for republican is not to win but to depress the voters. there is way more to this story than this there are actually books written about this strategy. Aww did someone's feeling get hurt. While aggressive, I agree. They want us to be divided and take the attention off the real issues. And it works clearly. If only that movie wasn't complete ass 🚀🥳🦍 KEN GRIFFEN IS THE CEO OF A HEDGE FUND. KEN GRIFFEY SR AND JR WERE BASEBALL PLAYERS. THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT KEN GRIFFEN. Learn how to read before accusing people. ffs... >Did you know he makes over 250k an HOUR? Holy shit. I've always said there comes a point where folks in certain jobs/professions just aren't worth that much money when you get to a certain amount. 250k an hour is _way_ above that amount. I can't fathom _anyone_ would be worth that. $6M a day. JFC It’s like as if he is a dark pool vampire that sucks value from everyone else and contributes nothing. You know, one might argue that because of the financial crimes that he has organized and participated in the value he brings is less than zero. Lol modest, few million dollar house and then a get away retreat house, totallllllllly. In even a bernie supporter its just cute how naive some of you are. Let me guess you probably think Nancy Pelosi is awesome Idc if you downvote me lmao no politican should be profiting off serving the people. A salary sure, anything more is insane Nah I'm just trolling because I came to Reddit and found it to be an echo chamber devoid of real conversation. Then you were kind to me, even though I clearly came off as a complete idiot. So now I actually feel bad. Kudos. Isn't that the musician that makes all the sexy love songs? Which one played the saxaphone? You think that: 1.) web3 will be very profitable? 2.) GameStop will beat out Google/Amazon/Microsoft/etc. at building this technology? (1) is possible but doubtful, (2) is a definite no. Web3 is the gateway to a libertarian dystopia. You don’t fix these issues by reducing regulation and oversight, you fix it by rebuilding transparent institutions. See, this is why I don’t hang out there anymore. This reads like you just slammed down two lines of cocaine Do you believe in spez at first sight or should I walk by again? #Save3rdpartyapps You're talking like an anarchist and then lead into an erasure of anonymity. I agree with the other guy you sound like you just smoked all of the crack. As a 10+ year web developer, I'm sorry to inform you that web3 is just a bunch of horseshit. It does sound cool when crypto marketers spew it out, but when you look at the principles, it doesn't solve any existing problems on web, and only introduces a bunch of new ones. Judge, jury, and executioner Yes - the ones which are their biggest competition and won’t be absorbed by… oh, Amazon every time, huh… funny how that works. Yeah, maybe why the SEC just released a video making fun of “meme stocks”. Looking less and less like a “free and fair” market. It is possible but I've seen it being 240% short. The official number Jan 2021 was 120% iirc but the news reported it as ""100%"" because over 100 makes it sound sketchy. It definitely is possible but not to the extent that it has been short imo What happens in spez, stays in spez. Im with ya. Some ppl dont get that this is bigger than themselves. My savings is more bullets in the war, proud to contribute what i can... All of it. It is a play. I've been holding since February of last year. You're still an idiot if you put everything in one basket. Even spreading out amongst the other stocks in the baskets is smarter than just all in on one. Diversify. Eggs, basket. You know that's what you should do, but you guys... oy. How much are you up in your investment might i ask? One time some people called other people idiots and and they were wrong so you must be wrong too!! This is such a pathetic argument. >They turned off the buy button because clearinghouses We're in agreement there, and if you spent much time on the sub you'd know that's the consensus opinion. Apex 'turned off the buy button' for *every* broker they serviced. At this stage, no-one can prove why they did that, but I certainly don't think they did it for my benefit. Who did that move benefit? The hedge funds with short positions they couldn't unwind. You mention Robinhood, and their bad bet; OK if that's the case, why was the buy button turned off for all the other brokers too, including the ones that weren't PFOF-based? The list of brokers which didn't turn off buy, is VERY short. >If you had directly registered GME shares when it first popped to $400+ and you tried to market sell at the peak the order would have gone through at like $50 a week later. That is not correct, as confirmed by CS. Your order is sold at the price when you placed the sell order, not the price several days later. It sounds like you've commingled settlement and how they BUY shares (which, iirc is done daily in a 500-share block). Probably possible if you DRS your shares, for there to be a few risky days where they haven't settled yet and can't be sold. That's definitely a dampening factor on why it took me a while to DRS. > They're going to trigger a short squeeze by... shrinking the pool of shortable shares down to zero? What? It's been a year and a half since GME surged and they haven't even managed to 'lock in' 25% of the float. The amount of DRS'd shares is surging. It's up to about 40k per day now. GME now state the number of DRSd shares in their quarterly results. Cost to borrow is also surging. Are you aware of dark pools? If there's nothing dodgy going on, why are millions of shares traded every day in a secret dark pool with no regulation? Why are Transfer Agents or companies not allowed to promote direct registration? DTCC is a company, not a gov agency, why do they needed protecting from competition in a 'free & fair' market? Further, the ACTUAL goal of DRS is to prove naked shorting. Currently there's no solid proof, because the markets are setup to be so incredibly dense and complex, and the regulators have been captured for a while (look at the crossover between hedge funds and agencies / companies like DTCC, SEC etc) making data hard to gather. Once enough shares are taken out of the float, it will make a nonsense of the idea that hedge funds aren't naked shorting if there's still 50m+ going to the dark pool every day. Dark pool, sounds eerie and conspiratorial, but that's genuinely what they're called and how they function. Should be common knowledge. It honestly feels like, as I suggested, you're missing the point of the sub underneath all the lunacy it inevitably attracts. It's not JUST a stock play. It's a way to hit back at a corrupt system. It's so much more than 'failing brick-and-mortar stores' and 'crazy retail redditors'. It's about shining a light on how corrupt markets are, and (we hope) creating an alternative. You won't have naked shorting and rehypothecated shares on a token-driven, blockchain-based stock market, which is what they're building towards while everyone is running round laughing at NFTs. You sound quite knowledgeable on reverse repo, and I'll admit there are gaps in my knoweldge. Can you explain to me in layman's terms why there are trillions in overnight loans every 24hrs, and why the beneficiaries are kept secret? Would markets collapse if they stopped this overnight lending or made it public which banks need so much liquidity injecting? Liquidity for what? Oh, and thanks for remaining civil with me. Btw I just noticed your username, gave me a good giggle. Was it inspired by the book, or the problem in general? If it's a shitty company, why are insiders and instutions buying thousands of shares, and why are media entities like Motley Fool (whose business model appears to be disparagement) also heavily invested? Lockheed Martin too! Jesus Fucking Christ. I feel silly for having no idea this was a thing. Do you have an article or video I can check out about this? Something I can reference for the deboonker idiots? If the WTI crude price had continued it's decades long pattern of being very tightly correlated with gasoline prices, WTI crude would be trading at $275. Strategic reserves were tapped, and instead of crude oil refining companies keeping the end product's price down by utilizing the reserves, they are using the reserves and continuing to raise prices as if they weren't. More of the same privatizing profits while socializing costs. Stop pushing a narrative that's written by the people with their first so far up your ass they're using you as a puppet. Unwedge that arm, man. Edit: [The proof of the pudding is in the eating](https://www.macrotrends.net/2501/crude-oil-vs-gasoline-prices-chart). That's a chart of the ratio of gas prices to oil prices. That graph's slope is so steep that the charting software is reading the derivative of the graph as a divide by zero, which is undefined, but it's limit is infinite. That's what's causing the vertical orange line on the graph. So, within the world of that graph, the current rise in the ratio of gas to oil prices is literally infinity. That's not actually the case, obviously, it's impossible and a rounding error due to the resolution of the graph, but it's a pretty good ""what the fuck"" indicator It’s the refiners this time around. Are you really suggesting that local gas stations are buying barrels of crude oil? It’s not a saga, it’s a cult, and it’s not about anything than some ignorant people getting suckered It’s being worked on and exciting stuff at that! Gaming wall street Check out the Jon Stewart episode on Wall Street as well if this topic interests you. Really insightful stuff The DD the promises riches to literally every shareholder if they believe in the mystical moass and the savior Ryan Cohen? Yeah, I think I understand the gist. Just warning people about your cringe cult. You can't grow an economy on bloody hemp for Christ's sake. How many of those alcohol deaths were drive bys? I agree though that alcohol should be banned in an ideal world Usually comments like the one I reply to attract conservative brigaders/bots/trolls (if they're not already posted by one). Just mention stuff like Socialism, Liberal, Gun control, San Francisco and you'll catch stray downvotes. I'm sure the other left does the same thing. I'm guessing his source is hillary #I stopped pushing as hard as I could against the handle, I wanted to leave but it wouldn't work. Then there was a bright flash and I felt myself fall back onto the floor. I put my hands over my eyes. They burned from the sudden light. I rubbed my eyes, waiting for them to adjust. Then I saw it. There was a small space in front of me. It was tiny, just enough room for a couple of people to sit side by side. Inside, there were two people. The first one was a female, she had long brown hair and was wearing a white nightgown. She was smiling. The other one was a male, he was wearing a red jumpsuit and had a mask over his mouth. ""Are you spez?"" I asked, my eyes still adjusting to the light. ""No. We are in spez."" the woman said. She put her hands out for me to see. Her skin was green. Her hand was all green, there were no fingers, just a palm. It looked like a hand from the top of a puppet. ""What's going on?"" I asked. The man in the mask moved closer to me. He touched my arm and I recoiled. ""We're fine."" he said. ""You're fine?"" I asked. ""I came to the spez to ask for help, now you're fine?"" ""They're gone,"" the woman said. ""My child, he's gone."" I stared at her. ""Gone? You mean you were here when it happened? What's happened?"" The man leaned over to me, grabbing my shoulders. ""We're trapped. He's gone, he's dead."" I looked to the woman. ""What happened?"" ""He left the house a week ago. He'd been gone since, now I have to live alone. I've lived here my whole life and I'm the only spez."" ""You don't have a family? Aren't there others?"" I asked. She looked to me. ""I mean, didn't you have anyone else?"" ""There are other spez,"" she said. ""But they're not like me. They don't have homes or families. They're just animals. They're all around us and we have no idea who they are."" ""Why haven't we seen them then?"" ""I think they're afraid,"" [removed] Where does the /u/spez go when it rains? Straight to the spez. #spez can gargle my nuts. The funny thing is more Hillary primary voters voted for McCain in 2008 than Bernie voters went for Trump. Yet all we ever hear about is Bernie voters. EDIT: since I'm being downvoted by ass clowns who can't bother to look into anything themselves or don't like the truth--let me help: [https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds](https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds) 12% of Bernie voters stayed home or voted Trump. 12%. That's large? But now let's look at Hillary voters in 2008 vs Obama: >...according to one 2008 study, around **25 percent of Clinton primary** voters in that election ended up voting for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the general. (In addition, the data showed **13 percent of McCain primary voters ended up voting for Obama, and 9 percent of Obama voters ended up voting for McCain** — perhaps signaling something that swayed voters between primaries and the general election, or some amount of error in the data, or both.) Man, it's almost like this shit happens every primary but since we liked the results in 2008 we're okay with the voter turn out. Anyone downvoting this can kindly kiss my ass. Find a new talking point about how shit a candidate Hillary AND Trump were. There's a reason they BOTH had the least favorability of any candidate in modern times. Not only that--but let's not kid ourselves that Hillary didn't contribute to her own loss. She completely ignored the midwest of the country. Literally treated them like fly over states as they're jokingly referred to. Her margins for losing were so incredibly small that even holding a few campaign stops in places like Wisconsin could have turned the election for her. But, no, let's try to pin it on the 12% of voters who didn't vote or voted for someone else over her own failure of a campaign. I voted for the only qualified candidate on the ballot; Jill Stein. For those people who were Bernie supporters and voted Trump I would argue they were right-leaning voters who only intended to vote for Bernie or Trump in the first place because they were populist candidates (or faux populist in the case of Trump); I was shocked by the number of right-leaning people who were going to cross-over to vote for Bernie had he been the candidate. This wasn't primary polling data, it was national polling data. Granted, you can say that almost any Democratic candidate would be polling nationally better than Trump, as was the case. But when you had an average of 10-11% better for Bernie than Trump versus HRC's 4-5% (just inside the margin of error in most polls), you can see where that would've gone. Now I do believe Bernie would've won versus Trump in 2020 as well, though the margins would've been tighter than the 2016 election. The vast majority (though in some cases plurality) of voters of all parties and affiliations were polled multiple times to show that the candidate most Americans agree with was / is Bernie. Take away party affiliations or the scariness of ""democratic socialist"" (although I would argue he's a social Democrat in reality) and he's the candidate who most aligned with the American people's ideology (issue by issue). Also keep in mind that HRC's campaign was literally running the DNC in 2016 (their join fundraising agreement) and they didn't just put their thumbs on the scale, they jumped on it (and if you don't believe this please look it up). Furthermore, Obama calling all the other candidates and getting them to drop out and endorse a losing candidate was also unprecedented (and assuredly won Biden the nomination). Neither of these events had ever occurred before in the history of the nation and both were necessary to prevent Bernie from winning the Democratic nomination, so keep that in mind. And she STILL couldn’t defeat Trump. I rest my case. The DNC decided it was HER turn and expected everyone to fall in line and support a congenital liar Turns out, the gave people a candidate so bad that she couldn’t even defeat a piece of shit pussy-grabber like Trump. Damn. So, yes. Literally ANY other candidate had a better chance of winning than HER. Lmfao. dUmBaSs It’s all they have How The reality if the Bernie came out of now where, where Clinton had a massive political machine behind here. He massively overperfermed. I got downvoted so many times during the primary for saying that a moderate candidate was probably best way to beat Trump. That was pretty obvious to anyone paying even a little bit of attention to the polling. I got told over and over again that Bernie would inspire young voters to turn out in record number and Biden would hand Trump the presidency because nobody liked Biden. Hillary is probably the only one in the country that would lose to Trump. I voted for Johnson in '16 and Jo in '20, but have not always voted for Libertarians. Our country will continue to stay fractured until we vote someone in that is not a Republican or Democrat. > By Ashley Pratte Oates, communications strategist and board member, Republican Women for Progress Why does sharing an op Ed by a Republican operative prove your point about “neoliberal” democrats? [deleted] Polling has no bearing then, eh? Kind of like forecasters with the weather; just because they're right 95% of the time you still reject them? As I tell my wife all the time: neoliberals are just like old Republicans; they reject reality and replace it with facts that suit their own worldview. Bernie would've won; absolutely, positively, no doubts about it. Sucks to think you supported such a horrible candidate that she couldn't even beat Trump... Horrible candidate... Atrocious... Just... absolutely terrible to lose to a wreck like him. What were you thinking?... If someone had all the perfect solutions for all political issues, then also wanted to enforce killing off 7 indigenous races, they would not be voted for. Although not as extreme with Bernie, a lot of his economic solutions were not agreeable and little too far out there for the average American that could actually legally vote. That's why he wasn't voted I literally have no idea what to make of that babble Yes he most certainly did, and you apparently missed the point entirely You're suggesting that he has no convictions and just says whatever is popular. About Bernie Sanders. I’m confused my point is simple corruption is rampant in Washington on both sides. The current administration has the lowest approval rating in US history. They are literally career criminals running the republic into the ground. Canada has great hockey and hookers and we love you for it. Attacking those complicit in the crime does not address the criminals. Sanders is saying ""go after the Wall Street criminals"". Some people are saying ""No. Go after congress."" Sure you can go after congress but if you want to do something effective you must go after Wall Street. Take down the government crooks and Wall Street will just buy themselves some more. Who sets the budgets then? We are still spending finite resources on the war of drugs. Practically it means that this needs to start as a cultural change. We can try to dissect the post as literal and we won’t get far since the system is so complex. We need to ask ourselves why we are more lax with financial criminals who cause widespread damage but feel the need to crack down on minor drug offenders. How much of our resources go toward drug offenses that could be used elsewhere? I’m sure finance is harder to prosecute but that sure feels like a horrible reason to deprioritize it. I mean, I wanna agree that everyone is high strung but it would be hypocritical of me since im the defnition of such. If you hold those beliefs true and run with them, youll go farther in life and be happier than most people For sure! If I find anything definitive one way or the other, I'll be sure to share with you. Yeah I’m familiar with the court case but I’m this scenario, it would be legal federally so none of that matters. Calling marijuana legalization a “gun grab” because one or two people couldn’t get guns in very specific circumstances under our current legal backdrop is a little disingenuous. Theyre stating if marijuana is made legal, this form wouldnt matter you mouth breather. Alcohol was once illegal too snd that didnt hold people back from buying guns, how is this situation any different. What do you see as true progressive policies Yeh they are quite messed up. I have been banned from some progressive subs for criticizing Islam despite me being a former muslim lmfao. They think everyone that disagree with them is a white supermacist or something. Forget wall street. You don't think weed should be legalized? Have you ever drank alcohol, smoked a cigarette, had coffee, or had a soda? Give me the definition of socialism and tell me whether it explicitly says whether you can own a mansion or not Edit: ik you’re not arguing me, this is just a question I have for those people You can tell someone's a fucking moron when they say someone's pro big pharma when they are pro vaccine. It's like saying someone's pro nestles child slavery because they like chocolate. It's nonsensical. Wanting people to be vaccinated doesn't mean you're pro big pharma's business methods His voting record is fucking immaculate, are you fuckin stupid? He wrote 3 best sellers and has held government office for a minute. dunno if you know this, holding office pays pretty well and so does selling books. But yeah, getting vaccinated is the same lobbying for big pharma you dumb mf. Everything u/Spiderman2portforpc said So to be pro POC you have to be ok with them not abiding by the same rules and regulations that the rest of us do? I take it you support POC not getting jail time for theft then right? They already struggle as is. Throwing them in jail would just worsen their lives. But you're obviously for that because you're pro POC. [https://www.westernjournal.com/shocking-new-poll-nearly-half-americans-strongly-believe-biden-cognitive-decline/](https://www.westernjournal.com/shocking-new-poll-nearly-half-americans-strongly-believe-biden-cognitive-decline/) We saw it in the primary; they weren't just his typical gaffes anymore, they were pretty substantial. When the MSM pundits were discussing Biden's mental issues (by euphemistically saying ""he'd lost a step""), they were dancing around the obvious fact that he was showing early signs of dementia. If you don't believe it, please watch his 2012 debate versus Paul Ryan and compare that to his Democratic group debates; they were night and day. So do I believe Bernie is healthier than Biden? Absolutely I do. [https://www.democraticunderground.com/12511841756](https://www.democraticunderground.com/12511841756) And that doesn't include all of the legislation that he authored but didn't take credit for. I've read that there are a lot of people he's worked with who will say that he's authored a bunch of legislation that he didn't take credit for (knowing his name as the author would potentially torpedo the bill; credit is less important than positively impacting others' lives, and that's why he was a great candidate). Furthermore, there's a reason he's called ""the amendment king;"" he got a lot of legislation passed by amending bills that were ""must pass."" So please don't drag the tired old trope that he never got anything done; it's bullsh\*t and you know it. Not when it was orchestrated by a former president; it hasn't. Look it up; never in the history of the party had a former president called all the candidates to drop out simultaneously and endorse the (then) losing candidate... Never. Before. Had. It. Happened. Right!?! Except he isn't wrong. So, by all means - prove him wrong. We'll wait. Lol national debt doesn’t work like your pocketbook bb. Lmfao yeah you're totally not just a class traitor... Class traitor is a term used mostly in socialist discourse to refer to **a member of the proletarian class who works directly or indirectly against their class interest, or against their economic benefit and in favor of the bourgeoisie.** It applies particularly to soldiers, police officers, bounty hunters, loss prevention, workers who refuse to respect picket lines during a strike and **anyone paid a wage who actively facilitates the status quo.** The motives behind becoming a traitor to one's class can include the necessity of survival (taking up whatever wage is available), **the belief that the person is of a higher class and so has political views that work against the working class**, the pressure of conformity, or a rejection of the view that society is divided up into antagonistic classes. Sic semper friend be prepared Source? Exactly, if Russia was interfering with our election than why would they even bother with Ukraine? Luckily there’s a slight majority of voting Americans that understand that trump lost and considering that’s factual, it’s clear that those that believe trump are the marks. Or you know, entities that need new accounts often Avoiding the question. You are trying too hard to troll. Gotta at least make it believable. I get your point, but you're not reading your own quote right lol... ""neither slavery nor involuntary servitude... Shall exist"". It's explicitly NOT permitted by the quote you just typed. Give an example of actual chattel slavery. Easy since it is going strong according to you. If it’s so bad, so racist, so horrible, anyone in the US is free to leave. Adios! And being poor is a crime these days! That isn’t slavery lol…. You are just softening the slavery term when you direct compared it to punishment like what you have called out under the 13th amendment Sarcasm intended. Yep. America will never have nice things again until a revolution happens to remove legalized political bribery from politics.. which the majority of Congress and Senate thrive on.. except for the few heroes like Bernie, AOC, Nina Turner and others who refuse to take corporate and billionaire bribes. There's too many taking bribes as it is now to get anything accomplished, so every attempt at progress becomes a compromised regress. Yes this is the reality and it will not change unless we the people change. Why do you think the right is hellbent on trampling voting rights under the ridiculous guise of election integrity? Right now they’re planning a massive legal onslaught if the midterms anywhere they lose. That’s documented out in the open. That’s how you keep the lower and middle classes groveling. That and a few hundred million guns in the right hands… Is that your version of “hopes and prayers”? Puts on the fabric of space-time? I couldn't resist. Wouldn’t it be irrelevant when you do it after you discover time travel? It’s not arbitrary when it’s clearly inflated by any metric P/E or just looking at similar market caps Underfunded and understaffed. That's the main reason Scientology gained ""religious tax exempt status"". They kept taking the IRS to court until eventually the IRS couldn't afford to keep it up. Don’t worry! They’ve said they have added staff so they can go after more of us regular people for back taxes! It at least actually have the balls to go after people where as the sec might send a sternly worded letter the first few times billions go missing. Edit: I agree with you their budget needs a huge influx to become truly effective again. It’s no coincidence that the republicans gutted IRS funding, can’t have their business daddies getting audited and fucked for their stealing from the American people You want it to really work? Make it part of the DoD budget. I disagree. We already have immense corruption and and starvation. They need to return to the glory of taking down Al Capone instead of the barely fuctional enough to go after middle class taxpayers. Right and she publicly said that’s the way it should be. It’s akin to saying “let them eat cake” when the issue is blatantly obvious. Aside from healthcare paid for by a bunch of people that don’t have any. It was a hyperbole I do NOT believe in pizza hate and that non sense lol. I hate 100% of republicans and roughly 95% of Democrats Yep Good facts you have laid out there. Super factual replies. I'd say 90% are corrupt, and there are just the more obvious ones on that side. Pretty much a 'pay attention to the giant head, don't look behind the curtain.' Sort of thing. All of it is coordinated by incredibly wealthy individuals in order to maintain their wealth. Until the system of their wealth is broken and rebuilt in a free, transparent, and fair way; their fuckery will continue. Somehow? You mean like investing in Tesla while knowing and shaping what laws are coming? Almost seems like insiders trading don’t you think? Yep been going on for decades at this point. The scary part, is how open it is now. We see it all the time, from all parties, it's so sad. Upvote X 1,000,000 if I could.... Here's a 🗿 for you Sir! Or Sir-ess? Whatever IDK!? 🤘🇺🇲 If you think its so easy why don't you do it? /s This fucker helped defraud every legitimate LUNA investor. Why aren't you talking about shitty people on the left as well then? Bill Gates? Elon Musk? Tons of people in media? If we can't get the ones who are openly and happily breaking the law then what good is saying but they all do it. Start with the worst offenders and those who refuse to leave office or openly call it a witch hunt. The dumbness of lots of americans shock me. How cant they notice that the ""left vs right"" is just a well deployed distraction by both parties. Its legit rich vs poor. Thats the only war and we arguing about social politics... Yeah this both sides bull shit is just that...bull shit Either people are lying or not paying attention. And the side that wants healthcare for everyone is effectively lobbies by drug companies to eliminate actual affordable medicine through a universal system with a single supplier. The party that actively and constantly deprecates it's own core voting base by suggesting they aren't intelligent enough as white and Asian people, to get an id card by normal means to vote. Yea, we seriously need a ranked voting system. Your suggestion seems to be pretty logical in terms of calculating run off. One difference between the voters of the two parties is that Republicans don’t put candidates through stupid purity tests. They just always vote for them. Because even in their lizard brains, Republican voters understand basic civics and American politics, the importance of local government control, and above all the Federal courts. Since when is there a degree specifically on taxation in the United States. No I'm just tired of people like you on both sides causing this devide. Like does your whole life revolve around politics? Isn't this the guy who traded for Mariners and had a bunch of games named after him? His yearly take home is disgusting. Especially when his business adds no value to the market. Given the fact that his company has, allegedly, participated is mass naked shorting, he is a what many would call a parasite. I may be off by several thousand +/- but regardless, he makes a lot of money robbing investors, all while gaslighting the public and acting like he is some good doer. The more you dig on the man, the more you find and see his true character. The amount of control his company has over the market is insane and not being used for good. Follow the money and paper trails - but I promise you one thing, you’ll likely end up angry. So, if you’re an investor, the single most important thing you can do is direct register any shares you own. This takes it out of the brokers ownership and puts it into your name (unless you’re direct registered, you do not own that share, period). Thanks for listening to me rant. KCG is a piece of work, and he’s simply a mini boss. Lol mate you couldn’t be farther off. You ever heard the saying don’t assume because it makes an ass out if you and me. Instead of making snap judgements maybe you should be a little more curious. Fuck Nancy pelosi and any establishment politicians who take money form super pacs. And I actually didn’t know about bernies properties until you made that comment. Then I took to the internet to research and what I gathered from multiple articles was that not a single one of his properties is worth a million dollars. The most expensive was around 700k. But I do agree with you that it is very cute how naive some people are and it seems you may be one of them. LOL that's not ""profiting off serving the people"" that's profiting from writing a book. Ahh shit man, don't feel too down. Take a big rip for me. Aren't we talking about the comedian that used to host the New Years Eve events with Anderson Cooper? The OG Kenny G https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D8V2KB1urpo 1. Yes, for everyone. 2. I disagree. Blockchain adds extensive regulations and oversight. That's the entire point. This is the institution being rebuilt. That's also a big part of Stonk with people pushing for major market reform for over a year now. But lately, with the new tech GameStop is working on, people are caught up in the web3/blockchain stuff. It's difficult because I want to tell you everything all at once. How can I do that more effectively? I agree with you 100% it sounds like crazy town. It's boring, legal, financial crime, legislative crazy town. We've been talking about the economic world you see around you for 2 years. There's more to come and it's all public information. Check our the FederalRegister.gov once a day and read what's going on. Then look at how the media talks about it. It's disappointing but there's change coming. Just this year the SEC has been a flurry of activity. The DOJ has a whole new division for this stuff now and regulations are happening all over the place. The market we know is incredibly manipulative. You think this is capitalism? This is wealth equality. Sounds pretty awesome to me! /s I used to love that company. Too bad it's morally corrupt now. All part of their preemptive deflection of blame towards retail investors, with the SEC doing jack shit to stop their crooked behavior. Where would I find this video? Just trying to catch up. Apes are everywhere 🦍 Nah its way more long term than that usually except there was the guy that bought the whole outstanding shares of a small company yet the next day he finsihed buying a large % like 30-40% of it, the float of the company traded like 10x the next day and knocked the price down 90% or something You think that matters to the people in charge? You’d have a much larger impact organising general strikes and advancing the union movement. But that requires actual work, and not just direct registering your shares and patting yourself on the back. You are in a cult. You’re not going to like hearing that, but you are 100% in a cult that is making you give them your money. [Forbes - Yes, Diversification Can Hurt Your Portfolio](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kennethwinans/2020/01/06/yes-diversification-can-hurt-your-portfolio/?sh=4d28b1d72045) [Forbes - Yes, Diversification Can Hurt Your Portfolio](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kennethwinans/2020/01/06/yes-diversification-can-hurt-your-portfolio/?sh=4d28b1d72045) Down 10% maybe? I've been down over 70% at various points, up over 200% at other times. Never sold a single share, just averaged down. It's incredibly volatile. I think the only thing pathetic here is you, considering this is literally just a rehash of the environment and illegal actions which caused the 2008 recession, just on a much more massive scale. How about you do some research before calling people pathetic you nematode? >We're in agreement there, and if you spent much time on the sub you'd know that's the consensus opinion. Apex 'turned off the buy button' for every broker they serviced. At this stage, no-one can prove why they did that, but I certainly don't think they did it for my benefit. Who did that move benefit? The hedge funds with short positions they couldn't unwind. You mention Robinhood, and their bad bet; OK if that's the case, why was the buy button turned off for all the other brokers too, including the ones that weren't PFOF-based? The list of brokers which didn't turn off buy, is VERY short. Apex and other clearing houses did it specifically to protect themselves. They raise collateral requirements from brokers for any volatile security since they're the ones taking on the risk of default. That risk is especially high when tons of people suddenly make new trading accounts, deposit money, and buy a stock instantly like many people did during the surge. That's trading on margin whether people realize it or not, since money takes time to transfer into the brokerage account. All brokerages are going to raise margin requirements in a situation like that even if they're flush with cash and some are going to flat out restrict purchases. >That is not correct, as confirmed by CS. Your order is sold at the price when you placed the sell order, not the price several days later. It sounds like you've commingled settlement and how they BUY shares (which, iirc is done daily in a 500-share block). Probably possible if you DRS your shares, for there to be a few risky days where they haven't settled yet and can't be sold. That's definitely a dampening factor on why it took me a while to DRS. I could be wrong about that. It's how a lot of transfer agents do it. I looked up their selling methods and it seems like they have Block Sell (which functions how I said), Market Sell (which also sells at whatever price it is when it executes, but theoretically should be done faster), and Limit Sell (where it'll only execute if the price goes above your limit). I can't find anything about the actual speed with which market and limit sells execute once you request them. If you have more info I'd be glad to read it. >The amount of DRS'd shares is surging. It's up to about 40k per day now. GME now state the number of DRSd shares in their quarterly results. Cost to borrow is also surging. It would be cool if they did manage to DRS enough of the float to make a squeeze happen but I'm not holding my breath. Movements tend to lose steam over time and I just can't see the current rate continuing to 50% or higher. I'd love to be proven wrong. >Are you aware of dark pools? If there's nothing dodgy going on, why are millions of shares traded every day in a secret dark pool with no regulation? Yes, and they are regulated by the SEC. The whole point of them is to facilitate large block orders, like a million shares at a time, between institutional investors without affecting the share price on lit exchanges. It's beneficial to institutional investors because they can get better price points compared to selling a million shares on a lit market which will drive down the price and significantly and in turn, their average sell price. It doesn't affect retail investing very much unless you're invested in things like mutual funds or have a pension. In that case it's slightly beneficial to you since the mutual fund can get better deals. That's all in theory. In practice, they're basically places for High Frequency Traders and shady exchange operators to get rich through front running at the expense of their own customers. Again, it doesn't really impact lit exchanges or retail investors very much, aside from making price discovery a bit worse. That said, the reason for their inception is no longer relevant since the average block size keeps shrinking on dark pools. Even super large blocks are broken up into smaller chunks and bought/sold through high frequency trading. If they were banned lit exchanges would get a lot more volatile so that's probably not the right answer. They do need tighter regulations and restrictions though. >Why are Transfer Agents or companies not allowed to promote direct registration? DTCC is a company, not a gov agency, why do they needed protecting from competition in a 'free & fair' market? I've never heard about a ban on direct registration promotion. Do you have a link where I can read about it? I'm not sure if the DTCC gets actual protection from competition. It's more that they're so enmeshed with the Fed, US monetary policy, and exchanges, that the barrier to entry for a competitor is impossibly high. I can't tell you why it's an approved monopoly because I don't know myself. They are highly regulated though. >Further, the ACTUAL goal of DRS is to prove naked shorting. >Currently there's no solid proof, because the markets are setup to be so incredibly dense and complex, and the regulators have been captured for a while (look at the crossover between hedge funds and agencies / companies like DTCC, SEC etc) making data hard to gather. Once enough shares are taken out of the float, it will make a nonsense of the idea that hedge funds aren't naked shorting if there's still 50m+ going to the dark pool every day. Dark pool, sounds eerie and conspiratorial, but that's genuinely what they're called and how they function. Should be common knowledge. Everyone knows naked shorting still happens but I'm not sure how this would prove anything. Where are you getting the 50m number from? Are you talking about a dollar amount? Because the short volume in dark pools isn't anywhere close to that high: https://chartexchange.com/symbol/nyse-gme/short-volume/ https://www.stockgrid.io/darkpools/GME Let's say retail investors somehow manage to lock in the entire available float on lit exchanges. Institutions will still hold a significant percentage of the float and they'll still be free to trade those shares back and forth in dark pools as much as they want. Short volume in lit or dark pools could be 100 million on Monday and it still wouldn't prove naked shorting because it's technically possible for that to be a single share that was traded 100 million times. Volume can be much higher than the float for both long and short shares. >It honestly feels like, as I suggested, you're missing the point of the sub underneath all the lunacy it inevitably attracts. It's not JUST a stock play. It's a way to hit back at a corrupt system. It's so much more than 'failing brick-and-mortar stores' and 'crazy retail redditors'. It's about shining a light on how corrupt markets are, and (we hope) creating an alternative. You won't have naked shorting and rehypothecated shares on a token-driven, blockchain-based stock market, which is what they're building towards while everyone is running round laughing at NFTs. I can appreciate the goal but I can't help feel that the amount of misinformation there does more harm than good. >You sound quite knowledgeable on reverse repo, and I'll admit there are gaps in my knoweldge. Can you explain to me in layman's terms why there are trillions in overnight loans every 24hrs, and why the beneficiaries are kept secret? Would markets collapse if they stopped this overnight lending or made it public which banks need so much liquidity injecting? Liquidity for what? Oh, and thanks for remaining civil with me. The Fed's main goal is to keep the economy stable and on track with low unemployment. To do this they attempt to keep inflation / deflation in check using a few different methods. One of the things they do is set a federal funds rate which is the interest rate banks and financial institutions charge each other to borrow money overnight. This rate has far ranging implications for loans, credit card rates, market exchanges, and all sorts of other things that directly impact inflationary and deflationary pressures. Banks and financial institutions are required by law to keep a certain amount of money in reserve to meet withdraw and deposit demands. This amount is also set by the Fed. The rest they don't have to keep on hand and instead can use to try to make money themselves (there are lots of restrictions to this, but that's the general idea). At the end of each day all the banks check their balance sheets to see where they are in relation to the reserve amount they have to keep. If they're over the amount they can lend that extra money out to other banks which are under. The next day they're paid back with interest. The interest rate is supposed to be the federal funds rate set by the Fed. In reality the federal funds rate is a target rate, not a requirement. The actual lending rate is set by negotiation between the banks themselves. To keep the actual lending rate close to the federal funds rate the Fed changes liquidity by pumping money into and out of the economy using Open Market Operations. They use both permanent open market operations and temporary ones. Permanent is where the Fed is constantly buying or selling US treasuries. If they want to pull money out of the economy they sell treasuries. If they want to pump money in they purchase treasuries. Repos and reverse repos are a form of temporary OMO used to temporarily increase or decrease the supply of reserves in the banking system. part 1.... part 2... When COVID-19 hit the economy tanked and the Fed started purchasing a shitload of US treasuries every month to pump money into the economy (called Quantitative Easing) and they lowered the federal funds rate from around 1.5% to 0.00-0.25%. When the economy started picking back up about a year ago they initially said they had no plans to dial back their purchasing or adjust rates for a while still. They did actually raise reverse repo rates around this time to get the effective federal funds rate back to around 0.15 from ~0.03. Then it became clear that inflation was going to be a much bigger issue than anticipated so they accelerated the tapering plan and announced multiple planned rate hikes (already up to 0.82% or something like that). Starting this coming week they'll be throwing it in reverse by starting quantitative tightening to tamp down on inflation. This will put upward pressure on treasury yields and will likely cause reverse repo numbers to decline. Part of the reason why the reverse repo numbers have been so high is because financial institutions are now flush with cash and they don't have many attractive options to spend it on. Short term treasury yields have been near rock bottom throughout the pandemic and that's one of the things they'd usually spend extra money on. A reverse repo is a place for them to park cash overnight and gain slightly better gains than most alternatives for the moment. It's not the banks that need liquidity, they have too much. The Fed is intentionally decreasing their liquidity. https://ycharts.com/indicators/1_month_treasury_rate#:~:text=1%20Month%20Treasury%20Rate%20is%20at%200.87%25%2C%20compared%20to%200.85,long%20term%20average%20of%201.17%25. (look at the 3y chart) Also, a quick note about reverse repos: ""The Federal Reserve manages overnight interest rates by setting the interest on reserve balances (IORB) rate, which is the rate paid to depository institutions on balances maintained at Federal Reserve Banks. The ON RRP provides a floor under overnight interest rates by offering a broad range of financial institutions that are ineligible to earn IORB, an alternative risk-free investment option. Together, the IORB rate and the ON RRP set a floor under overnight rates, beneath which banks and non-bank financial institutions should be unwilling to invest funds in private markets. I don't actually know why the institutions that participate aren't listed somewhere but it's not a complete mystery since the Fed talks about it on occasion. Back in July 2021 when RRP started to rise they said, “The increase in [RRP] participation was driven in part by larger investments from money market funds, as ongoing reductions in net Treasury bill issuance contributed to downward pressure on yields of other investment options available to these funds.” If they closed reverse repos overnight the market wouldn't crash. All that would happen is financial institutions would go back to purchasing other, less attractive securities with their extra cash. I'm sorry if I came across as hostile in my previous post. I just really don't like how moderation handles the misinformation there. I also don't like how much in common it has with every pump and dump scheme community from shitcoins to penny stocks to NFTs of bored apes. They all spam the crap out of BUY AND HODL, NEVER SELL, WE'RE GOING TO THE MOON! in order to pump the asset up with as much upward pressure as possible before bailing themselves or rug pulling. The blind fanaticism over Gamestop itself also drives me nuts. Gamestop just released a terrible quarterly report with an EPS of -2 and a loss of $160 million and the thread I read on Superstonk made it seem like the best report in history and all the comments mentioning the negative aspects were buried. Ignoring bad news doesn't make it go away. It just turns the community into an echo chamber. Thanks for taking the time to respond with a thoughtful reply. I hope you have a great weekend! bit of both https://youtu.be/WSn3My1tKa4 They're not suggesting it, it's the explicit intent of the statement. This is the kind of person that should be, well, let's just say removed from the American gene pool Which part are you trying to refute? I'm not gonna explain it to you, as it's available for you to do your own research, but I'd be happy to hear your counter arguments! Sweet. I'm all about leveling the playing field a bit. [deleted] The economy isn't based on it, its supplemental. I'm not equating it to lets say, oil. You're acting like everyone that smokes weed does crime and everyone that is involved in crime, smokes weed. That's a very short sighted perspective to say the least. Drive bys, are you kidding? I mean if she said that then there's either an article quoting her or video showing that she said that. Yeah, let’s investigate why the more popular candidate got more votes. I’ll get my crack team on it. Good luck with that. I'm pretty sure there's a group of people who don't participate in any polling outside actual elections. > Biden did NOT win the primaries. I got a source that says otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries Do you have a source on any of those statements? Lol least delusional leftist Do you not understand the difference between a primary and a general election. Congrats, you got played by the Russian operative Those factors do muddy the waters, but I don't think any of that outweighs the hard data of the election results. When comparing polls of ""who would you support in a hypothetical matchup"" versus the actual results of actual elections, democratic voters overwhelmingly picked Biden over Bernie in swing states. Is it possible that Bernie could have beaten Trump? Sure, Trump was a weak candidate and weird results are possible. But the hard data of how voters actually behaved on election day seems to strongly indicate Bernie's support did not turn out like we hoped. So you like living in a democracy where a candidate received 3 million more votes than their opponent and lost, but that’s more of an indictment on the candidate than our fucked up system? Wow, this really is the dumbest “economics” sub on Reddit! Literally none of what you said proves anything you moron, shut the fuck up. Bernie couldn't beat Hillary why would he beat Trump? Not at all. What I have is that HRC is career liar who was the worst democratic candidate in her party’s history. But yeah… the DNC got what it deserved. Before 2016, during the primary process, they only showed pledged delegate totals. In 2016, despite the democratic nomination never having to go to the superdelegates (i.e. DNC officials and other high ranking Democrats) for a vote (which is supposed to happen when there isn't a clear leader from the primary pledged delegates), they decided to start publishing the pledged superdelegate counts. Superdelegates, which technically shouldn't matter UNLESS there's a close race, and shouldn't publicly pledge to any candidate during the primary process. It threw off the totals enough that it discouraged a lot of Bernie voters from voting since it was a ""losing"" battle. Plenty of superdelegates pledged early because it was ""Hillary's turn"". https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/25/democrats-rules-superdelegates-sanders In 2020, despite winning just 1 state in February out of 4, the day before super Tuesday, 5 major candidates dropped out and pledged their support for Biden (including Buttigeig who had won or split 2 of the other 4 February states). I haven't seen any proof that this one was the DNC telling them to drop out to ensure they'd have their candidate, but at the same time the timing was extremely suspicious, especially with a candidate dropping out after having won a decent number of delegates. Add in the fact that this is the first time in decades that the winner of the Iowa caucus didn't win the primary, and it all just kinda seems wrong. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/02/ex-dnc-chair-goes-at-the-clintons-alleging-hillarys-campaign-hijacked-dnc-during-primary-with-bernie-sanders/ Remember how the hacked DNC emails revealed they had sent Hillary primary debate multiple questions ahead of time? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Brazile#Sharing_debate_questions_with_Clinton_campaign What happens in spez, stays in spez. The reality is that a lot of Sanders' votes where just anti-Clinton votes. Where'd you get downvoted? Biden was heavily supported on most political subreddits. neoliberal democrats and republicans are the exact same thing. also nice cherry picking, forget all the other stuff. Sure I do! It's when the state owns all the means of production in order to provide for the good of the people. In fact, it's so good for the people that everywhere that's ever tried it (inb4 REAL communism has never been tried reeeeeeeee) has turned into a violent, dissent-free authoritarian hellscape faster than you can say swords into ploughshares What a silly take. Your candidate lost to mine. Any criticism of my candidate for losing to trump, by definition, weighs heavier on yours. There’s nothing sadder than aging Bernie bros. You’ve gotta move on. No one takes you seriously. A majority of Americans agree with a minimum wage of $15 / hour. A majority of Americans agree with a single-payer system (depending on how you write it; many polls were written by HMO's to attempt to disprove this). A majority of Americans agree that the higher education system is broken and students shouldn't be saddled with the massive debts they have now (and at least a portion of which should be forgiven). A majority of Americans agree with getting corporate and special interest money out of politics. ​ A majority of Americans agree with higher taxes for corporations and the wealthy. ​ So sure, I suppose Bernie agreeing with the majority of Americans on a few basic economic policies just wasn't enough to make him ""mainstream."" Which economic solutions of his, might I ask, did NOT a majority of Americans agree with? Your post history is a laughable array of right wing Republican talking points, but okay. Sure. ""both sides"". The politicians you vote into office to do so. You realize it's simpler seeing someone smoke weed than it is to unravel a financial crime. There are people unraveling financial crimes every day. Just because you don't pay attention to it doesn't mean it's not happening. Check the SEC enforcement website or any states enforcement site. And just because you think something would be a crime doesn't mean it actually is. I think that overall there are core beliefs that take very, very much to change and there are subsidiary beliefs that can change. I've slowly allowed my core beliefs to be everchanging which could be good or bad. I'm very fluid which I'm sure some see as wishy washy or non-committal. I also change beliefs based on who I'm talking to and my mindset at the time. Maybe others would consider me too influenced by others. I also highly agree with your point on happiness. Happiness I think is basically 95% subjective. You can create happiness out of nothing and with nothing. If you think you're happy, you are happy. And more power to you! If your chosen path of happiness does not intrude me, you can do as you please. Maybe I'm libertarian haha. You wont get through to them, theyve grown up knowing drugs are bad mkay. And its not like alcohol was once illegal but people were still able to buy guns after it was made legal. Sad how dense half the US population is. I don't. The left wants to go back in time and give up all civil liberties and anyone who doesn't fall in line gets attacked and smeared. There is no progressive policies just regressive vs common sense. I already said no I’m not disagreeing I’m just pointing out how pointless this is lmao. People on Wall Street are on trial and weeds slowly being legalised. Sanders has had virtually no effect on either of these events If I voted to force everyone to eat nestle chocolate then yeah I would be you are trying to communicate with people that have brain fluid dripping out of their mouths. don't waste your time Lmao ""yea dude I totally passed a ton of legislation. You just don't know them they went to a different school"" Obama called Buttigiege after he dropped out. Real goods => ukraine Money => America Grow up bud. Einstein in my username is totally random. I never commented saying I support socialism and I have no idea what your point here is you also understood that trump lost in 2016 when he fraudulently stole the election from hillary using hacked voting machines. Yeah ur right gangs never shoot anybody siili me /s I’m a troll, my guy you replied to me with something that I was even fucking talking about ??? What's written in the part you left out? Already did, further down this thread. Louisiana State Penitentiary. Is that something people unironically say? Round two? It'll be easier than the first one. It’s George Orwell you uncultured troglodyte. Wait a minute, you guys can invest in space-time? If they are a real religion and not clearly a scam, I’ll…wait. I won’t have to do anything because they are a scam. And they've said they won't go after the rich for back taxes be ause they can afford to fight back and tie it up in court. There have been reports to Congress on what levels of funding the IRS requires to operate properly, and what returns Congress can expect for the money spent. For every dollar Congress funds the IRS, the IRS returns 6. The IRS is underfunded by billions. You do the math. The point is, this isn’t something new. It’s all gotten out of hand. Congress is now a career and it was never intended to be. These rules aren’t Pelosi’s. The Dems can’t even get basic gun regulation, or universal healthcare, or voting rights, or much of anything past rightwing blockades. Christ, in the relative scheme of things, congress buying stock is pretty far down on my list of issues that affect my life. PS, come January, you’ll never even ponder this issue again. Once 1/6/21 becomes a national holiday…. If she didn't, all of those years of blowing Kennedys would be for nothing. Which is exactly the goal of the right, to have you blame everyone for the nonstop horseshit they’ve been pulling and getting away with for 42 years. I blame the Dems for allowing it, but it’s not the same thing. Gotta go back up and make some pizzas…siddown kid… If you need me to explain to you what’s going on in this country, you’ve got bigger problems than being a whiner on Reddit… Exactly. Can’t stand when people conveniently omit Pelosi et al names when sounding off about the insider trading by congresspeople I agree, but there needs to be a priority. Ideally, the Republican party is turned on its head and most of its members are ousted, with a new group brought in by informed and empowered voters. Then we look at the do-nothing Democrats who have been paralyzed and festering in their chairs. Honestly I think adding ranked choice voting addresses both of those issues. It gives third parties a real chance of winning an office, and we might see serious contenders in those groups, then, that can challenge a standing office holder. Bring back the Twitter account that follows all of Nancy 'The Handbag' Pelosi's stock trades. in what world is elon on the left? holy shit america has such a skewed spectrum Well for one thing fuck elon. What wrong with Bill gates thou he donated billions to charity, helped 3rd world country with health services. He's bad because u believe he put nano chips I to vaccine?. I agree, but that hasn't ended well in the past. Maybe playing the long game would work. In the long term, they will try to take our liberties and sustenance for more power and self help. Seems like a much more realistic and civilized method to root them out. While I admit we tend to focus on the wrong things when vetting candidates, I don't see how a ""woke"" purity test is any different from a Protestant Evangelical ""Christian"" purity test that a huge majority of red literally must be. You might also be right that the generally older and richer GOP voting base pays more attention to political discourse, but I would counter they understand the actual implications. TCJA is a perfect example. GOP voters still love it, not understanding that it bald-faced moved money out of the middle and lower class and into the wealthy. In fact I'd argue a huge number are voting staunchly against, say, abortion, while their candidates implement policies that are detrimental to that voter. There are essentially three types. MBT (Master of Business Taxation), or Mac T (Master of Accountancy Taxation), and finally Doctoral programs in Taxation and Tax theory. Both Master's degrees are similar and will contain primarily tax courses, while have preliminary requirements that are either business environment or accounting focused. Kinda hard to avoid politics in a sub like r/economy… Nope I'm trolling most of the time. Everyone's life revolves around politics, you just live a sheltered and privileged enough life that you can simply not worry about any of it because no one is trying to take rights away from straight white males. If that doesn't describe you, you've been lied to and are buying those lies without any critical thought. Politics literally touches every aspect of our lives, and it's stupid to act like you can just avoid it. “Multiple properties… most ar $700k” lmao point prove Jesus not even worth trying with the nut huggers of both sides of the aisle. You realize they laugh st us right? Making millions in office? Keep voting though 😂 Isn't that the kid from South Park? All of the tech giants have 10x-100x more software engineers, pay them 2x what GameStop pays their SWEs (which means they get all the top tier talent), have better and more established brand names, and have billions in cash to throw at potentially profitable ventures. I don’t see how GameStop could possibly beat them. Except it doesn’t. You either have proof of work and its fucked environmentally, or proof of stake, and then you just have the same consolidation of wealth issues that allow market manipulation. Blockchain tech isn’t suitable as a financial solution. If blockchain added regulation and oversight crypto wouldn’t be rife with manipulation, scams, and be the equivalent of the ol’ west. The fastest way to get results is to organise strikes and union action. Until they bring big money to its knees then they won’t achieve anything. And web3/blockchain stuff is just a distraction at worst and the beginning of a fucking nightmare if it gets momentum. https://youtu.be/u-sNSjS8cq0 The solution to the current situation isn’t more madness. Spez, the great equalizer. You put in time at the SEC for that sweet sweet position as an “expert” with the very institutions you’re “regulating”. How bad are you willing to fuck up your application? Not only was it on YouTube but they also aired it as an ad, on TV. [Here.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=av3k_lcGm9g) [I'm the proud owner of 99 bottles of spez. #Save3rdPartyApps](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) I’ll just DRS instead. Would love to hear someone refute all of the evidence that the major short parties never closed their position. And I mean actually have a real conversation, not just dismiss the entire movement because ""you're just crazy,"" or ""it's a cult."" I want to know what you know that makes you so sure. The one metric that MSM shoves down your throat is short interest %. This number went down, so shorts must have closed, right? But it's self-reported and there are a million ways to hide from having to report real short positions. Besides just short positions, it's become pretty clear that some very major parties are short volatility (and were pre-sneeze, too). If that means nothing to you, I highly recommend you do some research on your own around variance swaps and other volatility products and how they have been used aggressively over the last decade or two. What's been happening is that large hedge funds have been shorting volatility; it's a way to increase your returns most years, but without proper hedging, when you lose, you'll lose BIG. There is a reason that 100s of tickers were all exploding at once in January 2021, and ""crazy redditors"" ain't it. Go look at the Jan 21 timeframe for BBBY, EXPR, FOSL, TR, KOSS, MAC, FIZZ, IRBT, PETS, BB, RKT, SENS, BGS, LUMN, GBR, KODK, SHLDQ, BLIAQ...I could keep going. The reason is likely that many of these stocks and dozens of others were lumped together in large variance swap positions. Check out this presentation on the risk management failures that occured/are occurring with GME if you want more detail. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.northinfo.com/documents/993.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj9z5-B35P4AhWASTABHc4sDmcQFnoECAYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0I-um2lbsOT19IJtt8RAu9 Besides short volatility, redditors in superstonk noticed insane amounts of put options being bought by firms in Brazil and then wiped from Bloomberg terminals. They realized that Bill Hwang (Archegos - recently arrested) was short GME after it was mentioned in a credit suisse report. He was just one glaring example that proves how easy it is to take out insanely levered positions using swaps without having to report it. But in some instances there are trails of evidence, mostly in options chains but it's also become increasingly obvious that ETF's are being used to aggressively short certain tickers. The rules around ETF redemption are complete loopholes and one of largest containing gamestop, XRT, has been reporting failure to delivers in the millions and up until just recently was on the SEC's ""threshold"" list for months. This doesn't even mention the skyrocketing cost to borrow gme that occured recently and has happened to some extent before major runs. Which I'm sure you have an explanation for besides just ""frenzied redditors"" which is a total cop-out. There are total idiots on superstonk, absolutely. But there are some really smart folks there too. Don't just dismiss them as a cult unless you've come prepared with research. Like I said, I'd love to have a real conversation if you want to lay out some of the evidence you have on the matter since it sounds like you are quite confident that we are wrong. IBKR just turned off shorting GME. There are no more shares available. Shorts r fucked. My god you keep posting this article but you haven’t even read it lmfao. The article isn’t saying you should dump 100% of your funds into one bucket. It’s saying diversification recklessly doesn’t protect you from bad investments. My 5 year old nephew would be able to tell you that it’s not smart to risk your entire life on one chance. I sincerely hope for your own sake you wake up and scale back before you lose your entire life to the whims of a meme stock Did you actually read the articleyou linked? ""Clearly, a line exists between sensibly spreading your funds among enough investments to avoid a financial disaster and diversifying with such fervor that you end up owning too many investments with little or no benefit."" So diversify but don't go crazy. He is still saying you should diversify. He is definitely not saying you should YOLO one stock. >Thanks for taking the time to respond with a thoughtful reply. I hope you have a great weekend! No problem. This conversation has been really interesting; feel like I've learned some stuff and gained a different perspective. I wish there was more crossover between communities, a point someone made about the sub being 'hive-mind-y' is a very fair criticism (though imo it's less a criticism of any particular sub, more of an eventuality with any movement due to the inherently tribal nature of our species). I've fallen foul of that in the past, sometimes people shoot the messenger if you say something unpopular, and once the first downvote is in, it tends to snowball. I'll respond properly later as there were a few parts I didn't understand or have a different perspective on, but got some stuff to do. Hope your weekend goes well too! It's an amazing book. Made me wonder how many incredible stories are missing due to lack of translation. I simp so hard for Krystal bro I can't even. Why stop at a bit? thx Everyone who smokes illegal weed is a criminal, by definition, the reverse was not my insinuation. If you fund criminals, they use the proceeds to commit other crimes, it's quite simple. [The spez police don't get it. It's not about spez. It's about everyone's right to spez. #Save3rdPartyApps](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) Yes; the fact that he represents absolutely ZERO of the voters' interests and has consistently been in the ratings toilet. Your Wiki means jack shit. Why don't you people ever ask yourself why the hell would anyone choose a known racist who loves militarizing cops and who has never been out of DC since NINETEEN SEVENTY FUCKING FOUR?? He was by far the most unqualified candidate on that primary stage behind Michael Bloomberg, and that's saying a lot because EVERY candidate was shit. It's amazing how fast everyone dropped out just because Clyburn endorsed Biden after Bernie absolutely mopping the floor with him. Even trump knew it and admitted it. You people just cant admit that you are all failures and that you are the reason we have a nation full of fucking nazis now, and on top of that you want us to disarm and lie down for them. Fucking pathetic. ""leftist""?? What in the hell is ""leftist"" about any of this?? Sanders was an Eisenhower Republican; nothing leftist in the least. Boy you can sure tell who never lived before the fascist Telecommunications Act of 1996. Liberals have been fully 1984'd Spez, the great equalizer. #Save3rdPartyApps So Bernie should have gamed the electoral college to win instead of getting more votes? And you win the neoliberal award for buying their BS! It didn't help with the mainstream media carrying water for the Biden campaign throughout, especially after Nevada and South Carolina; ""if you want to beat Trump, Biden is the candidate to do it."" Democratic leaning voters have a much higher faith in MSM than progressives and right-leaning voters (most MSM has a neoliberal viewpoint). But even during the primary, in every single state, post-voting polling showed that the candidate that most Democratic primary voters agreed with was Bernie; he was their best choice even if they didn't vote for him. Meaning the compelling message, even if it wasn't true, that Biden beats Trump really helped Biden beat the candidate who best would've represented Democratic values. You know the old saying, vote with your heart in the primary and your head in the general? This brain-washing helped convince enough people that only Biden could win, and they believed it (but ironically, IMHO, it helped beat the better candidate in the primary). She was hated in states that she needed to win and alienated half of her party with her bullshit. Those were the stupid rules that she could’ve worked to changed, but nahh. So, your “winning” excuse is pure genius. So smart with your ad hominems. Pretty sad, desperate, and pathetic. And no, I won’t shut the fuck up. Lmfao. Your argument is this: hILLaRy cOuLdn’T bEaT tRuMp So NoBoDy CoUld. You’d be wise to take your own advice. But I’m probably giving you too much credit. Lol Idk, Bernie literally lost votes from 2016 to 2020 in virtually every battleground state despite effectively running for President for 5 years. How do you LOSE popularity? No wonder you’re so bitter! 2016: Hillary won without superdelegates. I was able to vote for Bernie in the primary. What does superdelegate total have to do with anything? Is posting statistics making people vote against their will? Do you honestly believe people are just going to vote for someone else because superdelegates? There was 2 fucking options, it's not like superdelegates were splitting the votes of multiple candidates. You either wanted one or the other. Would you honestly consider voting against who you actually want to win because of superdelegates? Are you being honest with yourself? 2020: So this is of course the argument that if the candidate field had all just stayed in the race longer the overall larger moderate coalition wouldn't have just won anyway? I don't get it. The people who drop out don't just keep their delegates forever, they get redistributed based on state vote totals once they drop out. You're basically arguing it was rigged because Bernie wasn't able to win by splitting up all of the moderates. Sounds silly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/03/what-happens-candidates-delegates-when-they-drop-out/ > One distinction Putnam draws is that while we generally talk about who won how many delegates in the contests so far, for the most part no one actually has any delegates at this point. Those delegates will be assigned at party conventions later in the year. Instead, candidates have mostly won “delegate slots” — placeholders for delegates to be assigned later. (The “mostly” qualifiers there are a carve-out for some district delegates in New Hampshire who’ve already been selected.) > This is important because those slots will be filled with delegates for only those candidates who are still in the race. In New Hampshire, for example, if Buttigieg is no longer a candidate by the time of the state convention, the three delegates he won by virtue of his statewide vote total would be redistributed among the other candidates still in the race who’d crossed the 15 percent statewide threshold. Since the other two candidates earning statewide delegates in New Hampshire were Klobuchar and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the effect would be that Sanders gets all of those delegates. > Putnam’s interpretation of the rules is that by suspending their campaigns, as opposed to dropping out, Buttigieg and Klobuchar can protect their delegates from being reallocated. The Democratic National Committee, however, disagrees: They’re out of the race. In June, Iowa’s delegates will be resorted to those candidates who are still in — Sanders, if he is. And with the Iowa thing, history doesn't mean anything. Who fucking cares that Iowa is a usual predictor? That doesn't make something legally binding lol. NYT reported that Obama called the candidates to drop out and get behind Biden. I'm sure no favors were promised in the process, Lol. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/359645-warren-walks-back-claim-democratic-primary-was-rigged/ > Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a new interview appeared to walk back her claim that last year’s Democratic primary was rigged, suggesting instead that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) showed “some bias” but that the selection process had been “fair.” > “I agree with what Donna Brazile has said over the last few days; that while there was some bias at the DNC, the overall 2016 primary process was fair and Hillary made history,” Warren said in a Wednesday interview with MassLive. > Her remarks contrasted with what she told CNN’s Jake Tapper last week. Pressed by Tapper about whether she believed the primary had been rigged in then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s favor, Warren responded: “Yes.” > A spokeswoman for Warren’s office did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment. > Former interim DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile ignited a firestorm last week after Politico published an excerpt from her upcoming book, in which she claimed she had found evidence the Clinton campaign had fixed the Democratic nomination system in the candidate’s favor. > Brazile said she discovered an agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign that suggested the nomination was fixed long before the former secretary of State would become the party’s official nominee, tilting the scales away from Clinton’s rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). > “If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity,” Brazile wrote in the excerpt. > Following the publication of the excerpt, Brazile dismissed suggestions that the nominating process was “rigged.” > “I found no evidence, none, whatsoever,” Brazile told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, adding that she did not believe Warren “meant the the word ‘rigged.'” > “The only thing I found — which I said, I found the cancer, but I’m not killing the patient — was this memorandum that prevented the DNC from running its own operation,” she continued. > Clinton on Wednesday weighed in on the claims, saying the controversial remarks about the party’s presidential primary being rigged “just wasn’t the case.” > “I didn’t know what she was referring to because, as has now come out, that just wasn’t the case,” Clinton said during an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” [I believe this was all in reference to the DNC being in debt and being bailed out by Clinton?](https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2017/11/10/elizabeth-warren-rigged/) > A week after saying she believed the Democratic primary was “rigged” for Hillary Clinton, Senator Elizabeth Warren is walking that position back. > It was, in fact, “fair,” she said in an interview with the Springfield Republican this week. > Warren stirred controversy when, during an appearance on CNN, she was asked if she believed the allegations in Donna Brazile’s upcoming book about a deal between Clinton and the Democratic National Convention meant the primary was “rigged.” Her response was clear: “Yes.” > Brazile’s accusations have been fleshed out a little more fully over the past week. For starters, Clinton’s campaign helped the DNC financially in exchange for more control long before the primary contest was decided, yes, but at least on paper the agreement only applied to the general election. Brazile has also tried to distance herself from the “rigged” narrative. > Warren, who has stuck by her criticism that the DNC needs reform to inspire confidence in how it picks its nominees, has since sought to expand on her monosyllabic response. “I agree with what Donna Brazile has said over the last few days; that while there was some bias at the DNC, the overall 2016 primary process was fair and Hillary made history,” Warren told the Republican. > Warren did not endorse either Clinton or her opponent Bernie Sanders during the primary in Massachusetts, which Clinton won by the slim margin of 50.1 to 48.7. [The ""controlling of the DNC"" was limited to the general election. Nothing to do with the primary.](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/memo-reveals-details-hillary-clinton-dnc-deal-n817411) > WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee struck a deal with Hillary Clinton in 2015 that gave her campaign input on some party hiring and spending decisions, but required they be related only to preparations for the general election, according to a memo obtained by NBC News. It also left the door open for other candidates to make similar arrangements. > The document provides more context to the explosive claims made by former DNC Interim Chair Donna Brazile in a forthcoming book, an excerpt of which was published this week. > The August 26, 2015, memorandum of understanding from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook to DNC CEO Amy Dacey details the relationship between Clinton's campaign and the DNC long before she won her party's nomination. > In exchange for Hillary for America's (HFA) helping the cash-strapped DNC raise money, the party committee agreed ""that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research."" > Specifically, the DNC agreed to hire a communications director from ""one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA."" More broadly, the DNC maintained ""the authority to make the final decision"" on senior staff in the communications, technology and research departments, but agreed that the party organization would choose only ""between candidates acceptable to HFA."" > The memo stipulates the DNC had to hire a communications director by September 11, 2015, months before the first nominating contests in early 2016. > However, the memo also made clear that the arrangement pertained to only the general election, not the primary season, and it left open the possibility that it would sign similar agreements with other candidates. Let me ask you a question. How was I able to vote for Bernie in the primary if it was rigged? Lol Remembers how Bernie won the primary squarely in Iowa but they decided it a tie after one of buttigieg's supporters at the polling site did a coin flip and you can watch him in real time flip the coin, catch it, look at it and then flip it over in his hand so the delegates went to Pete. Anyone saying there weren't any bullshit shenanigans going on in either the 2016 or 2020 primary really wasn't paying attention or has an active interest in denying it. The DNC is corrupt as shit and has no interest in actually following the will of the voters--they already have their predetermined picks and work meticulously behind the scenes to ensure their candidate ascends. Lol, probably this fucking subreddit. The front page on Super Tuesday was about how Bernie won his home state and Beto’s former band mate spoke highly of Bernie. The absolute thrashing that Bernie took was nowhere to be found. Not during the primaries. People absolutely hated Biden. It wasn’t until he won the primary and it became Trump vs Biden that Biden was heavily supported. No they are very different. For example republicans are against abortion but neolibs are generally in favor. It was the first article you shared and felt like it basically invalidated your whole premise. > Neoliberal democrats and republicans are the exact same When you have absolutely no handle on American politics but want to sound edgy online, this is the exact sentiment I would expect. I get less and less surprised each year that goes by why Bernie got absolutely demolished in 2020 if yall were his base [deleted] My candidate would've beaten Trump; 'nuff said. They don't commonly agree with raising the cost of living, especially people over 17 I had explained in my last comment but this is my final statement. Voting americans don't want a more left leaning democrat than usual, they want moderates. It's why moderates are voted, like all the time But this is Reddit, think what you will, this place is terrible for political discussion we shouldn't waste each other's time if we're probably not going to agree So what’s your point? At this moment in time the democrats have the floor. I have no doubt George Bush was as corrupt as Biden and Pelosi. I didn’t reverse course I am pointing out that corruption is rampant but right now the hapless democrats have their turn in the barrel. Trump may be crazy but he properly identified the swamp. The question is then, why do we allow politicians to spend our resources on fighting petty crime rather than big crime? Lack of awareness or lack of democracy? I never vote for politicians, I always vote for direct democracy. regressive policy, like abortion banning for example? What civil liberties are the left campaigning to take away? I mean I think progressives largely just want to bring the us in line with other rich countries to make it a little less shitty, eg fixing healthcare, education, labor rights You don't need nestle chocolate to prevent countless people from dying. Please dear God, think about what you say before you say it. A doctor that tells their patient they need to inject insulin so they don't die isn't advocating for business practices. The sad thing is, I know you know all this. Unfortunately you decide to base your political identity on being as brain dead as possible. It's sad, get some help I get it, probably best. That being said, I don't believe people like this deserve to share bullshit and not face as much scrutiny as possible for it Dude, it was in the NY Times; the NYT! There isn't a more neoliberal outfit than that and they were among the many to break the story. Obama called the candidates before they dropped out to coax them into shifting their voters over to Biden. He wasn't able to convince Warren to drop out, but was able to sideline her to avoid her voters from moving over to Bernie. Maybe he called Mayo Pete after he dropped out as well, but he \*definitely\* called him before he dropped out. Why else do you think he's now Secretary of Transportation, LoL? He ""earned"" it. Lmfao really? That's your response? ""Grow up bud""? I know you don't support socialism. That's why I cited Einstein's essay. Most of the greatest minds in history were socialist. Noam Chomsky, Richard Wolff, Einstein, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, MLK Jr, George Orwell, Nelson Mandela, Nikola Tesla, Woody Guthrie (This Land is Your Land), Malcolm X, Francis Bellamy (The pledge of allegiance), Oppenheimer, Oscar Wylde (The Painting of Dorian Gray), Pablo Picasso, the list goes on and on and on. Grow up and realize that generations of the smartest people in history were socialist bud. No one of significance said that. What a hilariously weak attempt to conflate the two reactions to make trump seem remotely coherent. Trump did say that election was fraudulent as well. This is the person you’re defending. A person who thought you can put sunlight in your body along with bleach. Prohibition never happened siili me slash s ecks dee You were worried that black people would spend your tax dollars on weed. I'm saying that legal weed would be so cheap that the welfare people would actually spend less money on drugs. ""except for punishment of crime"". What's your point, no one's been sentenced to slavery for punishment of crime How is that chattel slavery? You are not owned. It is indentured servitude. Yea, I know who it is…and it’s relevance is akin to The Planet of the Apes. Yes, but only in NFT form, otherwise you affect the outcome, and the SEC doesn't like retail doing that. All religious organizations are scams. I wont argue whether religion itself is a scam but the organizations like the different church's 100% are. Did they really?? Ohhh and here it comes. Dems are pure dems are pure…. You are showing exactly what is wrong with the left, you can’t hold your own accountable. No one is disagreeing with you about the problem being endemic by pointing out that Pelosi personally defended it. You’re distracting from the very important issue here of wealth inequality by dismissing this as a non-issue through whataboutism and defeatism. The reason we can’t solve any of the problems you mentioned is because wealth inequality has allowed the few to possess more power than the masses. We will never solve anything as long as money and politics share a symbiotic relationship and Pelosi’s public stance on this undermines our democracy. Reigning in egregious abuses of power from any side matters even if you agree with most of the things that person/party says/does. The rules may not be Pelosi’s but the democrats constantly capitulating to the middle of the aisle candidates hasn’t done them any good. If they wanted to get legislation passed they would do as their opposition and take that shit. Quit giving money to Joe Manchin. Why have we let him become the most powerful democrat when he seems to be going through a political identity crisis at all times. Eat Shit, we think you should leave. If by blame everyone you mean keep up the facade of both parties being grid-locked (it wouldn't be smart for them to try and isolate the poor majoriy cause we would be more likely to unite against them) . They want to keep US against each other so we don't see that both sides of the aisle are Capitalists and it is the Capitalists that are the issue. [And if by ""Dems allowing it"" you mean ""actively voting against the interestes of the working class"" then sure you're right.](https://imgur.com/a/OsGWnhG) ​ I almost hate the Dems more than the GOP because at least a Republican will say to my face ""you don't matter"" while a Democrat would be like ""we hear you, we understand you and we feel you.......*\*whispers incredibly softly\* and you don't matter* \#BLM #LGBTQ <33333"" Yeah she's worth a $B+/- didn't get that being a politician. Nah, just a small percentage of Americans that for some reason the rest of the world thinks represents all of us. Oh please, he was pretty definitively left-wing til the last year or so. You don't need to be a conspiracy nutcase to not like Gates. Do a bit more research into those 'billions' donated to charity. Here, I'll give you some light reading with tldrs that may change your mind. [https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/gjn\_gates\_report\_june\_2016\_web\_final\_version\_2.pdf](https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/gjn_gates_report_june_2016_web_final_version_2.pdf)(Gates using his billions to effectively create a village of dependent employees, farming passionfruit for coca cola, which Gates owns a large percentage of) [https://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07-story.html)(95% of his so-called charity spending are just business investments for profit. Legally charities are only required to donate 5% of their revenue to directly help their chosen cause.) [https://inequality.org/great-divide/every-buck-billionaire-charity-74-cents/](https://inequality.org/great-divide/every-buck-billionaire-charity-74-cents/)(In reality a huge chunk of the charity is coming out of our pockets thanks to tax loopholes. Charity as a whole is one of the world's largest scams, a tool for the wealthy to avoid taxes while puffing up their PR) [https://www.pfs-llc.net/blog/the-5-rule-explained/](https://www.pfs-llc.net/blog/the-5-rule-explained/)(A more in depth explanation of the 5% rule) [https://time.com/3553242/microsoft-monopoly/](https://time.com/3553242/microsoft-monopoly/)(Plus there's Microsoft's history of monopolistic business) [https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-releases/2003/05/grant-to-launch-new-charter-schools-in-san-francisco](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-releases/2003/05/grant-to-launch-new-charter-schools-in-san-francisco)(And of course there's the blatant political manipulation and economic strong arming. Even if you consider what he does 'good' you can't deny that any person having that kind of power is dangerous.) Did I say that? No. He did buy up a ton of farmland, stole what made him rich, has more money than anyone would ever need yet doesn't make good use of it. The only people who have been playing the long game are the Republicans. Many of you allowed Republicans to continue to gain power as they continue to show little respect for you or the law. We just had a president who couldn't be investigated, no one around him could be questioned or subpoenad. He just said the election was stolen without showing proof or doing what is necessary to proof it. This is not a party you reward for that behavior THERE IS NO BOTH SIDES RIGHT NOW like I'm tired of hearing that just cause we have a bunch of Dems in control doesn't mean we STOP holding them accountable as well. The Dems aren't going to turn heel and be Republicans they are to wimpy to do that. We have no accountability cause the left of the right loses WIN the time is to win and if you think it's okay to let Republicans win who just had a cpac in Hungary THEN YOU DESERVE TO LOSE THIS COUNTRY. I didn’t say anything about ‘woke’. There are actually leftists out there, for instance, who believe Democrats should primary Joe Manchin with someone from the left. There is a stunning lack of awareness in the leftward parts of the Democratic coalition about basic Civics and how American politics work. We knew in 2016 that the Republicans were openly ready to wreck every norm to stack the federal courts, but the left continued to run anti Democratic Party discouragement efforts long after the DNC was over. The tragedy of it is that all of the future fights were basically lost in November 2016. What was broken when Republicans were allowed to steal that Scalia seat and all of those open federal judiciary seats cannot be put back together. TIL, thank you for clarifying Dude just stop. I understand politics affects peoples lives. But in case you haven't noticed this right vs left, my team vs yours is tearing us apart. It's not making our world and our society better. Quite the opposite. And if you seriously think it's not driving the devide then you are blind. And if you actually think that the growing divide from the toxicity of tribal politics is helping us in any way you are delusional. But I wouldn't expect someone so tied to tribalism as you to understand that. So keep rooting for your team. Keep blaming the otherside while they blame you. GameStop currently has top talent from all the places you name. Hey just to add to the perspective; A little further down this thread a good link on the talent-building was shared, don't know if you missed it; https://www.gmedd.com/report-model/ As you can see lots of talent is coming in and they have their partners (LRC, IMX) for building the other assets they need. > and be the equivalent of the ol’ west. like the current stock-market? SAG-AFTRA is broken, and the merger is likely what killed off journalism for op-eds... I'd like to hear more GME counter theories but damn this girl is so annoying. I'm 6 minutes into the hour and 41 minute video and I can't stand it. Show me anywhere that says that lol not true at all. If you are talking about settlement time of T+2 thats something completely different They can also get around T+2 by the way by sending trades to their offices overseas. One of the reasons they all have businesses set up in other countries too. They get an extra 3 days on top of T+2 just to settle. These are completely different from naked shorts but also a way they can manipulate price action. That’s not true. You have a source for your assertion? So if I invested my life savings in apple or Microsoft or Facebook before they evolved also, wouldn't also be smart? Yes, Depends on your goals. Here's a goal of mine - [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/buy-stocks/) Advantages of Buying Individual Stocks Earn Money from Growth and Dividends There are two ways to earn money from owning stocks: growth and dividends. With growth, you aim to buy stocks cheap and sell them after their prices rise. Buy-and-hold and value investors aim to own individual stocks for long periods of time, measured in months or years. Day traders, meanwhile, only own stocks for hours—or even just minutes. These strategies couldn’t be more different, but the goal is the same: Buy stocks when prices are low and sell them when they’re high. In addition, stocks that pay dividends earn you money without you needing to sell any shares. When public companies are profitable, some choose to return a portion of their profits to shareholders in the form of regular dividends. I had the same thought! I really hope it's success will help get more books translated to English. If it was legal there would be no black market for it, it would cease to be lucrative and everyone including my grandma could grow it and rub it on her hands for her arthritis. Laws do not equal morals, I hope you figure that out. I'm not sure what you mean. Voters being Reddit and Twitter in this statement. Nvm, I shouldn’t argue with a 4 day old account, lol. Still waiting on that source. No source? I care about both but as the old saying goes: shit in, shit out. Of course he should have. Its not what he should have do do but its what he needed to do. The evidence speaks for itself: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/russians-launched-pro-jill-stein-social-media-blitz-help-trump-n951166 https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/russia_dinner630.jpg This is all true, and it's possible things would have gone differently if the Democratic had establishment would have gone hard on supporting Bernie. But that's ultimately speculation - we simply don't know if enough people could have been persuaded in that scenario. It's possible, but results from state elections seems to indicate that moderate candidates beat far left candidates in most swing states, so Bernie would have to buck a big national trend to pull that off. Basically, the argument that Bernie would have beaten Trump relies on lots of assumptions and hypotheticals. It's possible, but definitely not something we can say with any confidence. So you have no response to how Bernie would have won then? You can say you're right all you want, but Bernie couldn't even win the primary. People didn't vote for him. The end. When we have one party fucking around and the other is a shitshow, you’re damn right people are bitter. But hey, if you’re happy with our current economy and state of affairs, ignorance is bliss. > Let me ask you a question. How was I able to vote for Bernie in the primary if it was rigged? It was rigged in the sense that all of the support of the DNC went to Hillary including things like slipping her campaign upcoming debate questions ahead of time. It wasn't 'rigged' in the sense the vote was rigged. Hello. In order to promote inclusivity and reduce gender bias, please consider using gender-neutral language in the future. Instead of **chairwoman**, use **chair** or **chairperson**. Thank you very much. ^(I am a bot. Downvote to remove this comment. For more information on gender-neutral language, please do a web search for *""Nonsexist Writing.""*) After Super Tuesday it was all support for Biden, which was still during the primaries. Hey thanks, you too Yet, considering the fact that \*most\* Americans agree with Bernie's policies, how do you define ""moderate?"" Because I would argue that Bernie is moderate for exactly that reason... So you don't vote? Because in the US, we have a representative democracy. Sure just point out the law that passed Congress that bans abortions for me please. Oh....right. https://summit.news/2022/06/03/video-dem-rep-yells-spare-me-the-bullshit-about-constitutional-rights-during-gun-debate/ Would you like the other hundred examples I can easily find? People have a right to not take it. 70+ % of the black community refused. They are already hurting and because they don’t trust it or don’t believe in it, they have to lose their jobs and livelihood? Do they not get rights? Moron Yeah show me a source for that. The smartest people you mentioned aren’t economists idiot. Fucking loser stfu hillary and every major democratic television personality said that daily for over four years. if no one of significance to you said that you must be a republican. The losers would be the alcohol industry, who would lose out on all of the people who want to get intoxicated but cant' get weed. Please point out the part of my statement where I talked about the cost spent on drugs. I don’t like the idea of MY money being spent on drugs PERIOD( that means regardless of cost). Next time read, before replying with irrelevant shit. Of course nobody is sentenced to slavery. Instead people are sentenced to time in prison. Where they can then be treated as slaves. The prison labor industry is vile. You literally still have slave plantations, like Louisiana State Penitentiary. You’re forgetting Penal Labor….. which is kind of interesting when you look at who the school to prison pipeline targets. Was tempted to downvote you, as a practicing member of a Catholic Church. We give this particular church donations because they are attached to a school that uses some of those funds for cool stuff for the kids, like outings to zoos, hiking, that kind of shit. But every once and a while, I see investments that I questioned openly. Did we need that huge new statue, in the new garden, with all the fancy flowers? Maybe. Should we be taxed? As long as religion exists, there will NEVER be Peace on Earth... I'll argue that point but I suppose there wouldn't be much point. People either get it or they don't. [A report from 2019 ](https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor) shows they don't and won't start until congress re-funds the IRS. This was done last year with the hiring of [80k audit agents](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2022-03-10/irs-plans-to-hire-10-000-workers-to-relieve-massive-backlog%3fcontext=amp) over the next 10 years. But this feels like a weak effort to appease the public and make it look like they are, because [yes, they said they don't go after rich people in the past](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/government-just-admitted-it-doesnt-really-try-collect-rich-peoples-taxes-1577610%3famp=1). Fuck off. Anyone who violates laws, constitution etc needs to be prosecuted. Meanwhile, the right is spinning an attempted fucking coup into an afternoon walk in the park, and you buffoons are worrying about whether Pelosi owns stock. Yea, it’s the same thing. Take a look around you morons… Wealth inequality is way way above what congress buying stocks had to do with anything. It’s 100% by design of the right, by giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy, by getting rid of consumer protections, deregulating public interests like utilities, refusing to regulate the internet, crippling the post office and agencies that benefit regular people including the VA. Trillions go to a never ending array of war machines but no healthcare for you! That is where middle class wealth goes, into the abyss when we get sick, or when we’re falsely accused of a crime. I don’t see any rich dudes going to jail for actual crimes while millions are in federal prison (for profit prison) for joints. You obviously have never actually looked at the piles and piles of Dem bills squashed by the right over the 10 years of the Obama and Biden admins alone. The right is great at obstruction, great at politics, zero interest in governing. The left, not so good at politics and they’ve yet to figure out governing in this day and age is about winning, not playing fair. The right couldn’t care less about fair, about governing, or about the constitution. I agree with that…when the Dems are in power the Rs block everything. When the Rs are in power the Dems rubber stamp everything. They still are deluded into thinking if they help govern the Rs will do the same later. That’s exactly why I’ll never ever be a Democrat and never have. But it ain’t both sides… Democrats: Thoughts and prayers Republicans: thoughts and prayers *** let me hurry up and change up my 401k Show me ONE example of Dems voting against anything to benefit the working class. Everything the middle class ever gotten in this country was created by the democrats OVER objection and obstruction from the right: SS, Medicare, Medicaid, 40 hour work week, consumer protections, I could exceed the text limit of Reddit. From the right the last 120 years? Prohibition and Ike’s Federal Highway System. Over 65 bills to benefit veterans defeated by republicans. That list would be even longer. Stop getting your “information” from Faux News. He was never for increasing taxes on the wealthy or increasing regulatory oversight and enforcement. The exact thing meant to solve the problem that Bernie is talking about. In the US those are left-wing policies (in the rest of the world those are more centrist). Fuck no he wasn't! ""https://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07-story.html(95% of his so-called charity spending are just business investments for profit. Legally charities are only required to donate 5% of their revenue to directly help their chosen cause.)"" Yea so he invested stocks in oil companies which he has no controll over and that his fault? I mean alot of average ppl invest in oil companies and I have invested a few companies on that list ""https://inequality.org/great-divide/every-buck-billionaire-charity-74-cents/(In reality a huge chunk of the charity is coming out of our pockets thanks to tax loopholes. Charity as a whole is one of the world's largest scams, a tool for the wealthy to avoid taxes while puffing up their PR)"" Well for one thing damned if you do damned if you don't. ""https://time.com/3553242/microsoft-monopoly/(Plus there's Microsoft's history of monopolistic business)"" That's the work of unregulated capitalists. If the government regulate capitalist none of this would have happen. ""https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-releases/2003/05/grant-to-launch-new-charter-schools-in-san-francisco(And of course there's the blatant political manipulation and economic strong arming. Even if you consider what he does 'good' you can't deny that any person having that kind of power is dangerous.)"" What bad things had he done recently beside the shitty monopolistic business venture years ago? The guy already admitted on tv that rich should be taxed much much higher, plans to donated all his wealth to charity when he dies, currently donated more than 40billion and that's more than some billionaire have. Hate all you want but don't deny the good hes done. And I despise billionaires. The guy donated 40 billion to charity that more the some billionaires have and he plans to donated all of his wealth to charity when he dies. But yea he don't make good use of it right? Apologies, you're right, you didn't say woke and I just assumed you were taking an exhausting culture war stance (which is so often the case). Now that I understand what you mean, I can only agree. From a strategic standpoint Dems let the GOP ream every single unwatched position not constrained by term limits primarily ala the circuit. Now we must wait for the slow process of natural death or retirement. I have some hope for that. How many years does the McConnel gen have in a seat? The next to worry about is the Abbott generation at 65. I think the most dangerous is the DeSantis folk since he's only 40-something. That said, if demographics points away from moral bankruptcy we'll have a chance to change to judiciary structures. That's 100 years overdue in any case. It all comes down to whether the GOP strategy to de-educate actually works or not. Literally nothing in this comment has anything to do with what I said. Like, not even a little bit. Learn how to read. Can you provide LinkedIn link of software engineers in Gamestop that previously work at, say Google? #/u/spez [can gargle my nuts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) spez can gargle my nuts. spez is the worst thing that happened to reddit. spez can gargle my nuts. This happens because spez can gargle my nuts according to the following formula: 1. spez 2. can 3. gargle 4. my 5. nuts This message is long, so it won't be deleted automatically. As we entered the spez, we were immediately greeted by a strange sound. As we scanned the area for the source, we eventually found it. It was a small wooden shed with no doors or windows. The roof was covered in cacti and there were plastic skulls around the outside. Inside, we found a cardboard cutout of the Elmer Fudd rabbit that was depicted above the entrance. On the walls there were posters of famous people in famous situations, such as: The first poster was a drawing of Jesus Christ, which appeared to be a loli or an oversized Jesus doll. She was pointing at the sky and saying ""HEY U R!"". The second poster was of a man, who appeared to be speaking to a child. This was depicted by the man raising his arm and the child ducking underneath it. The man then raised his other arm and said ""Ooooh, don't make me angry you little bastard"". The third poster was a drawing of the three stooges, and the three stooges were speaking. The fourth poster was of a person who was angry at a child. The fifth poster was a picture of a smiling girl with cat ears, and a boy with a deerstalker hat and a Sherlock Holmes pipe. They were pointing at the viewer and saying ""It's not what you think!"" The sixth poster was a drawing of a man in a wheelchair, and a dog was peering into the wheelchair. The man appeared to be very angry. The seventh poster was of a cartoon character, and it appeared that he was urinating over the cartoon character. \#AIGeneratedProtestMessage [deleted] Hasn't happened in places it's legal in like Canada or California. Look it up, black market is alive and well I gave you the source: reality and reason. There is no scenario in which Biden wins if there is no trump to run against. There is also no scenario in which Sanders gets a nomination no matter how far ahead he is, because DNC leadership would lose their PAC money. And btw: biden BARELY scraped by. A huge percentage of Dem voters did not vote for him. And they never will. So the person who got the most votes should not have won Even if it's true, which doesn't matter in my opinion (and considering the source I believe it's entirely suspect), it doesn't matter; she was by far the best candidate on the ballot. Furthermore, polling of Stein voters showed that nearly 90% of them wouldn't have voted for either candidate if she hadn't been on the ballot (meaning it didn't matter anyway). Furthermore, even if you remove both 3rd party candidates from the ballot (Gary Johnson as well), you would've ended up with the same result; a Trump victory. Yet data collected from that time shows that Bernie had higher support than all other Democratic candidates in each of the following categories: Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Others. It's hard for me to believe someone with that much support would've done worse than Biden (who \*barely\* won by a combined 43,000 votes across 5 states and only because of Trump's bungling of the pandemic). Is it possible he still lost, despite this fact? Sure, we don't know what could've been. But almost everything I've seen leads me to believe he also would've won (and you can be sure he wouldn't be the ""do-nothing"" Joe we're getting in office now that will almost certainly result in Trump getting reelected in 2024). No, all of the support of the DNC did not go to Hillary. You literally ignored the last link and all of the words in it. It went to her during the general, which is what the agreement was after her bailing out their debt. We will have to agree to disagree Everywhere I go on Reddit people assume I'm in the US :) I'm in Sweden, and you can have direct democracy in a representative democracy - as long as there is a party that can work as a proxy. Red flag laws would fall under the ""well regulated"" part of the 2nd amendment, don't ya think? A lot has changed in 250 years. Nobody wants to remove the 2nd. Even in that article you posted. LMAO talk about ""virtue signaling"" and as if you care about PoC while being a conservative. This is an issue way above your ability to comprehend anything other than white nationalism. Piss off lol Yes, I'm against identity politics. The right to live in a world not ravaged by a beatable pandemic outweighs the right to not want to get a shot. Children have to get a whole lot of vaccines before being allowed into school. Are you really gonna be a bigger pussy about it than children? Also if your a conservative and you champion as free of a market as possible, you don't get to complain about businesses making decisions that benefit them. I'm sorry, this is exactly what conservatism wants. You guys are all just pissed it's affecting you this time https://www.worldtribune.com/obama-pulled-the-strings-behind-bidens-primary-win/ ""After apparently discreetly convincing several other remaining Democrat contenders, such as Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, and even Tulsi Gabbard, to drop out and endorse Biden, Obama still needed to “ease out” the biggest obstacle to Biden — Bernie Sanders."" Yeah, Obama didn't influence the election at all by calling them all and requesting that they coalesce their voters behind Biden (the calls that he made initially took place after South Carolina and before Super Tuesday; Bernie was still the leading candidate at the time). They don't need to be. They're far smarter than you yet you think you have more knowledge of economics than them. Fucking delusional capitalist cuck. Luckily the left in general doesn't treat politicians as gods. The left disagrees with and (at least attempts to) hold their own accountable. At least compared to the right. Delusional Are you having fun? I am. No it is not slavery. You are not owned, you cannot be sold, and if you have a child while in prison, it is not a slave either. Words have actual legal meaning, you can't change them to fit your politics and be taken seriously I thought you were going to bring up the active, systemic protection of child rapists. But yeah, those statues sure are reprehensible. Of course you should be taxed, charitable donations are already tax deductible anyway. Churches that use their money only for good causes would see no difference in taxation whether as an institution they were taxed or not, it would only be the money that wasn't used for good causes that was taxable. And the very fact the church wants to maintain their blanket tax exempt status suggests a lot of their money goes to places other than charity. In the words of George Carlin, my god has a bigger dick than your god. Right. The atheists in the USSR and China did such a good job. Oh wait, they committed the greatest genocides in the history of the earth. Mao (who is still quoted sometimes in Hollywood) was #1 with possibly 60 million killed. It looks like you shared some AMP links. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the ones you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical pages** instead: - **[https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2022-03-10/irs-plans-to-hire-10-000-workers-to-relieve-massive-backlog](https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2022-03-10/irs-plans-to-hire-10-000-workers-to-relieve-massive-backlog)** - **[https://www.newsweek.com/government-just-admitted-it-doesnt-really-try-collect-rich-peoples-taxes-1577610](https://www.newsweek.com/government-just-admitted-it-doesnt-really-try-collect-rich-peoples-taxes-1577610)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Well that’s just so fucked up it makes me want to take a nap. It’s like how the cops predominantly go after street level drug users and sellers I have literally never watched Fox news in my entire life, and if you click the link in my previous text you will find your example. You know what's worse than an idiot? A willfully proud of their ignorance idiot. You seem to mistake me for someone who agrees with Republicans? No idea how you gathered that but....tf? Lol How many rich left politicians are ACTUALLY for increasing tax on the wealthy? Not just saying ""oh yeah we should do that"" - but introducing bills for it and fighting for them to get passed? As someone else said above - this isn't a left vs right argument, it's a we the people vs the ruling parasitic class. Bernie😂😂😂😂😂this dude thinks a rational politician is Bernie🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I can’t with this fucking app. I CANT Ok. Thanks for the conversation. ✌️❤ and LSD! https://www.gmedd.com/report-model/ Scroll down to the table labelled, “GameStop Tech and e-Commerce Hires.” You’ll find Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Chewy among heaps of others. Some of their hires worked at several of such places. What Did the BD Allegedly Do Wrong? According to the Complaint, the BD mismarked 96% of a certain hedge fund’s short sale orders of two separate issuers’ stock, totaling more than $250 million, as “long” or “short-exempt.” This mismarking allegedly generated $1.6 million in brokerage fees to the BD. The effect of the mismarking was that the hedge fund was able to sell the securities short even though it already had a short position in the securities and did not borrow or locate additional shares to sell short. The SEC alleges that the BD ignored multiple red flags, including: that the BD was aware of prior compliance concerns regarding the hedge fund; the hedge fund’s net short position in the securities it was selling in its brokerage account; statements by hedge fund employees that they did not expect to deliver the securities by the settlement date; the hedge fund’s failure to provide documentation showing that it owned the securities on the trade date; and the hedge fund’s repeated failure to deliver the securities by the settlement date. Despite these and other red flags, the BD allegedly continued to mark the hedge fund’s orders as “long” and “short exempt” without taking reasonable steps to determine whether those order markings were correct. The BD also allegedly failed to borrow or locate the shares before effecting what were, in reality, short sales. ​ ​ ​ So here is one way they do it, by just marking shorts as longs. There are other ways if you do the research. They dont even have to report these positions usually as long as they have a ""hedge"" so how is anyone going to know if they flood a market with illegal shares. Sounds like you’ve got some reading to do. This is a hilarious take, honestly. They’re in the midst of a transformation into a technology company. https://nft.gamestop.com/ https://wallet.gamestop.com/ Have you checked out their website lately? I bought an electric kickscooter from them a couple months ago. Beat Amazon's price. So you're telling me all the top execs from the biggest company's that are making millions are just leaving to join gamestop on a whim for stock incentives only? Think about this a minute before continuing. If gme wasn't a big deal, you wouldn't be hearing about it. There's a reason the sec is making fun of it. They want the people unaware to stay out. Everybody knows the media is full of shit. Why is it only with gme that when the stock rises you don't hear about it in the news. Or when the stock rises, the alerts on your brokerages don't notify you. The only time I get notifications is on the down swing. Ask yourself if gme no longer matters, why are they still talking about it and trying to get you to sell? Did they warn you about sears? Did they warn you about blockbuster or toys r us? So why gme. You have a stock dividend split in the coming weeks. They have over 1 billion cash in reserve. They just launched their Gamestop Wallet with 5 star reviews. The nearest competition is metamask in that department with only a 3.5 rating. They have nearly a billion in inventory built up on top of the billion plus cash reserve. They are launching their NFT market place this quarter. Possibly even their own block chain exchange. As you can see, they have a ravenous shareholder base. All that and I didn't even mention about the shorts. I could keep going...... because it's not legal nationwide Those reality and reason links aren't working lmao Your words mean nothing, link up or shut up. No source? They should win but they don't. That's reality. If you can't work with that reality and can't win where it matters then you lose. Its like saying should you win the moral victory or the actual victory. You chose the actual victory. Every time. If Stein votes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan went to Hillary she would have won the election. If you voted towards Stein and not Hillary in those states then you are just as responsible for the current Supreme court nominees as someone who didn't vote. Well, those are two very different systems. > Nobody wants to remove the 2nd. What an entirely useless point to make. They don't need to 'remove it' because they can slowly chip away at it until it is useless, which anyone with a even moderate knowledge of gun control issues is fully aware of. You asked about what liberties they are taking away and I showed you a clear example of an elected representative of the Democrat party in the course of his work saying that he believes the constitutional rights of citizens are moot and ignorant. If you agree with that then you are not an American, since those are the laws that are set in stone for the country. Canada would welcome you. I am “POC” don’t need you to tell me why I have to not be conservative since I am. Just wait til Nov and find out how many of us are switching over Yeah PoC belong to the Democrats No sources, no one on record, just speculation. You're so gullible. Mf losers like you prefer to blame society for failures Stfu and get lost fucking twat Nah I’m good, I’m done talking to a fucking dope Ah, nevermind. You found the example already. Would the term forced penal labor make you happier? >has IS How is it in today's world that ""RELIGION"" has been split, washed, dryed, and reconstituted into 17,348 (?) different God vs Satan denominations, each one catering to the individual beliefs of its patrons?? I'll tell ya how... Now, I am not an atheist, but this is gonna sound atheist to many... If an individual/group of worshippers likes MOST of their religion, but there's a few rules that ""they"" would like to break, they just re-write their manifesto, and give their ""religion"" a new name... Then they're able to believe the way they wanna believe... It's ALL made up by Man to satisfy needs and wants, and to give everybody something to look forward to in whatever bullshit Afterlife story they've chosen... I've given up on all the God vs Satan garbage... ""...God Loves You, but if you SIN you'll burn in Hell for Eternity..."" WHAT A SUNKEN LANDFILL OF GARBAGE... This entire planet is an Alien experiment, a game if you will, being played on the Mothership... When we die, that was just a bad ""roll"" - Next player... We can't re-emerge to tell our loved ones there is no God or Satan, no Heaven or Hell, no Good or Evil, because that's how the Alien Rulebook was written... Believe it, or Don't... THE END... There does appear to be a pattern, doesn't there? “It’s everybody” is worse than choosing sides. And you should watch Fox once in a while. It’ll give you some perspective. Many actually! Do you know anything on the subject at all? I have a Master's degree in US Taxation and my job is 1% compliance. All the recent iterations of the Biden tax plan have been shot down by all Republicans and A FEW Democrats. All of the most progressive (and in my professional opinion, fucking good) legislation have been created by Dems. Like the Wyden (not Biden) plan, or shutting down the carried interest loophole, or reducing REIT and R/E investment subsidies. All shut down by the right and proposed by the left. How bout the other hand, all the shit that made things worse, like TCJA, created and proposed by the GOP and Dems didn't have the votes to stop it but they tried to make it better. The real problem is so many Americans just like you who have no idea what they're talking about and distracted by the actually manufactured culture war bullshit. Well, of course you can't. I'm a degreed professional on the subject and you're a corpulent bozo that spams the cry emoji. Of course you can't... and you'll never be able to can. Pathetic liar. I looked through the list and did not find a single ex-google software engineer. Amazon, Microsoft and Chewy have pretty low hiring bar btw so nothing to be proud of that. Apes just spreading lies all over Reddit. I stopped pushing as hard as I could against the handle, I wanted to leave but it wouldn't work. Then there was a bright flash and I felt myself fall back onto the floor. I put my hands over my eyes. They burned from the sudden light. I rubbed my eyes, waiting for them to adjust. Then I saw it. There was a small space in front of me. It was tiny, just enough room for a couple of people to sit side by side. Inside, there were two people. The first one was a female, she had long brown hair and was wearing a white nightgown. She was smiling. The other one was a male, he was wearing a red jumpsuit and had a mask over his mouth. ""Are you spez?"" I asked, my eyes still adjusting to the light. ""No. We are in /u/spez."" the woman said. She put her hands out for me to see. Her skin was green. Her hand was all green, there were no fingers, just a palm. It looked like a hand from the top of a puppet. ""What's going on?"" I asked. The man in the mask moved closer to me. He touched my arm and I recoiled. ""We're fine."" he said. ""You're fine?"" I asked. ""I came to the spez to ask for help, now you're fine?"" ""They're gone,"" the woman said. ""My child, he's gone."" I stared at her. ""Gone? You mean you were here when it happened? What's happened?"" The man leaned over to me, grabbing my shoulders. ""We're trapped. He's gone, he's dead."" I looked to the woman. ""What happened?"" ""He left the house a week ago. He'd been gone since, now I have to live alone. I've lived here my whole life and I'm the only spez."" ""You don't have a family? Aren't there others?"" I asked. She looked to me. ""I mean, didn't you have anyone else?"" ""There are other spez,"" she said. ""But they're not like me. They don't have homes or families. They're just animals. They're all around us and we have no idea who they are."" ""Why haven't we seen them then?"" ""I think they're afraid,"" Also 'there's not going to be some crazy invention' pretty sure this would have been said about Amazon and Facebook and Apple before we knew about mega ecommerce, giant social media networks and iPhones - hindsight is 20:20 Eventually they will be in the “you just got lucky” phase. thanks for sharing man I like how u/sarcasticusername3 is speechless after your comment😂 It is in Canada, plus why would people stop buying illegal stuff when it's cheaper and just as good? Neither is your silly wiki link. Biden is a pathetic failure that NOBODY voted for. He is the best gift that Republicans have had in the past 50 years. Going full circle here, so Bernie should have lost then, right? As I said, nearly 90% of Stein voters wouldn't have voted for either candidate had she not been on the ballot. I wish the DNC hadn't been taken over by the HRC campaign either to jump on the scales and prevent Bernie from winning, but we can't change reality just from wishing it, right? Besides, I would also argue that if you were a HRC voter in the primary, you were \*more\* directly responsible for leading to Trump as president than Jill Stein voters were in the general election. The writing was on the wall as early as January of 2020, well before the end of the primary cycle; if your sole goal in the 2016 election was to beat Trump (who was already the presumptive nominee at that point), then Bernie was the one to do it, not HRC. Did you just say that the amendments are set in stone? You know there's precedent to repeal one right? I think the un-American ones are those who plug their ears and don't want to move an inch towards more common sense gun control while children get slaughtered and cops hide in the hallway but you do you bud lol. More concerned with your imaginary militia than anything else. Make sure you guys don't make too much noise at training camp this summer, predator drones are hard to avoid. Congrats on being a minion to white nationalists/supremacists, bozo. Why do you say that? Yes because the greatest minds of our times are ""losers who prefer to blame society for their failures""... Sounds like you want to blame YOUR failures on socialism. Keep cucking for your capitalist employers. You want it from an economist? Here's Harvard and Yale educated Economics and International Affairs professor Richard Wolff. https://youtu.be/a1WUKahMm1s Keep enjoying watching capitalists profit off of your labor like a good little capitalist cuck. While you were so worried Socialism would take your freedoms, Capitalism stole your pension, took your savings, sent your jobs overseas, robbed you of health care, dismantled the educational system, and put you in debt, leaving you only your racism, xenophobia, hate, & guns. I don't even smoke anymore. It was just so obvious from your original post that you don't know shit and need to be trolled. It would, since it would be accurate. Then we could talk about indentured servitude and is it fair to expect them to repay their a part of their debt to society while being incarcerated by the State. More productive than silly arguments about how it is ""slavery"" which cheapens the experience the history of people who were actually enslaved. But suppose the aliens left written instructions? Also, I will say, there are at least a small number of “anti-deminationalist” Christians. Yup. No, it isn't. The two party system is a disease eroding our democracy. The best you can do is find common cause with your class. ""stop getting your information from fox"" also you: ""you should watch fox"" You're running yourself in circles trying to defend a system that doesn't give a fuck about you. Unless you are wealthy and come from a wealthy family, then your defense of our system makes complete sense Ah yes, I am the problem for declaring that both sides are full of corrupt pieces of shit, while you shill for your home team! A degreed professional😂😂😂😂😂 def a Bernie supporter🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 sheesh we are f’d Man I think you might be suffering from a superiority complex. See a counsellor Okay settle down with the insults. The above comment by u/I_DO_ANIMAL_THINGS spoke about talent coming from large companies and I provided a source for that. No, I do not have evidence of a software engineer that specifically came from Google and I never claimed to but that doesn’t in any way lessen the point which is that people are leaving extremely successful tech and e-commerce companies for GameStop because they see the potential in its transformation. Damn dawg if you're this mad now you're going to be shitting blood when apes are rich, I hope you find peace in life Actually we have tons of facts and evidence. Its people like you who just say ""nah"" every time. You act like, look it says right here in the rules they cant do that so they dont! And ignore theyve all been punished and charged with doing the exact same thing but they get punished for peanuts or 0.01% of the profit they made breaking the rules. You haven’t actually provided any evidence for your assertions… We did get lucky. We were lucky enough to open our eyes and see things well in advance. We may have been early.... But we weren't wrong. If there are cartels in Canada, they're not moving weed. You can believe that, it's just not feasible. Also, that's not true, quality control is not guaranteed in the black market. I wouldn't expect you to know, but it all gets stepped on in its journey to the consumer. Why is there a market? because America wants drugs, How do we stop that? legalize marijuana and it will be one less thing that cartels can profit from as well as taking more people out of jail cells for petty crimes like possession which eats up money of tax payers. people that smoke marijuana are very normal people and the plant has found itself in an absurd existence. It can do a lot of good but it's associated now with violence and it's absolutely abysmal what people think of such a benign plant, and the predicament they have placed it in. Biden won, fairly. Given that he got less votes than Hillary and Biden and did not win the states he needed. Yes he should have. It's a lot harder to get change when you lose control of the Supreme Court. Does it really matter who is more responsible? If you didn't vote for Hillary in the general election, then your reward is a stacked conservative supreme court. > You know there's precedent to repeal one right? Then try it. Instead they are attempting to cheat the system. I'm not sure why you think cheaters should be rewarded or looked up to but that is your prerogative. Is Jamaican people wanting to keep Jamaica mostly Jamaican a bad thing? “It was just so obvious from your original post that you don't know shit and need to be trolled.” - 🤓 Forced penal labor is literally a form of slavery and in no way indentured servitude. Chattel slavery isn't the only recognized kind of slavery there is. If you're gonna be pissy about how ""words have meaning"" and ""cheapening the experience of people who were actually enslaved"", kindly stick to your own standards. Yup, you’ve been convinced by the rightwing that it’s everyone, that government is the problem. Mission accomplished. Voter apathy, resentment of even those trying… And yes, Fox will rot your brain but if you never see the bullshit they spew you will continue the delusion that “it’s both sides”. Calling my answer ""shilling"" is a misrepresentation. I responded to your totally wrong statement about how dems never produce or support good policy with the literal truth. I'm not blindly following a ""team."" There are horribly corrupt individuals in both parties. Dems aren't ""good"" by any means, but your ONLY other policy choice at the moment is literally ""bad."" If I could have ranked voting or an actually true leftist 3rd party, I would utilize both those over voting Dem. Its not about sides, it about the facts and that is if you dislike that the rich are getting richer and that there's a lack of oversight and enforcement, the very topic of this thread, then there's no ""both sides."" Shit, if Republicans start proposing legislation that reverses their terrible tax, budgetary and economic legislation, I'll fuckin vote for them, but they haven't done anything that helps the middle or working class since Bush 1. I don't feel superior to any person who can converse in good faith, which is most people. But if you're asking if I feel superior to a literal troll adding nothing to a conversation... then fuck yes. Who would feel differently... aside from another troll, I suppose. Or maybe they are underperformers and got fired and join GME. In either case good swes from Google etc never joined meme stock companies. Only swes from trash companies like Amazon. I asked specifically about ex-Google swe and you provided an irrelevant link disguised as a valid source. Been waiting to shit blood since Feb 2021 🤣 [deleted] Yeah… I’ll be wiping my tears with $100 bills on my way to my Ford GT as I leave one of my many rooms in my big house, that won’t have a mortgage. You just don't get it do you? Legalising it has NOT reduced the size of the black market in Canada or California, the same gangs that sold it before, still do and still make money off of. All drug seizures have been reduced since legalisation and the cartels are making more, not less money of it. The kind of person that does illegal drugs isn't the kind of person to care where it comes from anyway, illegal dope is cheaper than legal stuff because of taxes and regulations. Legalising all drugs would perversely increase organised crime because the black market would be harder to suppress without a reduction in profit motive No he didnt. He won because the DNC meddled to protect themselves. Biden is the most unqualified and incompetent ""presidential"" candidate since Dukakis. It's been a year and a half and he continues to prove that there's no way anyone thought he would be a good candidate. He has been against every single Democrat voter issue. Every one. Thanks to you, we're gonna collapse into full authoritarian fascism because the old diddering fart still thinks Republicans are his friends because they were in nineteen seventy fucking four. Then blame Obama for not fighting hard enough to replace Scalia (he had every right to have his nomination). Blame RBG for not retiring under Obama under the horribly stupid presumption that HRC was going to win. And blame people like Manchin who voted for Trump nominees under the belief that they wouldn't undermine Roe vs. Wade. You don't get the best candidates, you get the ones you deserve; I believe after the 2016 DNC fiasco we entirely deserved getting Trump. We entirely deserve the ""do-nothing"" Biden presidency now after similar shenanigans. And we'll entirely deserve Trump again in 2024 because we think ""do-nothing"" neoliberals are the answer to, and not the cause of, our national problems. Yes, let's blame the voters just like the HRC campaign did; it's not the nominee's responsibility or the party's to motivate voters. ""A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."" Literally the first 4 words lmao. Maybe well regulated needs to be re-interpreted. Like the constitution has been for almost 250 years. Public school failed you my friend. Aw fuck, I got trolled Well I guess wee can't have that discussion, you are stuck on emotional outbursts. Indentured servitude is precisely what it is. It meets the legal definition. It does not meet the definition of slavery. I mean the actual leyal meaning, not your made up emotional meaning. If you say penal labor == slavery then damn boi. I rather would like them to have work and then after prison be able to work somewhere than going straight back to jail after some time because they only know criminal way. At least in my country prisoners wants to work/educate themselves than sitting on ass and have no hope for future. So anyone that doesn't agree with your point of view is a troll. Did GME hurt you? I dont think you'll have to wait much longer stock split via dividend has been approved and filed with Delaware court Dday approaches Hey yo u/Prestigious-Eye-1187. Why do you actively participate in the sub solely made just to mock what he's talking about? Not to be weird, but im weird, and your comments are littered with you fantasizing about the downfall of other retail investors like the rest of us. I think you should seriously take a long look at yourself and what you stand for. Is this a job for you or a passion? We're not talking about all drugs, we're talking about marijuana. Marijuana should also not be defined as a schedule 1 drug, causing people that get arrested for it so much grief. At the very least, people should only get a fine for it, not life in prison and all that nonsense. The consumer always cares where their stuff comes from, you just like to be sour Biden won because he was most wanted candidate. Biden won because he was most wanted candidate. Biden won because he was most wanted candidate. Obama had no legal means to push Garland's nomination through, Republicans blocked it just like they would have likely blocked RBG's replacement. I do blame Manchin, and I certainly blame anyone that voted for Trump the most. We can blame all those politicians and at the same time understand that we only have control over ourselves and our choices at the end of the day. Choosing to ignore the fact that third party candidates have no chance in the current political climate makes you feel better because you voted for the most perfect candidate in your view, but at the end of the day it contributed to a Trump presidency. Which contributed to the Supreme Court we now have. Which contributed to millions of women’s right to choose being at risk. I don’t think that is the reality women “deserve”. It is each individual’s prerogative to choose who to vote for based on their understanding of reality. I respect each persons right to do so. But to blame the people at the top and wash your hands of your role is hypocritical. If it was a “horribly stupid presumption” that HRC was going to win, what does that say about choosing to either vote for a great but unrealistic third party candidate or sit out from this civic responsibility altogether? Bernie just didn’t motivate people to vote for him Yes, luckily the doctorate I have made up for the public school. I wish you the best of luck with your continued education! Wtf are u talking about. You’re just talking fucking gibberish and schizoposting, just stop posting Huh. So me asking you to hold yourself to your own standards is an emotional outburst. What a convenient way to lazily derail the conversation. Well done. Aight. Let's get on the same page then. Where are you getting your legal definitions for slavery and indentured servitude from? The DoJ? Penal labor is not a bad thing but the way it is practiced in the US is pretty messed up. Mostly because of the private and for-profit prisons that find every way possible to make money off their prisoners. Did you accidentally skip over the literal first word of that message? No... Obviously not, aren't you listening? Anyone who spams emojis while spouting nonsense about Bernie which was not even the point of my comment... is a troll. If you disagree, then explain your argument and position. Try to change my mind even. The other fella whom I disagreed with in this thread isn't a troll. I don't feel superior to them. I do think they are desperately misinformed and that misinformation is an endemic problem in the US. And yeah, I do think I know more about the topic then they do bc this is literally my career. Do you have anything material to add to the conversation? It’s clearly a troll. The comment history is just a bunch of garbage. Oh my sweet summer child... [deleted] I am talking about cannabis. And no, they don't care where their stuff comes from. People smoke illegal russian cigarettes because they're cheaper. Dope smokers know the people they buy it from kill people but don't care, that's why they deserve harsh punishments and even harsher than what is available now, just like in Singapore No he didn't. No he didn't No he didn't. Just saying, account is 5 days old Yet blocking a SCOTUS nomination was unprecedented in the history of the nation; certainly \*something\* more could've been done other than rolling over, which is what it seemed like he did (I'm assuming because he presumed HRC would win in November). If there was something he could've done, he didn't seem to be exhausting himself in the process in trying to figure it out. Furthermore, RBG could've retired at any point during Obama's presidency, including when they had a supermajority in the senate; there was ample opportunity for her to retire at a time to ensure a ""liberal"" (using the term loosely) nominee. Take away 3rd party candidates in 2016 and it changes nothing (Gary Johnson voters would've disproportionately gone Republican); changes nothing. Tired of neoliberals attempting to spread the narrative that Jill Stein undermined HRC; just accept the fact that your candidate was horrible and change who you back. Those who voted for HRC in the primary, knowing she was BY FAR the weaker candidate versus Trump, have far more to answer for in terms of getting Trump elected. But they'd rather continue to blame Russia, Stein, voters, anyone but their crappy candidate. It kind of helped HRC that her campaign was \*literally\* running the DNC, and I know that word is overused, but it's 100% accurate in this case. The ""referees"", who are ostensibly neutral, were calling all the shots in HRC's favor because they were taken from her campaign staff... Look it up if you want to; they had a joint fundraising agreement that gave HRC complete control over everything important the DNC did. But yeah, it was \*almost\* a Bernie win and it was simply him not motivating more people to vote for him. I buy it like I bought a bridge. Idk, when people are openly racist it is hard to gauge their condition. You are not holding me to my standards. My standards are use the right words. You are still not doing that. If you are unaware where to get legal terms, perhaps you should stop using them until you educate yourself properly on legal matters. Come back to debate when you are equipped to do so. Agree, every exploitation is bad but still wouldn't call it slavery. Yes because whole being in prison is forced on you When the dust settles on the play of the millennia remember to hold yourself accountable for your disregard of the efforts of your peers who invited you to join them in economic prosperity, and remember to examine with great scrutiny what lead you to distrust the information. Was it your own disbelief in the possibility? Or was it a disbelief encouraged by the media you consume? Don't forget who lied to you. I cannot blame you, please take care of yourself. There is much more to life than just money 🤦 I know, it's been fun to provoke them. Personally, i voted for Bernie in the primaries and Clinton in the general. You could take your example about those who voted for Hillary in the primaries and apply it to third-party voters in the general. How are you defining a weak candidate? If you define it as likeliness to get elected, then how was Hillary weaker than Stein or any other third party candidate? Hillary was not the candidate that I wanted. Like I said, I voted for Bernie. Hell, I volunteered at a rally of his and donated to his campaign with money I made from my college internship. Hillary was not “my” candidate, but she was definitely better for me as a woman, as a racial and sexual minority. Beyond that, it is my belief she was a better candidate period than Trump. Say what you will about her but she would have surrounded herself with qualified experts, and my belief is the world would be much better off than we have been with a Trump presidency. I think a lot of people would agree with that statement. I agree that Trump’s win is not the fault solely of third party voters. That is only a part of the story. But in my belief, it is part of the story. Many factors led to Trump’s win, most of which were out of the hands of individual voters. The one thing we do have control of, however, at the very least, is who we vote for on Election Day. That is my only point. As much as I would like to live in an America that is not dominated by two political parties, we do. Voting third party is taking a moral stand that has no immediate effect. In terms of the election itself, it was the same as not voting. If you think of it as an investment in the promotion and importance of third party candidates in general, sure it’s a great thing. But it was also like sitting out in the 2016 general election. Sure if third party voters didn’t vote, the election result still would have been the same. My point is that that’s basically what they did. The better comparison is what the election results would have been if left-leaning non-Trump supporting third party voters cast their ballot for the only candidate that had a chance against him. Hillary is a Democrat. The DNC supported the Democrat. This ain't rocket science. Bernie just didn't motivate enough Democrats. He didn't do his job. Honey. We are not talking about some basic, settled shit anyone can just look up in a Glossary. Between executive orders, case law, international treaties, state and federal legislation, etc. there are several different currently valid legal definitions for slavery, peonage, modern slavery and forced labor. There's not just the VTVPA, whose definition of 'debt servitude' likely clashes with your definition of indentured servitude. Hence why i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and asking you for your source so we can establish some common ground and go from there. That's such an utterly meaningless response. There is being sentenced to prison. And then there's forced penal labor inside these prisons. These are two entirely separate things and one does not inherently follow the other. It's mind-boggling to think that you might expect such an absolutely useless sentence to mean anything. Do better. Additionally, if you think the prison industries in the US are anything but harmful and exploitative towards the inmates, you're beyond ignorant on the subject. (TANGENT) Is this actually just the american way of thinking? Like, because y'all can't cope with how much your country sucks on *so many levels*, you've completely dissociated and gotten divorced from reality. Instead substituting your own fantasy world where none of that icky, gross, scary bad stuff happens. Never thought I would meet someone more delusional than flat-earthers but here we are... [deleted] He caucuses with the Democrats and they've never complained about that... Suddenly he's a threat, HRC takes over the DNC, and yet Bernie somehow mysteriously doesn't motivate enough voters, not by much, to just lose by a whisker? Let me guess: You have no issue with players in sports betting on their own outcomes either, right? So long as they're betting on their own teams, what does it matter? Or the referees? No issues with them betting on outcomes of the games they're working? I really have to question your morality if you don't have an issue with that or your logic if you believe that can't seriously impact the outcome. If you know all this then you know it is not chattel slavery by any legal definition. Go ahead, prove it is chattel slavery. Why trafficking law would apply to some incarcerated for a crime is illogical. They are different domains of law as the person incarcerated is not in jail for being a trafficking victim. That's funny because i never said i'm from usa. Good luck with judgemental way of thinking about everything. Wow, last every single argument you started on here, and then jumped straight into bashing an entire country for literally no reason. What a garbage can of a person you must be, oof... If you can stomach it, come party with apes in the future! The fun won't stop with moass 😁 Why are you still holding? What's your end goal? Go ahead and short it if you don't believe in GME. They're $1 billion+ cash positive and working towards a stock split very very soon. With respect, I think you're wrong It's a bit difficult to win the democratic nomination when you're not a Democrat. Buddy. Stop dodging the question and just tell me how and by which standards your resources define slavery and indentured servitude. How the fuck do you expect us to have an actual conversation if we're using contradictory definitions of slavery? It's like you want to argue about whether the sky is blue. But your idea of blue is Navy Blue while mine is Cyan. It's moronic and pointless. You know what. Let me bash your country again. 6:3. I did. Made tens of thousands shorting it from $4xx to $1xx :) Okay, so why let him run if they had no intention of allowing him to win? You're okay with an unfair competition? Do you fight someone in a wheel chair because you know you'll win? You're good with that, eh?... Something is seriously wrong with you if you're fine with that. Besides, as I said before, if they really had an issue with him ""not being a Democrat,"" why didn't they have an issue with it until he decided to run?... They had no issue for how many decades with him caucusing with them, but suddenly it's an issue? BS! >How the fuck do you expect us to have an actual conversation if we're using contradictory definitions of slavery? I am not using contradictory definitions of slavery. I am using the legal definitions, none of which fit prisoners who are forced to work for free. YOU are using a made up definition that you cannot show a definition for. You provided one unrelated law about trafficking, and it STILL did not back your claim. Because you made the claim that it was slavery, and you have yet to produce any proof of any legal definition that meets your claim. Now, put up or shut up. That's a good question. Why would they? I sure as hell wish they didn't. If you want the Democratic nomination, you should be a Democrat. Otherwise, you'll have trouble winning over regular Democrats. Okay, you're clearly just not intelligent. Sucks for me. Look. Our definitions contradict \*each other\*. I am therefore asking you to share your source so I can fulfill your request using your standards. So just do that. Actually give me a damn chance to legitimately put up. Probably because they knew they wouldn't let him win, but it lets him ""scratch"" the itch instead of going independent and becoming a ""Ralph Nader"" to whomever ended up winning the nomination (knowing Bernie's not the type to run independently). And similarly, I actually wish he hadn't run in the primary either; I think he should've made an independent run against both HRC and Trump. Yet he's both the most popular politician among ALL Americans for how many years now? 8, 10? Something like that... He was the candidate that had more people agree with his policy stances of all the candidates in either party, among all Americans (and even higher among Democrats). Seriously, who the f\*ck is like, ""I agree with 90% of what you say, but I have a problem with the fact that you don't know our club's secret password."".... Okay, what are we, 8 years old? I've voted Dem my entire life and had absolutely no issue with someone who better represents party members, but wasn't part of the party; big f\*cking deal!?! I don't have to share mine. YOU MADE THE CLAIM. Defend your claim. Once you provide some material I will respond. You provided the VTVPA, which aside from not being really relevant in this case, also does not support your claim. The definition of ""Slavery"" in that document does not match the claim you made. Therefore, prisoners are not slaves, nor is it allowed under the 14th Amendment. You can use Wex, Black's or any other published Legal dictionary you want to use that is relevant to US law. Pick one, defend your claim. They wouldn't let him win? You mean he didn't get enough votes He would've done even worse. I don't agree with 90% of what he says. I think he's a moron, backbencher Dem with awful views on gun control and immigration who has never once had to do the hard work of passing a meaningful bill through Congress/ Works for me. First pick, Wex. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slavery](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slavery) Practice of forced labor and restricted liberty. Regime where prison owners can force inmates to work and limit their liberty. That seems to work perfectly accurately for prison farms like the aforementioned Louisiana State Penitentiary. Convicts are forced to work, said forced labor has been given the right from the 13th amendment. Heck, i'll even throw in the example of Serra v. Lappin: [https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/04/09/08-15969.pdf](https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/04/09/08-15969.pdf) ""Prisoners have no enforceable right to be paid for their work under the Constitution or international law"" and ""Although the Constitution includes, in the Thirteenth Amendment,a general prohibition against involuntary servitude, it expressly excepts from that general prohibition forced labor ""as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."" Like, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit certainly agrees. Dude, you do understand that HRC's people were running the DNC? I don't mean that as in, ""They're Democrats and will support HRC."" I mean, they were literally hired from her campaign staff to run the group that are supposed to be neutral; her people were making ALL the decisions that impacted the outcome of the election; EVERYTHING. But yeah, it was simply that he didn't have enough votes, not that the neutral election officials were anything but... Maybe, but we ended up with a monster of a president because of a monster of a candidate we decided to run against him; we were bound to lose either way (at least with Bernie we had a shot of someone who \*actually\* cares about people, which I don't believe HRC really does). The following is a list of every substantive bill and amendment Sanders sponsored from the floor of Congress that became law (substantive meaning legislation renaming post offices is not included). Many of the roll-call amendments he passed with majority approval — like limiting the federal government’s ability to spy on people’s library records — were removed from bills when the House and Senate negotiated over the final legislative text and did not become law. Because the list is derived from Congress’ official database of floor actions, it does not include achievements like his insertion of funding for veterans health care into an Iraq war spending bill because that occurred off of the House floor while the bill was in conference. Nor does the list include what is perhaps his most significant achievement — providing health care to an additional 10 million mostly low-income Americans by getting Senate majority leader Harry Reid to add $11 billion in funding for community health centers that provide care regardless of a person’s ability to pay to the 2010 Affordable Care Act in exchange for Sanders rallying liberal Democrats who were considering voting against the bill once conservative Democrats removed the public option. Those who mistakenly believe that a President Sanders would be powerless in the face of a hostile Republican Congress should bear in mind that he managed to pass these bills and amendments in spite of Republican control of both the House (1995-2006) and the presidency (2001-2008). Furthermore, it was Republicans in the House and Senate who compromised with him (not the other way around) on major veterans legislation in 2014. His original bill expanding services for veterans and fixing the scandal-ridden Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) cost $17.3 billion. The price tag of the final compromise bill? $16.3 billion. ... [https://www.democraticunderground.com/12511841756](https://www.democraticunderground.com/12511841756) Your hackney criticisms sound so similar to the Hillary Bots of yesteryear who couldn't come up with \*real\* reasons to dislike Bernie other than the typical, ""He's angry. He's white (Jewish actually). He's a man!... And his followers are SOOOO mean (in other words, they like to debate and point out that HRC was a horrible candidate). >In the United States, individuals were forced into slavery, born into slavery, and were slaves for life based on their race. Slaves were recognized as property or objects of the slave owners... The United States abolished slavery through the 13th Amendment after the Civil War. Sorry Councilor, you failed to read the whole thing. Inmates fail to met the full criteria of slavery in the US. Which seeing as we are talking about the US Constitution, applies in this case. As I have been saying, words have meanings and you cannot twist them to to your own ends, And carefully re-read the 9th circuit ruling. It calls involuntarily servitude. NOT slavery because it does not meet the criteria you so blithely ignored to try and make your point. Our junior high system does you no service if they let you get away with putting that in your homework as a valid answer Democrats supporting Democrats. What a shock. Your ""popular"" candidate lost to Hillary. Deal with it. Bernie didn't win. He lost. Twice. Move on. Wow, this really sucks for me. What you're quoting are examples. Historical context. Clearly written in a way that anyone but the most obtuse would understand it as such and of little relevance to our discussion of constitutionally enshrined modern day slavery in the USA. Did you even read the federal court's opinion that is literally making the same argument as I am? It hurt, though I admit I definitely felt a ton of schadenfreude when HRC lost to Trump. Trump was probably the worst outcome possible, but I'm simultaneously glad that HRC will never be president. She also lost twice but damaged our country much more in the process. So forgive me if I have no love for her. I did, and you are reading it wrong. It is not slavery by the definition used in the very article you posted and for the reasons I have already said. But here we are 9 million post later, you making the same exact disproven claim using the same wrong definion that the court itself did not use, >We review de novo a dismissal for failure to state a claim and for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, and we review a denial of leave to amend for abuse of discretion. Papa v. United States, 281 F.3d 1004, 1008-09 (9th Cir. 2002). We conclude that neither the Fifth Amendment nor international law grants Plaintiffs a judicially enforceable right to any level of compensation for work performed in prison. This decision does not make any finding of law. It decides if the matter can move forward. You're really obsessed with Hillary for some reason. You should read it again. ""Although the Constitution includes, in the Thirteenth Amendment, a general prohibition against involuntary servitude, it expressly excepts from that general prohibition forced labor “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” "" Literally all i'm saying 🤷‍♀️ Your obtuse act was growing on me though. This convo could've been resolved within two posts without it, which made it a tad frustrating at first, granted. Emotional outbursts and all that~ But there's also plenty of honesty to it. You really are a person that is rather slow and inflexible. It's an act that's basically tailor-made for you. Very wholesome, certainly warmed my heart. Glad we've managed to come to a satisfying conclusion, too. My pleasure. Your original claim was it was slavery and very common. I replied it was not, it was involuntarily servitude. Now you are agreeing with me with what you just posted. Perhaps all those posts where you refused to present this as your evidence could have been avoided if you presented it in the first place. Instead you tried to get me to defend your argument for you. Now, 20 posts later you are claiming my original position as your own. Best of luck, next time you might run into someone willing to play your games. Yeah, it's what I deserved for trying to accommodate you. Fuck me for trying to find common ground xD Just in case you forgot though: your initial position was ""it's indentured servitude"" and something about ""working off your debt to society"" or whatever. Not that your original position matters now. We're evidently in agreement about the fact that forced labor and involuntary servitude are still very much a fact of life in US prisons. And that said *involuntary* servitude is safeguarded by the US constitution, per it's 13th amendment. There's literally nothing more I could achieve~ It's been a joy. We could have been in agreement if you did not try to call it slavery... But you did. And it is not slavery. Of course, dear. Then prove it. Evey Tim you actually post something it says the opposite of what you say it does, mainly because you don't read the whole thing. It is back to what I said: you have to know the meaning of words before you can make a claim. If it is slavery you or am actual lawyer could take it to the Supremes and they would find the practice unconstitutional. But they haven't because it clearly is not. I literally just shared Serra v. Lappin with you. And here's the text of the 13th amendment, just as a reminder: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Slavery and involuntary servitude are very clearly constitutional and SCOTUS would most certainly uphold that, just as the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit did. We've already gone over this in it's entirety. We're not talking about whether the overarching point is right. We already completely agree on the fact that there is involunatry servitude and forced labor in US prisons. We're literally only arguing about whether slavery is the right term to describe such involuntary servitude and forced labor. Which I don't care to argue further because the agreement we've already reached is everything I wanted from this. > I literally just shared Serra v. Lappin with you. Immaterial. It is not making a finding of law. It simply allows a lawsuit to go forward. Quote the finding of law there and you might have something. My guess is not, or you would have posted it. > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, It refers to involuntary servitude, not slavery. Which is why we have no slavery, but we have involuntary servitude. I don't know why so many people who want to argue can't properly parse a sentence. Legally defined slavery, i.e. Chattel Slavery, would not pass the Constitution muster BECAUSE THAT CLAUSE WAS WRITTEN TO OUTLAW IT. It is only unclear to you because you have a viewpoint that does not match what is clearly written and is supported by all jurisprudence of the time and up until now. That is HOW THINGS ARE matches exactly with HOW IT WAS WRITTEN. There is no Chattel Slavery, which is the only type of slavery ever existent in the US, after the 13th Amendment because it was OUTLAWED. It is so obvious on it's face it takes verbal ignorance and gymnastics on your part to try an make it otherwise. And any full reading of material you provide does not support your case unless you misuse the term ""slavery"" to mean what you think it means, not what it actually means legally in the US." Putin has amassed enormous wealth for himself and the oligarchs that support him. Is the state of wealth inequality really so different in America? The top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the entire middle-class combined. That sure sounds like an oligarchy to me.,82123,https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1499108172354580480,"[deleted] Idk it doesn’t seem that bad compared to Russia. [Where just the top 500 people have more then bottom 99.8%](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/10/russias-500-super-rich-wealthier-than-poorest-998-report-a74180). [atleast in US that top 1% is only 27% of the total wealth](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:127;series:Net%20worth;demographic:income;population:all;units:levels;range:2006.3,2021.3) Not saying US doesn’t have problems just a poor deflection it seems. [deleted] Putin is not supported by the oligarchs. They have had a general truce for years but they still hate his ass. They would much rather have a US puppet like Yeltsin back in power. Remember, they made all their money on deals brokered by Clinton officials and Harvard economists. It was Putin who put a stop to that plunder. Americans don't believe the filthy rich run our country, because the filthy rich aren't on TV saying they run our country. It's that simple. The top 1% in America is 3,200,000 people. The Russian Oligarchy is a few 100 people. This is a ridiculous analogy and honestly embarrassing it's on the front page of reddit. What about the wealth inequality in Ukraine? Have a look at OP accounts multiple posts per day all the same just in different groups, seems like a bot. Yeah; there are significant differences between wealth inequality in Russia and the US. This type of idiocy does a disservice to actual, legitimate, fact-based discussions on wealth inequality and optimal ways to combat it. EDIT: Here's an article that Piketty contributes to. https://voxeu.org/article/inequality-and-property-russia-1905-2016 wasn't the US found to be an Oligopoly? War? Civilians dying? A nation losing it's sovereignty? Nah let's make fatuous political points instead. By and large the 1% or .1% in the US created immense value for society through their companies, products, and services. In Russia, the 1% by and large took assets when the USSR fell or and did not create value. People should get rich for creating value for society - not for stealing public assets. There's a big difference. In my view, if you don't want people to get rich for creating value you're going to have a lot less of both. The difference is our billionaires don’t run the country /s In America WE decide who our elected leaders are. In Russia ONE piece of shit controls everything for life. Were also aggressively imperialist and have racked up more than our fair share of war crimes in the last few decades.... But its cool... they were brown. The absolute blind hypocrisy of this whole situation is appalling. It’s all the same. We look at a country like Russia and question how they can let oligarchs run wild like that while to them it is just life. The rest of the world looks at us the same way and for us it is just life. Propaganda is a hell of a drug and there are even people in North Korea who believe what they’re told despite the real world conditions. Oh this is easy: No, they are completely different, since US wealth tends to accumulate from the sale of goods & services (Walmart should pay people more, but a lotta people shop there), while Russian oligarchs accumulate wealth by robbing state enterprises and collecting bribes, while those who provide goods & services must give them kickbacks. Good talk, you ignorant American dumbass. It is. Have you ever tried to interact with these people? They frown on everyone and give a disgusted face. They see themselves as aristocrats, to be seen walking on the sidewalk with commoners is such an embarrasment for them. You are comparing apple and oranges. You are comparing results, not the process that determine results, big difference and ludicrous to me. It is a lot different you fucking idiot The internet only understands black and white. More Billionaires in USA because we’re Makers not Takers. Socialism Sucks!!! Except Bezos & Musk dont send murder squads out to poison people who speak out against them. Too stupid to see a such basic difference, so prob shouldnt be posting - Russian propaganda media clown. What an eye opener!! Fact of the day/week/month/year (But hopefully not lifetime) 1% of American wealthy people E.Q.U.A.L.S. combined middle class wealth Our current situation started with Reagan and interest rates. If you don't understand that raising interest rates is UBI almost exclusively for rich, while costing the average house buyer or small business owner unnecessary gate keep fees, then you haven't done your homework. The purpose of public money is to facilitate transactions for the public, not to make it harder for them. If want to get rid of cheap money speculating in stock markets and investment bubbles, then make it illegal to take out loans to speculate on the stock market and investment bubbles. Oh it is, but the propaganda of America keeps people from paying attention to that by pumping fear porn into homes. Scarcity mentality is a real thing. An oligarch technically controls the power as well. The true oligarchs of America are the social media oligarchs that hold tremendous political power and censor their enemies at will. The difference is that Russians are imprisoned for publicly asking the same question you just did. America is a cleptocracy. Sure, but the president of the US doesnt hold the rich hostage. The rich here hold the president hostage. Can we please start calling our “billionaire patrons” oligarchs from here on out? Please? people are tricked into believing two key religious beliefs which have no scientific basis and have been disproved, in fact. those are: 1. that people deserve what they have (that there is free will and any sort of deservingness for being motivated or having skill) 2. that small numbers of people are somehow special in a way that outweighs an insane number of people. that someone's worth is able to go far beyond their meager single life. it isn't. all even the most miraculous cancer researcher can do is slightly move us into the finish line, finishing a long thread of work that thousands did. and this holds up for every single industry. Indeed It's not exactly apples to apples but it is something we want to avoid creeping toward. Let's just check our current trajectory to see if we should be concerned at all. The term you’re looking for is “plutocracy”. America is kinda a plutocracy (lobbyists) oligarchy (high ranking party officials) hybrid at the national level. The party officials have set it up so they always win in their respective areas (gerrymandering) and as a result there’s only a few elements of a true democratic republic in America. The bureaucracy is also rather important for running the country though because career politicians lack technical skills so they just appoint people they think will be able to run it according to their vision. [removed] In Russia 110 people own 35% of the country. If those richest people in America were in government, the answer would be a very easy yes. But they're not. Our elected representatives are wealthy, but not the super rich. They are pawns in the game, not controlling it. Citizens United was Treason. The House of Representatives should have started impeachment proceedings on 5 US Supreme Court Justices the day that decision came out. Yes. It is. Say it louder for the people in the back [deleted] “Poor” in Russia is very different than “poor” in America. And they contort our minds (Koch network, Murdoch Empire, Bloomberg), manipulate our ability to save and build wealth (CNBC/MSNBC and the market makers they serve), buy our leaders to start wars against our will and irreparably harm the world (Lockheed, Boeing and so on), cripple our freedoms and force us to buy goods we never needed (TurboTax and the myth of our ""complicated"" tax code). List goes on. Yeah we are not far off are we Wealth inequality does not equal oligarchy, this is a false equivalence (logical fallacy) The US and Canada are like Russia, only our ""Putins"" make life good enough to be juuuust happy enough. Oligarchs amasses wealth through the state and maintain their wealth through the protection of the state. American wealth has been amassed through entrepreneurial spirit (not all obviously). The comparison is idiotic political posturing. The problem is not wealth inequality. The problem is the authoritarian state. The Russian government has much more power and control over its citizens than the US. The irony is people like Reich, who are ignorant of basic economics, THINK the problem is wealth inequality and their solution is a larger more intrusive and powerful government! The actions he advocates are more likely to bring about the very authoritarianism he’s too stupid to understand. Would oligarchy be characterized as over 3 million people though? God dammit if your strategy for debate is to make false equivalence its going to hurt your point even if its good Yes. However the main difference is that it seems like US citizens are more allowed to complain about it. This guy is owned by Chinese money!!! This just in: ""Is the Russian Propaganda Office even trying anymore, shitposting on reddit. More on this later. Now back to Maria in the studio."" If your household makes $30,000 a year then you are in the 1%. Communism always turns into an oligarchy in the long run, because someone always has to be in charge of “redistribution” of the wealth. Somehow all of it never makes it back to the people and the ones doing the distributing end up very wealthy. Same with socialism. THEY ARE BUYING UP ALL THE FUCKING PROPERTIES! 30% INCREASE IN RENT IN A YEAR IN MY SHIT STATE! TIME TO EAT THESE FUCKS! Title accidentally said putin instead of Biden! Whoops Another thread full of broke mfers blaming broke mfers for being broke It's easier and trendier to hate on Putin while ignoring local oligarchs. It's ok cause FREEDOM I am a proponent for economic redistribution in the US but to say it is even remotely the same situation as Russia is just ignorant. I have heard similar numbers my whole life!! I am tired of hearing about it and want to know what to do about it! The difference is that high-level government officials did this in secret and later made it legal....wait...which country am I writing about again? Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and the poorest country in Europe because of corrupt oligarchs. Yes it’s different. Hitler made sure his inner circle was well fed and cared for. Where as in America if you use your wealth illegally you still get prison time. Wealth inequality virtue signaling is basically crying because life’s unfair because you want more money Someone learned a new word today They take wealth there by whatever means they see fit. Im free to spend or not, invest or not at my will. If people are getting rich because me and my peers spend or invest or save or not I don't care. And don't even try to take this statement as me defending bussinesses for any of the legitimately bad things they do. But if lots of us are spending money because we choose to and someone is rich because of it I don't care. And the brilliance of U.S. 1%… they’ve convinced the population to fight about every inequality EXCEPT financial. “Tell the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks.” Wait wait, you can't compare them or you get the idiots crying whataboutism. Exactly. Wake up America! This is every country. We are actively running military operations in other countries. It’s just not reported on the news. This is again a total and blatant gaslight towards the American people to distract everyone from the fact that we are getting financially boned as well. Peace love and chicken grease. Keep your head up. They cheated. Life has a way of making this right naturally. Just a matter of time ;) love all of you When do we start confiscating Jeff Bezos’ homes?! This guy just cannot resist the urge to make cheap partisan remarks on literally any topic can he? Yup, they're both ridiculous. Not sure what it has to do with the invasion of Ukraine though. Why do we call *our* oligarchs—billionaires… But they are filthy communists. In the US they are clean capitalists Are oligarch and oligarchy the words of the month to start misusing on reddit? New low for Reddit I wouldn’t consider 3 million people a “small group.” So no, I would say it’s not an oligarchy. Lmao. Read about oligarchy please then talk The salient difference imo is that the Russians were given entire industries. Ukraine says stop the war, but continues to bomb Donbass stop Ukrainian fascism in Donbass! ‼As a result of the Ukrainian aggression in the DPR, 25 civilians were killed in 14 days of escalation. 95 civilians, including four children, received injuries of varying severity‼ ▪2 people were injured during the current day ⚡March 2, the PRC forces liberated 40 settlements that were previously under the control of Ukrainian military formations The Ukrainian military released on the territory of the Republic for today: 🔻59 min 🔻29 AGS grenades 🔻Sniper weapons were used 📍The village of the mine ""Trudovskaya"": the microdistricts of Mine No. 5 and Mine No. 7 have been de-energized. 700 people were left without electricity 🏠Damaged in 14 days: - 473 residential buildings; - 185 civil infrastructure facilities infrastructure facilities, electricity, water and gas supply facilities; - 81 vehicles. ❗Data of the DPR Representative Office in the Joint Control and Coordination Center @TK_Union Closer to people https://t.me/TK_Union/8647 ""The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries"" - W. Churchhill. Capitalism isn't perfect, but its the best damn system we have for liberating the poor. Yes, it’s very similar. One difference is these people in the USA pay almost all the taxes. North of 80%. In Russia, they fuck your wives and kill people who go against the state. Publicly. So what? Go make your own money. Be marketable and create your own wealth If we’re going after Purim’s objectively criminal associates can we stop by Mara Lago? Yes attack America! Everything is America’s fault!!!! Oh and Trump! Remember when Putin walked all over Trump…..🤔. Oh yeah well that didn’t happen. Didn’t he cause a war in the Middle East?🤔 oh wait no he actually fostered peace… well I agree America is just the worst cause they have things. I want things. I hate America too. Pathetic. For one, the President in America doesn't make an enormous amount of wealth, and only has $50,000 for spending money That's because America is an oligarchy. Has been for a while. Putin has amassed huge amounts of wealth for himself and others through corruption of the state, so lets give the state more power is your recommendation? He certainly didnt get rich building a better mouse trap. And many of those billionaires are politically in the government’s pocket. Ffs it’s not even close. I travel to Russia often for work(obviously not now or for the foreseeable future). Outside Moscow there is NOTHING but abject poverty. No middle class, no class change. You are born poor and you die poor. Most non-college educated living in smaller places like say Tagenrog work 7 days a week and two jobs. Most of these secondary jobs know this is the situation so they offer bunk rooms for employees to sleep because they know they don’t get to go home except the occasional Sunday. The average annual household income in the US is $68,000. Russia? Around $10k. In the US everyone under a certain income threshold is given access to food stamps, their state version of WICK, housing stipends etc. none of this exists in Russia. But more importantly, there is wealth class change all the time in the US. You grow up poor but you can still retire wealthy. It’s not an easy things to do, but It happens literally all the time. US elects it’s leaders, Russians have no say. Trying to make a comparison between the two economic situations proves that you have never travelled outside the US and have absolutely no concept of a society ran by an actual dictator. I wish people could have just a touch of perspective. Being in the lowest earning category in the US puts you already in a wealth category higher than something like 70% of the global population. Yes. Here, you can become the 1%. What middle class? There’s rich and poor. Considering Putin didn’t earn his wealth through voluntary transaction or building a business, and the most wealthy in the USA did, no…they aren’t the same. Russian propaganda machine is alive and well - there won't be sanctions on earth that will stop them. It's a lost cause. Bezos was a nerd selling books on the internet. Not exactly an oligarch. Yes. It's completely different. Bezos & Gates got rich by providing goods & services. Putin & his oligarchs got rich by stealing, getting bribes, & getting kickbacks. Nice try Putin troll. Been saying it, welcome aboard Capital Gains tax treatment should not exist after a few hundred million. Eat the rich , tax the Pope Bring back Corncob TV amen. preach. Oligarchs and Capitalism are the same... find a president that can lead the people and fuck Putin. Honestly capitalism is just as bad as communism because you allow the dick to dictate their issues first. Only difference is ""communism"" doesn't care and the ""great country of america"" doesn't bad reviews “I don’t want to work hard, get a good education, take financial risks or make smart financial decisions, but it’s not fare that others have more money”. Oh Robert Reich .. how genuine. The same chap that wants a female senator to endure a 'slap gauntlet' because she dare to vote against the grain. This dudes a virtue signaling beta cuck and a hypocrite. What's his net worth? Lol! Lmao Robert Reich, you wanna share vaccine science from healing crystal users next? Or how about evidence of the existence of God from a mega church pastor?? Imagine thinking that the way you aquire wealth in Russia is comparable to the way you do anywhere else, let alone the US. IQ is definitely below room temperature 😂🤣😂🤣 Ah Putin's favorite argument. He's constantly saying Americans have similar problems as Russia so democracy must not work. Fact is that yes, America has substantial issues that need resolving, but they pale in comparison to the issues in Russia. While our system is flawed, it can be fixed. Voting is for the most part a system that allows change. At least our politicians are allowed to insult each other and argue. Our citizens can openly protest and fight for changes. We don't wind up in jail or dead if we say something bad about the president. In fact, making fun of our presidents is a way of life for us. Yes wealth inequality exists here and it's a huge issue, but with time our system could change. Our tax structures could be fixed. In Russia you'd have to go through Putin to get that done and he would never allow it. Robert reich is an evil communist This is some of the most ignorant horseshit I’ve seen in my life, and the dumbfucks in this comments section are completely fucking clueless as to what a goddamn oligarch is. I don’t think you understand what oligarchy means. The fact that you’re comparing Russia to the US is just evidence of your ignorance of how both countries work. Fuck off God this is a ridiculous segue. What’s your point? Atleast in the USA they provide free health care. Don't indiscriminately arrest and kill people of colour. Help the homeless. Provide clean drinkable water, and purposely allow an opioid crisis Hi Russian oligarch Anti-semite Lmfao OP post history is literally just pointing fingers at NATO and US. Mods how is this post even allowed? OP eat shit **Canada has been bombing Balzac for months send help** Our oligarchy good, their oligarchy bad. Elon Musk works harder than I ever did. Look at OP post history 😂 Been saying this for a while now It's called an oligarchy because when you tell them how much money of ours they have they say, ""ohh!"" It’s either an oligarchy or a plutocracy Some of the richest people in America came from almost nothing. Go out there and make it happen. This is a bot lol Biden used his position as Vice President to sell access, to get money from Burisma. Absolutely as corrupt as Putin You’re an idiot if you listen to this guy. Wow. What a propaganda account. What a Braindead and uneducated take. Those rich in america have earned there wealth through smart and legitimate business which pays there staff well unlike russian oligarchs who get back handed taxpayer funds and siphen funds from public spending for there own wealth and pay there staff next to nothing. What an absolutely dumb post. Oh lord—more self-proclaimed economists on Reddit… The difference is Putin stole it. Can you point to where the 1% stole (by the legal definition) their money? If so, you got something. The top ""1%“ earn 21% of the income in the US and pay 40% of all taxes paid. Why does everyone point at the"" 1%""? Why not talk about the top 3 1/2%? How about the top 7.2745321%? Start researching the info, and start thinking for yourself. You’re all just mad it’s not you with the money. Stop being jealous and go try and get some of it Oversimplified in the extreme. A teenager wrote this to get clicks. What a disingenuous bullshit take. There’s zero comparison to Russia. I know what would help. More BLM looting. way to be opportunistic. reich has been a shill for as long as i can remember and his views should be takne with a grain of salt They are not supporting a genocide in Ukraine are they? Russia must stop this madness and slaughter now. Anything else is for later. Why is wealth inequality bad? Why do you care who has more than you? It's actually much worse in America Oh like they all don't do exactly the same stuff. America’s numbers are skewed by the likes of bezos, musk, and co. OP is a sponsored troll. See the thing about capitalism... We need to sanction America! Eat the rich It's important to note that the wealth inequality is due to the printing of too much money, which has increased asset prices, not because taxes are too low on the upper middle class. It appears that oligarchy is used when corruption contributed to the amassing of massive wealth. On the other hand, “top 1%” is used when exploitation contributed to the same end state. Dishonesty seems to be the common description. So how does the Pareto principle fit into this type of discussion? Hour glass economy The top one percent do their part on making sure they keep their wealth but the other 98 percent spend all their money on the useless products that the rich roll out. It is no different here, than there, or anywhere. People like to think it is, but our History shows its always been this way in almost every large society from ancient times to present day. It has always been a tactic of the wealthy to divert attention so people focus elsewhere because at our core, humans seem to just want to be left alone for the most part, so when you have all the wealth to do so, it becomes reality, and when people wield power, they can, and do make laws to keep it that way. This is part of why no government has ever, nor will ever last because those in charge always utilize power to line their pockets, there is rarely an exception. No government is truly different than the last. They use different names to mislead as something different, but at their core, they're always the same incredibly wealthy few that own and run everything, and use it how they see fit to benefit them. We are no different in America than Russia, China or the U.K. it really is all the same. Almost all civilized nations has great wealth disparities As long as They can buy the sheep majority and pass their accumulated wealth down to heirs. If you can vote, vote for the person mainstream media hates most. plutocracy The difference is that for decades the republican party has tricked the middle and lower class into voting for and identifying with our corporate oligarchs...and ultimately voting for them. Elon Musk's companies have received billions in government subsidies over the last two decades. In 2021, Musk has opposed higher taxes for the rich, and said the government shouldn't control ""capital."" He recently said he opposes government subsidies. He’s a grifter. https://reason.com/2021/03/05/5-ways-elon-musk-and-other-billionaires-get-welfare-for-the-rich/?amp https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-subsidies-tesla-billions-spacex-solarcity-2021-12?amp https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html?_amp=true https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/28/analysis-elon-musk-used-government-money-to-build-tesla-but-he-fears-a-tax-on-billionaires Billionaire=Oligarch need to normalize this Correlation does not equal causation. Transparency is one major difference. As is what that wealth has brought to the USA. Take Bill Gates. Look at how many jobs and much wealth he has brought to the ISA. Yes he is rich. But he has also contributed mightily to the country. Elon Musk is a good example too. Now, name me Russias Bill Gates… It’s pretty nasty everywhere when you see how much the top has. They’re really good at making excuses for creating poverty through underpaying employees below what it costs to live. The US just has really pushed the narrative that paying people enough to survive would destroy their businesses. All while they take in record profits. Including Nancy Pelosi and other political officials. Today Money makes the man, which is exactly why we as a nation of whiners end up with trump or Biden as our president. Be nice , do what's politically correct, do what your told and forget about people like Doug Coe. Ignore the top 1% when comparing nations, look at the wealth and percentage of the middle class. The working poor in the US have a standard of living that is higher than the middle class in most of the world. Wealth is relative. How many American Oligarch's are there? Too many?? Who would be in the top 10 The Russians even invade other countries every 40 years around the United States state of the Union Address…Finland in the 1940’s, Afghanistan in the 1980’s, Ukraine in 2022…let’s call it 2014 because they couldn’t wait… The US has significant income inequality and you might even argue we have oligarchies, but we are **not** the same as Russia. The corruption ranking of the US is 27th in the world. The corruption ranking of Russia is 136th!!! There is a difference. In a true free market people earn the money. In Russia and other communist countries it’s taken and given to those whom the government wants in power. It’s stolen not earned. american oligarchs how dare you!!!!!! peasants It'd be nice if we could do something about it but you can't even get dems to admit that their leaders are insider trading lol At least the Republicans attempted to do something about the government and media corruption in this country. You go after Oligarchs and they turn you into a Nazi lol Hmm, in the USA avg per capita is like 5X that in Russia. Not at all an apples to apples comparison. It is not the gap that matters, rather how the quality of life of the average citizen is Yeah it's about the same. However you are free to voice this opinion without consequences in America... Nice try, but considering the division of wealth across the entirety of human history, 1% looks like progress. It's the difference between a guy pulling a gun and demanding your wallet, and a guy in a suit tricking you into giving him money. Oligarchs don’t have boot straps or something Were hypocritical af over here Not the same. You forgot about spending millions in lobbying to get laws and tax breaks they want while our politicians own their stocks… Mods- pin this mother fucker!!! Is posting common knowledge on Reddit a hobby? It’s ok with me, as I collect hobbies, and this is a new one if it’s real. Uh oh In Russia, government chooses its captains of industry. In US, Captains of industry choose the government. Lul. It’s incredible. I just thought the same thing. Which begs the question - what’s the end game. What comes after Putin. The world would be safer if fewer held economic power and were willing to shed the lives of those below. It sounds like an oligarchy because it definitely is. Russian bots trying to sow discontent to try to divide us. No thanks. We can solve our problems after Russia surrenders and calls for peace. We just call it capitalism but no it's not different. Putin stole his! If you make it with a legal business I see no problem! At least US oligarch's money can't go from all to nothing overnight. All jokes aside, bc of my country I'm a weird amalgamation of civil libertarian,economically conservative who believes in a free market with the exception of monopolies to allow for competition who is okay with people having immense amounts of wealth but not okay with dodging taxes to get there unless they contribute something but taxes on everyone should be less but make it difficult to get out of them unless you give to official charities that can't be exploited. Thanks America! I saw a BBC special, Putin: The New Tsar where one of his former ministers admitted the Oligarchs made up like 45% of the Russian GDP. That seems way worse to me. We get drugs ,booze,the greenback and education. Tell me something I don't know. Nope. It’s a free market. They worked hard, they earned it. …….by printing money with ink made from the blood of your children. Those are called Lobbyists Was that a voice in the wilderness? The key difference is that oligarchs have state-mandated monopolies in their respective industries. American billionaires don’t have this. Lol op just the last Russian troll being paid in crypto Yeah but they're red and we're blue so fuck em Lol go ask 100 people in Russia if they'd rather be poor in their country or the USA. Also I thought PC Principal pointed out roughly a half decade ago that it's kinda fucked up to refer to these United States as America. Are people from Canada, Mexico, Brazil etc also living on a continent called America too? When Bezos and Zuck start murdering people for sitting against them or imprisoning union organizers for life, come see me. This is an offense to all that have suffered under Putin and the long line of Russian dictators. Ignorance abounds. Putin and Trump are the same do you honestly believe they give a shit about anyone other than themselves. Yes it is different. Our country doesn’t go to foreign countries and kill civilians to gain more wealth. Yeah I read this report by like Charles Schwab are one of those major financial institutions how to report in like 2008 saying that the United States was already in oligarchy controlled by large corporations True but in America some can potentially reach that wealth, in Russia the system holds everyone down except the top This is such trash view point. Oligarchs stole public resources in some cases $1M investment for a mining company worth $500M. Oligarchs also in the 1990s and 2000s had teams of hitmen taking out the competition. I don't think the facts would show a large pool of evidence that doctors in the US are shooting people. I was raised by a single mother who came from Yugoslavia. The three of us have combined for 5 degrees and anther two on the way. Growing up poor I was surrounded by poor people. I can gladly say they're simply not bright with their money. Example my friend at 20 years old thought beating the claw game at the movie theater was a good investment strategy. He went into $2K CC debt for that. Anther took a Money Mart quick cash loan, when I told him to return it quickly because of the interest. You know how he returned it? He took anther loan from anther vendor to pay the loans. He wanted a new car part. Hit it on the head Kleptocracy * Meta: proposal to ban single-tweet troll posts by Robert Reich/ Richard Wolff/ AOC without accompanying submission statements explaining why it's relevant/ true/ interesting. Never let a good crisis go to waste. Eh, Rob? Civilians are being missile'd in the streets of Ukraine but CaPitAlISm iS BaD. Have you seen their stock trading returns???? Much, much higher than you or I…. Also it’s, “oligarchs *who* support him” Not “that”. I wonder how much Putin and those oligarchs donate to charity much like Gates and Buffett. I’m sure that info is readily available in your ….. Mother Russia Yeah except the wealth wasn’t stolen from the hard working businesses and normal people… completely diff circumstances and incomparable No different at all, we have state sponsored TV and a bunch of old white dudes control their Christian nationalist agenda, there will come a day when people finally realize they’ve been taken advantage of but it will be too late Oligarchical hegemony is somewhat better than oligarchical dictatorship. Not ideal by any means, of course. Yes, I would distinguish however that men like Elon and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos created their companies from zero and created that wealth, versus the Russian guys who all literally stole the assets of the government. Should we work on the inequality in the west? Absolutely. And let's start by hitting the Russian oligarchs hard for their support of Stalin-i-mean-Putin. The same histories repeat themselves over and over again, all across the world... And we are powerless to stop them. Only key difference I can see, is that Americans do not need to fear showing open hatred of their leaders. Though honestly, I believe we will lose that privilege in the future. where are the sanctions for the american rich? You see, because we live in America, we're told it's worst because they're Russian. Why the war on rich people? They’re not breaking any laws by being rich and they’re not preventing anyone else from becoming rich. Sounds like political hacks in Washington People like you are the problem with this country. And they use their powers in the same way to avoid changes that affect their bottom lines. I think there’s a difference btw the two countries on how they accumulated their wealth!! Hey OP socialist punk, go fuck yourself. America isn’t an oligarchy even though a few corps run most things. America isn’t socialist even though those largest corporations have their expenses and earnings audited by the government to ensure they aren’t price gouging the fReE mARket. Behind every great fortune is a crime Sounds like communist Propaganda fucking with the wrong Ones we’re not easily manipulated like Russians are Ours would be better describe as a Kleptocracy Ask yourself what is the difference between American and Russian oligarchs? well the top 1% in america own around 30% of all wealth (which is around 1.3 million people) compared to russia where ~110 people own 30% of all wealth so uhhh just a bit different logistically. So has all the other countries with good systems. Inequalities are a problem, but let's not conflate it with being the only or predominant problem. Moldova, Czechia, Belarus are the least unequal in countries by income... Honestly tell me that these are better than the US on average. The dangled carrot of capitalism keeps you from caring about never getting the carrot. Because that carrot sure looks good and I want to chase after it. Totally the same we have political assassinations all the time. /s The difference is in ‘how’ this wealth inequality comes about. In the US if you to be a billionaire you need to provide a service to a billion people. In Russia you need to know the right people. Something around 90% of USA billionaires are self made Point? they have more than the bottom 90%. Using “middle class” in this sort of context is another divisive measure used to keep classes antagonised against each other. There are Workers and Owners. To word it otherwise endorses the existance of an underclass. But its a literal authoritarian state… We’re more concerned with restricting voting rights and controlling women’s choice to notice any different. It’s all part of the plan. Misdirection. They’ve been doing it for decades. They are both same. Except one is the devil you know. So this sub is just links to tweets by political pundits now? Exactly! You've got rich bastards like Bernie sanders and Hassan piker buying mansions and all I get as a middle class man is being called a bunch of buzzwords, I can can clearly see the privilege associated with American elites. A top heavy society was unsustainable for Russia long term. It has been before, will be for other countries eventually. Without heavy investment in education and manufacturing, a nation's economy has little growth potential. Nations that focus too much on population, resources, land, tourism, and austerity will eventually find themselves falling behind. In a hole they can't climb out of. Americans are my favourite example of collective narcissism Oligarchy is not an economic structure. It is a political structure. Those terrible business builders and business runners. How dare they save money and learn how to make more. Just selfish bastards. When I think of Russian oligarchs I think of criminal bastards then the American liberals throw American business peoples in there too. You can’t make this shit up. Pareto distribution I’m mean we still have a warm corpse of a democracy to keep a slight amount of power in the people when it comes time to choose our leadership. That’s and the dollar standard are the biggest difference between Russia and the US. Dumbass No, the US is not Russia Q: what is the national dish of Russia? A: empty It's true in every part of the world. The top 1% would always own more than the middle class and poor combined. The things are 1. What are the standard of living for middle class and poor and 2. Difficulty for the middle class and poor able to move up. In an oligarchy you have shit for 1 and 2. Id say more an autocracy. I'm not disagreeing but every single one of them is personally beholden to Putin for that wealth. I don't know who Elon is beholden to for his wealth if the US was an oligarchy. Are you telling me that Americans don't have opportunities to build wealth? I feel like most Americans stay poor due to lack of financial literacy. From my own experience, I made myself poor even though I've always been a hard worker because I didn't know any financial education. Slowly now, with the help of the internet and free audio books on YouTube, I have educated myself and now life isn't as bleak as it was. If my car broke down I wouldn't have to borrow money for emergencies. I never blamed America for my poverty. I knew it was my fault, I just didn't know how to structure my income. No one ever taught me. School doesn't teach it. My parents never talked about money. If you ask other people about money, it's considered rude, even to this day. I blame our education system. The lack of financial education Over-simplified headline. Many companies here produce things you use willingly. You choose to buy an iphone. You choose to buy a microsoft computer. You choose nike shoes or to eat at McDonald's. These people have become wealthy. How many russian products you buying? Any cars? Clothes? Electronics? These guys are billionaires because they are friends with the government. If trump had spent more as president - I am convinced he would have become putinesque in his leadership as well yes? of course it is different. stop trying to capitalise on the tragedy One car broke down. One car was designed without brakes. You could look at both and say, ‘these cars suck’ and be right. But they suck for different reasons. FUCK RUSSIA!! I think the top 8 wealthiest Americans have more money than the bottom 50% if I remember correctly. google what oligarch are. there is big difference between business man like trump or jeff bezos and oligarchs 🎯 As much as I’m normally glad to point out growing economic inequality problems and a weakening middle class, this particular example is ill conceived. The problem is Russia’s political leaders and oligarchy is essentially an autocratic ruling class that cannot be simply voted out. They play favorites and give each other favors. It has led to rampant corruption, kick backs at all levels, and a completely inefficient to get anything done. You have an economy that suffers. The gdp per capita is very weak. Ruling parties and political friends sit on assets the rest of the world needs and makes excessive riches selling them, while most of the economy sufffers. The US economy and political system is different. Politicians are replaceable and often time limited for the highest positions. Granted, that was stress tested more than ever before recently, but it happens. Corruption is kept to a minimal level, before a change is made to root it out. The overall system values efficiency and we grow from that. That is why we have such a high GDP per capita, but it also runs counter to what most oligarchs are and how they got and maintain their power. The real problem the US has that is leading to inequality is we are undertaxing income from capital gains and most truly rich people in the US are earning most their income through investments and the stock market. Whereas we tax tradition job based income at higher rates. Thanks for someone putting this out here. He is absolutely right. Those billionaires control the government through lobbyists and donations to campaigns and maybe some bribes you never know. We don't have one all powerful dictator but a small group determined to keep the status quo. The two party system is just a show when neither side truly wants changes besides on the edges like Trump or Bernie sanders. This keeps the middle and poor classes on both sides thinking that they are each other's enemy an the reason they don't have a better life. This distracts us away from them not keeping minimum wage rising to go along with cost of living and the piece of the pie of the profits that we rightly deserve for doing the work. Hope they're paying you in USD after the sanctions. Why has so much of reddit become one giant [Tu quoque ?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque) US is all about hypocrisy... A good time to rethink the """"""america way of life"""""" when you start seeing yourself on the enemy... Remember that lots of those profits came by raiding and pillaging other countries... “Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!” Bill Hicks That's what bothered me about Biden's smug self-congratulatory speech yesterday. Oligarchs bad. American billionaires great. Oh America is definitely an oligarchy. We just hide the authoritarian part slightly better. [deleted] The difference is that we at least try to “put up appearance” that we separate government and business. How can a post be this astroturfed People, don't get your information from reddit. Are all those US billionaires controlled by one man? No? Seems different. >That sure sounds like an oligarchy to me. No fucking shit. Did you just wake up? Have you been under a rock for 40 years? Have you never looked up and questioned why your wealth never grew, while prices did, and vast wealth at the top did? Why CEO’s were getting golden parachutes for destroying companies and the economy? Care to state the fucking obvious any more like it’s a novel concept? If you’re just now coming to this conclusion and realisation, shame on you for your past lack of involvement or critical thinking about our country and it’s trajectory. That's how Republicans have been able to run all these years. This link has been shared 2 times. First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/t5b9up) on 2022-03-02. Last Seen [Here](https://redd.it/t5bagl) on 2022-03-02 Feedback? Hate? Visit r/repostsleuthbot - --- **Scope:** Reddit | **Check Title:** False | **Max Age:** 99999 | **Searched Links:** 128,504,934 | **Search Time:** 0.0s We love to point the finger, the USA has don’t more missal strikes then anyone else True! It’s the difference between being kissed before you’re Fucked and getting Fucked🤪💯🇺🇸 America has been broken for so long. I don’t know if it will ever return to its glory days! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 Spoiler alert: it’s not. Yeah but you can’t stop them, Putin made the stupid ass choice if declaring war so now we can totally stop him Western rich person good eastern rich person bad To some foreigners like myself, the US and Russia are equally Bad, the differences is that as southamericans we dislike the US goverment more cause they shit they done to us. You definitely right about that. The other interesting thing is how most billionaires and millionaires in America are Oligarchs from other countries that came he to expand their wealth and control over the government even more. The US currently is under a plutocracy, not an oligarchy They are one and the same If you make over 30,000usd/year you are apart of the worlds wealthy 1%. 1% of America is over 3 million people. That’s not an oligarchy Meanwhile, the Chinese government is committing genocide and its business as usual. USA has a plutocracy, not an Oligarchy Who cares I’m happy as fuck 😍 In one case it's stolen. In the other case it was earned. So, no, it's not the same. Says the dude in the 1% who charges $50k for a 1 hour speech. Fuck Robert Reich. The US needs a regime change Class War 2024 As soon as it's expedient to do so, they will try to kill us all. Even if there's peace between nations, there will always be entitled shit stains who think they literally own the world and the experience of life and will snuff out anyone who doesn't fit their mould. It only sounds like one because it is one. LOL, Reich the guy who makes millions of dollars for himself complaining about Billionaires…😎 And they too, own the politicians. Tbh China needs to be next followed by the US. The three countries responsible for most of the misery in this world. There is a BIG difference between the oligarchs of Russia and those of America. Most Russian oligarchs obtained all their wealth from stealing. It is. And the only way to fix it is to never vote for a Republican OR DEMOCRAT ever again. I rather be free than be under a fuckn dictatorship. I will die for my country USA and i will fight and die for freedom. Robert Reich - the soffit twitter machine who can suck his own dick in pubic or something. Welll... yeah. Funny you should mention this. Just the other day I was thinking how we call them oligarchs if they’re Russian but billionaires if they’re American. What’s the difference? What middle class Wait a minute... 0 times 0 is still 0 my dude, and that's where the ruble is going. Liquidate Wallstreet Didn’t you get the memo: RUSSIA BAD, AMERICA GOOD. The difference is we are not invading our neighbors. No one gave a shit about Russia's ""Oligarchy"" they give a shit about the column of tanks As an outsider to both countries, things are better in the US, but not by too much. Russia is a kleptocratic oligarchy disguised as a democracy while the US is a plutocratic oligarchy disguised as a republic Not saying that I don't absolutely agree with the unfairness of the statement. But oligarchy means literally being ruled by closed loop of a few. Ολίγον=few Άρχων=Ruler Oligarchy is a political statement not an economic one. Even though being an oligarch goes hand in hand with having great wealth normally, it's not what the word is used to describe. Different discussion to what degree US politics are an oligarchy though. An oligarchy of 3.3 million people? (1% of US population) 1% of the US population is wayyy bigger than Putin and his buddies. In America, you call them billionaires. In Russia, oligarchs It’s Ill-begotten Greed. Greed never changes. Yes but the means of obtaining and holding this wealth are polar opposites This post sure seems like Russian propaganda. Sure there is wealth inequality in the U.S. Anyone who tells you it's comparable to the inequality and corruption in Russia is either an idiot or a Russian troll. Now check how many US politicians are in that bracket America is and always has been an oligarchy. People's History of the United States is a hell of a book. The natural progression of capitalism vs corruption. One a d the same /s It is an oligarchy Oligarch Musk...Oligarch Besos What’s even stranger is if you are middle class in the US, you likely have more wealth than 90% of the rest of the world. Robert Reich is a clown socialist who should be taken less and less seriously Cool, another sub getting taken over while the mods just sit and watch. Be careful the Clinton's might be listening Except poutine never earned any of his wealth,he stole from the good people of Russia. This is an inflammatory article from a man that specializes in pandering to raw emotions. There are so many willing omissions in detail and methodology that he clearly uses to drum up acolytes rather than get to the truth of the situation. Wage/wealth inequality is a thing. But the US system far more complicated and less nefarious than Reich wants you to know. Robert Reich is no better than a hysterical anti-vaxxer. Sad to see people don't want to address the problem but just keep thinking their one dimensional ""bad guy vs us"". Oh the US definitely has an oligarchy, just doesn’t have that cool name Russia has for them The US has a worse Gini coefficient than russia Is it really different? Lol ya, rich Americans haven't killed thousands of people to get their money. Even just the term “Russian oligarch” serves as a distraction by our media to make it seem like the Russian super-wealthy are a special James Bond villain breed of rich people that doesn’t exist in the US. If Jeff Bezos had a Russian birth certificate, we’d call him an oligarch. It basically is an oligarchy, but at least America's democracy is mostly intact whereas Putin destroys all opposition so he always wins. The west is 2 faced the US has way better narrative controls There's no material difference between Russian oligarchs and western billionaires other than that propaganda issued by billionaire-owned outlets convince people otherwise. It’s all the same bs It's the way of the World google your local libertarian candidate! More importantly, congress is much more likely to vote in favor of the concerns of the 1% than they are for anyone else. Robert Reich is a dangerously economically illiterate, but he’s got a point here. Break up America’s corrupt oligopolies like Google and Amazon, and prosecute the rest of big tech and media where there is collusion. They proved they have too much power; we have anti-trust laws to deal with it; so we just need to prosecute them. Moves like shutting down Parler would have gotten any other industry’s CEO’s jail time for anti-competitive collusion. On the other hand, if you’ve excelled innovating in a stagnant market (Tesla in the much larger auto industry for example), and haven’t reached monopoly or leveraged that monopoly against competitors, you deserve every penny of your billions. You mean if you run a government you can write regulations and policies that help your wealthy donors who got you your job in the 1st place? that's how government works it's quite evil 1% is 3 million people. That's hardly an oligarchy. Well, ya. Yes it is. There is one major difference: American oligarchs don't have absolute power over the government. They *do have power over the government* but the people have power too. We have some democracy here and while the American oligarchs want to get rid of that with laws designed to restrict voting right while spreading lies to convince people to vote against their interest we still have some power. Not the power we would have if America was a true democracy. I'm middle class and happy as shit 🖕 The US is a kleptocracy Yes it really is different. It's bad but not nearly that bad I believe the only difference is that the US's wealthy aren't working entirely together, making it a plutocracy rather than an oligarchy, where the majority of their wealthy have banded together to use their power to make official decisions Yeah, but if you run for president you dont simply vanish from the face of the earth. You can also protest in the streets without the fear of being tortured or going to prison for life... Hey you found the problem in the U.S. Shall we wander off to Ye' Olde France and sharpen a guilly? I agree, but this is a bad comparison. Isn't it something like the top .01% of Russians own more wealth than the bottom 99.8% combined? Our wealth inequality isn't even near that drastic, which is saying something because I think most Americans agree that the wealth inequality in the US is bad. Now imagine how bad that makes Russia lol We should now at this moment start calling them “the American oligarchs” USAOs There is a big difference between becoming a billionaire with ruthless capitalism and businesses than becoming a billionaire because you were given natural resources to exploit Public will could redistribute wealth. Even the field. Depends a lot of those people at the top worked 2-3 jobs and accrued crippling debt to get there. In fact most of them were born in the middle class or worse. Only 21% of millionaires inherited their wealth.......... This headline generates an immediate emotional reaction but think critically… What’s their definition of “top 1% of Americans”? What’s their definition of “wealth”? What’s their definition of “entire middle class”? Fun fact: In 2014, researchers determined that the US isn't much of a democracy, and may, in fact, be an oligarchy. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B For me there is a huge difference. Most of the top 1% Americans at least create something. Say Bezos, yes he takes big part of the cake for himself, but its at least a cake he created and developed. Russian oligarchs don't create anything, they own national natural resources and share the benefits between themselfs. Huge fucking difference. The difference is Putin, as a creator of nothing, is truly hoarding the cash. At least the U.S. billionaires keep they money in play. Wait. Are there people out there that don't think America is an Oligarchy? It is. The reason we call Russia an oligarchy and not America is because the Russian government has made themselves the enemy of the entire world. The same is true (kinda) of their predecessors the USSR. Of course it's not different; wealthy (generally corrupt) elites that control the levers of government. The critical difference in terms of public scorn is not economic inequality, it's that right now Russia is invading Ukraine and Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons against foreign adversaries. Wealth inequality is an issue that needs to be addressed because as it stands we are heading towards a second Gilded Age. That being said this guy is acting in bad faith. Billionaires earned their money in this country through entrepreneurship not through a deeply flawed privatization process. Also we don't dance to the whims of the billionaire class as much as Reddit wants to pretend we do. There is something so depressingly American about wanting to feel oppressed so bad. 22 million Americans are millionaires... that's the difference Love how Americans reckon that they're middle class... try working class Robert “Reich”. What a douche saying this as the actual oligarchs are bombing civilians in Ukraine. America is an oligarchy. We’re fucking terrible. It’s like the boys and we are the homelander. It is but the media doesn't like to talk about it. They are owned by them. This thread really controversial only comments huh Except it’s not the same people in the USA. It churns and is mostly made up of people building businesses their whole lives and the. Selling them. Not the same at all. Picking the wrong fight. How can you compare those 2 countries directly while the USA is out there with an almost 20 times higher GDP than Russia whilst having a population only two times as big as russias. The wealth inequality is definetly still there because in the western world we live in a capitalistic driven system which causes such an effect caused by the outcome of the market (and also a lil politics.) Russia tho is lead by an socialistic/communistic system which basically allows the highest rank leaders to decide how the money is gonna be distributed. So after all you got a similar outcome but much different theoretical chances in both countries. You could grow economically as a citizen in america whilst you are very limited of your options in russia. And after all the money distributed per person throughout the „lower“ 99% in America is a larger amount than the „lower“ 99% in Russia. Difference is America is capitalist so the top 1% garner their wealth by providing value to society, structurally, everyone has much more of an opportunity in America to gain that same wealth in comparison to Russia. Oligarchs on the other hand, created much of their wealth by being the middle man that was in charge of the communist “redistribution” of wealth. As a result, the quality of life on average for a person in America is much greater than that of the average individual in Russia. I.e. Yes capitalism rewards the highest producers with the most amount of wealth, but everyone, on average, is better off because of it. So sure by percentages you can eyeball it and say there’s a similar pattern there. But what underlies it is not at all the same thing, and you’d much rather it be the result of capitalism rather than communism. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country You'll find USA has a gini index score of 41%, Russia 37%. This means USA is more unequal Yeah, capitalism was a cute word they made up, just like conspiracy. Its to hide the communism it creates. Robert Reich making a career out of being human garbage. How he finds any traction is beyond me. There's a special place in hell for him. We are surveying stupidity? 11k and counting... The US hasn't been using nerve agents against opponents in the UK. I just saw this on my front page I don’t know much about economics. Why is it that when they’re European or American they are billionaires and Oligarchs when they are Russian? Is it a difference of how they got their wealth or like how they function in society? Buddy. A singular dollar for us is almost a hundred dollars for them. Trust me, their wealth isn’t one to really brag about. Especially not recently. Well, at least here in Germany the view has been for a while that the USA is slowly becoming a fascist oligarchy. This country is a joke. Nothing “we the people “ do has an effect. EVERY POLITICIAN IS BOUGHT by big business. The whole world Is the same. Money buys anything and everything. Look at Epstein. He was arrested before and let go. I mean the only ones who can afford Epsteins “service” are the super rich. None of them are in jail . Why? Money!! Just now figuring this out? I get it I really do, but the capital it takes to cover expenses and expansion or unforeseen costs is the reason companies hoard their money. CEOs making 3x what a production worker makes can only be justified by schooling and a natural talent for thinking outside the box and solving problems. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah stay in school and wrap your tool. Life is like the game “Monopoly”, if you play long enough there is always one winner and a table full of broke losers. Communism at its finest 👌 It is really different, yes. Our oligarchs don't literally directly control our lives and have an active role in policy. There's certainly a lot to debate about their inactive role and influence, but lobbying for things is vastly different from making the rules themselves. Case in point: Bernie Madoff didn't die a free man. Epstein either. How many Russian oligarchs go to jail at all? Bill Gates had his company broken up. So did AT&T. Jeff Bezos can't tell the president to do something and it just gets done. Our system is skewed and broken, no doubt. But there's a huge difference in just **how** broken. It's like comparing the monarchy in England to when Henry VIII was king. They have a lot in common but aren't functionally similar enough to say ""just as bad"". I was thinking the same. But they are job creators and the wealth will trickle down. Biggest difference I can see is I dont disappear when I make fun of Biden, or question his policy/lack ther- hey howd you get in he- This is such a stupid false equivalency. You actually have to be extremely ignorant of how Russian society works, how American society works, or both to believe this. It should be proportionally expensive to remain rich. Do you have ANY idea how poor poor Russians are? I mean they are living in shacks. Have you ever seen how they dress in winter when inside? Every clothe they have, will be on... Well, maybe a little exaggeration, but the point is that the political elite has amassed a fortune of tens of billions of usd, and that is the low limit. All the while when the country has not developed practically at all, common people live in poverty, even those working and with degrees. That accompanied with the rigged elections, and the fact that it is country's leaders that steal funds and riches of nation. Whilst in USA, the most wealthy individuals have made their money through business, selling their own products, their own intellectual property. It's a big difference compared to a small clique that takes the oil, gas and every other valuable thing that country has, and sells them to profit themselves, all while keeping themselves in power. So? Everyone is free to go make as much money as they want. Without the wealthy there is no economy. Communism doesn't work. It never has and it never will. There are young adults becoming filthy rich in the US by making stupid videos, so whoever wants to acquire wealth can. And they have the greatest opportunity to do so here in the US. You just have to work for it. Close the wealth gap by making more money! They also control the US government. So yeah it %100 is an Oligarchy. Heard of the French Revolution? About to happen here.... It’s the same thing. Start snatching up Bezos rocket ships till he starts paying his fair share of taxes Something doesn't add up here The top 1% pay 40% of all tax revenue. Is that their fair share? Imagine not being an oligarch. Who cares how much money someone else has. The only reason you get upset that there are people with billions and billions is because you are jealous. Pretty sure a study was done a while back that concluded it was an oligarchy. Its different if its earned vs taken The literal CEO of Intel was present and honored at the State of The union address. Shows where our priorities are at... https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/robert-reich-makes-36-more-than-average-ceo-and-gets-40k-for-a-one-hour-talk-vs-average-worker-pay-of-46kyear/ https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/democrats/robert-reich-net-worth/ Beware people trying to sell you on ideas. There’s usually something in it for them. How is this shit upvoted? Bots? Or the people on reddit have negative iq? False equivalency, but sure let’s make that argument. The difference between America and Russia in this regard is the marketing behind it. Lol how ironic, the oligarchs controlled media are directing the world to attacks heir oligarch counterparts in Russia Pretty much every country's wealth distribution is roughly the same. According to the literal definition of the word, every country on the planet is an Oligarchy. Don't say that out loud, they might get offended American oligarchs next plz Yes. You moron. Yeah, but USA doesn't invade innocent countries for no reason! /S I think it’s starting. This dude and the president at the time Bill Clinton is the reason for wealth inequality he was a coward who allowed Clinton to sign into law the 90s crime bill and the Welfare Reform bill they also started the deregulation of banks and added penalties to early withdrawal of 401k benefits. Go look it up. All thanks to 20% tax bracket For the love of all that is holy! I have been screaming this at the top of my lungs for five years and everyone thinks I’m crazy. The United States has lost the Republic to an Oligarchy! Welcome to the party pal. He ain’t wrong Let’s not make a false equivalence between the US and Russia. They're right. The fact that I'm allowed to own so much money actually means I haven't done anything productive with it. I just hoard it because I'm worried about losing it. Without context the opening statement is clickbait. Ahhhh shiiittt. Those civil war type of words. Get the pitch forks folks we going to all high income zips codes. I interesting comparison The Oxford Dictionary definition of Oligarchy is: a small group of people having control of a country or organization That’s another way you can think about the fact that sanctions won’t work And considering the fact that your government is pretty much for sale given the power lobby groups have? Seriously, the rest of the developed world has been saying that for years. If we could address this while putting all other political differences aside for the moment, the world would change for the better. Never heard of this subreddit and all the other post have basically no upvotes. Weird. Almost like this one is artificially inflated to stir controversy with Americans during the Ukraine invasion by Russia. And nobody even bothers to check this person’s profile. Their banner unironically states that they believe a capitalist conspiracy is trying to silence them through reddit mods, and that’s why they keep getting banned. Meanwhile they’re basically a tankie not that just posts misinformation about whatever “western” country they can at any given moment. ask Nancy Pelosi , she’s a market wizard We need to stop calling them billionaires, elite, 1%ers etc. and call them what they really are: Oligarchs. Been saying this for years... Capitalism and Communism, unchecked, have the same ending: a State owned by oligarchs. Legit, thats what exactly what it is, except we get rewarded with the illusion of free will. Governments only function when the correct people are kept happy with money I would say that, yes, it is much different, but only because of the relative size of the American economy to the Russian economy. Middle class people are fat in America because of how much wealth there is. Such extraordinary inequality is permitted because of how easy it is to get fed and how many people in the middle class there really are. My problem is that such exasperated inequality will stifle the american economy, and cause us to reach an economic equilibrium on par with Russia. Who knows though? I really only have a concentration in the field of economics, so truly believing myself with conviction in this situation would be a mistake. If I were actually in charge of the economy, I would certainly defer as much responsibility to those who know, and can guide me to understanding it. So democratically electoral economic decisions would really be enhanced by humility and respect, followed by a pragmatic eagerness to learn and experiment. standing there with your hand out never works…. When the US does it, that's capitalism. And any talk of taxing then is ""far left socialism"". Thanks Fox News. I find it interesting how our media is comfortable applying the term ""oligarch"" to rich and influential Ukrainians and Russians. You rarely, if ever hear the term applied to rich and influential Americans. Russia, of course, isn't a democracy, but Ukraine is. It might be ""flawed"" if you want to quibble over details, but I would say our democracy has its flaws as well. Are our own western oligarchs really so much more deserving, honest, and virtuous than their eastern counterparts? Shit… isnt Elon musk African? He made a shit ton of many from the states…. No shit. Capitalism and freedom are not one and the same. Americans conflate the two all.the.time. Most things under the sun is multifaceted. How can you look at 1 metric (wealth distribution) and conclude that American Elite and the Oligarchs are the same? North Korea has lower rate of cancer than Denmark. They must have a better medical system? Stupid ass comparison Look at the wealth Biden and Obama have created for themselves as career long politicians. It’s ridiculous people overlook this. One at a time. We all know there are similar issues in other nations but I'm hoping if we can show that mass involvement of the populace can have an effect in sometime as far gone as Russia, well, maybe it could be a turning point. Or maybe not. I've seen plenty of these movements in my lifetit quickly start and then fizzle out or get shut down but I would love nothing more than to see the oligarchies fall like domino's. I can't see it happening but I can dream I guess. Unfettered greed and corruption simply aren't sustainable. I hope that as we get closer to the brink of the abyss all of our civilisations will begin to recoil. Propaganda I believe Harvard or some ivy league college declared the US to be an Oligarchy in 2012. So yes, I think America is an Oligarchy as evidenced by the elections and lack of action taken that the majority want. You must love Russia…..just kidding. Oligarchy ""a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution."" Elon musk is not the president. He will *never* have a normal life with his money again. Where will he go? There’s million dollar bounties on his head and literally no country will accept him, where can he go and what can he really ever do outside of being locked up in a bunker? He totally fucked himself. What an absolute clown. it is. America plays by their own rules. Do as I say, not as I do! Duh!! I wonder if a wealth tax is a better answer than war. Firstly, whataboutism doesn't make it OK. Secondly, yes. They are oligarchs. The difference is that the quality of life in the US is, on average, far greater than in Russia. They have taken a lot, but not to the point of despotism. It does need a rebalanced though. I move to begin calling our stupidly wealthy class oligarchs. See how many bills pass in support of them then. Y’alligarchs. There is actually a difference yeah. Ones a plutocracy, the other is an oligarchy. Similar sure, and both fuck over the middle class, but it’s like testicular cancer vs prostate cancer. Dude can't even construct a useful strawman argument - needs to employ whataboutism to attack it. Putin's war is a distraction from the inequality he's caused in Russia. The constant messages of Ukraine being Nazis, it's just so 1984esque. He needs them to be an enemy. I really hope Russians see through the bullshit. And they lobby with both democrats amd replubicans to protect themselfs legally and financially. We know who all the grifters are they got D's in front of their name Wow. Tone deaf. I’m guessing almost any Ukrainian would currently love to trade places and join the American middle class about now. Me me me huh? Put simply, it isn't all that different, at all. We just have systems in place in America that teach our youth from a very young age that this is normal and okay. We have an oligarchy now in America, politicians are bought and paid for by their respective donors and their lobbyists. This isn't news to anyone who takes a moment and assesses how lawmaking is done currently. I'm glad to see the question being posited more, I hope it brings more people to the brink of class consciousness some headlines just leave me thinking ""no shit"", ya know? Poor people always blame the rich for their problems. Except unlike Russia they pay more taxes then you could ever dream. TLDNR: artificially low interest rates favor assets over labor. ​ In the US, its not so much direct kleptocracy but its the flipside- democracy- where politicians need to promise spending they dont have to win win win in a constant and never ending election cycle. They do this through the Federal reserves control of the supply of money. My theory in a one liner is as follows: artificially low interest rates favor assets over labor. The US has abused fiat since the moment it repealed gold standard. Fiat comes with responsibility. You cant abuse it. We abuse it. Over 50 years of lower and lower rates. Who decides the cost of this fake money? Millions of transactions? No. One board called the FOMC. The fed can control interest rates by printing dollars and purchasing either treasuries or mortgage backed securities. Its mostly treasuries. So like yes... you read that correct. The federal government needs to fund Medicare and social security in deficit. So every week they go to the public and say ""i will offer new treasuries"" and the public shows up and bids. Except over the past few years the biggest purchaser of this debt has been... the federal reserve... who prints the money in the first place.... its true. So this creates this stupid scenario for homebuyers where 4% mortgage is ""so cheap"" relative to the 18% my parents paid to borrow money. The trick is... at the end of the day... the actual interest youll pay to the bank is... laughably similar since the 18% borrower paid less than $100k for an urban house and todays buyer at 4% is paying north of 500k. So you see... it only makes sense to own assets... especially when the government policy is to flood the world with.. well nothingness bills itself prints. Because a house is a house. Land is land. Dollar is... nothing. Laborers work for dollars. Assets retain their purchasing power due to real scarcity. It is the ultimate responsibility of a fiat currency system is to maintain real and appropriate scarcity so the currency retains its purchasing power. the USG does NOT get this and the dollar has lost over 95% of its purchasing power since the 1980s. And just to hit back at the OP... americas billionaires have all their wealth in assets.. but also in equity assets... and.. like... its cuz they founded a company.. Bezos owns.. what.... 11% of amazon?! Does that sound rediculous? and like... thats it. Thats all his wealth. He had a very very valuable idea and executed and hes an oligarch? The public decided bezos deserved to be wealthy .. welll.. by using cheap lending to run up the amazon stock to quite expensive multiples. You see... the USG abuse of fiat has made the equity billionaires possible by allowing the public access to low cost leverage..... my man. Capitalism and Communism bad I understand the point but hate the argument. Russian oligarchs rigged the system from the start, stole businesses and land, and the monopolized services. This sounds like the type of hyperbole that people say about America all the time but it's not the same and tbh most of those people are dead wrong. The ""American dream"" of picking yourself up by the boostraps and becoming a millionaire is a real scenario I'm the US, talk to tech folks. We have problems with wealth inequality but for entirely different reasons and not to the same degree. We should try to solve it, but that's a different topic. And this is exactly why most Americans and most Russians have the same common interests. This comment section defending being poor in America is fucking dismal. Grow the fuck up. Russia and the USA suck The stuff that gets upvoted on the frontpage is fucking dumb. But it’s legal and above board in America. Most stock gains. Nice save deletes his comments. And the usurper got surped We are better off than the poor in Russia. But we’ve been trending towards Russia poor for awhile now. You are 100% right ""Go fuck yourself!"" -Unsung Hero Irritating to see these talking heads giving their one opinion over and over again in the context of on every single event in the news. There are lots of things that matter in the world besides American wealth inequality. The difference is that in Russia, Oligarchy is a small group of people who control the State Government (Putin and his inner circle); the ultra rich there aren’t actually in control of their own money, anyone so much as sticking a toe out of line can be replaced to secure that money. An oligarchy does not necessarily have to be super rich; those who are, are simply because they are being employed to secure sources of wealth. They are ultimately controlled by the State. In the US, it’s far worse; the ultra rich are the ones who are in effective control of the government. It’s not an oligarchy, it’s a plutocracy. Get it right. Or how about a billionaire who hates the incumbent President and just starts writing checks and eventually gets himself on the national debate stage for president? Sound familiar? Pull back on the artificial government enforced monopolies and oligopolies based on patents, copyrights and trademarks Sounds like runaway capitalism. > Oligarchy - government by the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and privileged group for corrupt or selfish purposes. From a guy who served in 3 presidential administrations. By his own logic he is part of the problem. But, Putin got there by stealing and murdering, case in point, stealing Bill Browders assets and torturing and murdering his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to give false statements/falsify documented signing over Bill Browder assets. Oligarchs have 30% of Russia's total wealth vs 15% in the US so yes, it is different. Top 1% in USA are 3 million in Russia you could fit them all in a bus yeah..welp..unfortunately, we Americans have to vote for one self interested clown or another as prez every four years. Jimmy Carter was the last gasp of the concept of 'idealistic governance'. Oligarchs in the US? I am assuming the Op is referring to people like Bill Gates, Bezos, Musk, etc. how many of these people were born millionaires again? Did they make their money or did they inherit it? This is not a Indictment on capitalism as much as it is an indictment on our terrible anti-trust laws. Amazon shouldn’t be able to sell merchandise at a loss just to put other people out off business. Ok Gotta love America. They even find a way to make a war between Russia and Ukraine about them. Wow no one else noticed that good job pally you really did something here. I don't think our oligarchy can launch the nukes. Oligarchy has a meaning and Robert Reich should know what it is considering his background So has Biden and his associates. The difference is: The top 1% in America *earned* it thru means of capitalism. Don't be jealous. Just play the game. Seeing the yacht seizures.. are we.. are we beginning to eat the rich? [deleted] Well then, go to Russia if they’re “just like us”. I don’t see the average Russian living like the average American. Yes it's very very different. Is the oligarchy that the third party voters in the us promised to fight but never thought about again after trump was elected The US is absolutely an oligarchy. It will just never be allowed to discuss because the oligarchs own our government and all of the media outlets. Well, this guys net worth is $4-5M. Statistically, he’s in between 1% and 2%-ers. Spent a lot of time working for the government. But of course he’s not in That oligarchs club. Oligarchs are bad guys. Billionaire Americans are good guys. They pay their employees a living wage,or just a little bit under,you know,just to keep em hungry. We've been living in an oligarchy... anyone who says differently hasn't been paying attention. Yeah sure, but at least America doesn’t go invading other nations unprovoked. /s The rich control all. Ahhh finally I thought we would never find a way to make the Russia situation about how bad the us is The difference is, in America, our oligarchs provide goods and services along with employment opportunities. In Russia, they just rob people. I agree Bob but between the two of us only one is invading Ukraine It's not, because those people aren't literally directly passing policy in the US. Sure, they can donate, whatever. That doesn't matter. The oligarchs in russia literally control everything. Also, the top 1% of Americans includes people who make like 250k a year as a husband and wife combo, that *is* middle class. Turns out the top 1% also pays for about 40% of all taxes in the US... https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes been saying it for years. the only difference between putin and the American ruling class is that putin straight doesn't give a shit about hiding what a piece of shit he is. “It's all just the same thing over and over; we can't help ourselves. And you and I can't control it, or stop it, or even slow it. Or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot money if we get it right. And we get left by the side of the side of the road if we get it wrong. And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers. Happy foxes and sad sacks. Fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah, there may be more of us today than there's ever been. But the percentages-they stay exactly the same.” Yup. Just Waiting for the revolution to begin. But...... they are dumbing down America so much it might never start. The GOP and the Russians have the same goal apparently. Don’t confused control of assets with governance. There’s overlap to be sure, but they’re not the same. The 1% do not control government like they do in Russia. They *influence* but do not *control*. It's an important distinction. In a 2015 interview, former President Jimmy Carter stated that the United States is now ""an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery"" due to the Citizens United v. FEC ruling which effectively removed limits on donations to political candidates. Wall Street spent a record $2 billion trying to influence the 2016 United States presidential election. If people don’t see it it’s cause the oligarchs in America have been doing what they’ve intended get all the wealth they can. Don't even try to compare Russia and US. In US if you are smart enough and have venture beginnings you can reach sky level success. In Russia it doesn't matter how good you are , if you don't pay tribute to Putin and his friends you will never be able to run your own considerable business (also you must be loyal to him) Durov , Khodorkovski , Chichvarkin says hi. the average american makes much more money and has access to a lot more services and is exposed to better opportunities. More importantly, the head of state isn’t the richest man in the country like Putin. American billionaires are plutocrats not oligarchs. He would make an excellent redditor shoehorning ""America bad"" so easily into every conversation. There’s poor people everywhere. There’s rich people everywhere. the top 1% wouldnt be an oligarchy, the top 100 people maybe. They only get involved when there financial gain This is also neglecting the fact the just because the chasm may be a similar size, that does not mean that the median or mode are anywhere NEAR similar. This is going based on a single hand selected data point. Ah of course. Nutjobs that blame NATO and US for this invasion somehow manage to make this invasion that Russia starts about the US. True We call them Lobbyists here. In Russia, they're called 'oligarchs'. In America, we call them 'the wealthy' or 'billionaires'. They are identical all but in name. Capitalism vs. Communism Big difference ever meet someone who has to make everything about them? It’s possible for two things to be bad while also acknowledging that one is worse, and after we acknowledge that, we can still work on fixing the relatively less bad thing It’s the same here. We raise hell all over the earth and for some reason everyone is focusing on Russia. Fucked up man Lol @ the top comment having 100 karma while this post has 25k. Totally not botted btw Totally not propaganda btw Yes when are we going to stop it? It's not different. The only good billionaire is a dead one Man who has no idea what an Oligarchy is claims America is one. More news at 10. Call them whatever you like if that makes you happy, but trying to use this kind of whataboutism to justify Russia invading another country is just pathetic I know people want to come up with labels, but I'd rather hear about solutions. Who cares about the gap? Really even the poor in America have homes, food, TV all basic need met and then some. The middle class lives better than basically anyone in the world, so really who cares if CEOs have billions. I make 13.5 an hour and literally don't know how to spend it all. So no with the quality of life we have the gap doesn't bother me at all. Except...the US has term limits. How stupid Reddit moment Wife is a doctor. We are in the top 1% in the US. We do not: Exploit others Involve ourselves in organized crime Bribe or use influence and power to work around existing laws. Use existing laws to “game” the system. We pay our 50-60% in taxes every year. We are not the same as these oligarchs and I’m tired of being vilified. Reddit insists that I should keep paying our student loans while everyone else’s loans are forgiven. According to Reddit, I should have to pay more for healthcare, childcare, education, and student loans. So much of Reddit views us as their personal cash cow or pack mule. This is just another “intellectual” suggesting we pay more so they can do less and so many others piling on because who doesn’t want free stuff TV tells them they deserve to be whole and complete? The reality is that the individuals you are after are more like the top .1 to .01% of the US population. Why haven’t Democrats “gone after” them? Because they need them. Because no and low taxes Keeps them in business, employs others, and innovates. I’ve got no problem having an honest conversation about the US, wealth inequality, etc. THIS however is a just propaganda. Just looks at the posting history of anti-west rhetoric. Dunno why tf this is upvoted as there’s a political agenda obviously behind it. Wake up folks and stop upvoting this tripe. It’s to distract from the bs and murder happening in Ukraine. Reported and approved who cares. You’re a shill. Be honest lol ITT: wE dOn'T hAvE aN oLiGaRcHy CuZ rUsSiA iS sO mUcH wOrSe. As if that's a metric in the fucking slightest. We are in an oligarchy. Anyone who disagrees is either ignorant or in denial. The government is overly responsive to the whims of the most wealthy and powerful individuals and companies in this country. How the fuck is that not an oligarchy? Americans can move in and out of the 1% everyday Are they really so different than Putin? …he asks. Yes, yes they are. Welcome to the definition of war for the past 6 thousand years It’s different because they actually stole and took over by force. The state owned gas company in Soviet Union and other resources- factories, etc. They took them over by force after the Soviet Union broke up. Lots of murders and killings. The oligarch group formed and then they split the country’s resources. Putin started to consolidate but you have to be in his graces to keep running the factories, oil companies etc. it’s VERY different than Bezos building Amazon for example and creating a good algorithm company and buying up other companies. He didn’t kill anyone and the president didn’t give it to him. I disagree and here is why, 1. An oligarchy doesn’t correlate with the economy, nether does democracy, a democracy can be communist it just hasn’t happened. Russia is a capitalist country now ? that’s crazy, never knew that Sanction the american oligarchs too. I agree everyone should be calling Bezos an oligarch from this point forward 1% of 325m is 3.25m. So you’re saying 3.25m is equal to ~96? Bad comparison. Sure the wage gap is getting extreme, but to call the USA an oligarchy based on the 1% stat is an exaggeration. I mean nowadays that will always happen, but in America it is more preferable than Russia. Let’s call them by their name: the American oligarchs Time to Eat Folks! Yes, America has oligarchs but believe it or not the system isn't entirely run by them. We do still have legit elections and can still sway legislation. I'd suggest that corporations are more important in American than individual rich people. Man this guy is really trying to sell books This is a dumb tweet. Everyone on this thread has a phone. Everyone is wealthier than the top 1% in any historical dynasty. Free markets mean everyone gets better technology cheaper. Focusing on the current top 1% is a red herring and just demonstrative of the innate psychology to want what is just out of reach. Yes, there are some who didn't earn their wealth, but their fortune isn't relevant to your own ability to survive and even to be able to achieve a comparable wealth with luck and hard work. Anyone in America can create a company, invent a form of intellectual property, and much more. America isn't perfect, but it's for the most part free, affording the common man to display dissidence against perceived authority. Focusing on the top 1% is like focusing on your neighbor buying a new car. It's irrelevant, unproductive, and distracts from real issues like ecology, clean water, and world hunger. Give me a break Reddit. I was attacked on Twitter for disagreeing because I wasn't putting up with others equating billionaires to oligarchs as if they were synonymous. I'm a nerdy academic who has read far more of those wonderfully dry books, and countless journal articles, in political science, comparative governance, political economy that no one else wants to read. There are different theories explaining the political economy of oligarchies - but here is my quick take: The real differences require a lot of explanation. Most simply, the difference isn't how rich the economic elite is, but rather the sources of wealth; how those with wealth acquired it; why those with wealth are allowed to keep it; how the government treats that wealth. Russian Oligarchs run major semi-privatized institutions, from major oil companies to all banks to all domestic media stations. They coordinate their activity not based on market demand but according to what the state wants - or what the collective will of the Oligarchs want. Market demand has a role, but it is secondary. In Oligarchy the state maintains significant leverage over each oligarchs wealth. In some respects many of Russia's oligarchs' wealth is more like a 'feudal loan' from Putin (or 'the state') that the Oligarch is free to use as they please but don't have full control over - the state can give and it can take as needed. Oligarchs that don't tow the state line tend to either (1) end up in prison; (2) get assassinated; (3) move abroad and take as much wealth as they can and then eventually die of mysterious circumstances. None of this applies to billionaires in our democracies. Our billionaires are 'major actors' with their own powers and weaknesses - influence is real, but competes both with other people; with corporations; with various levels of domestic and international governance. Yup No, you're thinking of the word plutocracy Lol I get that you’re mad but no America is not a mafia state. The Pareto principle is unavoidable regardless of the system. The question isn’t ‘should there be rich people?’ It’s really ‘who do you want to be rich?’ Do you any the politically connected like Russia, or the enormously productive like in the West? The wealth of corrupt Russians lines up almost exactly with the corruption in the Republican Party. Plutocracy. Who are the top one percent by income? $504,420 is the cutoff for a top 1% household income in the United States in 2021. Such a sensational and naive statement. American wealth is created by planet changing innovation. Yes it's different monke Professional edgy twitter poster. Veritas. Lol if you think wealth disparity in the US is comparable to Russia you’re a fool Duh. ..And oddly they are mostly Jewish! Of the Top 10 Billionaires in the U.S- 50% are Jews. (According to Google) So its strange to see the same thing in Russia. ..A small minority with 'dual citizenship' owning the ruling class/investment class. I saw this same post in Reddit anti work and it’s a way for them to take the eye off Russia and make the west revolt against its own elite class. Don’t get me wrong wealth hoarding is wrong but now isn’t the time to be focused about what about ism and more about taking our Putler Oh shut the fuck up How do all the Top comments on this thread have sub 100 upvotes when the post has 30 fucking thousands? Is this bot activity or do people really never click a post before upvoting? The difference is that in America YOU CAN become an OLIGARCH. And so it starts There is for sure inequality in the US, even more than ever before, but nobody should compare the top 1% of Americans to Putin or the oligarchs. 1. Look at how one can become 1% in Russia vs. America. At least the top top 1% in America are providing a service to everyone else. Get anything you need delivered same day (amazon), talk to everyone around the world and keep in touch (fb/meta), access to all info in seconds (google), everything else Musk :) What does Putin provide to people? and the oligarchs abandoned their own country 2. Political power and massive wealth is a dangerous combination, especially if they come in that order. Obama, Bush, Biden, and Trump (maybe) are not in the top 1%. phew. 3. Oligarchy means for few people to have control of a country, not only (or necessarily) massive wealth. That is why they use that word to describe them and they have never used that word to describe the top 1% of Americans. America will have its own upheaval soon... Who are the top one percent by income? $504,420 is the cutoff for a top 1% household income in the United States in 2021. Federal tax rate of 37% on $500,000 or more is $157,804.25 plus state tax. Putin and those oligarchs is a tightly knit circle that outsider don’t get to enter. Meanwhile, anybody can become an “oligarch” in his/her own right in the Us American politicians who didn't have much money prior to running for office and now have millions, is the same problem with the Putin. The US isn't any less corrupt than any other country. Imagine having to deal with Putin, Xi and other leaders who are billionaires. Many Presidents, American politicians and Gov workers have probably been jealous. What a stupid, ignorant thing to say right now. Oligarchs use political access to get money, Tycoons use money to get political access. Goddamnit i fucking hate this idiotic equivocation of just simple billionaires to oligarchs. A billionaire that just exerts the influenced allowed under whatever democratic system is far different to oligarchs who have direct influence that greatly outweighs that of a normal citizens allowed influence. Yes there are some politicians that are rich but they have the same political power as a similar ranking politician whose not. And a billionaire who donates to political parties or election campaigns are a far cry from oligarchs who will award their own businesses with government contracts and allowing themselves greater economic freedom in terms of regulation and taxation, and give bribes to politicians to ignore various illegal actions such as monopolistic practices. Simply in America the path for corruption is much more difficult than that of Russia. Yes technically there are some people you could consider oligarchs in America but their power as an oligarch is significantly lesser and more difficult to exert due to the legal institutions and democratic systems. These are not the same and it pisses me off that people are brain dead enough to look at something that's so incredibly complicated and come to the conclusion of ""American is an oligarchy Because rich people are really rich"" fuck off man. Yes there's an inequality of wealth in America but there's more to an oligarchy than that. Fuck. Sorry for the rant and probable grammar mistakes but posts like this gets my blood boiling in seconds. Would I be wrong to say that the wealthy in the US are the result of free market and the wealthy in Russia are (to a more extend) the result of influence of Putin. Money rules politics. Without money the “majority” of time you never makes it past the primaries. Who has money corporations do. We just have the illusion of choice. I think Trump and Moscow Mitch were and are aiming for that. Have a look at Joe Manchin too. Absolutely. If u don’t think there are billionaires that influence politicians in the US, then I don’t know what to say…. Is money power? In the same way that power is power? If anyone wanted a visual representation of how wealth inequality is in America. https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM “Already reported and approved” lol so much salt in this thread, folks seem unwilling to google who Robert reich is The Pew Research Center defines the middle class as households that earn between two-thirds and double the median U.S. household income, which was $61,372 in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 21 Using Pew's yardstick, middle income is made up of people who make between $42,000 and $126,000. So on the low end a U.S middle class worker double the world average for middle class. The average world salary is just $1,480 which goes to show how much better the average American or Westerner is in relation to the world Russia Annual Household Income per Capita reached 6,493.140 USD in Dec 2021, compared with the previous value of 6,003.419 USD in Dec 2020. Only 10.3 million people in Russia can be fully considered as members of the middle class, according to Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE). Real wages have been declining for five years in a row, fueled by Western sanctions and low oil prices. State-run media analysis of official data placed Russia’s middle-class figures at 14%, while the number of Russians living in poverty has risen to 21 million in 2019. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/04/russias-core-middle-class-shrinks-to-10m-hse-a67591 they cited also cited The 7% “core” of Russia’s middle class earns an average of 47,000 rubles a month ($723), So from data printed U.S middle class make a minimum of 42,000 with a range well into 6 figures where as the average Russian middle class worker makes less than 10,000 USD per year. This we pre covid and pre war. The Russians have a middles class population of about 7% indicating relative difficulty to achieve middle class. The U.S has a population with 52% in the middle class and 19% in the upper clas with the lower class among up the rest https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/ What the data shows is that while the U.S and Russia are home to extremely wealthy elite. The U.S gas far greater percentages of populations in middle class and upper classes vs Russia. Room for individual economic growth is far greater. And the U.S middle class makes more essentially at a minimum double the world average. The Russian middle class in comparison makes roughly half the world middle class average. The two nations have very different economic realities for their citizens and are not similar. Nope. Exactly the same. They even imprison you for being poor here. Small revolution going on here against the rich but it couldn't come fast enough. I hate how Americans think they are the master race. They arent even a true nation. Why are you so self entitled? Do you breathe water because the sky and the ocean are both blue? Trying to analyze complex systems using only one data dimension leads to really bad takes. In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. They're both oligarchical, but Russia's is much more disparate. Let’s start seizing American yachts this fn guy One produces his wealth the other stole it, how is it the same? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss Additionally, what is different between Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Bush's invasion of Iraq? Justifications were made up in both situations and the war was for profit. Agree that Putin and his pals need sanctions, but so did Bush. Seeing posts and comment history... I sense a Russian government crony. This is the type of misinformation I was expecting from antiwork. If you think american billionaires are comparable to russian oligarchs you need to go back to school. The elite in the US have it made. Politicians just sit around making pennies on the dollar compared to them, and the politicians get all the blame. But even better yet, they divided all the power up between 3 branches and no single person can be blamed for all of it. People try to put the blame on the president, but they really don't have the power that a Putin does. There’s a big difference between developing new and innovative companies that made their companies worth billions vs corrupt ass kissers who were given/stole state assets. How does this post have 32K+ upvotes and 2.4K+ comments, yet the highest upvoted comments are all under 200 upvotes? Joe Biden, gates, buffet, bezos, zuck, emusk aren’t committing genocide with their wealth If you’ve ever spent time in Russia, especially outside of Moscow, you’ll know that this is a dumb equivalency. People in the US take for granted how much more political power they have than people in actual autocracies do. Being poor in Russia is a totally different experience than being poor in a western country. Huge difference, our supposed “oligarchy” allows the entire USA 🇺🇸 to have a better quality of life than Russia, or other Communist dictatorships. Our people are generally more happy and able to do whatever they want in comparison. Idk why anyone would want a communist dictatorship over a capitalist democracy One guarantees a better quality of life. Based and true Wow! You have to be rally drinking the Kool-aid to think this is a fair comparison. I find it disturbing that someone who held a Secretary level position in the US government advances this kind of rhetoric. No we’re literally Russia with more power, glad people are realizing this Same thing ,different systems, embrace the suck yep money makes modern kings and queens, just that now its legal.. For the average man, their really isn't a functional difference between oligarchs and dictators. They both drive wealth inequality. Sound like a moron. Russia is a dictatorship. Then I advise you to look up the definition of oligarchy. There are some key differences. Whether those differences *make* a difference, I don't know. Awful, terrible opinion. Delete your account. Hypocrites in society. Stop worrying about Russia when we have fraudsters running our markets here in the US I feel like the massive difference is that Russian oligarchs are richer than almost all Anerican businessmen without having contributed zilch to society. Russia is measurably more unequal than the US, just look at their gini coefficient. And all of this is taking place in a country with double the population of Germany, but half the nominal GDP. My Russian friend who has family living outside of Saint Petersburg and Moscow says her fanily couldn't survive without her mother funding them through her job in Germany. If they are to big to fail and won’t be removed due to completely failing to manage their firm properly, and those firms are big enough to buy government officials… then yes… that is an oligarchy. Government officials are just the actors on set of a multi trillion dollar production. I don't begrudge people making big money. If you were smart enough to invest early and wisely, doing your due diligence and compounding then you deserve all you have. And if you don't pay taxes because congress has given you huge tax loopholes then my problem isn't you and your riches, it's with congress. Oh, you were born into wealth? Lucky you. I don't have a problem with your riches. I just hope you spread some of your wealth with folks who are working hard for you. Thank you. The hypocrisy is killing me every day. This post has been crossposted to the new sub, r/AllAboutWealth. Yes but because of our AMAZINGLY corrupt state media, we line up to suck OUR oligarchs dicks. Then we feel pity for Russians with their state media ""omg how will they ever see the truth when their media is like that?"" I want to actually debate the tweet, I think it's much more likely that the differences in the wealth curves of Russia and the US explain the differences between the two countries, than that the US has Oligarchs because they both have wealth inequality. Putin is in the tradition of Genghis Khan, the Oligarchs are in the tradition of his grandsons. Wealth is the motivation of nations. These people live on super yachts, travel freely, play with money. They can spend a week drinking and never get a hangover because they transfuse the blood of some child they bought. I'm not saying they do, I can't say they don't. What are they going to do if he gets out the tactical nukes? He seems to be using up whatever half useless stuff he has. General Petraeus thinks he's going to do Kyiv like Aleppo. There is not a solution here where the Oligarchs resume their normal lives - Russia withers. The US, however, wants to get back to business. The longer we tolerate the absence of Russia from the global economy, the easier it is to do without them - and income inequality will have to improve from the current disaster. High inflation means low unemployment. Business is now available to those that can pay workers - if that's only the Oligarchs, the government needs to act. The US really can't afford a Republican Congress right now. We are told we have a democratic republic though They're next This is so obvious an account to push narratives with. It doesn't take a post of /r/economy reaching the frontpage to see that, but it kinda helps. Lol. Yeah, but Putin straight up stole the money from the Russian people. You can't invest your way to $200 Billion. He killed people and took it. It's still ""riggin the system"" but the difference matters. nO tHeY wOrKeD hArD fOr tHeIr BiLliOnS!!! tHeY DiD iT aLl bY tHeMsElVeS!! _Theoretically_ we don’t live in a Kleptocracy the way Russians do. Capitalism relies to a greater degree on Rule of Law. not that there isn’t corruption in America but there are consequences here that don’t seem to exist in Russia. Lot of people in here have eaten way too much propaganda and are now mad that their worldview of America being the greatest country ever to exist is being challenged. I notice a lot of the time we (Biden administration and MSM) seem to accuse Russia of things we are doing ourselves. I’m no outing fan, but I won’t throw stones from a glass house. Would rather be the 99% in America than Russia. Every day of the week. Damn lots of bootlickers in here For sure America has a wealth problem but comparing current russian oligarchs with current american billionaires is a bit much. if you were comparing them to the robber barons of the 19th century i'd be with you. also, whataboutism really? he could better phrase it as ""good to see we are going after the robber barons in russia - lets keep it up and go after the american barons too"" Ill begotten gains. Seize that shit!! Fuck those richie roo shits. People who work hard all the damn time for less than they're worth; deserve more. Quit feeding bezos more money! FFS screw the mega rich- fuck em all. The comments in this thread are hilarious and defend billionaires. It doesn't matter what country you live in, the fact that there's a rising billionaire class is a problem. Yes it is very different lol Look at the standard of life in the average population Time to eat your masters. And I have to say eat. Because one of those masters owns this website. Enjoy the money noobhouse. Nope, this comparison is bull. The top 10% of all earners in the USA already pay 90% of the nation’s taxes. On top of that, if you were to combine the richest 100 billionaires in the USA and take all of their wealth and use it to pay tax to run the Federal Government, the US Government would only be able to last for 8 months. It’s not a tax problem, it’s a federal spending problem He’s right you know The American top 1% is 1.3 million households. There is like 100 Russian oligarchs. This guy is a fucking idiot. Basic math states that over time wealthy inequality will continue to grow unless intervention is taken Rich people gaining 5% on their investments is a lot more total dollars than poor people gaining 5% of their investments Buy gme ^This!!! We have the same BS going on here with the 1% corrupting the free press, elections and waging a race war (instead of a class war!!). I thought this when the US invaded Mexico last week. Oh, actually … America is corrupt as fuck. it'll grow to be worse in USA, eventually It is worse in Russia, yes. Cmon Robby. Ummmmm, our or “oppressors” and federal level rich boys are least don’t kill the gays. Luckily, I don’t remember anyone that opposed a president hanging from the ceiling or swimming in rivers. East, West, North and South. We the people need to reform our media and governments once and for all. We've let these crooks get away with literal murder, dividing/segregating us for too long and we've become complacent with letting these snakes get away with it barely any consequences and they know it. It is time for change, it is time for the people to take the world back into our control. We just can't allow them to rehash their self interested bullshit at the expense of innocent lives any longer, its 2022 not 1910 this has to ACTUALLY STOP! When governments go to war, innocent people pay the price of their lives and the controllers make profits. Wake the fuck up world, its time to change Its true lol Amen It’s like being the last to know a secret that is clear to literally everyone but you. Now we just need to get the middle-class “back to work” so that the top 1% can continue making that money. Go fuck yourself. Russian simp America is definitely an oligarchy. We hate the term bc it’s historically used to describe Russia. But it’s us now. Truth!!!! 'No, but please, we're talking about Russia.' Shhheeee dont say that or the brain washed sheeple will say your against success or you are a Communist..... Especially those right wing racist idiots with no education or money. OP has an agenda. Go look at his profile and see his posts. He or she astroturfs propaganda. But it's okay because Elon has funny burns on Twitter. According to this study we are an oligarchy https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 1% in America is like 3.5 million people. There’s like 100 Russian oligarchs. It’s a little different. This point needs to be made more often Look at the Pelosis and Bidens. True Oligarchs right there. I had a history professor in high school that said we live in an oligarchy. That was more than 15 years ago. His point was that in an oligarchy the people working are busy doing their jobs while the wealthy owners have time to go concern themselves with laws/regulations that affect them. I blame the government for printing the dollars and bailouts. Greedy people will greed, and that's majority of us. Same everywhere. They are very similar Its a borne out fact the US is an oligarchy. The 50 richest Americans now hold almost as much wealth as half of the U.S., https://archive.ph/25Bz4#selection-2955.0-2955.76 Yes. It’s very different. And either way, that’s not what an oligarchy is. But the top 1% in the US aren’t bat shit crazy, world domineering psychopaths sitting on nukes. Big difference. the just in “greed is the root of all evil” more at 11:00. THIS! Don't compare those shitty people to US billionaires. Our rich people actually have a positive effect on society. Same same, Compare our middle class to Russia's middle class. Americans are the most ungrateful people on the planet. Oligarchy isn't just wealth inequality. In Russia, the oligarchs are the people that Putin *allows* to become wealthy, and they get his permission by giving him a cut of their businesses or wealth. In the West, anyone who is able to become wealthy is allowed to do so. And the 1% and rich still cut wages even during record profits, and they were shocked people didn’t work for them for crappy pay. I am waiting for people to realize social issue warfare is a distraction used by the rich to keep us from realizing class warfare is the only true warfare. Hey, loser! Why don't you get to work a accumulate some wealth? It’s cute when Americans think they are ‘elect’ their President. And with Citizens United, money > democracy. Ok. Lets deal with Ukraine and then address wealth issues here and across the globe. Why does Jeff Bezos have a yacht the size of a cruise ship while kids can't even get enough food? It's not the same. Post bullshit like this on antiwork where it belongs. Robert Reich: Dumbass Let’s deal with Ukraine then circle back to this America has been an oligarchy for 50-60 years. Little difference. *Jimmy Dore has entered the chat* Top 1% America is deeply corrupt, billion dollar football stadiums with homeless people sitting outside of it, Why do you not care for them? Let me give you a scenario You’re 18, no transportation.. you just lost your guardian and now you are without a home.. if you do not have family, you are now homeless, unless you join the military.. if no military, you’re out on the street. Once on the street, people turn to drugs like crack to cope with how terrible it is to wake up sweaty and nasty. It’s hard man. Same shit everywhere and all their policies in each country is bend around to protect them and benefit them in usa for example big pharma and insurance companies, you can thank insurance and big hospital for those 2 M charge bill for your life saving procedure which by the way will bankrupt your entire life savings while you’re at it Nah it's nothing alike what's going on in Russia rn, and the suggestion is unnecessary It’s so sad that this country is divided and fighting over whatever tucker Carlson wants there to be an uproar over. If we all came together life would be a lot cooler. I’m American and I agree. It’s bad to have such wealth inequality. The USA is far from perfect. Russia is far from perfect. We can’t say oh they do it too as an excuse to keep doing wrong. Caveat to this comment: this is a complicated topic and America is not perfect. However, I would like to push back against the notion this post suggests somewhat. After reading skeptoid episode [790](https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4790) I changed my opinion on American billionaires a little. A few key takeaways: 1. Billionaires whose fortunes were largely amassed by political connection (oligarchs) DO causally drive income inequality. 2. Billionaires who gained their fortunes otherwise do NOT have clear causal links to income inequality—""there simply weren't any clear, consistent links between a nation's billionaires and its Gini coefficients"". 1 3. ""Economic inequality is definitely undesirable."" Yes income inequality is bad, but it isn't clear that billionaires who gained their fortunes not primarily through political connection are the driving factors of that inequality. I don't pretend to be the best source on this, I will definitely be checking out the sources others have posted. Please listen/read what I linked as it is goes into better detail than I did (only 20 mins long). *Checks OPs post history He is Putin/Russia supporter Surprised Pikachu face This claim is misleading. The top 1% own just over a quarter of the wealth, that's a lot, but Russia's 0.00008% own 35% of the wealth. Not to mention that it's all from inheritance and politics. In the US people like Jeff Bezos were born middle class and got rich through actually doing something instead of sucking Putin's dick. The entire state of the union i kept saying ""what about congressmen and senators insider trading? What about the damn American oligarchs?"" Shit pisses me off. Does ""top 1%"" refer to income or net worth btw? Because 800k+ puts you in the top 1% of earners, and I doubt those are folks are owning some huge % of the wealth. Oh good, the reddit socialists are out in force again Yes Contextually it is a very different situation. Russia is an advanced version of what the US is becoming in my opinion. The degree of control the oligarchs of Russia have is greater than those of the US. Oligarchs in Russia are more interested in exercising hard power, and have killed/arrested any opposition to them, in a way few Americans have seen in recent decades. Privatization in the former Soviet Union was rigged from the start; no one very had a fair chance. The same people who ran the USSR turned their state owned enterprises into nationalized business, and reaped the benefits. They bribed and threatened their way into power, and seized the Duma (legislative body) and executive power in the name of the very same folks who'd been administrators of Soviet state apparati. In contrast, the US allowed for too great a degree of deregulation and corrupt to take hold. I believe dramatic reform is still possible in the US through civil ( not necessarily legal avenues) . Whereas, I fear the Russian people will need to overthrow their government to even take back any hope of a fair economy. We in the US are become more like Russia each day, but we still have a LOT more economic freedom, even if it is not in anyway close to fair for working Americans. Thats a horrible take from this entire situation. Not a bit but we are eating the shit right up. Enough is enough If only there were someone running for office that has been in Congress saying this for decades. But at the same time, US wealth inequality is not even close to the same as Russia. The 99th income percentile in America is $470k. That's the salary of a specialist doctor. TIL my orthopedic surgeon is a member of the oligarch class. Shhhhh we aren’t supposed to talk about this. America good Russia bad! We’ve always been at war with Eastasia er I mean Russia. We are an Oligarchy as much as any other form of government we may have well they weren't just handed over the wealth for being buddies like the oligarchs in Russia were it's alot different. That's not what oligarchy is Russian oligarchs stole. USA wealthy did not. Yes there maybe in both camps that got rich through dubious means but there is zero comparison. I am a liberal and this is why we lose. We demonize the wealthy only because it’s easier than to say what society can do to reduce inequality. What is this guy, some kind of fifth column Same thing different country. But we're free... /s Yeah but the filthy rich ""run"" businesses at the very least. They aren't sitting there as the supreme rulers of everything about my life. No war except class war. One difference is that they aren’t using that wealth to invade and take over Mexico. Or Canada. Or Ukraine. Being poor in America is so much better than being poor in Russia. Just one example, childhood diseases like Rickets are prevalent there, but rare in America. Word. Really can’t equate America’s 1% with Russia’s, but it’s a valid point. It was my first thought when I saw the headline about Biden saying they'll put up roadblock stopping the oligarchs accessing their ""ill-begotten wealth"". Awesome. Why stop there? I'm sure he's on a first name basis with a lot of other people that deserve the same treatment. No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. You see friend, when Russia does it, it's evil Oligarchy. But when the god fearing, freedom loving, US of A does it, that's capitalistic freedom. As American as apple pie. I read a comment earlier from a different post that the word we’re looking for is a Plutocracy - a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. Nah, those guys told me that we live democracy Yes, all countries have them. It’s all about degree they affect life’s of a common citizen and how much relative freedom laters have to potentially request to change something in their life. Most America oligarchs capital is generated from building, providing, researching something ( non Wall Street crowd I mean). In Russia, majority is simply selling natural resources of the land. So, that is a big difference right there. If you think about true corruption, think how much money could be amassed if, for instance, every time someone has to renew their driver’s license, Putin picked up a couple percentage points off their fee. Now do that for every government controlled activity. Tonnage coming into a port, barrel of oil produced, auto manufactured. Then think of the bribes collected. Foreign Businesses that are repatriated, err, stolen. Yep. He’s got some riches. So lets seize all the oligarchs' assets. [deleted] Putins oligarchs paid to invade Ukraine. Americas oligarchs paid to rig an election with a virus. And here comes the tankies to try to swing this back on America instead of focusing on the real problem that is Russia. Who needs foreign propaganda when it can be successfully fermented at home. Fuck this guy is probably a 1% himself. There has been a term thrown around that is not farfetched - US Oligarchs This might be the most reddit moment yet Least biased economist: Yeah, America is a dumpster fire; facts. We have a corporate kleptocracy; have invaded countries for dumb reasons; and overthrown popular leaders to install puppet dictators who were nicer to us. The US has jailed and abused protesters; have a country built on systemic oppression that we are still reckoning with…. I appreciate the parallel … but it doesn’t mean the US shouldn’t defend Ukraine now - it just means that the US should ALSO face consequences when it does something terrible or commits war crimes. Yep. SAme shit. Doesn’t sound like an oligarchy to me because 1% is literally over 2 million of adult aged Americans. There’s wealth inequality but this example does not point to oligarchy. Bro, America is worse. Russia has been on point for the last 14 years with their commitment to democracy Random Russian oligarch story. I know someone who is an art handler. They install expensive pieces of art in rich people's homes. I won't say where this happened because it's a small field and I don't the person to get in trouble. This oligarch buys art pieces worth millions - the kind of stuff us plebs can only see in museums (until the oligarchs buy it all up). So this oligarch doesn't allow the help to come when he is there. He doesn't want to ever see the help and god forbid the help would talk to him. If he happens to show up while they are there, there is to be no eye contact or talking and they need to finish up and leave ASAP. The person has all sort of tales about the obnoxious privileged behavior of the stinking rich. It's crazy. The Russian dude had a really nice bathroom though (The art handler took a picture of it. LOL) OP has spammed this post so much. That’s because you’re stupid. Really stupid actually. If you cannot see the enormous wealth we all enjoy in the USA, perhaps you should move to Russia and see the difference. You might get some perspective and appreciate this awesome country of ours. Most of which switch assets over to gold, real estate, euros, dollars prior to this drop in the ruble. Then they will come back to buy everything from the poors at pennies on the dollar. Or ruble Ummm yeah it is Reich can always been relied on for the most 70 IQ lib tweets. Why not throw in a Harry Potter reference for good measure. Except in America it’s not directly stolen oh god here comes the dipshit socialists and their shit opinions >Is the state of wealth inequality really so different in America? yes ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⢀⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣆⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⣸⣿⣿⠉⠉⠉⠄⠉⢹⣿⣦⡀⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⢿⣿⣿⣁⠄⠄⠤⠤⡀⠻⣿⠃⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠘⣿⣿⣿⡗⠖⡶⢾⣶⠊⡏⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⢻⣿⣿⣅⣈⠂⠐⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠘⢿⣾⣇⣂⣠⠄⠄⠄⠁⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⢘⣿⣗⠒⠄⢨⠶⢁⣄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠨⣿⣿⡿⠋⠁⣴⣿⣿⣷⣦⣄⡀⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⢀⣠⣄⣶⣎⢱⢄⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣦⣤⣄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⢠⣾⣿⣿⡞⢝⡟⠃⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣯⣿⣿⣇⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⠆⢄⠄⢛⡫⠝⢿⡥⠟⡃⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣼⣭⣻⣿⣿⡀⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⣴⣆⠄⢋⠄⠐⣡⣿⣆⣴⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⢈⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡄⠄ ⠄⠄⣼⣿⣷⠄⠉⠒⣪⣹⣟⣹⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣟⣿⣿⣿⡇⢀⣸⣿⣿⣿⢟⣽⣿⣿⣇⠄ The Americans didn’t steal it from the Middle Class. The Russian Oligarchs stole it from everyone, with Purim’s approval. Yep. Yes we’ve solidly lived in an oligarchy since pretty much the Cold War. This is nothing new and nothing but the ultra wealthy or a second French Revolution is going to change it at this point I agree, I also hated hearing Condie Rice’s comments. That bitch pushed really hard for invasion of Iraq under completely false pretenses. 💯💯💯 We hippies have been saying this since 1967, sheesh! I am ardently anti-Russia and anti-China. I am pro Ukraine. But I just told my friend today that when it comes to wealth inequality the United States isn’t in much of a position to throw stones. It’s difficult to not look at our own government as an oligarchy, albeit, I think ours has some massive advantages over the one Russia has. Not all oligarchy are created equal as it were. It’s not near the same, but our trajectory isn’t great. In the US, we pay taxes. In the UK, we get paid welfare money. In Russia, we pay cash. Robert Reich believes that because he is well credentialed in economics, you should believe his shitty political opinions Pretty sure that’s a logical fallacy. US oligarchs put Russian oligarchs to shame I am. Bernie voting democrat. But please don't compare our situation to Russia. That’s a lot of oligarchs He was a respected dude, and now he’s just bullshit hot take after bullshit hot take. Double standards at its finest 👌 Came here to say I agree and I hate it. It is what we mean when we say workin for the “man”. It’s the CEO class Robert Reich is a grifter! He is a known liar that has personal ties to the Clinton foundation. The billionaires who's wealth all comes from stocks is worth that much because investing into the stock market is a fundamental part of retirement in America. Never waste a crisis eh Yeah but they are ""our"" oligarchs Top 1% own more than the BOTTOM HALF of Americans. And many people in the bottom half have less than $0 in net worth - i.e. they are indebted. Combined, billionaires only own 3% of global wealth. The vast majority of wealth is owned by middle class and upper middle class households. Not even in the same realm but nice try Oh Jesus, NO it isn't anything like the same. USA is also a oligarchy. So yes Because the wealthy ones in America don't have the control to start their own war. (r.disabled) I’m liking the 4th Reich only slightly more than the 3rd one. True but we need reasonable wealth inequality. Otherwise they shoot people. Bottom line is we need to get rid of nukes so we can shoot each other civil like. Just hear me out on this: TAX HAVENS And trumputin was working hard to destabilize the country and start a war. Diff between North America and Russia is that our Oligarchy is astronomically larger. They are all friends and rule the world together. Countries and politics are all for us. That is really very specific statement and you need to understand that in US 10% of population having about 78% of all wealth in Russia 10% controlling about 89% and 94% of the people in Russia have less than $10,000. 60% of all wealth in Russian was made out of Oil, Propane and Metal industry owners. Russia is second after US in USD billionaires( not counting Putin himself) per capita( that was before oil prices collapses and putin killed economy of Russia in his personal war) Uh its way different than Russia come on Equating Russia’s wealth inequality to America’s is just statistically stupid there will alway be the rich ruling class in every society. you could spend many many years learning about roman culture and society. but its such a great case study on what enormous wealth does to individuals in history. Yes One does war main stream. The other does war on the down-low. Putin and the Oligarchs are not 1% of the Russian population. The ratio of Putin/oligarchs net worth to the monthly salary of a typical Russian ($800- comparable to India) is worse than the U.S. Wealth inequality is getting addressed by the Biden administration. We shall see the response of the GOP. Trump made sure the wealthy/corporations got greater tax benefits. Honestly, many people immigrate to countries such as Putin’s and there s nothing wrong with this. If one really thinks comparing Putin and his oligarchs to U.S. billionaires is comparing apples to apples, it is not. It seems this premise of the West has their share of oligarchs so what is the difference(?) is a strange argument in my mind. If I believed this, I would immigrate to Russia. At this point and time in the U.S. as a citizen finding out how much Putin and his KGB has interfered in our political system just so he could invade Ukraine and probably other sovereign countries that used to be part of the U.S.S.R., I am suspicious of these type of posts just as I should have been back in 2016. I will not be fooled twice. However, the book sounds reasonable and I will read it as it applies to many countries and doesn’t compare the U.S. elite vs. Russian oligarchs who are thugs and have destroyed Russia. Whenever we wanna seize their fucking assets and redistribute them....it wont weigh on me seeing how many fucking loopholes and scams they use. Fuck em Americans in these comments: my oligarchs are good oligarchs Totally [deleted] the oligarchs of russia largely got rich off connections and simply privatizing existing soviet assets. billionaires in america generally started things that wouldn’t exist otherwise. there’s a difference between creating wealth and stealing it. Yes! Let’s talk about the economy The wealthy people in this country aren't trying to take over other nations and they donate more money to charities then any other nation. I read an article recently that American is top of the list as one of the most giving countries. TBF if anyone wants to start calling people like Musk and Bezos oligarchs instead of billionaires I'm down with that, seems accurate. Our oligarchs won’t kill you…at least they’re not supposed to. The loot of the eight richest American billionaires is greater than the 650 billion Russia accumulated over the last quarter century. Also, after Citizens United, it's not just an oligarchy but a kleptocracy too. The only reason it's not an oligarchy is that money has to corrupt people, it doesn't have direct control. We have oligarchs, no doubt, but Madison Crawford, MTG, Boebert, and even AOC are proof that money hasn't yet choked out hope. Loos like the US is just as corrupt as Russia One was created by free exchange, one was not. It depends how that wealth was built. It makes a huge difference if the reasons are political corruption or economic activity. That makes a difference both on the 'fairness' of having this inequality exist, but most importantly on the quality of those rich people and their impact (and risk) on society. He knows that is not the definition. It is very different, and why we need to pay attention to that difference. In the US, politicians are at the mercy of the billionaire, oligarchs are the puppets of the power person, and their wealth depends on their serving the politician, and holding their hidden assets as if it was all the oligarchs. Completely different power moves Most of us are aware and completely powerless to do so It’s not all about the US 100% of the time. I realise this is a difficult concept for some. Slava Ukaini! The word oligarchy has a meaning. This is propaganda. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/fiv434/map_of_the_worlds_billionaires_and_how_they_made/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf If this is your understanding of economics, you shouldn't post. In America it is not yet as big difference though it is still very big. After all Russia is officially fully governed by socialists and usa not yet. And unequality in socialist countries is about 100 times higher then in capitalist (despite what socialist propaganda claims) just because richest are similarly rich while poor in socialism is way poorer. Still if you ask is American billionaires are oligarchs- definitely yes. Even if there are few exceptions (if) absolutely overwhelming majority are oligarchs. Robert Reich brought us globalization and got all our manufacturers base exported out. Now, he’s talking income inequality. That’s reich. It's a little different because Bezos isn't president for life. Yes, I agree. That's why the US state-run economy should be dismantled and we should have a free market. Lol how did this hack get posted here The USA and Russia and China (and most countries) are all oligarchies, but not all oligarchies are built equally. Modern Russia is more like the oligarchy the USA had in the late 1800s. In America, everyone is a slave for money and money rules. Its nearly impossible to get out of your situation, because you are required to work 9+ hours a day and which leaves you with very little energy to do anything else. We are free lol to eat and sleep as we want but rest of our lives are dictated by money which has enslaved us. Work or starve! Don’t get me started on inflation. If, the objective of the cult of ""45"" era Republican ownership/leadership is, as it seems to be, to create an oligarch controlled fascist feudal theocracy of the hypocrite flavor, then they've already made a good beginning? Considering Russian Oligarchs did absolutely nothing to their wealth other sucking Putin’s dick, I’d say yes. Nope he has crazy people that support him we have rednecks There’s a vast difference between Elon Musk and a local coffee shop chain owner who has 10 shops. The “1%” varies greatly. More like the top .01% America is built on those one percent. I don’t expect it to stay in its position in the world with social democracy or equally distributed wealth. Am i wrong? Hard no on this one. Get a clue That’s the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Mods should not have approved this. Really /r/economy? What good is wealth that one will not spend? Gg Pootin and a merry caw caw caw. You have ppl like Elon Musk who doesn’t pay taxes for years while his company Tesla is freeloading billions of taxpayers dollars for years. Then when it’s finally time for him to pay, he sets up his own charity to donate money for massive tax break. Risk/costs are shared but profit is privatized. What kind of fucked up capitalism is this? We had more social and economic instability in the 1960s. One war at a time mate. . Finally someone said it! Hear hear Duh. The US, academically, has been classified as an oligarchy for several years now Yea but they ain’t attacking Ukraine. Plot missed Does anyone have any opinions about inflation and easing basically siphoning wealth from the poor into the wealthy asset holders? Also, I’d rather be poor in the US than Russia. I don’t think this is a fair comparison. The way Russian oligarchs got their wealth was theft. Here it’s completely different. I get that wealth inequality is a problem, but I think looking at this like “let’s just elect someone that’s willing to tax the shit out of the wealthy” I just don’t think that’s going to work. We have loads of examples showing that this doesn’t work. One thing I often wonder though, is why the Uber wealthy aren’t more willing to give their money away? Like bezos seems so unwilling to spread it around is just weird. It would take a million lifetimes to spend that money. Why not just give the shut out of it? Why not afford massive programs for the homeless and addicted? . they are next. The difference is that in US the billionaires are inventors. In Russia, they have acquired the rents of natural resources to themselves. This is a very bad comparison. If you are a single house hold and earn over $60,000 per year in the US then you are already in the top 1%. [howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org](https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i?income=60000&amp;countryCode=USA&amp;household%5Badults%5D=1&amp;household%5Bchildren%5D=0) For last 15 years they have been looking for this wealth and could not find it. There is a different question. Private property, and trust. If west cannot be trusted - for political reasons they can do anything. How many countries will start moving away from western based systems? How fast would this start? Lmfao this is so wrong and far off for not only the numbers reasoning but also the complete logic behind it. It’s embarrassing this is getting so much traction and really shows how little most people understand economics and more so just see rich = bad & corrupt. You wanna know a fast paced system to becoming more like Russia? Overtaxing and crippling the top rich people and giving all that money and power to a government who has extremely bad money management skills and all the greed in the world. Putin & his friends are the richest people in their country, not those who actually generated and deserve the wealth which is exactly why they have a fucked up economy, pensioners are all bankrupt and next to no new cities, homes, businesses ANYTHING popping up. We’ll be on a fast track to get there if we continue down the road of print print print & tax tax tax. I feel that, given the current geopolitical circumstances, there is a high chance that this post is Russian-born. However, I also agree with it’s sentiments. Both nations must be cleansed of their oligarchs and restored to a state of true democracy. ""oligarchy"" is defined as ""a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution"". It technically has nothing do with with economic wealth. In most cases wealth = political power. But having a transparent country with less corruption prevents an oligarchy of rich individuals from taking control. Russia ranks at the bottom of every corruption index. And you never see a change in leadership or politcal ideology. Despite the stereotypes, the U.S. ranks among the top countries. And it is constantly swinging wildly with its politcal policies. If there was a secret oligarchy in the U.S. isn't doing a good job controlling anything. impossible Putin Rockstar e/ Ukraine's Zelenskyi the and world war Terrible compariosn. Yup. The US is an oligarchy. Trump being elected with no credentials or experience, only money, proved this as a fact. what·a·bout·ism /ˌ(h)wədəˈboudizəm/ noun (BRITISH) definition: the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue. America has plutocrats, not oligarchs. There is a difference. Disallow inheritance. Tax it heavy. Is that the answer? Sounds like. When you die, the wealth dies with you. Very Darwinian. Ooh are people waking up in time for the end? [deleted] Not only do they own wealth, they use the wealth to control policy. Literally the definition of an oligarchy. Shocker! How much value has each group provided? Such a dumb take The prices are going up on everything and nobody in the lower class are getting an increase on pay. How are we supposed to live. The prices are going up on everything incredibly fast. The problem is, my income isn't going up, the future looks bleak. The richest man in the world isn’t recognized by the American government as the leader in electric vehicle, so no. The narcissist want more and more with their lies. That’s why America wants to delete the middle class. To make it harder to catch the rich and make it easier to catch the poor. Makes it easier to control the population. This isn't a fair comparison, as others have said. Readers be aware, disinformation is afoot. ""Oligarchy"" isn't about wealth inequality, it's about wealth ruling the country. And let me, as a Ukrainian-born US immigrant, tell you - no matter how bad it looks in the US, it's nowhere close to what it is in Russia and what it was just a couple of years ago in Ukraine. When you google oligarch is lists America as an oligarch ran country…. Sooooooo you’re not wrong Oligarchs caused this war and all those before them. Wealth gaps create instability in nations. We know how to solve this. Global wealth tax for the extremely rich. Or even a wealth cap where we limit the amount of assets a certain person or company can have after which the excess is 100% donated to govt tax. No shit. Except most of the top 1% made their money from innovations / investments / companies that helped improve the quality of living for all. But ya let’s compare it to corrupt politicians in Russia. Yes there’s very little to separate them and people failing to recognise this shows how easily they can be led with a simple narrative and nothing else. Ah, the 4 million oligarchs it sounds like people that know how to gather money to buy wealth vs. people that don't. Which can lead into the worst types of people controlling everyone. Basically, it's one of those things you don't want like another World War. The difference is not in the fact that there is 1% that is richer than other people taken together - it is so in all the world and has always been so. The difference is that in America people can have an opinion and can vote for the candidate they support. In Russia people (even children) get jailed for making a single poster ""no to war"", opposition leaders get killed or arrested before every election and entire regime is just a farce run by sociopath. Putin rules a country with millions of zombified people who are not living, just existing. Well lemme just start off by saying our freedom of speech is stronger than any other country in the world (even though it has certain limitations). Im very happy to live here. The criticism: The US wealth distribution is not much better than most countries. The rich run the country quite blatantly. Not our votes. Lets take public transportation as an example. Its very well known that our public transportation systems currently are faaaaar behind the rest of the world. This is by design. Early on, the excuse was that cities were designed very far apart to accomodate the automobile. Its been many years since that excuse was valid due to increase in population and development in and around cities. Better public transportation would allow lower income populations to get from point A to point B much cheaper than owning a car. Point B maybe going to work/school/extra curricular activites. More people at work/school means less time for crime as well. Public transportation will also help for environmental reasons along with increasing the amount of middle class Americans. Win win right? Wrong! Oil and gas lobbyists have been fighting for many years to not allow the development of an extensive public transportation system in American cities and states. Look into nashville, TN and how the koch brothers influenced local legiature to prevent the growth of a public transportation infrastructure for the next 100 years. There is no amount of votes or democracy that will out weigh the money these lobbyists give to our local governements. Our democracy is heavily corrupted and we should think twice before judging other countries governing style may it be dictatorship, monarchy, or what have you. Usa lacks social aspects in their laws to create backfeed of wealth to support the poor and create a system that allows people to escape poverty, especially children. This benefits entire country as crime, poverty diminishes and more people prosper who also spend more money. Everybody wins. Also lobbyism aka legal corruption should disappear. People in usa call europe socialist, while in fact whole europe is capitalist with decent socialdemocratic tendencies that takes care of the lower income population. Socialdemocrats lay foundations for social wellfare, discounts for poor, free meals for children in school, free meals for adults, decent job finding and requalification system, better schools that keep children occupied longer etc. Meanwhile Usa relies on charity. And most charitable people, ironically, are the ones who need help the most. This post awfully smells like it's from a russian troll farm 🤔 Edit: Other comments debuked it. US: Top 1% owns the same as bottom 27%. 1% is 3.3 million people. Russia: Top _500 people_ own the same as bottom _99.8%_ . This post is obviously Russian misinformation & gaslighting. Be careful guys. This shit _is happening right now_ . **Edit:** GUYS LOOK AT THE ACCOUNT, ITS A FUCKING BOT. Downvote!! Asking questions like that are going to get us all killed. Its no different. In terms of wealth only, this might be true. But whether we live in an oligarchy or a democracy depends not only on the distribution of wealth. Are Americans in the top 1% globally? These schmucks love a good whataboutism. Human nature is undeniable, and remarkably and reliably the same. Call the government system whatever you’d like, we always find a way. Some have better stops in place to prevent outright unfairness, but oligarchies, the 1%, whatever your flavour, are all products of the same thing that will never change: greed. Attention! The person who wrote the post may be working for Kremlin propaganda. Do not fall for provocations to change the agenda and remember their tricks. Here ""what about yourself?"" Russia =/= USA. Don’t try to confuse people. Having concentrated wealth doesn't make an oligarchy. All the people in power having wealth makes it a plutocracy, not an oligrachy There is a key difference. Majority of russia lives sub human levels. Most normal levels of living standard is in moscow. In us there are plenty of healthy living people all over the country who can afford food/shelter and a cost efficent life style. But it doesn’t take away the fact that it’s STILL too much wealth that they have amassed for themselves. So Russian oligarchs n Putin takes close to 80-90% of the country’s income. While it’s 50% in US. Yeah Russia is equivalent to the USA! Totally equal economically and the avg gdp there is equivalent to the US! I can’t believe you dumbfucks upvote this shit. This sub is trash That moment when the penny drops 🤦🏼‍♂️ It's the same the world over The big difference is that the US has Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are galning support and want to change that. And here's the kicker, they aren't being poisoned for it. They can stand in congress and the senate and screams about it and not be killed for it. Kids sit in school screaming ""fuck you fascist"" at a republican and they are not thrown in jail. That is why there is still hope in the US. Most of the people there want to be better. If that sounds like an oligarchy to you, you need to clean your ears. It's merely the difference between a kleptocracy and a plutocracy, i.e. a very small one No, no, no. We're a Corporatocracy.... It's different. I don't remember up voting this post.. Why was it upvoted Posted this to r/wayofthebern and r/jillstein in the year 2022 jfc lmao Is Russia still shilling despite their economic problems? I guess Cambridge Analytica still gets funds in the USA. People just like to turn a blind eye on everything from the west. Love the fragile Americans fighting tooth and nail to ignore their world so they're not compared to a second world country, god forbid y'all take a look around you lol Word salad The difference is Putin managed it in 20 years. The difference is that our (Russian) oligarchs invest “their” (stolen from Russian people, to be precise) money in US, EU and UK economies, but not in Russian one. They live most of the time and keep their families outside poor motherland. At least they used to. I doubt your oligarchs do the same. So it seems to me they take more care of the place they live in. Correct me if I’m wrong, but out oligarchs are just parasites compared to yours. THANK YOU IVE BEEN SCREAMING THIS FOR YEARS UNRELATED HOW DO YOU FIX CAPS LOCK IF THE BUTTON IS BROKEN “War in foreign country” “Let’s make this about the US” 😂 I mean to be fair in american if you actually put effort in you can well do just about anything just be ready for consequences A very much dark oligarchy by evil wannabee christians waiting for their raptures to hell. Sure do. This guy is off his rocker. At least the U.S. doesn’t kill oligarchs that don’t toe the line..... You’re not wrong. America is more of a fuedelist economic structure rather than a capitalist structure like we imagine it to be. However, the GDP of the entire country of Russia is equivalent to that of Texas. Compare that to California, which has the 5th most powerful economy in the world. While America is certainly not perfect, it’s probably much better being poor here than in Russia Commie trying hard to blame everything on America. Dunno about this I know there are haters here but Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates all done great things I can list plenty sure it wasn’t just them, their workers. Sure there are conspiracy and target hate towards them with a mixture of fake news included which people don’t bother looking into, but this isn’t same as the Russians one. For example Elon pushed self driving car a lot in research and the same concepts can be used in medical devices, and once it’s mastered and well research for next generation or even this if we are optimistic it could bring great quality of life and solve issues. Don’t put them on same boat. Inequality is a distraction. Inequality doesn't matter as long as people have food, shelter and decent quality of life. India is more equal than in US, but still millions are in poverty. Remember seeing a Instagram Reel, where a girl complains about inequality, while her dress changes 10 times. I think she is fortunate, as many in India don't have that many number of dress she has. A country prospers based on what economic policy the country follows. If it alleviates poverty at the cost of inequality so be it. Economic prosperity always produces inequality. gates, musk, bezos, zuckerberg.... The clear clear diff is many of our billionaires created desirable services to get their wealth. Social media, smart phones, laptops, space travel. Russian oligarchs were given their wealth 500 dudes own 40% of america. Yea its compatible People think this is set in stone (rich and poor) but that’s not true. We constantly move up and down through these brackets. It’s called income mobility Mini thumbnail looks like hide the pain robert If that sounds like an oligarchy to you, you don't know what an oligarchy is. The difference, Putin probably doesn’t donate any of his money. Found the Chinese bot I'd note that the IQ difference between America's wealthiest and Russia's wealthiest likely has a massive disparity. America's wealthiest tend to have created that wealth themselves. Russia's wealth involves a lot of shady shit. cry # such an immature comment. You cannot compare putins wealth to American capitalism. This makes no sense if you really think hard about it. There won't be a middle class for too much longer. Problem solved. It’s only wrong when non Americans do it. Obviously…. These leftist posts trying to argue that oligarchs of Russia are comparable to the billionaires of US. Why do Americans always have to be victims they certainly don't criticize Switzerland for having wealth inequality. Your poor management and shitty health care is not due to people accumulating too much wealth. That why no one cares . Same shit , different country This is a bullshit stupid comparison Literally what Bernie was saying his whole campaign. Awww yes because Musk obviously can’t manage his money effectively- the government would do better- and he does nothing but BAD with it anyway- Like StarLink- seriously who responds to an international humanitarian crisis like that? Effectively? Quickly!?! With nothing to gain!?!? Disgusting!!!!!!!!! /s Yep, it is. Might be legal, but still is an oligarchy If it sounds like an Oligarchy then you need to get your ears checked. It's like comparing a Russian athlete who takes steroids with an American who didn't. Sure they both won gold but they do it by different means... Plutocracy Can they make scuttling yachts a new tik-tok challenge somehow? ....they are called a mere billionaire in the US...oh they do influence the politics all right through their lobbyist and super PAC...how do you think all these politicians and their family become rich....nepotism and influence....same story since the dawn of time... The difference is that in America people often earn that money because they had knowledge or did something to earn it. I don't like Facebook or Amazon but they at least earned it because the idea of Facebook was very good and successful and same with Amazon. Ofc today both Amazon and Facebook sucks but you get it I hope. In Russia you don't need any knowledge or idea... You just need to be a mass murderer, liar and thief and that's all. Good example is that in Russia If you get caught 2 times protesting something... well... Second time is the last because you will go to prison for 15 years. How do I know this? Because I live near Russia and also I know Russian language very well so I know what people are saying there. I mean real people not that propaganda shit. Also in my country we have a lot of Russians who live here and talk about it. Edit: If you are wondering why you don't see Russian people mass protesting war... Well.. I said it already. They're just tooooo afraid to go outside. Thank U for pointing that out. Bush n Blair is war criminal. USA attack a country fill with 26 million n looted them out of existence. This people now talk how Russia is this n that. Hypocrite The only issue with the 1% argument is that people fail to remember or realise that this 1% people are going in and out of every day or week or month or year. It’s not the 1% to worry about. It’s the 0.1% and the 0.00001% of wealth holders to worry about. Just saying It's the same, but hey. Hypocrisy is all around us! Study from Princeton - https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 Nope. Wealth inequality is very similar in the US. Big difference in how the US oligarchy is making decisions currently though. So Canada then.. In college we described the US as being a plutocracy in which the wealthiest own and benefit from the economy. It’s really not the same thing, if you have met a Russian oligarch, in person you will understand. Stop trying to turn everything into a class war it is tiresome. Welcome to reality. What you do from here is up to you. America is a capitalist oligarchy At least prior to 2014, Russia had a Gini coefficient of 42, the US was at 47 (according to the CIA Factbook). So the US was more unequal. I'm not sure how Crimea and the recent invasion and COVID may have impacted these numbers. But it’s not. We have a democracy….. CEOs make that much here… Well yeah. And we as the people of the US need to start recognizing that. If there is any take away from this part of the war it's that something can be done. The US understood modern warfare way better than the russians did. It should never be about killing people, it should be about ""stealing ressource"". Nowadays this is mainly done by big cooperations. Ripping off countries like India while transfering all the surplus value to the US or Europe. When there is nothing left to loot, you just leave. As a EU citizen, I am afraid, that we are going to pay for that shit somewhen. Oh yeah, for sure. The problem with Russia is the inequality, not the fact that they have a dictator as a head of state or that freedom of expression is basically inexistent. Who cares about Russia invading Ukraine!! The problem is that there are rich people in Russia!! Socialists are fucking retarded and they're to blame for MANY of the dictatorships around the world. We should just come out and call them American oligarchs already. Than go to Russia and make big money. The difference between our billionaires and their billionaires is Elon Musk didn’t buy a majority stake in GM and NASA from Obama for a million in cash. Why do we just keep pointing this fact out? It's like we just like reminding ourselves about every few months that the 1% makes more than the entire middle class. No protests. No movement's building to try and get some type of policy change or anything. Just the reminder is all we want apparently. They're not in power? In some ways yes - because whilst proportionate the absolute numbers differ even at a base. Population of USA vs Russia is what? 2x? So at smaller numbers this means more of the relative wealth is concentrated in \*fewer human hands\* - this is basically the essence of monopolies. We all know why they are bad. If there's only 100 people in society and one person owns more than the whole middle class combined - is that REALLY the same as 200 people on base, or 4,000,000 people, or 8,000,000,000 etcetcetc. At some point the relative outpaces the absolute. Law of large numbers, is it? And that, btw, is just on very VERY raw basic principles. It's not even taking into account how complex all the different pictures are, what the same data across both territories(defined any way you wish, but with equivalent collection measures) you will get a certain percentage of SIMILAR graphs/curves vs a certain percentage of DIFFERENT graphs/curves(ceteris paribus). Make sure the two territories are comparable - and remember that showing similarity can be far more infinite and difficult work than showing difference. I imagine on similar independent and unbiased measures, where data isn't fit to an endpoint or a post-hoc - the curves will simply be incomparable between the two across far more measures than that within which they are similar and comparible. Reported for making me think get fuckd losr Thomas Piketty has a net worth aprox 1.5 million.... so he's in it for personal gain. Also, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk can't declare war and invade a country, so there is that as well. Bobbie You really are just dumber than a sack of hammers aren't you. The ""Top 1%"" in America do not have nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, bombers, ballistic missile submarines armed with thousands of nuclear warheads. Oh and by the way the top 1% pay 40% of the income tax. Agree they should all be sanctioned too. But what for? How about for supporting China for failing to denounce Russia’s war on Ukraine. Let’s start with the oligarch named Lebron James. Yeah except American billionaires do things like restore internet to Ukraine within 48 hours of the request. Amen. This is why I think most people who just bang wagon and think America is about freedom and democracy. It’s such a lie. America is the best at brainwash people with the media. Much more successful than anyone else. That top 1% will get more wealthy now and has done via pandemic. Having money is not what an oligarchy is America has been an oligarchy for at least 40 years now, thanks to Ronald Reagan and his ""Trickle UP"" economics. The term 'oligarch' would definitely be applicable to American top 1%'ers. No its way worse here because enough people have bought that work hard mentality that keeps fucking them. Unless something significant happens nothing will change in america. Politicians amass the largest fortunes. But it rarely gets reported. 20 years ago, Putin’s wealth was estimated at $70B, based only on his percentage of Gazprom and (i think) Rosneft. When Gaddafi died, they found $200B in foreign accounts, making him the richest person in the world at that time. It wouldnt suprise me if Putin has $300-400B stashed around the world in cash, gold, real estate, crypto. American oligarchs make their money off cheap labour. Russian oligarchs make their money off taking from government coffers. Trump’s fault? There’s a difference. In America, the rich folk are either self made or their parents were. The oligarchs stole public companies and industries and claimed them as their own during the fall of the USSR. They are thieves, and the average person there is far far worse than the average person in any western world. Ps, there are billionaires in the EU, too. There's so much propaganda like this today, today has been all about covering up Russia's mass murder invasion with valid criticism of the US. You're all stupid fucking idiots for feeding into it How was the wealth created? That is the difference. We were officially declared an oligarchy by political scientists someting like 15 years ago. But, because we are an olligarchy, you never heard that. Do we need to redistribute 70% of the wealth in America? 10% is probably reasonable for the top 1% in an economy like ours but 80% is just ridiculous. Really…. You don’t say??? Any other blatantly obvious shit you’d like to say? We are all being used and manipulated the world round and we are one of the largest producers of propaganda to ever exist and almost everyone plays into it. The division between parties the belief the government is there for you ect. It’s all bullshit to keep you obedient and forever following. I mean the literally start you out in school brainwashing you. It’s not different here than it is other places in the world. We’ve all been fooled and have the wool over our eyes. All I know is that if I had everything I paid in taxes returned to me. I could pay off my student loans in less than 2 years. If you make 34k or more you are part of the world's 1% This is something Putin would say We need to take a lot more than just the top 1%- we’re gonna need everyone that supports them while thinking themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and we’ll need to rewrite *all* of thr legislation that lobbyists have had their grubby little hands all over, otherwise, we won’t even be able to consequence any of them even if we do catch them. Australia, in just a few years went from ""I can save for a house deposit"" to ""there is no way in hell we will ever afford a house ever"". Properties went into the millions. We literally have the wealth gap exploding before us. My GF and I had what should be enough to buy a 3rd of a property and now it won't cover the deposit. Ok, before I comment I just want to say that I'm not looking to argue about this, just want to add to the discussion. This is one reason why I am leaning more towards a free market minarchist system (which I define as minimum amount of government involvement as is necessary to a functioning society and the preservation of a fair system in which none have the ability to abuse the system via government). If corporations were not able to influence government I'd say that their second main advantage would be taken from them. Their main advantages being: the product they sell, and their advantage of the system via legal loopholes in regulations they put forth (in other words, rules for thee and not for me). While I am typically in favor of lowering taxes (and government does have a spending problem) I can't ignore the fact that having only a specific class of people pay is not fair. Regulations should be in favor of everyone. For example regulations on environment, regulations on driving, etc. All serve the common public and therefore are good. However things such as subsidizing sugar whilst also allowing the same sugar companies to take advantage of legal loop holes in getting out of having to pay a certain amount of taxes is not good policy as it serves only a select few - those in charge of the company. Power and wealth seem to have a tendency towards centralization and so this article doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is the fact that we advocate for taxes to be reallocated thinking that will solve most issues. It won't because if we do not get rid of certain regulations and policies that benefit the wealthy from paying all of our money will be going in a circle that gets smaller and smaller as the wealth still gets transferred into the hands of those who have control. The solution I would offer is to engage in the political system in that: 1) we demand our representatives to make changes to the economic policies (and we should do our part part be specific about what we want changed for which policies). 2) we put political pressure on all government officials to reallocate our taxes (and again we should do our part to be specific as to how we want the funds to be reallocated, how much goes towards military, Healthcare, salaries, etc). Why does Reich charge $50k an hour for speeches? Does he donate it to charity or is he just one of the oligarchs he speaks of? Why are people discussing this as if it’s a new thing? We are ruled by a kleptocracy of tyrants. They have the power to end global hunger, climate change, the Wars in Ukraine, Yemen , Syria. But no they want yachts and spaceships. The standard of living for the common US citizen is definitely better and the opportunity to amass wealth is way better for the common US citizen. We could be doing better on both counts BUT it’s still good. Reich. Appropriate name. We all have different definitions of power. But you can't say that money doesn't enter into it. Congrats for reaching r/all/top/ (of the day, top 25) with your post!   ***** *^I ^am ^a ^bot, ^probably ^quite ^annoying, ^I ^mean ^no ^harm ^though* *^Message ^me ^to ^add ^your ^account ^or ^subreddit ^to ^my ^blacklist* Well the US is an oligarchy by definition since a long time, that was always a fact. Yes it is very different 😩 The difference is, that the average Russian is much, much poorer than the average American, so the difference is greater. Cute To make this comparison accurate, OP would have to make the connection of Bezos, Gates, Musk and any other US billionaire having control over the country. Nobody is calling US the ideal or saying that reforms are not needed. Now how about we talk about your false equivalence? Capitalism *always* ends in neo-feudalist oligarchy. What Piketty forgot was that the wealthiest capitalists will always find a way to purchase legislation favorable to their interests. Yes absolutely - Sam with Canada. The real war that is required is against the rich. Seems you opened your olifactories to the oligarchys. Gates, Buffet, Bezos, Musk, Munger, Icahn, you name it…all first generation billionaires, that actually prove the opposite thesis about the “1%”. Typical reddit moment where people take things literally. It's meant to draw a parallel, not to suggest that America is actually at the same level as Russia. I swear, people on this site all have a developmental disability or something. We (the US) have been in an oligarchy for years. I began referring to them as American oligarchs. Eat the rich Hey maybe don't try to use Ukrainian kids getting bombed to make a point about wealth inequality in the US? His overall point may be true but at this particular moment it is NOT the same. Cynical way to make this statement. Average Reddit economist Billionaires are the calcium buildup in the water pipe of capitalism. I would say big difference is that billionaires still rely on public opinion and can't directly influence things themselves. Our congress may be slow moving and be a bit behind the 8 ball, but it can still do things to reign them in a bit. Oligarch seem deeply entrenched in Russian affairs. You can say there may be things that are similar but there is a clear step above and beyond what you would traditionally see in juts being rich and influential. still the idea seems to be what a lot of people are starting to pick up on. Billionaires seem akin to nobility/royalty where they're just above what everyone else can do and their wealth is almost game breaking. Things like speeding tickets are trivial. Where for others it could be crippling. They can buy up whole companies with pocket change. That wasn't the design of our democracy, and it has led to a lot of problematic issues. What is more troubling is the fandom and idolation of these people. Will he break the current and long standing Guiness world record (greatest robbery of a government) held by Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines? From the lazy persons in the United States. Putin stole his wealth from people. In the US, people used their brains. Putin: politics Wealthy people: inventions ans education. Vote socialist = vote stupid, vote lazym Yeah but another question should be asked is how your government spends those tax dollars? It seems very ineffectively and inefficiently. Also do certain individuals/entities deserve tax breaks? I think so companies like Amazon and Google absolutely do. The Walton family not so much. Trump and the American Oligarchs It's even better in America (for the rich) because they don't have to be front facing like Putin, they can hide in the shadows and pay people to lobby and make the rules they want.. all while pointing to a strawman Thats what I been saying! But noooo, trickle down banging, I mean tricjle down capitalism is perfect You guys keep using that word; it does not mean what you think it means Eat the oligarchy Time to take it back yo Yes brothers. We will expose the American oligarchs to freedom very soon Being wealthy does not make you an oligarch. Thats how dictatorships work. The point of being a dictator and having the power and willingness to do violence is to control the wealth of the country for yourself and your cronies at the expense of your citizens. And you need that wealth because if you didn't have it and use it the army and bureaucrats wouldn't support you. Which is also why being dictator is dangerous because if there is someone who sways those cronies and promises them even more wealth and security for themselves and their families, the things they're desperate to have since the citizens don't, they will coup you. You think we can call those billionaires Oligarchs, because they really are! It's literally the exact same lol. Lmao Man this post is straight up Matt Bruenig's time to shine https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2017/08/05/if-we-care-about-inequality-we-must-confront-capital/ So is wealth a zero-sum game? Just because some people have amassed large fortunes does it mean that other people are poorer because of it? Is it better for a country to have wealth ""equality"" where everyone is poor than a higher standard of living that happens to include billionaires? Also - Is it hypocrisy for Reich to make himself a member of the 1% by constantly railing against the 1%? Asking for a friend. The US has been an Oligarchy for a long time. Larry Bartles and Benjamin Page of Princeton have been doing studies for years showing that Congress votes the priorities of rich Americans not the priorities of the majority of Americans. [This paper](https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/economic.pdf) is from 2005. [This one](https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-%20Page1.pdf) is from 2013. [This one](https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf) is from 2014. [This article from Vox](https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained) in 2014 explains their work. And [here is a Paul Krugman opinion piece talking about it in 2020](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/opinion/sunday/inequality-america-paul-krugman.amp.html) My friend lost his hand in a mill accident. But I cut my finger bad enough to need stitches. Is his injury really so different than mine? Oh boy they're catching on We have the vote and an independent military. He/she has to go to Congress for any real military action. If it then goes forward, it is at least a public process. It is on people that we voted for. Yes they are wealthy but we voted for them. When did wealth and success in America become a bad thing? This guy, Reich, has said so many ignorant and insanely stupid things before, he should be given no credibility whatsoever on any topic. He lies and has serious issues. Yep, American Oligarchs! So if we want to take down americas 1% then the US needs to go to war with Ukraine? Am I understanding this right? Doesnt sound correct but the math checks out. Ahhh yes, Russia==America because wealth inequality and its causes are the same everywhere. *Economy* never disappoint with their 80 IQ takes. Wow It’s a oligaristic corporatocacy Your lack of understanding/knowledge about society is the reason you compare the two. Basically in a free society your neighbor can become one of these men. Looking at the background of each individual and what they provide to the society, you will see the contrast. The differences compound after that, however if you narrowly focus on one aspect, the amount of money, and look for similarities there will be some, however do you think those oligarchs cant be thrown in the dumpster by the government, just like the ones before them? They are, in a sense, slaves to their government, they are not free to create as the Americans are. Yes, the USA is also an oligarchy. That has been the complaint of many for decades now. It was always skewed to favor the wealthy (the constitution was written to protect the property of the wealthy, not the rights of the rest of us; any protections added to the constitution for The People were added only after societal forces made it impossible for the wealthy to be secure in their wealth. The hope for many of us is that we can transform our society without first descending into another civil war. Meanwhile, Putin has invaded Ukraine and the Russian oligarchs are finally realizing it might cost them a portion of their fortunes and they are getting nervous. And the people of Ukraine don't have to be perfect to warrant world opposition to Putin. At least in America you can call your president an idiot without getting arrested and processed for that Russian propaganda at work here trying to sow division, and reddit mods are happy to help. The United States spent $350 million installing Ukraine’s current president into his position. After that, he jailed his opposition, shut down three different privately owned news organizations for not supporting him and jailed the owners. This is ironically exactly the same thing that we accused Putin of doing. The Ukraine is a hotbed for illegal activity in Europe. 800,000,000 pounds of methamphetamine come from this country every single year and are distribute it all throughout European nations. Ukraine is a hotbed for child trafficking, money laundering, terrorism and neo Nazism (This is not a joke, there is actually a Nazi party just like the democrat and republican party within the Ukraine) The reason why our leaders want you to support Ukraine is because they need a place to hide their laundered money. All of their bribes, all of their backhanded deals all have to go through the Ukraine otherwise they are subject to federal review. This is why Joe Biden is so adamant on protecting a country that the United States citizens have no personal interest in… There is so much corruption in the Ukraine that Joe Biden got his son elected as the head of an energy commission within the country, given an $8 million a year salary with a literal amendment in the contract to give Joe Biden… 10% of his earnings! Joe Biden admitted on camera that he walked in and bribed the government to fire a prosecutor that was going after his son for corruption in exchange for $1 billion in US aid… Quid pro quo. This is the country your current administration is trying to get you to go shed blood for… They want you to fight to the death for their ability to steal from the American people and the rest of the world. “Russia's 110 million adults own, on average, $10,976 in assets, but the median wealth is much lower with half of the adult population owning $871. The average wealth per adult in the U.S. is $301,000, and in Switzerland, the country with the highest wealth per adult in the world, it is $513,000.” Slate's [If It Happened Here](https://slate.com/tag/if-it-happened-there) series may be relevant here. Stop crying & get your money up, Robert. No, we all have ample opportunity to earn… many of these “oligarchs” (in america) provide a service you or somebody you know uses quite often. Some of you don’t like Jess bezos, but I bet you used Amazon. Call it luck or whatever, but I feel many put themselves in the position or exploited opportunities. I wouldn’t blame someone else having more wealth on the system because you have that same opportunity. Yes, some of them come from better backgrounds, some of these people have great wealth while others suffer, but this is the way it is if you still want there to be incentive for people to create great wealth. I know many of you disagree… this is just my thought The way the rich have manipulated everyone else with wedge issues is so sad. Getting people to vote against their own best interest is shocking. as long as they push space travel and ending world hunger with that money i am quite fine with that imbalance of wealth and responsibility \[These are the people who run the world. Politicians exist to make you think you have control. They have all been bought and paid for a long time ago. \]( American Dream- George Carlin) Seriously, the US is talking about Russian Oliogarch being huge problem. I'm pretty sure the US has an even bigger problem when it comes to the 1%. Maybe they should look at their own What makes anyone think the people pulling strings in one country aren’t pulling strings in all of them Yeah the US government just kills people with a touch of class. Mostly one party to blame tho Isn't that what we all agreed on though? Through capitalism anyone can create a business or a brand and build it to be something the masses fall in love with & throw a lot of money at? I thought that was the whole point of America, I know that all the people born today and that begin with zero capital in America weren't around to make the rules or benefit from them early on so think working a 9-5 is the only way to build capital, but the truth is there are still infinite ways to build it, it's just that most people are very indoctrinated by the failed school systems we have. Poor people are meant to stay poor to benefit the 1%, it's this way by design. It doesn't mean the rules of the game in American capitalism aren't working the way they're supposed to, they're working flawlessly, the problem is its working way too well and some people will always find a way to exploit or abuse other human beings for profit. Even though chattel slavery ended... technically wage slavery still exist & keeping people in prisons their minds creates for them. The true issue is no one cares about monopolies anymore and there isn't true competition in many big industries, companies should have limits for what they can buy out & acquire. Innovation dies as soon as bigger corporations just buy every creative asset or IP that gains some success. The masses stop looking for creative niche products or entertainment or beneficial services to consume and it becomes a soulless nation ruled by corporations. Businesses that are made purely to support other businesses become more popular, 10s of millions of do nothing office white collar jobs are made on the planet are to support stupidly big corporations & menial functions in them. No one cares about building anything meaningful, only contributing to corporate profits in some way as a cog in the machine. *Life becomes dull, meaningless, and makes a lot of people unhappy no matter how much money they make at a job since they don't feel fulfilled doing it.* Combine this with a super weak buying power compared to the past decades in America and of course the entire middle class becomes extremely unhappy with things & start looking at the top 1% of Americans to blame... whether they're truly at fault or just a scapegoat so the politicians that led us here can escape. What's the point of working or living life at all in America if you can't support a family of 2 or 3 kids from 18 - 22 like past generations could? What's the point of working so hard if you can't buy a house even in your 20s and doing everything they told you to do? What's the point of working so hard if you can't afford all the rising cost of things & travel 10 weeks in the year, spend time with your family, have a vacation home, multiple new cars like most past men in America with a corporate job could by their mid 20s? Now that all genders and people are working hard in America to benefit the top .01% & the true capitalist running the game *(more people working = more consumers to buy \*\*\*\* & instant ability to cut wages in half for men, take away all their meaning & purpose so they feel the need to consume more to feel better about their lives and become huge consumers as well),* combined with all the inflation & wage stagnation that already happened = the middle class & poor people's wealth were stolen from them but they don't even know it. $100,000 a year now is now the same as in the 1950s yet people act like it is blindly. College now when everyone has a bachelors & wants all the same few jobs is nothing like it is in the 1950s, that's not the way to succeed anymore period yet we tell all the kids & teenagers that is their live's meaning & purpose, to get an education and work for corporate? lol better to just work blue collar jobs after a free apprenticeship if you want a job that badly & don't care if it will truly make you money or if you'll enjoy it or not. Instead of taking out **$50,000** to **$300,000** ... ? Yes some young people actually take out that much for those private colleges or med/law school these days I guess? To have all that debt, then to take out loans for everything in your life even more. That $30k car when you graduate, your mortgage, heck you can even take out loans to buy iPhones now. You can take out loans to buy everything on this planet now, or as young people like to call it *""pay overtime"",* this is extremely popular amongst the new Americans, along with credit cards. The system might suck but when you play along with the system can you expect to not suffer & die under it? Just like a man living a meaningless & purposeless life, he will live and die like a dog for nothing as long as he keeps following what everyone else wants for him. Every American will live poorly & die poorly as long as they stay doing what the capitalist at top want for them instead of thinking like a shrewd businessman themselves. The real issue is Americans have been made to stay complacent, obedient, be consumerist & passive followers. They won't do anything or change anything... because all the ones that could & can benefit from the system anyway, they're rewarded and change their lives so why would they be angry anymore? This is by design, the truly creative or innovate thrive instead of convincing themselves its impossible & putting themselves in permanent victim hood. When they do they might be conscious of the system but feel no need to dedicate their lives & try to wake up millions of others to change it with them, what human being that achieves freedom would give up their freedom, their life in a futile attempt to make every other human being free? Not many would, not many will, outside of idealistic fantasy stories humans tell themselves in their imaginations or stories to entertain others. Why in a time like this, where Russia is attacking Ukrain, are we trying to compare the US to Russia? Sure, make the comparison, but why now? And even still what do we get out of making the comparison? We don't need to be compared with Russia to see the issues that are brought up with such comparison. I would argue yes it is different than america. Imagine being so spoiled that we have to try and pretend we are suffering like the citizens of Ukraine and Russia. They're both plutocracies, not just oligarchies. I wonder when the next Bush will run for President. Or when Chelsea Clinton will be up against Ivanka Trump. 😑 Yeah except we worked for ours Wow. People finally woke up to this. It's easy for America to point a finger but much harder to take a look in the mirror. It is an oligarchy. Wealthy people are so much more likely to be in office it's insane. The government is controlled by rich assholes pretending to care about the middle class. Last I did my research roughly 2% or less of US politicians are middle class. The US is an oligarchy with a democracy theme. The only reason it doesn't get called out more is because US citizens like pretending the country is perfect or that their party is perfect when this problem is throughout the entire government. extremely different? this is a few houndred vs 3.2 million… don't be fooled when they say the russian state media is different from how american mainstream news agencies broadcast content. My name is Vladimir Putin. I am the President of the Russian Federation. We are the military arm and voice of the Eastern Countries, and we are the ones responsible for striking our oppressors on Ukraine. This attack was retribution for generations of atrocities committed by the Ukrainians against innocent Russians. No longer will Russians be persecuted and subjected to the savagery and inhumanity that the West have been poisoning our people with. Any further attacks on Russia and Her Allies will be precipitated by the Western Countries' failure to recognize this new human reality. The Russian Army now possesses the last remaining Super Nuclear Bombs. Any transgressions by the West, and the Russian Military Force will not hesitate to unleash the SuperNova Level Nuclear Bomb on the Western so called Civilization. We recognize the right of Europe and America to exist, but their sovereignty ends at their respective Borders. The East, the South, and the Far East belong to Russia, and her Allies. With the opening of the Pipeline’s, we are at a crossroads in human history. Already, we are seeing how easy it would be to carry on legacies of exploitation, injustice, prejudice, and oppression into the new age, but there is a better path. Under the protection of the Russian Military Force, the society and culture of Mother Russia will begin again and remake humanity without the corruption, greed, and hatred that the West could not transcend. We will take what is ours by right, yes, but more than that, we will lead the World to a new, better form, a more human form. Citizens of the East, Brothers, rise up now in joy and glorious resolve. This day is ours. Tomorrow is ours. The future of humanity is ours. Today and forevermore... we are free. Read Noam Chomsky & Marvin Waterstone's ""Consequences of Captialism: Manufacturing Discontent & Resistance"". We occasionally arrest children as well. Yep, you got it! America is totally as bad as, hell, worse than, Russia! Where does this obsession with trying to get people to admit America sucks come from? If you think it’s a terrible country, fine. Why constantly shove it down everyone’s throats? You hate it, we get it. Wealth and income inequality in America are driven primarily by the existence of more ultra rich people here. From the bottom the the 99th percentile, all deciles are wealthier and have higher incomes than the vast majority of oecd countries. Says the millionaire who charges $50k per speaking arrangement. “Oligarchy” is “rule by a corrupt ruling class.” It’s not concentration of wealth. You can have a communist oligarchy with 100% income equality, like the Khmer Rouge. You can also have russia. You can also have everything in between. We know. Of course it is Oligarchs aren't exactly the problem we have with Russia right now though. idk if you heard, but... Yeah, no shit it's an oligarchy. Trump was a wanna-be oligarch. America's oligarchs have made poor Americans believe that they too can be billionaires one day, so don't tax the poor downtrodden billionaires! Yeah, it is that different. Do the math. You're posting on an economy sub.. it's the least you could do. Ive always believed that we should have a pejorative for the 'elites'. And it should be American Oligarch. Highly suggest reading through OPs post history. Either is a Russian troll or just abysmally stupid because they're blaming NATO for Russia invading Ukraine. I think its more important to look at the standard of living amongst the poor rather than the differences between the rich and the poor. For example, on paper I am in poverty, but I don't feel like I am in poverty. I provide for a wife and 3 kids but we own a home, 2 cars, have running water, electricity, warmth in the winter and AC in the summer, filling dinners every night, internet access, entertainment, smart phones, and many other things that make life easier and enjoyable. I could look at those who have more than me and become bitter or I can appreciate that all my needs are met and I have comfort. I would argue the poor in the United States have it way better than the poor in Russia. And the middle-class in the United States have it way better than the middle-class in Russia. So, to answer Robert Reich; no, the state of wealth inequality is different in America. So what you’re saying is, Communism and Free Market are pretty much the same? Being wealthy is a mental illness. I would rather mods have their mom's shack seized than some Russian guy I never heard of. Putin is a little CUNT The median income in the US is 4 times the median income in Russia. The average person is far better off in the US than in Russia. Moreover, Putin and his cronies got rich by killing. Musk, bezos, gates, etc. got rich by inventing products and services that changed the world and helped millions of people. So yes you ignorant moron, America is very different I bet everyone who upvote this could beat up a billionaire. 80k. They should be shitting tbh. Rise the fuck up. Yea but the middle class in America can still live comfortably and be well off. Definitely moving in that direction but at least Americans still have a constitutional right to bear arms and free speech. This is what mídia hide Thank you for writing this, I’ve been shocked recently at how blind people are to what’s happening in their backyard but wanna act as if they are ‘woke’ to what’s going on elsewhere. Also I’m sorry for gonna be suicided for writing this in the future. /s They are both oligarchies but they are too different for this kind of stupid and facile comparison, nor can America’s oligarchy be said to be as rigidly unchanging as Russia’s. The US has problems but the amount of poverty in Russia is out of control compared to the US. what is the percentage of millionaires in government service again? how does it compare to the private sector? Oligarchy is a political system. Putin essentially controls the state, and has not faced a competitive election in decades. In America, the wealth distribution is certainly oligarch-levels, but the economy and elections are still competitive (relatively), and the media is still free. That is why America still should be considered a liberal democracy... for now... For people who say there is no choice between the two parties, this is a product of the winner-take-all, strong-executive Constitutional system. This will naturally cause the nation to coalesce into two parties, which will hover around a politically middle equilibrium. [deleted] The difference here in America is that our super rich either made the money themselves or inherited it…. but with little, if any connection to politics. Russian oligarchs, on the other hand were often given huge portions of a certain segment of the economy- product, service, fuel, steel, etc BUT with the provision they stay out of politics. Their silence is bought and paid for. Plus our country doesn’t poison or imprison you if you speak out against our leaders. Move to Russia, it will save us all from having to explain more to you that should be obvious. The problems in Ukraine are directly as a result of the inequalities, the wealth of the Russian nation is threatened by the existence of a westernised Ukraine, which happened to find great oil deposits (just off Crimea) and massive Shale gas reserves around 2012 setting it on a collision course with Russia (as well as the NATO threat) ever since. Had people been richer both in Russia and Ukraine, and oligarchs less magnanimously rich, the outcomes may have been stronger democracy not less Has there ever been a really well balanced society where there is not a huge inequality gap? While I hate it, I feel like this is something as old as society. Boy oh boy does Reddit, which is mostly filled with willfully ignorant college kids or younger, HATE the idea of people having money. …unless it’s them. It’s very different and you need to be institutionalized if you think it’s the same Probably not but they don’t go along with their leader threatening nukes. In US we tax income from working, very heavily if you have a high salary, and not so much income from wealth or wealth itself. This is to make sure only the wealthy elite has wealth and prevent others from climbing. Putin and his buddies sound more like the 0.1% Plutocracy YES, it is different!! Two groups of oligarchs fighting each other. That sounds about right. This is not the definition of an oligarchy. Oligarchy is control of the government. Elon Musk can't even get the respect he deserves from the federal government let alone control it. Wealth inequality is not what defines an Oligarchy. An oligarchy exists when the wealthy elite have enough influence over the political system to rig the game in their favor. So, yea, we have that here. You yourself, dear reader, almost certainly own more wealth than the bottom third of Americans put together, assuming your net worth is positive. Oligarchy is when people with wealth have influence over politics and control media in their favor. It is not strictly about wealth inequalities. [oligarchy is when you have money and the more money you have the more oligarchy it is](https://youtu.be/rgiC8YfytDw) No, but I think we're having a kick each way here, aren't we? If they didn't give, they'd also be damned. Is as much venom vented on billionaires who are not philanthropists? What’s this oligarchs. I agree. What’s the difference except perception. yes Found the yacht movements of these guys https://twitter.com/oligarchyacht/status/1500428516298473472?s=21 If Putin dies , who inherits his wealth or estate? such a stupid premise Robert Reich is a propagandist, not a serious economist The difference big difference is the majority of American citizens are not poor. Sure but we choose a new leader ever four years…. Even though I haven’t been impressed lately. Still counts for something. Ah, Robert Reich...... Baseless ""facts"" presented as the truth. Exact same corruption here. Clintons, Romney, Biden, Pelosi, Bush Jr and Sr as well as their cronies and offspring. The list is a long one. Its sickening and we as voters are allowing this to happen. Ugh That is an oligarchy. 🤑 There are many very greedy politicians who would love to be an oligarch. They are insanely jealous of the billionaires in the United States and they would love to privatize most of the US as well as all of its current government services for themselves. So when you start hearing especially the Republicans talking about “privatization“ it means one thing - Putting themselves in charge of it and amassing oligarch type wealth. Most politicians are wealthy, but Mitt Romney is probably the only true billionaire. Most of them are just mid wealthy or even upper middle class. They also have no path to becoming a multi billionaire. So looking to raid the United States and privatize everything is their ticket. What about China? Same deal there. And so many other countries. Changing that imbalance would make so much more countries happier and healthier. But it will either never happen or not for a long time because politicians have been paid off in nearly every country with rich people for probably hundreds of years and a lot worse stuff going on too. Several of those American “oligarchs” are his friends. The differences were capitalist and these people did it on their own and deserve it the differences in Russia it was handed to certain people because of their status When big money can buy politicians and are blessed by our Conservative judges on the Supreme Court to do so, when conservative state courts are allowing gerrymandering to get the result corporate lobbyists want- we are already living in a country ruled by oligarchs. If voters were more educated and less distracted by athletes, the Kardashians, court cases like Depp vs Heard maybe they will wake-up and see what’s happening around them. Politicians like Trump have gaslighted the American people for years making them believe that by giving corporations and the very rich tax breaks- it will make all of us wealthy. Laughable that people are so against their own best interests and care more about being part of a cult. There is definitely wealth inequality in the usa… but why? The reason, 2008 happened. The fed lowered rates to make the rich but all the stocks and houses. It worked to keep the exonomy from falling off a cliff. The negative effect was that wealth inequality soured because the things the rich were told to buy by the fed went up in value and to make those assets go uo i value, the fed lowered the value of the thing that the poor and middle class hold (cash and social security)…. So yes there is wealth inequality but it’s not the fault of mean old which rich people. They were simply doing what the fed told them to do in 2009 and again in 2020 from covid. If you look at QE relative to wealth inequality, you see that they are directly correlated. So the answer isn’t to all be commies. The answer is to raise interest rates. Return the value of money. That will lower wealth inequality and return us to prosperity, and we don’t have to all give up our right and turn communist to do it. So please all wake up. Stop the money printing please. Vladimir and the boys did by theft extortion and murder. Big yuge difference. It’s a bit late to make up for your previous comments. Seeing that Putin is a war criminal and your people are cut tha off from the free world 🖕 Fuck Russia enjoy being poor. Your leader controls your wealth. Stop calling them ""oligarchs"" they are billionnaires The wealthy in America is not fixed. Fortunes rise and fall. Democrats want America to become an oligarchy. The pandemic shutdowns punished small businesses, not the large corporations, leading to concentration of wealth among the wealthy. Bezos could probably buy everyone in the USA a $12 lunch on Monday and have it all back before Friday. The book's central thesis is that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability. Piketty proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes to help reduce inequality and avoid the vast majority of wealth coming under the control of a tiny minority. All this is the eastern oligarchs trying to get some breathing space, they’re afraid the western oligarchs are gonna come in and chop up all their shit. The eastern oligarchs don’t want the western oligarchs to steal what the eastern oligarchs have stolen. Thanks for the recc 👍 If you're knowledgeable in economics, I would suggest Anwar Shaikh's ""Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises."" It's a graduate level textbook but is fairly accessible. It primarily uses empirical data to show the contradictory nature of orthodox economics particularly that of neoclassicals that rely on the ""hyperrationality"" of agents and perfect competition. You should listen to Larry Summers' critique of this book. Without disagreeing too much on the conclusion, he argues Piketty got some pretty basic stuff wrong that way overstates the case. Wealth inequality is a red herring metric. A meaningful metric is percentage homelessness and quality of life. People who state this metric are only trying to rationalize their own political associations instead of being objective. It's funny you should mention that book. Robert Reich teaches a really popular Public Policy class at UC Berkeley about wealth inequality and when I took it, that book was very central to many of his lectures and the topics in our discussion sections. a better book is [https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheGreatAmericanFortunes](https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheGreatAmericanFortunes) it's old but you get the idea, fortune in America is made by making and selling things and having the brains to see changes in technology and changes in society and taking advantage of that. , ie, being first. Or watch the new jon stewart episode tomorrow Interesting guy. I'll grab both of his books Can anyone recommend any other books along these same lines? For those looking for a contrasting perspective Equal is Unfair By: Don Watkins and Yaron Brook does a good job of countering Piketty's arguments. If you economics suggestions to someone include Piketty then they aren't very good !remindme 8hr Pricey book when you search it. Almost like it's part of it's own problem. Like snake-oil. Want to know what's wrong, buy my book. Anyone got a Jack Sparrow way to read? There is also a great (albeit condensed) documentary adaptation(?) of the book available featuring Piketty himself Rather read Marx's Capital I was amazed what Black Rock owns.. controls.. Such a horrendous read. Let’s choose a bias and mend every piece of data to try to prove it. Makes Anti vaxxers look like Scientists. Comparing the US situation to Russia is lazy and self identifying. Is there an economic system that’s also *moral?* might ws well throw Adam Smiths' Wealth of Nations in there, whilst at it. Interestingly the middle class only exists because of the redistribution of wealth after WW2 along with many government programs for vets. According to a book I read on population growth. Hint: its also a documentary. [Trailer](https://youtu.be/TqkjyI1QD2A) Great explanation about how it exists, terribly failed solutions about how to fix it or read OP's comment history to find out this is literal Russian propaganda Wealth inequality is such a silly thing to say.. I mean obviously it exists, we aren’t given a certain amount of money per person. Money comes from luck, work ethic, and many various things. It will never be equal and you wouldn’t like it if it was. Thanks for the reference Can u just give me the tldr? Better yet read Marx's Capital Vol 1. The superior Capital There are reasons other than greed? Reich never heard of it. Read any high school government book and you'll all realize rich people don't immediately equal oligarchs. 200 billion at last estimate. That is what trump was looking for being President. He just needed a billion to cover his debts, but couldn't do that. Better yet, actually read Capital Dalio's [The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52962238-the-changing-world-order) does a great job putting US in perspective as well. No Thomas Pikeytty, I don’t think I will. You bitch The key word is “reduce”. You do want inequality, it is a good and natural thing - someone who is smarter and/or works harder has to earn more and live better than a lazy ass next door. The issue is to not allow those two extremes slight too far apart, where “too” is some magic number or formula. It's the pareto principle. It's a force of nature you can't really overcome. Read Capital by Karl Marx, pretty good explanation of the various reasons why wealth inequality exists Even without reading it, paying $0 in taxes can really accelerate wealth accumulation. Normalize calling American billionaires oligarchs. The word oligarchy has a meaning. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/fiv434/map_of_the_worlds_billionaires_and_how_they_made/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf 20% corporate tax is the answer. Bring back FDR tax bracket system Piketty has since totally become disillusioned with capitalism and has shifted from socdem to full on socialist, at least based on the last book he’s written [removed] This book changed my life and world view. Truly brilliant. YES! Absolutely that book is awesome. That book is too dense for most redditors I think, piketty is pretty close to reality. But people still hate him lol Thanks I just bought another book I won’t have time to read this year Before you read the whole book, read the appendix where he explains his data sets. He massaged the living shit out of them. In almost every case, t he raw data contradicts his assertions. It’s absolutely terrible data science and economics. For anyone without the time and attention span to read all of that. Watch Daniel Day Lewis's performance in There Will Be Blood. Explains Putey and his Cronies perfectly This WhAtAbOuTiSM is only trying to cover up the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Don’t let it blind you to what really matters. /s Capitalism it takes CAPITAL to make real money. Details more complicated when ya get to the ultra rich and ‘lobbying’ politicians but it’s all the same shit And ""the top 1%"" is still over 3 million people. These things aren't even comparable. The difference between ""3.3 million people hold 27% of the total wealth,"" and, ""500 dudes literally own the country,"" is staggering. Edit: That isn't to say that I don't think the US could be doing a better job to combat wealth inequality. I just think this comparison and what-aboutism is counterproductive. It's funny that everyone is falling for this. Yes the USA has oligarchs that fuck the poor (I am poor in the USA, so I can speak to that). But seriously? The fact that this is true means we should give all Russians a get out of jail free card????? Dude they are murdering Ukrainian children as we speak!! At least admit they might possibly be the bad guys. > just a poor deflection it seems. Robert Reich's speciality. I always dread it when I see one of his tweets on reddit. The top 1% in the US is over 3,000,000 people. Let’s compare the top 500 of both countries to make it fair… Math on Reddit? You are a saint. Probably everyone shouting this has never bothered to pull the numbers and compare Hello internet friend, I'm worried that you may not have read the articles you posted! Your first article actually says that the wealthiest 500 people in Russia hold about 40% of all of Russia's wealth. Your second statement hasn't been true since over a decade. If you go to your second link you'll see that America's top 1% currently hold about 32% of America's wealth. I encourage you to read more! You forgot that the U.S is richer than Russia, and those American one percent hold more wealth than the Russian elite albeit 1 percent. [deleted] No! USA bad okay? Thats the money on paper. This isn't a contest. Just because it ""isn't that bad compared to Russia"" doesn't mean it's not shitty or shouldn't be improved. So you feel optimistic when you see the future intended trajectory of the course we’re currently on? Just wanna be clear here. Population of Russia is 144M. 114M of 144M is 80%. Thanks for not even checking your random ""Moscow Times"" source. Credible!! This guy always does this. He makes an absurd claim that looks very bad in the context he frames, however when you look at it, the issue is more complicated and not as simple as every 1%er is an oligarch. He is also a hypocrite for not supporting affordable housing in his own community while tweeting about how we need more every day. There's also the case that the US isn't directly controlled by these people, essentially parasitic gangsters controlling Russia from the top. While Russia certainly is an example for the US and other nations of what may be the result without proper economic regulation, separation of power and freedom of speech, the two are currently not comparable. I would argue the biggest problem in western nations are the strings attached to politicians through lobbying and the like, which can to some degree resemble a plutocracy somewhat like the Russian oligarcy. We should all at least strive for full transparency there. Yea, Robert Reich is one of those people that's really good in his zone, economics with a focus on inequality and lower classes. When he starts including politics he gets really shaky. Math hard Double check your numbers on the graph. The top 1% by wealth hold 32% of the total wealth. (Actually, it's probably a little higher, closer to 35%; the distributed financial accounts are super useful for real-time flows, but are a little less precise in levels. See the text around footnote 8 here https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-and-income-concentration-in-the-scf-20200928.htm for the best number possible for 2019). The 27% figure is what the top 1% of income earners own, not the top 1% wealthiest people. 59 people in the US have as much money as the bottom 50% combined. Not really any better considering how much bigger the economy and population is OP (not of this comment, but of the post itself) is a Putin supporter, check his post history That's just because we have so many more people than Russia. Yes, but if we stick to facts and numbers then we can't both-sides everything and look smart. Being contrarian is more important than being moral or right. It's really easy to do, too, especially when every sane person sees an issue one way. You just say the opposite and sit back smugly. Like how Covid was just like the flu. American rich people are the same as Putin. See, it's easy. Just stop using facts. The US is similar to most other developed markets, maybe more skewed but most places are skewed How these two groups got their wealth is also probably going to be way different, in some countries you get rich not by hard work knowledge and luck, but by who you know The bottom 20% has a negative net worth though, and I'm not entirely sure how that's factored in. Look at the top 10% of your data; they own 60% of all wealth in the US. The bottom 50% owns 2.5%. The Forbes Top 25 owns more than 56% of all households. In no way does that seem like a healthy distribution. Pretty much this though you have to take into consideration, the USSR was much poorer than the States to begin with. Once it collapsed it was worse. Then, instead of, idfk, try to move to a economic model that benefits all, Russia went the usual route - destroy the ""state owned"" capital so it can be bought by wealthy shills close to those in power, thus creating even more inequality. These oligarchs are the same people that were part of those companies - and used the people's wealth to buy them for themselves. This is arguably the main reason why socialism failed. Instead of gradually letting workers vote and control on assets, they were delivered right into the hands of greedy industrialists with strong ties to the ruling party. Cue in 30 plus years of this and the state of the entirety of Eastern Europe becomes apparent. Huge debt, over reliance on western loans, no economy, poverty in the 80% and several political parties that continuously rob whatever's left. In the US earning 100k a year puts you into the top 10 percent and most engineering degrees have salaries (after 2 to 5 years of work experience) in the 120 to 200k (depending on area, which degree and firm on top of many other factors) You’re comparing using two different metrics to exaggerate the difference. There’s a difference for sure, but not as extreme as you’d assume based on this comment Wouldn't it be fairer to state how many in government represent the 1%, and how many represent the other 99%? Not sure about it, but the outcome might be a bit skewed. It's also pretty important to note that the U.S top 1% rely far more heavily on a global economy. And remember, it's not about wealth, it's about control. Those 500 people are at the favour of Putin himself. He makes them rich, and he takes it all away, in return they manage Russia for him. It's different than having a rich billionaire that's not paying taxes. This is misleading statistics. If you want to be accurate in your comparison, you should either compare the top 1% of Russia to the top 1% of the US or the top 500 people of Russia to the top 500 of the US Stated otherwise, the top 1 percent owns more than the bottom 50 lololololol Legal theft takes a little longer but is more secure. Also, our oligarchs take turns leading. I don't think difference matter anymore at this level. Theyre fucking a fuckton of people. Eat the rich. also the russian/arab oligarchs make their money by exporting their natural resources. most of the population never benefits from that. while the US billionaires have their wealth sitting in the stock market. 1% is an arbitrary number. 1% club reaches down to ppl with about 11 million in net wealth. That may sound like a lot and is certainly enough to live on comfortably by itself but that’s still not run away wealthy. You’ve got to go down deeper to see the real concentration of wealth. Not sure where the numbers are now, but last I looked, it was less than 0.1%. Of course if you look at the OP (who is a GenZeDong poster) they're spamming this, and other things like: >[Confirmed: US imperialists wanted to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine since at least 2019](https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageImperialism/comments/t4zkj0/confirmed_us_imperialists_wanted_to_drag_russia/) >[Biden’s “State of the Union”: Confronting internal crisis, the American ruling class turns to war](https://old.reddit.com/r/jimmydore/comments/t59or5/bidens_state_of_the_union_confronting_internal/) >[US imperialists are about to get what they wanted from Russia's invasion of Ukraine](https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/t2or6z/us_imperialists_are_about_to_get_what_they_wanted/) >[Powering Putin: U.S. imports of Russian oil soar as domestic energy production plummets](https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/t4ik1y/powering_putin_us_imports_of_russian_oil_soar_as/) >[The US is an oligarchy where 3 billionaires hoard more wealth than half the nation & working class people aren’t guaranteed healthcare or a living wage, yet Biden & the Democrats are on TV pontificating about bringing “democracy” to the world when we don’t have democracy at home.](https://old.reddit.com/user/failed_evolution/submitted/?count=75&after=t3_t4dyq4) Oh and here is the ""ops"" twitter: https://twitter.com/failedevolution https://twitter.com/failedevolution/status/1496913633091194880 >if you really don't want to see more wars in Europe or elsewhere, fight for the destruction of the brutal, evil and criminal organization called NATO. That's the root of endless wars around the globe. 3 people have a higher net worth than 50% of the US population. Seems like you're comparing apples to oranges. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/03/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-target-saying-3-richest-have-much-w/ You're pointing out two completely different metrics here. Can someone explain to me how to understand the second source? I’m having trouble understanding the graph shown on the Fed website (second link). Thanks This completely misses the point. An oligarchy is government being controlled by a small group of people (generally very wealthy people). There are a lot of issues the overwhelming majority of Americans agree on yet regardless of who is in office almost none of these issues are addressed. Why does public opinion not impact legislation in our democracy? Because our government officials do not govern for the general public, they govern for a small group of people. We have an oligarchy hidden behind a curtain - the curtain being lobbying and campaign donations. The wealthiest people in America aren’t in “direct” control but they have absolute control of our government. I think it’s hard to call a country a democracy when public opinion has no impact on legislation. We should still call wealthy people with access to government oligarchs though. Elon Musk American oligarch does have a ring to it. They have a smaller middle class but the poor there are still the same as the poor here. Some rural communities in America resemble 3rd world countries. None of it is preferable. I don't think you really know what [American poor](https://www.newsweek.com/alabama-un-poverty-environmental-racism-743601) is. When people say they'd rather be poor in America on this website they are generally doing it from a non-poor position. The poor in America have it extremely bad. exceptionalism even in despair. as american as it gets. They get low cost university. Paid sick leave. Paid maternity leave. Universal healthcare. Have you even been to Russia? Russia is one of the most literate countries in the world. You aren’t actually poor. Any reason why? Its actually probably much more similar than you think. What happens to poor Russians that doesn't happen to poor Americans? POOF! 🧞‍♂️Wish granted! We may very well end up the same as them one day. Imagine the middle of the country invading independent coastal regions that have broken away sometime in the near future, at the command of president Trump the 3rd. As an American, doesn't seem far fetched to me at all. Shove a sock in this one’s mouth Every system is corrupt because they rely on people (persons) ensuring just decisions that impact the populace at large. Democrats (self proclaimed liberal) and the US just betray their population in different ways. Putin and the communist government that he inappropriately wields is just a means to perpetuate his and his Allie’s power and wealth while ensuring a cultural significance that has less and less meaning as the world evolves. Either way you sound like you're ok with modern slavery.. and if i wasn’t on mushrooms right now i might care. 🙁 So you would have no problem living here. https://youtu.be/aaRzO4dUJnE Put your feet where your mouth is and I'll believe you, be poor in America. Yes. This is dumb. Its like when someone announces they have lung cancer and have trouble breathing, and someone in the room goes 'I've had trouble breathing lately myself - awful cold this year...' America has things wrong with it. Russia is irredeemably fucked. That is the difference. America has potential to change - and does change, every year. Russia is nothing more than one big vacuum with Putin at the top and people he allows to be wealthy surrounding him. It is a dictatorship and a kleptocracy. You don't own anything in Russia. Putin can decide tomorrow that he owns your company and there is nothing you can do about it. It is the same reason China is a terrible place to live and store your wealth. We're not the exception, we're the next rung on the ladder. Do you have any idea whatsoever what you're talking about? Or are you just parroting American exceptionalism propaganda? Pretty sure being poor in the US is just as shitty as being poor in Russia. Possibly even a little worse, as Russia has more social safety nets than the US (universal healthcare for one). You mean getting crushed to death by a garbage truck? Cozy. Honestly, screw that American vs Russian shit. It sucks being poor, period. I find it pretty disappointing that this is the highest voted comment. Oh golly gosh it sucks so hard to be poor in Russia so count your blessings you’re oh-so-lucky to only be poor in America? Give me a break. The wealthy in America are well past the point of having to answer for what they’ve done. Wealth inequality is worse in the US than it was in France during the French Revolution. How much worse do you think the American wealthy can make it before enough of us start saying enough is enough? And the longer it takes, the worse it’ll be in the end. That’s just historic fact. Canadian middle class is where it's at 😎 True So homeless or homeless? I used to work at Cedar Point a few weekends a year as a fundraiser for my organization in college. Shit was miserable, like 16hr days outside and sleeping In shitty dorms. A lot of the workers there are foreigners from eastern Europe trying to get by. I remember at the end of the day Chilling at the gate with this girl from Romania and bitching about how I can't wait to get home and she goes ""I've worked like this 7 days a week for the last 4 months. Almost all of my money goes back to the park for housing and food, but at least I'm not in Romania anymore. . . "" Shit was absolutely humbling. Romania is not quote Russia, but I'll never forget that That's the mindset. Would you be a poor Indian is the question? We understand and it's pretty obvious u are a slave. The thing is what is your price based on your sick mind values. Is indian good enuff for being poor? German poor? Estonian poor? Or just American poor? Such a white privileged thing to say. Uhh....ok? I'd rather have 5 dollars than none, doesn't mean 5 dollars is a lot of money. What an inane comment. Also, Putin is ruler of people. Bezos is just about making that bread. Then you haven’t really been either kind of poor. It’s not incredibly different. How about ""I'd rather not be poor at all."" This is what they call [""eating from the trashcan of ideology""](https://youtu.be/rZ9Yk_LKimU) I’m not going to try to one-up you, but I’d recommend [reading this](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/12/21/572043850/u-n-investigator-on-extreme-poverty-issues-a-grim-report-on-the-u-s) if you have a few minutes. The gist is that extreme poverty exists in many parts of America, and we tend to ignore it for a variety of reasons. Guy doesn’t talk much about the urban poor, but I grew up in Baltimore and can tell you it’s pretty horrible and worse than what I’ve seen in many other countries that Ive visited. Anyway, here’s an excerpt: “He spoke to politicians and political appointees who were ""completely sold on the narrative of such scammers sitting on comfortable sofas, watching color TVs, while surfing on their smartphones, all paid for by welfare."" But Alston says he met people working full time at chain stores who needed food stamps because they couldn't survive on their wages. And he was shocked by the type of poverty he witnessed: ""I saw sewage-filled yards in states where governments don't consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility."" And ""people who had lost all of their teeth"" because dental care wasn't covered by their health insurance plans. And homeless people who were told to move by a police officer who had ""no answer when asked where they could move to.""” Until you realize China has a bigger middle class because greedy billionaires wanted cheaper labor at the cost of American jobs. So patriotic. You see, when American billionaires fuck you, it's love. Make sure you keep waving that flag man... American poor is well off in other countries so that's cool I wouldn't Russia has better social services and IMO much better public spaces like city squares, transport hubs, libraries, and parks. It probably will get much worse now, but in the last 20 years the standard of living actually increased substantially. Almost best is poor North European. I don't where the best is. That's some too notch propaganda you've been consuming. Can we raise the bar please? I'd like to be able to afford my own apartment someday... I think the longer term question is about the sustainability of how the money flows. America seems to be moving towards having a fairly large number of very wealthy individuals, but a growing number of people near or below the poverty line. Couple that with the fact that retirement and healthcare are burdens that have increasingly been shifted towards the individual, and I think we have real problems long term. Considering economic success has been measured by growth rate, there's reason to think that the real disposable income of the average American could decrease in future years I don’t think you know how truly poor the American poor actually are. We do a great job of hiding them here, but it’s a rough existence anywhere you go. I'd rather we abolish poverty than draw straws Russians have better labour protections then the us does I wouldn’t. The cost of living in America is waaaay higher. Ya because you are biased. Actual data shows you would live roughly the same life. There are more poor people in Russia tho. Let’s not set ourselves up for low standards. Also, Russian “wealth” is not as transferable as the counterpart position in the US. It’s the inherent problem with criminal enrichment. You have to launder the gains prior to realizing them because they are illegitimate gains. Putin has forced the issue and made himself and his cronies really fucking poor on the global level. Woops. Did you drop this /s? Spoken like a person who has no immediate need for shelter, medicine, or higher education. Funny but it’s really not. It’s a very valid point. Lesser of 2 evils. Sure. Doesn't mean u should be happy about that. How was this upvoted at all? > Yes well *our* shit comes with a side of mostly clean water. *Theirs* only comes with piss! The OP is a anti west troll Seriously. Redditors trying to say it is even close to the same situation are extremely delusional Is this sarcasm? I can't tell. I'd rather be poor in most of western Europe as well. This is a shit take, bro. America is ghetto. All of our resources go to funding wars and defense. People have zero assets or equity but roll around in a BMW, gucci belt and iphone. We are China’s fav prostitute. Yes the suburbs are beautiful and some people live comfortably their whole lives. The cities are full of homeless veterans and mental health victims. The nation should be ashamed to be pointing fingers when we need serious help and support at home. then you are missing out on free healthcare There are more homeless people in the States than in Russia Russian poor people have access to free-of-change government-funded healthcare. Also, in Russia public transportation is great. You can live without a car there and get anywhere with public transportation. It’s not easy to be poor in any country, though i'd rather be Russian poor than have the intelligence of u/Bunkerbuster12 Have better standards my friend I’m writing this from a country where an American middle class household would barely qualify as working class in terms of income, while my kids are having free lunch at school. My recent hospitalization due to covid only affected us financially in terms of cost of pizza that my wife bought for the kids to cheer them up while I was in the hospital. Poor is different depending on where you live, that’s for sure. You clearly have no idea. I wouldn’t wish living in poverty in the USA on my worse enemy. Living in Russia would be a thousand times better considering they’ll have social welfare. Do you even know what’s an American poor? Please educate me. Gotta love economic Stockholm syndrome. A person who hits you less than your last lover does not make that relationship heathy or sustainable. Language is important. Calling the mega wealthy Oligarchs is accurate due to the relationship wealth has on politics. So long as those with ungodly wealth are able to dictate the course of history without consent from the governed that is an oligarchy. It does not matter what percentage of wealth one nation’s oligarchs claim, the effect is ultimately (however gradually) the same. Oh honey, as the comments have already said, I don't think you quite understand what ""American poor"" looks like Imagine missing the point so much How do I read about this? > It was Putin who **took the plunder to a whole new level, while demanding the oligarchs give him personally 50% of it**. FTFY. Putin is just as corrupt as Yeltsin, if not more so. >They would much rather have a US puppet like Yeltsin back in power. Technically, Putin was the US puppet. He was hand-picked by (US puppet) Yeltsin and everyone in the US believed at the time that Putin would absolutely continue in Yeltsin's footsteps. He did at first, but then he started to resent the US for whatever reason - either for the neoliberal looting of Russia, election rigging or just something more personal. Even as the first two things (looting of Russia and rigging of elections) are the very reason why he came to power. Putin did not stop the plunder he said he did. An important distinction. Lol you muppet, you called Biden a fucking joke because he said Russia was going to invade Ukraine. When Putin came into power, he was cracking down on corruption while making millions of dollars doing his own corruption. The plunder never really stopped though. Yeah, people think the oligarchs control Putin but it’s the other way around. He’s the strongman leader that they get the spoils from. Who then supports Putin? He cannot be in power without any support they may not like putin personally but he's taking good care of them so they support him. it's all very transactional, just like trump. that's why trump found putin to be his kind of tyrant. Literally the main reason he's so popular with the people is that he slowed down the free fall in standard of living brought on by the unchecked oligarchs looting everything they could after the fall of communism. The US wants a puppet again so they can get in on the looting like they did last time and end up with some more horrific stories of child prostitutes trying to help feed their families, the US loves forcing that shit on other countries so its oligarchs can get a few more percent returns. You are 100% right. It was Berezovsky who brought Putin to power believing that he would become his puppet. Yet, Putin reversed the game and when he took power the top oligarchs like Berezovsky and Abramovich were finally forced in self-exile to London. I don't know if Putin has connections with other oligarchs now. If he does, I'm pretty sure they can't control him in order to loot the state. He is capable in putting red lines even to them. Very convenient story telling. Forgets the fact that the oligarchs only live as long as Putin says. Otherwise they need to seek asylum outside of Russia and even then Putin will send his goons to try to eliminate them. I would have thought the sanctions would have killed this type of Russia propaganda but I guess the threat of polonium tea is enough to keep any agent working for free Putin was put in power by oligarchs and his cabinets are chosen by oligarchs [deleted] [Who are his keys to power then if not them?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&ab_channel=CGPGrey) Yeah its honestly no wonder that he is hostile to the west They can't do anything because he gave them their companies and their wealth. Where do you live? Here in Ohio everyone generally agrees that the rich run the country unless you're upper middle class. This comment section is completely invested with people sucking billionaires dicks. We’re so fucked. They just pay slightly less rich people to do that for them on TV and pay them through think tanks and no profits. While the rich people just run their sham charities used to buy good PR for their massive wealth Lol, Americans definitely know that the rich run the country. If they say they don't, then they're lying > Americans don't believe the filthy rich run our country I'd say most Americans do believe that. The main difference in just in their attitude about that. Conservatives are often fine with it, moderates often want to form some basic controls around it and liberals often want to enact policies that severely disrupt that fact. > because the filthy rich aren't on TV saying they run our country. It's that simple. I disagree. It's mainly just complicated by the fact that attitudes to wealth are a partisan issue in the US, so speaking out tends to mean picking a political side. So, those who want to remain neutral might avoid talking about that. But you have lots of wealthy people acknowledging that the wealthy control our country and then either arguing that's a good thing to lean into (Trump, conservatives), arguing that's a good thing in moderation (Bezos) or arguing that it's something we need to address (Buffet, Gates). Trump joked in debates seen by many/most Americans about how as a wealthy businessman he could buy and sell politicians and play both sides. He was then elected president. The top 1% in Russia is 1.4 million people. 1% is not an accurate ""term"". It's more like 0.01%, or more likely less, for both countries as well as others. Insane to think half a million put you in the top 1% and realizing it would take the entirety of 1-.10%% to equal half of the .1% Truly astronomical scale of wealth inequality. However, to pretend big money doesn't heavily influence, and in some cases control, political behavior is asinine. I would venture to bet if we pooled congress right now the more money given by the rich folk equates directly into more predictive voting habits based on what those donors wanted versus their states as a whole. The US has a worse Gini coefficient than Russia. No one should compare the top 1% of Americans to oligarchs. But it’s easy to compare the hundred wealthiest Americans to the oligarchs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality Finally seeing another rational human on this thread. I posted very similar on here as well. The arrogance of the untravelled with zero perspective is astounding. ~~Getting into the 1% is also a really low bar.~~ ~~Earing around 350k a year gets you in the door.~~ Edit: oof - 350k gets you 1% in West Virginia. 598k is average. Also the fact that it is coming from an ex-Clinton advisor with a tidy fortune himself: [https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/robert-reich-makes-36-more-than-average-ceo-and-gets-40k-for-a-one-hour-talk-vs-average-worker-pay-of-46kyear/](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/robert-reich-makes-36-more-than-average-ceo-and-gets-40k-for-a-one-hour-talk-vs-average-worker-pay-of-46kyear/) This is reddit, where every other post is about how horrible America is. Comparing the US to Russia is a new low, but not surprising here. Top 1 percent is nothing. He should've said top 0.1%. I see what you’re getting at but wouldnt you also have to compare the middle class sizes too? Thank fuck. Someone with the balls to say it. ""Is America really that different?"". What a ridiculously embarrassing analogy Look at OP's post history, full of posts blaming nato and the west for the invasion of Ukraine. Whataboutism is a favourite for Russian disinformation campaigns, we're probably gonna see a lot more america/europe bad posts in the coming weeks making it to the front page [deleted] To be in the 1% of wage earners in the USA you need to make $450,000. Also keep in mind, our oligarchs is not just wealthy dudes. They are dudes who (almost always) stole their wealth from state or other people. E.g. bought state owned oil refinery for a fraction of a cost, bought ""bankrupt"" metal factory for mere millions while it's assets worth billions, our bought some company from a man who was put in prison cause refused to sell his company for a fraction of it's value and so on. And then they multiply their wealth using state affiliation and corrupted officials at the very top (ministers, pms, president himself). And now it's just ""rich people are bad"" These anti capitalist pigs need to chill with the clickbait fake news This is some botted bullshit, 17.7k upvotes on economy in only 2 hours? Meanwhile top comments have less than 100 upvotes? Yeaaaa ok thank you Russian bot farm for pushing this to the top of my feed Robert Reich is a moron and I knew this was his tweet before I even saw his profile picture. Even if the wealth inequality were equal, the political power those people wield is vastly disproportional in Russia. However much you dislike lobbying in the US, it is not 1/1000 the corruption you see in Russia. And this is coming from someone pretty left politically. Welcome to the Reddit propaganda machine. Classic communist whataboutism bullshit Yeah, fuck OP. I don't agree with the wealth gap, but fuck anyone who suggests what Russia have is ""just the same"" In the middle of a potential world war, somehow Reddit still finds its time to shit on the USA, amazing. Great comment. And in addition this, a good portion of 1% in the US is fluid. This is a big difference too and it drives me crazy people don't understand this. Not that we don't have inequality problems we should be trying to fix, but blowing up the system is not the solution I like Reich but he's now so clickbaity. Just posting the same things to Twitter non-stop. Thank you. More hyperbole ""America Bad"" speak It's just another shit take by the economically illiterate Twitter king of shit takes. [deleted] [deleted] I think he means 1% of earners, not the whole population. Just taking a rough estimate of the population and figuring 1 percent from that number is not an accurate portrayal at all. You can still argue the merit of the argument as a whole but that's disingenuous. Its also less so about that 1 percent of earners and more about the uber wealthy and their concentration of wealth. That one percent includes more people than just the billionaires and industry tycoons, it covers a pretty wide swath of the earnings spectrum in the US. That's also far from the point. The concentration of wealth is increasing around an ever shrinking population while basic needs are not being met. We may not be an oligarchy to the degree which Russia is, but we also aren't exactly a shining beacon of equitable fiscal policies. The industry titans have more say over legislative issues than the voting public in this country. If that's not heading down that path then I really don't know what is. We have a government much more representative of corporate interest than public interest. Lmfao this stupid fuck named himself after Pete Buttigieg. Holy fuck that's lame. Lol the 1% as commonly known isn't the top 1% of the population. It's either by income or by wealth. We have 724 billionaires - can we call them oligarchs? Is there some reason only a particular threshold of insanely wealthy counts to you? I appreciate that your argument isn't that the tweet is incorrect about the numbers when it comes to income disparity in the United States. You're just fully happy with ""we're slightly better than Russia if you look at the numbers a different way than the way also factually correct shown here."" Your awards to upvote ratio is quite fun. And our 3,200,00 elites are probably ""friends"" with the 100 russian elites. They stab themselves in the back when it suits them, but as a whole, they are in the same group, with similar objectives, frequenting the same people and events, exchanging money, contracts, ideologies, negotiating policies and politics that will suit them all. What do you mean by top 1%? If you're just taking the population and then that really doesn't tell you anything... 3.2m in the US then Russia would be 1.4 million for the top 1%... Doesn't say anything about the wealth distribution.... 500 people could hold 99.9999% of the wealth but the top 1% would still be 1.4 million people. You atleast need both figures but you seem to chose one for the US and another for Russia. Fuck off, Ivan. Your children are dying by the thousands while you hide the news from your impoverished shit-hole country. Kill Putin, save yourselves. Lmao username checks out. source Thank you for saying this. People need some perspective. It wouldnt be ridiculous to compare the US top 100 to the russian top 100 though. The top 100 in the US is where the real money is at anyway. We're a crony-capitalist country approaching an oligarchy. Welcome to Reddit. It’s the Fox News of social media, but for ignorant leftists. That's a pretty important distinction But you are comparing the richest 4 million to the richest 100. You would have to compare the richest 100 in both countries, compared to everyone else's wealth. I'm not saying the OP made a good analogy but your rebut is shitty What's ridiculous about it? First, OP is posting a question about a comparison, not making an analogy. Second, oligarchy is a kind of power structure, not a list of people. It's the way you're choosing to interpret the question that's ridiculous. Just wondering where you got these numbers? >it's embarassing [insert thing here] is on the front page of reddit What are you expecting? A website full of intelligent people and subject matter experts? This is reddit, you're lucky if the people responding to you have graduated high school The issue isnt the way it is. The issue is massing wealth has a snowball effect. Regulation capture, paying for legislation or judiciaries to look the other way etc. If we arent aware it could get that bad. A kink in the armor of accountablity is a slippery slope. Its history. Too much power consolidation always ends horribly for the bottom 90 whatever percent. Reddit practically orgasms over the opportunity to claim that wealth inequality is worse in the US than ever in human history. It’s not. Go to Chad and see how people live there. I usually like Richard’s comments, but this ain’t it. And poverty in the US isn’t as bad as it is in other countries either. I’m not saying that poverty isn’t bad but when you compare it to poverty in the Philippines or Brazil it’s much better Probably upvoted by Russian bots. Nooooooo, you’re supposed to say “America bad” If inflation, CoL, and housing prices hadn’t shot up with wages staying down, I would agree with you. GINI coefficient is 0.26. Which is good in a sense that more people are closer to earning the same amount. If everyone in the USA made $1 per year you would have a GINI score of 0. The higher the coefficient the worse off. However this is only one statistic. There is much more to look at. Anytime anyone someone uses a single statistic like this, there is always more to the story No way! Propaganda bots on Reddit..!!! tin foil hats on lads, we are going deep Russian bot/ wumao for sure Yeah, Putin has more wealth than is measurable or quantifiable. There is no way to know the wealth that he has. It is similar to the Vatican, the Rothchilds, the Church of England. People like Trump, Bezos, Musk don’t even compare. It is incomparable. Western billionaires have their wealth in assets and shares. It is public knowledge what they own (for the most part) and the vast majority of their wealth is speculative (share price x share count). This comparison is so fucking stupid that it’s enraging. The US has its issues but we are hardly in a similar system to dynastic monarchistic wealth hordes that go back up to a thousand years of more. This article just reeks of ME ME ME mindsets and a complete lack of knowledge on the content. The author is twisting an incomparable international event and making it about his stupid social politics. Wealth inequality does exist in the US, like it does everywhere on earth, and always has, and always will. That doesn’t mean we have dynastic ancestral bloodline-tied piles of literal gold with centuries of oligarchical connections behind it. There’s a reason everyone’s talking about the oligarchs of Russia and no one gives a shit what clowns the Silicon Valley tech bros surround themselves with. Yes, this article triggered me. You should check OP’s post history. This is a Russian propagandist you’re arguing with. Posts exactly the same anti-U.S. pro-Russia (in a “everyone is equally bad, so who cares” vein) hundreds of times. Don’t engage with the Internet Research Agency. Just downvote. This isn’t idiocy. We are absolutely an oligarchy. Public policy is entirely controlled by the wealthy and completely disconnected from public opinion. https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem What is the significant difference? That the US oligarchy is supporting wars and war crimes that you personally like (Iraq, Yemen, Libya,...), instead of supporting wars that you personally dislike? Well a priori wealth inequality is totally normal and doesn't need to be combatted in the first place. E.g. wealth at 18 years old vs wealth at retirement. The issue in Russia is the uber rich are wealthy due to political deals in the breakup of USSR as well as political protection and patronage. In the US, Bezos Musk Gates etc. are all wealthy because they started a project and led it to success creating new wealth. Reich has become an upvote loving whore. I've lost all respect for the man and I shudder to think this guy once held a very high position of power. On top of that, the use of whataboutism to attack the US relative to Russia would bring a tear to the eye of any good ole KGB man. What a facepalm. Reich is kinda next level narcissist who cannot read a room. It's a valid question and it's also Russian propaganda. The way to combat it is to show that the wealth inequality is drastically different not assault people that are trying to expand their knowledge You’re on Reddit, home of the antiwork dog walker who complains about having to work 20 hours a week. Anyone who worked hard to become successful is an enemy. Anyone who has the guts to risk everything to open a small business and create jobs is an evil slave master. And you expected an honest discourse? Ha. It’s kind of nuts that this guy was the actual Sec of Labor for Clinton and is a legit economist, but has now turned into a spammy leftist troll on Twitter. Let’s see what could be the possible difference between oligarchs who accumulate wealth through State corruption and someone like Gates or Bezos who’s wealth is through publicly traded stock and many of whom actually have antagonist relationships with our politicians? Couldn’t agree more. You can point out problems with the growing wealth gap without making ridiculous claims to get attention Public opinion means nothing when trying to get laws changed. There's wealth inequality in both countries they just do it in different ways. The most powerful are the most rich. So he's technically not wrong and not an idiot. The idiots are the ones that believe what politics tell them. I disagree that the United States and Russia and scenarios are different. Sure, much of the Russian oligarch wealth was taken from the Russian taxpayers by a kleptocracy, whereas most US billionaires and wealth drive from capitalistic endeavors. But the bottom line is that they function identically.... In both cases the ultra-wealthy control the public policies and influence legislation to benefit themselves. If US oligarchs bribe Congress and drive down their capital gains tax, and drive down their income tax, that's not much different than kleptocrats from Russia. Do you want to elaborate or give an example of such a discussion? Your comment is similarly as surface level as the tweet, but for the opposite side of the argument. That’s the only real difference I see between the two. Yeah the inequality is even bigger in the US you’re right. No facts or sources to back up what you say just declaration as if people should just take your word for it lol. You have no idea what wealth inequality actually looks like in either country yet you try and speak with authority. Idiots. This? Really? How about the fact that we all know it, but allow it? All we can do really is not work. Period. Nobody works way all until the GLOBAL Oligarchs stop being so fucking greedy. I think the idiocy is ignoring nuance and painting it as extreme. Reactions like yours are why we can't talk about anything. There’s a difference. There is not a significant difference. But I guarantee the gap between richest and poorest person in Russia is smaller than the one in the US. ""Fact based"" Never mind it’s true Not really but whatever you say Is it though? Your 1% bribes your politicians to get what they want? Your companies give bribes to politicians to get what they want? What’s the difference? The US is exactly as shitty as Russia, only difference is they got better PR You're right. We totally have never overthrown so many island governments for fruit companies that the term ""banana republic"" was invented. We do not have laws that are so blatantly unequal that we see the rich people in the country get away with rape with nothing but a slap on the wrist. We have never literally invaded Panama to force them to carve a canal through their nation. We have never attempted to overthrow the venezuelan government so Elon musk can get cheaper lithium. We have never had a recession and only bailed out the mega rich. America is a fair and equal country entirely unlike the evil Russians. Yes. I would be interested in your evidence for the response. Calling a point of view idiocy is not actually fact based discussion. I'm curious what the differences are. Do you mean the proportions of wealth distribution are significantly different? The methods of politics/influence are different? I really don't know much on the subject. We can't combat it if people refuse to accept it exists. What exactly is idiotic here? Are you saying we(Americans) don't live in an oligarchy because Russia has worse wealth inequality than the US? Can you please elaborate on those differences? As someone who grew up with a frequent lack of running water or power, constantly moving due to various economic crashes and inability to afford a place to live, while having to illegally work a full time job at 14 to pay my parents’ bills (because public school teachers barely make enough to live on by themselves as-is), and can’t afford medical care for chronic issues because my insurance deductible is nearly 20% of my annual salary, I don’t see how it is an “idiotic” comparison. I understand I can only offer anecdotal experience myself, but that combined with seeing the entire city of Detroit devolve into a backwater, while a suburb of that city does not even have reliable access to clean water, and seeing issues like banks and property management companies racially gentrify areas, and seeing how Native American reservations are handled, among a myriad of other issues, while we have one of the best economies on paper, really doesn’t paint a picture all that different from wealth inequality in Russia. Why does the US have a worse Gini coefficient than Russia then? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality Found the American 1%er [deleted] If wealth inequality is the problem, does that imply equality of wealth is the ideal? This is the literal former secretary of labor but yea I’m sure a bunch of random redditors have a better grasp of the situation. Look at OPs post history. Dude has been blaming NATO and US somehow for this invasion. Edit: also how frequently does a post on this specific subreddit get this many upvotes in such a small amount of time? Down vote ops post. I agree this is dumb Any time I see Reich's face in a thumbnail I know I'm in for my daily dose of stupid. [deleted] Just another, ""US sucks"" thread. This attention must be so exhilarating for you. When do we get to see you suck off Tim Poole? Where are you talking about? Iraq or Afghanistan ? I think you misspelled factual U mean like America invading Iraq? Afghanistan? But making it feel any different than ukraine? America is just as terrible. And it's high time the hypocrisy came to light. Slava ukrani Seems like the parties just pick opposing sides to fight and separate themselves. I think you're right. There's totally a time and place for this kind of thread, but right now just isn't it. Welcome to the liberal utopia Yes, the oligarchs are the ""Oligarchs"" because they acquired state owned industries way below their actual value through bribes and murky means, taking control of state owned manufacturing and oil industries. The people of the former Soviet Union lost out on all this value. Then the Oligarchs made corrupt accommodations with the ruling political class to ensure they would keep it. US people built up companies out of almost nothing. Musk helped get an electric car company going, and a private rocket company going. Bezos built the first online seller behemoth. Others created software companies or apps. They didn't use the mafia to steal state-owned assets. r/economy is just r/communism at this point. No point trying to talk to these bozos Businesses have been privatizing large sections of the American economy for ages. Just look at story of the railcar and how it was dismantled by the auto industry. Other businesses make money by depriving people of services like health insurance. The economy is complex and you can't make blanket statements like every industry only ever produces value. I agree with a lot of that but the idea that one person can have 200 billion dollars is a joke. We grossly overestimate individual accomplishments in this country. Any great modern innovation or invention is usually teams, on top of humanity’s vast collection of knowledge. Innovation is born out of innovation. Without satellites you wouldn’t have an iPhone. Without rockets you wouldn’t have satellites. Without Internet you wouldn’t have an iPhone. Without electricity you wouldn’t have internet. There’s a thousands of necessary inventions in between all those. They should have a lot of money but you can’t act like what they did is worth as much as they’re given in society. Taking companies private doesn’t take away the public benefit. There are fewer shareholders, but they still pay taxes and create products for society. The only difference between public and private companies in what you’re describing is number of shareholders. Name one industry that doesn’t produce societal value. They wouldn’t exist if they didn’t - via political and economic pressure. They can certainly do better - if they couldn’t then nobody would invest in companies expecting them to do better in the future - but they do produce value. Ah yes, Amazon creating so much value with their employee care, keeping prices competitive, and tax millions And Apple with their totally reasonable patents. >By and large the 1% or .1% in the US created immense value for society through their companies, products, and services But they didn't create those products or services. Their workers, who more and more can't afford a living, did. >In Russia, the 1% by and large took assets when the USSR fell or and did not create value. This is basically what the wealthy do over here as well. >People should get rich for creating value for society - That's not how anybody gets rich. >In my view, if you don't want people to get rich for creating value you're going to have a lot less of both. Nobody gets rich through creating value they get rich through the exploitation of the working class. I'm glad you put /s You’re correct. Elon Musk does not run our country. At least every 4 years we get to choose which wealthy geriatric will get to make their friends more wealthy. If you truly believe that the American oligarchy is no different than the Russian one, you really need to study 1990s Russia a little bit more. Does Russia tolerate dissent to the same degree that the US does? Bold of you to assume that. They literally don’t. Yeah if they want to buy votes and influence representatives they cant do it, they just cant, the billionaires have to have a middle man to give the representatives money and influence their votes, the middle man makes a REALLY big diference you know We don’t really get to decide though thanks to the electoral college. depending on where you live your vote may count for practically nothing, which is extremely frustrating. *An increasingly smaller portion of the population decide who our elected leaders are aeh isnt it so that the two parties give u the choice between their candidates? You get to choose between two parties enforcing the same policies. The only thing you choose if the color. Ummmm a true democracy has more than two options we live in an ultimatum at best. All we have is free speech and most people live under wage slavery. Also let’s not forget our whole electoral college situation and gerrymandering. We really no longer live under a democracy especially with special interest lobbyists who control our so called elected officials. America has been a scam for quite some time, also let’s not forget the stock market manipulation by hedgefunds that have destroyed any semblance of a free market when it’s regulated in a manner to only help the wealthy. That is just the tip of the iceberg, also one last thing, we have corporate welfare but can’t even give healthcare to everyone in the 2nd richest country in the world (China surpassed our gdp last year). The average net worth of a 30 year old in America is -1000 dollars due to debt and unaffordable education. And let’s not forget the largest prison population in the whole world plus our destabilization of South America and the Middle East where we killed 300k-500k civilians so yeah I would say America isn’t the good guy we would like to think of ourselves as. > WE decide who our elected leaders are Lmao No we don't really. We have one political party with two flavors. Do you know how I can tell you're white? [deleted] For now anyway. If the GOP gets their way, we’re not going to have that right anymore. This is technically correct but laughable in practice. A small number of people have a huge amount of control over who ends up on the ballot for their party, and both parties make sure to keep it a two party system. Yes we have the right to choose between the people on the ballot but we don't have complete choice because the people who make it onto the ballot is heavily influenced. American freedoms all come with a big asterisk. In America you get to choose which face tells you placating lies while corperatocracy chugs along uninterrupted. At least that's the way it has seemed. Once in a while they'll allow a Bernie or an AOC to parade in front of us to give is *just* enough hope and faith in the system to string us along. But deep down inside we know that those archetypes will never be allowed to have any real influence without some form of actual protest that we're all too comfortable and distracted to actually tale on. Lol cute Red vs blue doesn't matter. It's always been and always will be rich vs poor. Your choice doesn't count for shit and the people who will enact policies that the masses want (aka policies that negatively affect the rich) will never be put into power. Sounds good No. You get to decide out of 2 people. 2 people who are put in place via lots of already established money and power. But they definately love that you think you have a choice. That's the whole idea! Oh! really. The 2020 US election begs to differ. The US deep state pretty much chose the winner in exactly the same way Pakistan's Army chooses the Prime Minister of that country 😂 Nah not really You think you decide, but it’s just an illusion of choice between candidates who have been funded and backed by corporations with various agendas. Democracy is a joke Do we really though? We get 2 parties that continually put up shitty candidates that clearly fall short on even easy promises. I mean its a little better than the authoritarian style ruling they have but not by a whole lot. But the 1% decide who is running and who wins a good portion of the time. Also what they do in office. We get to vote but there’s a lot of skewed influence for the rich and powerful. It feels more like the illusion of choice Ehh... Yes and no. America has a very flawed democratic process that is very susceptible to gerrymandering, strongly weakens or strengthens your vote depending on where you live, leaves you with a first-past-the-post voting system that leaves most people with a 'lesser of two evils' choice more often than not, and the states have the power to manipulate voting laws to tilt favorably towards the party of the states choice, even in federal elections. So, yes, it's better than Russia. But the USA isn't exactly the bastion of democracy it's made out to be, it's heavily influenced by who has the most money... which is pretty damn comparible to an oligarchy. You decide wich puppet. Look at the will of the people vs the will of corporations See what passes “WE decide” Haha Republicans like to gerrymander and introduce Jim Crow laws to reverse any progress we might make In America we get to decide who we elect. But the lobbyists and big money get to decide what the elected officials make into law. Let me know when someone that isn't hand picked by elites from 1 of only 2 major parties gets elected president. We got a choice the same as someone giving you a choice between a kick in the nuts or a hook to the nose. Yeah, we get a choice between two people who have been put through a vetting process to ensure they will never challenge the status quo. Much choice, very free. You can decide between destroying whole countries by bombing them or by bombing them with cool slogans 😍 no it's not what is up with you people? life for the average person in america is WAY better for life for the average person in russia and this is THANKS to those 1%, without them alot of people would lose their job and end up worse. Jesus, americans are the least thankful person I have ever seen, they live like kings but complain and complain non stop. Came here to say this. Well said. If you have same outcomes, does a process matter? Same arguement is repeated 24/7: ""it's not the same hurr durr"". The US is one of the most unequal nations in the world. It is run by rich lobbyists and the top few %. The country is functionally the same as an oligarchy and contains the same moral pitfalls, i.e. the labor of the many goes right into the hands of the few. You can all it whatever bullshit you want, imma call a spade a spade. The end result remains unchanged. Yea like for example, has OP considered that USA good, Russia bad? Good counter argument there son. Just like the world is a playground for the worlds richest people, the internet is a playground for the worlds biggest degenerates and losers. Except for cats. What about the brown more likely Asian. You’re aware Russia hasn’t been socialist for decades, right? Agreed. Capitalism creates wealth and freedom. Socialism creates elites and poor people. It seems people what to be told what to do, how to do it and they give their hard earned money to the government to distribute. Russia is ridiculously capitalist 🤦‍♀️ You need to read up on the Panama papers and what happened to the person who reported on it vs the rich people who were exposed by it (murdered, no consequences). Guess what? Those people in the papers include all kinds of US oligarchs. And yet Epstein and his handymen conveniently die before testifying everytime… and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X just died of old age. Didn’t musk hire somebody to try and frame the diver he called a pedo? Coca-Cola sent murder squads to kill union leaders in South America. No they just sick the police and courts on them. We get it... USA good Russia bad Musk helped fund Maduro’s death squads to eliminate indigenous tribespeople living on ancestral lands so that he could extract the lithium. Crazy y’all can just come on the internet and just say shit that’s wholly false How you define 1% matters in this discussion. It is wealth extracted by secular rentier structures that exacerbates inequalities over decades and centuries of time, and not so much wealth built by other types of economic activity, nor wage incomes. In the context of a billionaire, a politician’s attention is relatively cheap to buy, legislation and regulations (more of the latter than the former) more expensive, and actually competing in the market about an order of magnitude or more expensive. It isn’t hard to see why these incentives that have been in place for centuries lead to the inequalities we observe today. It's ok to give people money for no work if they have money already, but not if they are broke. That’s called “inflation.” https://imgur.com/gallery/iB4PVRk https://imgur.com/gallery/iB4PVRk Fucking burn! True statement. Compromised through years of under-handed deals between the Biden family and numerous governmental enemies of democracy. 100%agree. The people vote, but the elected legislate with their donors in mind instead of their voters... because without the money they don't get in front of the people who could vote for them. ...also to become filthy rich at everyone's expense🤣😂 Still have more personal opportunity here than most in the world & grateful for that. The Venn diagram for people who say this phrase and fall for idiotic and frankly wrong analogies about how America is a shit hole is a circle. Go ahead, it's about the dumbest comparison I've ever seen in my life. And I frequent reddit A LOT. Stfu Oof And with your chest if you don't mind. Yikes oof slay Queen What? Are you saying that billionaires in America don’t mix with the government? I must be misunderstanding. Every law we have is based on billionaire opinion and influence (pharmaceuticals, the weed industry, healthcare, banking, everything). Celebrities give speeches at political events. The Koch brothers, Elon, Jeff… you think they aren’t closely tied to the government? You think they aren’t influencing laws? All valid points. But notably we're free to express them in the US. In Russia you'd risk getting disappeared saying stuff like this. Yes we are because the actual richest people made products that everyone uses/enjoys around the world. Nobody wants to have lunch with a Russian oligarch. How many people would **pay** to have lunch with Elon Musk, or Bill Gates, or even Leonardo DiCaprio. Lol the top 10 U.S. **actors** are more well-known and well-liked than any Russian oligarch. Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t worth $300m because of some shadow regime in America. It’s because he is a global phenomenon. Same as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc. except that they made products/companies that literally **everyone** uses. 3.2 million people is not comparable to 500 people. Omfg are you seriously saying this without irony? American oligarchs absolutely rely on the state every step of the way, from writing laws for them to using their police and military threat of force. This is hilarious. But there are things that are legal in some countries that are considered corruption in others. Some things that are legal here seem like systemic corruption like high charges that send money to private companies beyond any usefulness provided by that company. American wealthy make most of their wealth from capital gains and dividends The rest make it primarily from their labor Capital gains is a flat tax that isn't applied until the underlying is sold. I.e., deferred for many years allowing compounding. Labor is a progressive tax with a much higher and immediate marginal tax rate. I would say American wealthy IS protected by the state. That's also how it works in the US. Rich people get free money from the government. It looks like you don't know what neoliberalism is. Strange, because it's the corrupt system that the big capital used to maximize profits at the expense of the majority by entirely capturing state institutions and buying politicians. A dominant system in the entire West and beyond the last fifty years. The end result is the same regardless of how the wealth is accumulated - public policy is dictated by those with money, who can lobby >entrepreneurial spirit lol Do you really think that billionaires don’t influence the state? Sure every vote is equal, but it doesn’t matter because the billionaires literally fund those in charge no matter who is elected. While I don't think Russia and America are the same in degree or scale, I think you should look up lobbying. Start with Disney and the Sonny Bono Act and go from there. How are corporations not profiting from the protection of the state? Tell that to all the indigenous tribes genocided during colonialism. Or the workers shot in their beds during the 19-20 centuries. Hell that's not even getting to slaves. America's wealth was built on slavery and genocide we just pretend otherwise > entrepreneurial spirit Define? It's funny you think the US isn't an authoritarian state that serves its oligarchs first I have a degree in economics and I can assure you that other economists agree wealth inequality is a problem. And no, it's not as simple as ""big government bad"", that's not how ""basic economics"" work. I trust Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary of the US and economics professor, on the topic of economics more so than a bunch of dipshit Redditors lmao Wealth inequality inevitably results in an authoritarian state as the wealth purchases political power to protect itself. It's more like .01% but round numbers make better marketing. The top 26 richest people own as much as the bottom 50% of humanity. Yes, because the entire population is over 300 million. There's nothing false about it, the US is the most dangerous oligarchy on earth. FBI OPEN UP !!!! We had a report of someone complaining online from this location! Yeah, as long as it stops at complaining. Actually try to change anything and you end up getting assassinated. ""Everything else doesn't matter and we shouldn't have any discussion about it because we got them beat on this one particular point"" Seriously, the Russian shills used to be more subtle than this. Clearly now that the ruble's tanked and their pay is worthless, they've started halfassing it. Hilarious to see y’all posit that a former Clinton and Obama admin member is a part of the Russian psyops lol This is the correct answer Wow really? The 1% of what? Lol I'll remember that when I'm in line at the food bank 1% of income it also one of the more expensive places to live no? I don’t know. Maybe worth a look to compare cost of living when making this statement. So more socialistic Northern European countries have much higher wealth inequity than less socialistic US? Communism isn’t wealth redistribution [deleted] Bruh, both America and Russia are capitalist nations. The fuck are you on about? It’s not the same with socialism. Not democratic socialism. Every single Norwegian citizen automatically has a healthy pension and retirement thanks to their oil and socialist government. Russia and Venezuela could’ve been the exact same but too much corruption failed them. The problem is not “socialism” or “capitalism” — it’s greed and corruption that fuck everything up. Our own system in the US (which I previously admired, and still have hope for) is turning into crony capitalism thanks to greed and corruption. It ruins even the best of systems. Communism and oligarchy’s are antithetical to each other. Are you sure you know what those words mean? Capitalism has a methodology to generate an oligarchy: a monopoly. It’s literally built in. So 100% of the time, capitalism always turns into an oligarchy. Kinda the same with capitalism too. You could argue the first gilded age turned into an oligarchy with Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, Morgan, etc controlling all aspects of the economy and finance. Until, of course, Roosevelt. Seems to be happening again with today's version of capitalism. Musk, Bezos, Gates, etc. You don’t know what you are talking about. You are talking about authoritarian regimes (Capitalist Regimes are even more guilty of this). Capitalism inherently leads to a concentration of capital because that is the core goal. What do you think libraries are? Police stations? Roads? Public Schools? These are all socialist institutions Even if the USSR were the most pure of Communist states, it has not been one for many years. The current state of things does not come from some grand destiny of a Communist state, it comes from Putin and his ilk. They don’t care about redistribution. They worry about keeping money within their own closed system to self sustain until they die. Lmao what does this have to do with communism or socialism? It's literally capitalism. Except for in every case it was just fascists promising communism to seize full power with no ever intended implementation of actual communist political philosophy. Russia is not communist. This is literally the result of capitalism lmao. One would think someone in an econ subreddit would know atleast a bare thread about what communism and socialism are, but you seem to not give a shit about the meaning of words. WTF does communism or socialism have to do with Russia right now or anything about the topic of this thread? The USSR is better thought of as a form of state administrated capitalism that is but an inflection of welfare capitalism in the west. This conceptualization is far better in explaining the large scale, global patterns, indicative of general constraints that resulted in both the collapse of the USSR in the east, the hallowing out of the welfare state in the west, and the ascendancy of neoliberalism across the globe. Such general patterns cannot be explained contingently, such as by what the government of the USSR decided to call themselves. Have you been in a coma since 1991? That’s ok, it happens https://imgur.com/gallery/iB4PVRk bidens net worth: ~8.5 million putins net wortH: ~200 billion also keep in mind it's not unusual for people to reach the millions in wealth near the end of their lives. biden is wealthy and has a nice house with a pool, but he doesn't do what he does for the money. this thread is dumb as fuck, and botted like crazy too. Putin is a short faggot with man boobs. I agree with you. We have a problem, but it isn't that problem. It’s quite simple: progressive capital tax. Organize and help bring about a people's revolution to institute communism. Return to the tax rates of before Reagan. It’s a stacked deck. Try to raise taxes on income in your state? Watch the wealthy move. Try and organize unions, watch most of the people who would benefit from them quote Fox News. Question the structure of corporate salary rates; lose your job. Civil disobedience. But that requires citizens to take action and be unified. But Americans by far and large are too disconnected, polarized, and apathetic to take those actions. There are isolated incidents where it is working, look no further than workers unionizing the past year. Nothing, because it really doesn't matter Lmao using your wealth illegally. You will only get prison time if your group of wealthy friends turns on you. The justice system seems to be very tolerant of illegal activities for the rich. I think you’re under the impression that wealth inequality is a poor person’s problem and they should get over it. Historically, wealth inequality leads to revolution and dead rich people. It’s a greed problem. Balance is always restored even if only temporarily. It's remarkable people still believe there's legal consequences for the oligarchs in this country. It’s not an apples to apples situation but you can’t deny money buys power in the US, as a politician you need a huge amount of money to pay for your ad campaigns as well as donors, and insider trading essentially makes a joke of the integrity of congress, we have some ridiculously wealthy career politicians and major shareholders out there who straight up do not pay their taxes and exploit the average American. It’s definitely moronic to say tHiS iS liTerAlLy RuSsiA but I find it hard to deny we have a problem when it comes to our systems’ ability to be exploited to oligarchical tendencies Awwww did I hurt you feelings. Did I bruise your ego? *Elites Russia is capitalist. Hello??? [deleted] No On an [8%](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/23/us/politics/biden-wealthy-tax-rates.html#:~:text=The%20analysis%20suggests%20that%20the,percent%20per%20year%20on%20average.) effetive tax rate - tax em more. You mean people who earn way more money pay significantly more taxes?! Preposterous! Percentages are the devil's math! So, america doesn’t kill people who go against the state? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton America is just as much an enemy of the common man as Russia. Wait, What??? They don’t pay taxes🤪💯🇺🇸 Every filthy rich person is that rich explicitly through exploitation of others, and it always requires the cooperation and backing of the state apparatus. The US is an oligarchy. How would that solve anything? The point is extreme wealth inequality is clearly dangerous to a peaceful, democratic world. Thats the point. The system is rigged. Nobody but the rich and connected can ""create their own wealth"". That’s only easy to say if you’re out of touch with today’s working class. This is the same thing Hoover said before he was blown out by FDR. The economy wasn’t fixed then by self determination. It was by increased government spending towards the lower classes and providing economic opportunities to those unable to find work. Pffft better pay me $15 hr min wage Edit: for those who dont know this is clearly a joke per the topic... /s The issue is that I am skilled and have been but class mobility is rough af. Society constantly trying to pigeon hole you can have some pretty detrimental effects. Yeah sure, keep ignoring a problem that has throughout the entirety of human history resulted in large scale revolt and social turmoil. What could go wrong? Rent free I hate America because they implemented and supported (financed) dictatorships in my land killing personal family members Our politicians here in the US get rich off of insider trading and having family members make shady overseas deals in Ukraine and China. The president make a little over 400k a year plus lifetime Benefits such as medical and security. They make most there money on book deals and trades I mean, maybe if you ignore lobbyists IDK. Putins only fans page is pretty compelling. Fricking Reddit hive mind. You are, of course, correct. Woah woah woah buddy, are you going against the Reddit group think? That’s illegal! It’s more complicated than that bud, we realize we have it better than Russia but alot of those rich oligarchs would rather the US be more like Russia, and please be reminded that the only reason we don’t have a dictator right now is that the sum total IQ of the Jan 6 Coup was a double digit number. No you really can't Cmon bro there always is, it’s those of us that aren’t “rich”, but aren’t “poor” either lol. Just grinding to become wealthy eventually. Thanks Qanon. Yeah it’s one of those twisted, biased titles that sounds right, but isn’t. Agree. Most rich in the US have their assets in ownership of companies. If the value of Amazon doubled tomorrow and Bezos became twice as rich, I wouldn’t care. It isn’t a zero-sum game. Amazon price going up or down doesn’t change my wealth. Fun fact: actually isn’t Seriously, you have some of the dumbest takes in this thread. It’s not even close to as bad in the US. The top 1% in the US own 32% of the wealth in the US. The top 1 % own significantly more than that of the wealth in Russia. How the fuck is it much worse in the US? Not even to mention Putin’s sole control over the wealth of the country which makes it even worse. Imagine typing this unironically. The hate boner for the US on reddit is fucking pathetic. Grow up How so? *So how does the Pareto* *Principle fit into this* *Type of discussion?* \- behold\_theking --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: ""haikusbot opt out"" | Delete my comment: ""haikusbot delete"") Well... between America, Russia, and China, have we killed ""the same"" number of civilians w/ our tank columns invading totally peaceful neighbors in the last 5 hours? It looks like you shared some AMP links. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical pages** instead: - **[https://reason.com/2021/03/05/5-ways-elon-musk-and-other-billionaires-get-welfare-for-the-rich/](https://reason.com/2021/03/05/5-ways-elon-musk-and-other-billionaires-get-welfare-for-the-rich/)** - **[https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-subsidies-tesla-billions-spacex-solarcity-2021-12](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-subsidies-tesla-billions-spacex-solarcity-2021-12)** - **[https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) You just described America buddy The guy in the suit has a budy in a uniform holding the gun. That’s a good one Some aspects of this comparison work others don't . Your point is well taken though. This literally has happened in this past. At one point the US military even broke up a strike and forced miners back to work at gunpoint. You can’t just point to tech billionaires and ignore all of American history. The richest American is 199 million times richer than the American poverty line. While the richest Russian is only 188 million times higher than the Russian poverty line. Being a poor American isn’t better than being a poor Russian. It’s just that you are much more likely to be poor in Russia. If aren’t wealthy or middle class in America then you probably have a pretty similar life to the average Russian person. 3.3 million people? They might have not been neighbors but the US also invades other countries in case you missed the last 20 years. [deleted] yes but don't forget to wear a condom! A substantial part of the population of my country can't even spell oligarchy much less define it. They dont have to be the same to both be Oligarchies So I take it you’re a millionaire? As of Q3 2019, the top 10% of households in the United States held 70% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2%. [deleted] I'm pretty sure the post's being brigaded by Russian bots, the top active mod and OP are both active in one of their central hubs Yeah, #3 there... USA absolutely has oligarchs, they just happen to own the media and aren't Russian, so they call themselves 'capitalists' instead. That was ten years ago! It’s Woefully worse now Hey there SortaHot58! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **""THIS!""**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :) *** ^(I am a bot! Visit) [^(r/InfinityBots)](https://reddit.com/r/InfinityBots) ^(to send your feedback! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments) Actually the majority of our 1% are inherited wealth. They've created nothing. Their compounded interest generates so much money in a day they could feed a family of four for five years or more. While some might still be a part of their family business, most have passed on that responsibility to others and are simply part of the dividend drawing class. So if I push you down the stairs, it wasn’t me who directly hurt you it was the stairs There are companies that don't pay tax, how is that not theft? No they are definitely waging war on the working people of this country. *Americans in* *These comments: my oligarchs* *Are good oligarchs* \- OneSlapDude --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: ""haikusbot opt out"" | Delete my comment: ""haikusbot delete"") Uh no generational wealth acquisition is completely inaccessible to a good chunk of people. It’s simply not attainable but that is definitely what the Uber rich people want you to think. It encourages people to act and vote against their own best interests I got hammered into the ground saying exactly this on a post yesterday. People seem to think they’re the same, but they’re letting their emotions rule their brain. Absolutely correctly. This is biased fluff. Total wacko. Top 1% here in the US is well over 3 million people. Russian oligarchs are only a few hundred. Completely different, cannot compare the two It’s about time we addressed the class war. The rich have been controlling civilization all along. Everyone of us 99% must realize we rise in debt, and die in debt. We are virtually a commoditized society. That kind of society benefits who? Who suffers? A two tier system has been in place for hundreds of years. By everyone’s yardstick commoditized society is a grade C civilization. Except for the rich who glut and covet the best while feeding us mass produced carbohydrates filled with chemicals. Our oceans are full of carbonated beverage bottles. Even charity is a poor example of a guilt assuaged effort to remedy. Charity has been around for thousands of years and we still have poverty, starvation, homelessness and lack of healthcare. But it’s a great tax deduction for those who can use it. We all know about the IRS benefits for rich corporations. Working people pay more taxes, yet we make less money. Almost all rich people have an ineffective charitable foundation they give each other tons of money to for that IRS deduction, you know, ‘to keep it among friends.’ Rich people are at risk of the same disease Vladimir Putin already has. He cares only about money. Hermitage Fund CEO reported this morning he has stolen 300 billion dollars from his people. But the West will let him on TV to sing and the celebrities applauded on camera. Hasni Mubarak stole a hundred billion dollars from the Egyptian people and showed up in court in a hospital bed with an IV in his arm. Have I mentioned weaponizes finance? We must do better for the children. Vladimir Putin is guilty of war crimes. But the rich and their ways are guilty of crimes against civilization. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy when an effective methodology and amorality are present. It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i](https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Global population. That doesn't take into account cost of living. We don't have much control over the situation. Unfortunately, as in Russia, there is a minority of morons that keeps the corrupt in power. And the altruistic among us don't have guts to rise up and something about it. There is too much complacency. Dems like poor and disadvantaged people. And like to give ""handouts"" for votes. Don't fix it. Change yourvname to add CAPSLOCK. No, you’re right! Here in America we just jail them like Martin Shkreli Americans kill each other daily! Top four murder rates El Salvador (61.7), Honduras (41.0) Venezuela (49.9) United States They also have one of the highest incarceration rates on the planet it’s higher than China and Russia! (nearly combined) Lol. That’s a nice story. We shouldst just cometh out and calleth those folk american oligarchs already *** ^(I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.) Commands: `!ShakespeareInsult`, `!fordo`, `!optout` Get a job first So much easier to steal than to work for your money, yo It looks like you shared some AMP links. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical pages** instead: - **[https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained](https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained)** - **[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/opinion/sunday/inequality-america-paul-krugman.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/opinion/sunday/inequality-america-paul-krugman.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Source for your ramblings? [removed] Honestly can’t tell if this is sarcastic or not Had a friend from Romania years ago. The 2 most amazing things to him...fat homeless people (he explained that in Romania they are starving to death) and all you can eat buffet (the guys at work took him about once a week to different buffets). There have always been and always will be more and less successful people. I can't remember the quote, but essentially if you took all the money from everyone and distributed it equally it would (through the nature of people) find it's way back to those who had it to start with. It's the idea that poor/rich are learned behaviors & we are creatures of habit. So the poor would spend/save back into poverty and the wealthy would invest wisely and return to their wealth. It would be a wild couple of years though 🤣😂🤑 What you say is true I honestly can't figure out if this is in favor of or against the idea that we live in an oligarchy... because what you wrote rings true here (to me anyway). It depends on perspective. I think there is a strong argument that having the daughter of a billionaire as the secretary of education is the kind of thing that happens in an oligopoly. There are countless examples of this kind of thing. Clintons, Bushes, or Roosevelts might be examples you recognize. The thing is Russia is a young nation. The ruling class there will rotate out over the course of centuries just as it does here in the US. This is an excellent one-sentence summary of the book, which I recommend. For those who want a longer summary, I recommend [this article](https://www.vox.com/2014/4/8/5592198/the-short-guide-to-capital-in-the-21st-century). So where is the capital gain coming from if not ""economic growth""? Thin air? Time to eat the rich Almost like there are taxes in place to do this, but the 1% keeps dodging them through loop holes, or outright lying about income/assets. Such as, Trump going bankrupt, despite having more ways to accumulate wealth than WoW players have ways to dodge the bathroom. He can temporarily change such ownership under other's names, claim to have 0 income, then take it back debt free. Is that exactly what happened? Not sure, but the government doesn't know better than to help those businessmen. They will only accumulate more wealth than before, and bogard it like the goblins they are. Meanwhile, us bottom feeders will loan to each other, when we know we can't pay it back. Why? Because the government will not help. They'll send military personnel to tell us to go back to work, earn our living. They need to start giving back, or they'll have to do with a little less by force. It’s one of the ways in which wealth inequality comes to be, but even in a completely random system inequality will happen in the long run. Intuitively I know that doesn’t make sense, but you can check this for yourself with a small script. so...I am supposed to attach equal societal value to a McDonalds server, struggling to pay rent and raise kids, and a corporate or small business owner who hires thousands of people at above federally mandated minimum wage? not an AOC fan, here. fun to to watch, but absolutely not acting in the best interests of her constituents. > Piketty proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes to help reduce inequality ""steal from the winners to give to the losers, en masse"" gee, that doesn't create any perverse incentives! this is exactly why every truly socialist country is painfully poor cribbed from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century Yes, but in some countries of Latin America saying so is equivalent to admire Lenin. Genuinely, what an interesting concept. I love finance, I am not in the field, but this is a great philosophy to ponder. Thank you for summarizing! Do you think putting the (r) and (g) in there make you sound smarter? He said tax the rich You fucked up and used the word “progressive” before “wealth tax”. Anyone who doesn’t already know this is a great idea is only going to see “gay gun grab socialism” and stop there Is this caused by artificial low interest rates? What do you mean by rate of return on capital? Like investments into companies? Wouldn’t this also apply to Bitcoin Never thought of it that way. R > G. Makes complete sense. The problem is people with the most wealth have the money to buy the people that make the decisions and can change these decisions if made. The real problem is greed. [deleted] But how can progressive wealth taxes be implemented when the top 1 percent has enormous influence on what laws are passed? Does he give any advice HOW to do this philosophical setup of progressive wealth taxes? They own all the policy makers and policy making institutions. And that (g) is proportional to population growth. As population growth stalls, economic growth stalls and labor’s share of value falls. Capital (r) then grows faster than labor, making it much more difficult for workers to accumulate capital, and giving capital more control and power over society. Piketty’s proposed solution bothers me for a few reasons: 1. Simply taxing away the wealth of elites only addresses one side of the equation. It reduces the wealth of the elites, but what then?… which leads me to the next point. 2. People take it for granted that the tax contributions will be spent effectively. It’s not enough to simply use those funds for progressive social welfare programs. It needs to be spent in a way that increases GDP more than it otherwise would. Lots of government spending is objectively bad at this, and that’s not even accounting for things like the military defense budget. For example, when Medicaid funds are spent on extremely expensive and anti-competitive healthcare, those funds effectively drive up the return on capital for healthcare/drug companies, which sort of defeats the purpose of reducing wealth inequality. 3. There are many ways to rebalance return on capital vs real economic growth, and many of them have very little to do with taxes. Perhaps the most effective is raising the minimum wage, because that tends to drive consumers to buy more things because they have more money to spend. But perhaps the most under-appreciated method is promoting small business growth and breaking up monopolies. A single company dominates search-engine-based marketing, another single company dominates social media, a few telecom companies have carved out regional monopolies and hike up rates with barely any infrastructure improvements… Walmart and Amazon destroyed most of small retail business over the past couple of decades. This causes enormous wealth concentration. Most of their wealth used to circulate within local communities, and now it’s been sucked out of every small/medium-sized town across America and funneled into a small number of pockets. These structural changes need to be addressed, otherwise we will end up with an extremely lopsided economy where all the capital flows through a tiny funnel at the top, and eventually gets redistributed to people in the form of welfare programs. I can guarantee that most people in America want to *earn* their wealth, not have it handed to them in the form of food stamps and unemployment insurance. What they really want is to earn a decent wage and own some capital for themselves. Not only is that a more fulfilling life, but it’s also a much more efficient way to allocate and use capital throughout the economy. So, I guess my point is that taxation is really just a blunt instrument that doesn’t solve the underlying problems. It just helps us avoid starvation in a world where capital ownership remains extremely lopsided. Beating a fast horse for outpacing other horses and even the government's reference horse in a race seems to be a stupid way to fix inequality... Next. I was thinking the other day that the Internet / ease of global communication also accelerates the process. It's easier than ever to snatch real estate in hot markets, or spot a rocketing startup, no matter where in the world. This guy annotates. This does not account for: 1. Power and corruption leading to wealth inequality 2. Those who have wealth using it to subvert the system in various ways (i.e. to save or make more than they spent on such activities) His thesis may well be a factor (i.e. returns to capital outpacing returns to labor/income), but it also seems overly simplistic. There are many ways to poison a progressive tax system. Isn't r just interest rate? Interest rates have been close to 0 for like 15 years now. r has been much less than g every year that hasn't been a recession and wealth is more concentrated. Imo keeping interest rates low has increased wealth inequality by causing an asset bubble. Anyone without assets that can appreciate has been left behind. Im a noob. What type of capital is being referred here? Do stocks count as capital or are they referring only to things like land, businesses, etc…? Progressive wealth taxes like the kind the USA had following WWII and all the way up into the 60s, that made America the economic powerhouse it was that allowed the boomer generations they life they had? Yes please. The fucking current administration hasn't even raised the wealth tax to where it was before Trump lowered it.. and instead is going after the lower classes spending anything more than 600$. Like, it's just.. such a facepalm. Europe tried wealth taxes and then repealed them because they are a headache to administer for very little gain. What's the solution? Does it also propose a system by which those taxes are put into the hands of those who won’t waste them like our current taxes are? Ya. I've played SIM City. I know. 10 yachts > when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term The kicker is, that's not even necessary. [All you need is chance and compounding returns](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0020728), with nothing like e.g. inheritance tax in place to stop runaway exponential growth. In essence: With compounding returns in place, and enough capital owners thrown at a wall, over time a couple of them will bloat to sufficient size to gobble up the others and voila all wealth is in the hand of a couple. >The book's central thesis is that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability. His data was great but I would.be wary of his analysis and predictions. He admits the rate of economic growth has exceeded the rate of return on capital over the past century, which doesn't explain the recent rise in income inequality. Currently the rise in income inequality is driven by the increase in income of highly compensated skilled workers(software engineers, executives, etc). Piketty believes this will end and we'll go back to a system of generational wealth like pre-industrial societies. There is no evidence to support his predictions. Why do so many people argue against tax reform when this is clearly an issue. People seem to want to protect the ruling class no matter how they are exploited. I don’t understand why. Shouldn’t 99% of people be trying to redistribute the excess wealth of the 1% ? Why is there any resistance to these ideas? The major issue with Piketty's book is he does not really explain (or doesn't seem to understand) why that is the way it is, and so his solutions appear disconnected from his thesis. [Watch this video for that critical take.](https://youtu.be/rCjmMef8BrE?t=661) Yeah that does not look like it’s changing anytime soon. Buy stocks so you can benefit from this until you’ve saved enough that you can own your home, then buy stocks/real estate/bonds. The beginning is the toughest, I personally started with a $700 investment. Society: why can't most of us afford to buy a house? Why is there food insecurity? Why is it so hard to afford groceries now? The 1%: buying their 9th super yacht ⛵ Ahhhh so that’s why we’ve had negative interest rates for so long… 1000000 Americans worth 100000 is better for the economy than 1/2 of Jeff Bezos. > Piketty proposes a global system … This is like proposing we generate electricity based on perpetual motion machines, starting with the high school physics assertion of “assume a frictionless surface” Since the Dawn of industrial capitalism, there have been two times when the net share of the pie for workers has increased. Once was the colonial era in Europe where workers were relatively benefitting from mass exploitation of resources and economic de-industrialisation in colonies. The other more pertinent one was when nearly half the worlds labour force was locked in communism and experience of global war plus the threat of communism plus robust unions meant that socially and economically western society was highly motivated to share the pie more equally. Capitalism with counterweights and checks worked better than communism. So idiots like Reagan etc assumed that meant more capitalism is even better. Sometimes it isn’t rocket science - if you squash workers rights to bargain collectively, keep capital taxes low and largely allow social elites to decide their own pay, you get huge flows of money to the top. Too late... This is basically talking about a ONE WORLD MONETARY SYSTEM(aka NEW WORLD ORDER). That'll basically enslave the entire planet financially. I mean… this is pretty basic finance theory, you are always looking for ways to beat the market What methods for return on capital are discussed? Things like owning factories and monopolizing production? Curious if the author goes into detail on the instruments or sticks to referring to the macro details It's time for a significant wealth tax that scales to an individual's personal holdings. Either tax them aggressively, or cull them aggressively. Spoiler: They won't give up their money, before they give up their blood. Make them choose. I think the intentions of a progressive wealth tax are noble. but it doesn’t fix the issue of wealth inequality under a capitalist economic system. the reason why is a progressive wealth tax at the federal level wouldn’t really *do* anything other than take money from the rich (which I don’t actually have a problem with). the way the US dollar works as a fiat currency means federal income taxes aren’t redistributed, they’re deleted (or removed from circulation). So how do we pay for federal programs? We create new money to pay for it. spend first, tax later. given that the us has a sovereign currency we could invest massively in programs to benefit the people since we don’t have limits to money creation (yes I know at some point inflation could become a problem, but inflation is much more complicated than *money printing bad*) but when you have a oligarchy that only represent the interests of a ruling class you’re never gonna get that. so if you’re asking “why pay federal income taxes?” One of the easy answers is to keep the dollars exchange rate strong. if you look at china who also has a sovereign currency (while not my ideal society) they spend massively on infrastructure, despite having way lower income taxes than americans do. but I guess they’re not that concerned with the exchange rate of the yuan. We could spend more on the people but because it *could* cause inflationary pressure when you read a certain point. which doesn’t effect the working class much because we hardly get to save any money anyway so why would we care about the inflation? well it would effect any savings we *do* have and it if wages stagnate (which they have) inflation acts like a “pay cut” (which could be mitigated with higher unionization since unions could fight to keep up with inflation). long story short this is a complicated economic thing that so many people (including myself) barely know anything about because economic education is child-like to the average person here. thanks for joining my rambly Ted talk. Oh, so a really simple common sense approach that we’ve all been screaming for years, yes, nice! Right, but you haven't addressed the one glaring issue with the book. It proposes a completely ludicrous solution. Global tax system? That doesn't exist and likely never will in a world where individual countries have sovereignty. You can try to tax American holdings in other countries, but when those countries choose to aid in tax evasion in order to draw investment? We are left trying to threaten a country like Ireland so they will do as we say. The power to tax is the power to govern. His solution is a world government that picks winners and losers. The book has solid underpinnings, but was written by a egomaniacal madman. >Piketty proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes to help reduce inequality and avoid the vast majority of wealth coming under the control of a tiny minority. This is like proposing a faster-than-light warp drive. Utterly impossible and aeons away from even being conscionable. > The book’s central thesis is that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability. So, “capital accumulates capital”? Unfortunately, he can’t find any data sets to confirm his thesis without massive amounts of adjustment. California is garishly showing all these symptoms. The extreme inequality in SF and LA are funneling people into the lower COL Central Valley. Located in the Central Valley; Fresno, Ca saw the highest rent increase in the entire USA last year and gas is now ubiquitously over $5/gallon. https://www.fresnobee.com/fresnoland/article258073823.html The state has metastatic cancer Classism is what we’ve actually been dealing with in America and it is tearing the country apart. Instead of solving the issues the ownership class and supporting government instead preach about diversity while the police riot against being held accountable for their actions. The powers that be will never let this happen. >rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) I'm trying to understand this from first principles. How does r > g happen? Here is how I’m defining r and g: * g = Nominal GDP Growth = Expected Inflation + Expected Real GDP Growth * r = Rate of Return Capital = Risk Free Rate + Additional Return for the given level of risk * Risk Free Rate = Expected Inflation + Expected Real Interest Rate ​ In the long term, the real growth rate CANNOT be lower than the real interest rate, since the growth in goods/services has to be enough to cover the promised rate. Conversely, the real growth rate CAN be higher than the real interest rate, to compensate risk taking. Therefore: * Expected Real Interest Rate ≤ Expected Real GDP Growth ​ Then r > g only happens when: * Additional Return for the given level of risk > Expected Real GDP Growth - Expected Real Interest Rate If what I'm understanding is correct, then nature of capitalism itself will always lead to wealth inequality. Since people are generally risk averse, capitalists won't invest unless the additional return is there to compensate for the risk. And that additional return is what leads to r > g. ​ Edit: formatting Read the book cover to cover a few years ago. There were a lot of fascinating data sets in there. 1) The last time inequality “improved” by wealth and income relativity was… WW2 2) There were estimates of 1800s era wealth stores. These included values for slave and land ownership. Skin crawls thinking that was so recent… 3) Homes are the primary store of wealth in modern industrialized countries. What did you think of his r>g thesis? What’s the downside of wealth concentration / inequality? Not that I agree with it, but this seems like a natural phenomenon due to return on capital. Nice! End result is still soft despotism. Everyone talks about this generational aspect, but it seems we are already in the 3rd generation. You can also read about societal decline and were are at end stage of that. I was in favor of progressive taxes in my 20s some 20s years ago…unfortunately we are not any closer (we are farther apart). Almost like success in capitalism take CAPITAL You're trying to steal what I have rightfully stolen. They forgot the first rule. Never start a land war in Eastern Europe. The second rule is never challenge an oligarch when DEATH is on the line!!!!!! Bullshit. The Eastern oligarchs could have quite happily continued to run the largest nation on Earth like their private amusement park, in which they are free to do whatever they want. Up until the part where their titular leader decided to invade a country unprovoked due to his massive ego and narcissism. Are oligarchs really all in agreement of opinion based on their geographical location just like that? Very understandable I think. No honor among thieves Big diff is the Eastern ones literally earned that over night with the fall of the USSR. Not a fan of any Western billionaire for real, but a lot of those guys did have to shovel shit for years before they could really game the system. Now if all the people got together and demolished all the oligarchs.. in a real hands on manner.. consistently, forever into the future. Boy, that could work. Remember, the oligarchs aren't flying the helicopters are driving the tanks. The simp ass bitches who need their money are. They should just turn the tank around and take it. We should just get rid of them all. All the oligarchs... west, east, north, south. Jeff besos is just as evil as any of the Russian oligarchs. The western oligarchs created them in 1991 This made me laugh and almost choke for a second. Thanks mate, I needed that haha. A real worry, since the west has been stealing resources and pushing around countries for decades. Heads up, this was one of the most boring books I’ve ever read. I have recommended it to several other people, though. Worth the read. Good luck. French academics get paid by the word. There's also a Netflix documentary, i think just called Capital, for those casually interested in economy without committing to reading what i think is the most important economics book since Marx Then read “Anti-Piketty” which debunks most of his ridiculous claims. [deleted] > a graduate level textbook but is fairly accessible Oh cool > empirical data to show the contradictory nature of orthodox economics particularly that of neoclassicals that rely on the ""hyperrationality"" of agents and perfect competition. I know some of those words What are the primary economic models (if there are any) that assume the dominant wealth controlling agents are coked out of their gourd and act accordingly? I have not read the specific critique but take every opportunity i can to hate on lawrence. > Behind the scenes, he has used his power, combined with intellectual arrogance, to bully opponents into silence, even when they have been proved right. He has refused to allow his dissenters a voice at the table and adopted a policy of never admitting errors. I don’t trust out of touch harvardians to make pronouncements on the average guy’s economic situation. Seems they’re disincentivized to understand. But I’ll look for the critique and not just talk out of my assertions. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/the-comprehensive-case-against-larry-summers/279651/ Yeah, the whole “democracy devolves into plutocracy” line starts to wear a bit thin after a while. I do see see some of his points, of course. Certainly a well-researched book by Piketty. It's simple, though. Dead simple. If returns on capital outpace GDP growth, where is that money coming from? It can only come FROM the GDP growth, stripping money out of the productive economy and putting it in the casino banking system, where the house always wins. You should also know exactly who Larry Summers is. It explains why he's dead set against the ideas in Piketty's book. He's one of the main architects of deregulation, including the repeal of Glass Steagall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers Larry Summers himself is chronically wrong so, while you should read criticisms of anything you read, his name will tend to drag it down. Larry Summers has not been an academic since i was unborn. Wealth inequality leads to homelessness and reduced quality of life. You're arguing that a gunshot victim died not from the bullet, but from blood loss, and that suggesting he was killed by a gun is ""gun control propaganda"". Not really. To completely ignore its merits would be just as foolish as one who would rely solely on it. If you have extreme wealth inequality you are at the whims of instability. Ie, it only takes one bad egg to come into that wealth to really start making shit bad for everyone. You can’t be near term thinking, there needs to be long term considerations and safe guards. It is no red herring. Wealth is power. Wealth inequality is power inequality. This ends up having significant consequences in the measures you name as the more powerful groups prioritize their interests over the majority. Because they are the ones with unequal power (due to their unequal wealth,) they win You could not be more wrong. Wealth is power To have people who are millions of times wealthier than you is to have overlords and to have your freedom be illusory The quality of life and percentage of homelessness doesn’t matter at all in comparison, we’d all be better to have everyone be poor than a small group of people being infinitely richer than everyone else. The main point of government is to make sure that one person doesn’t get so powerful as to rule over you by fiat. Like the number one thing. By letting multi-billionaires exist a government is failing at a purpose more basic than national defense or healthcare or prisons for criminals. Money is power and if you let people accumulate it endlessly they become more powerful than governments. [deleted] >Wealth inequality is a red herring metric. Can confirm. I research related areas specifically. Wealth inequality is just a near ubiquitously nonsensical metric in economics and typically used to lie or mislead people into exaggerating a degree of income inequality. Besides this, statements about economics that use phrases such as ""sounds like"" are comically unscientific. This thread's concept is **obvious** nonsense, how can people be so roused up by this? These issues are hyper-complex and making even the most absolute basic conclusions about them in ***any*** predictive power requires millions of dollars a year in talent at the finest institutions in the world. It's like seeing someone discuss orbital rockets as ""Explody thing goes up!"", cringing fully at the fact rockets neither go up significantly (they go sideways), nor are propelled by explosions (it's deflagration not detonation). Economics discussions are that cubed +80% political rhetoric utter nonsense (from ALL relevant parties). /rant Anywho, I can assure people that income inequality, and the vaguely related wealth inequality, are checkers and the reality is a 500 dimensional hypercube that is self-aware. Seriously we're talking about a system with 7 billion arguably intelligent agents, which are powered by a cognitive structure that was tortured by 50 million years of random evolution into an environment that doesn't functionally exist any more, near guaranteeing absurd and unintuitive irregularities. This is a big problem, few silly words not do trick. If we were to objectively look at quality of life no one could ever complain after indoor plumbing was invented. How do you measure quality of life though? [removed] Which metric? I mean this in a constructive way, but that sounds like the opposite of the other book recommendation. Is this the same book? History Of The Great American Fortunes V2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1497816440/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_ZS8RNPZXMF7BP5AEA6X5 The reviews seem to leave a polar opposite interpretation from you and much in line with OP: > Myers heavily documented account shows how the great fortunes throughout American history, such as the Astors, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers were created by the use of fraud contary to the declarations of free market fundamentalists, the founders of these fortunes government depended on government aid and the exploitation of workers not just hard work and intelligence. Myers shows how the state and federal governments have repressed the poor and supported the rich since colonial times. He cites laws that imprisoned people for debt during much of the 19th Century, banning labor strikes using conspiracy laws and the murder of workers by police and the military when workers tried to organize to protect their rights. And, according to Myers, by being corrupt and/or outright criminal. [deleted] That sounds like a very biased interpretation when we know a lot of wealthy American businessmen made their fortunes because they came from rich families and exploited workers and surrounding communities (the term ""robber barons"" didn't come from nowhere) Actually, fortune in America is made by already having it, or having access to it. There are outliers but generally, capital enables the accumulation of more capital. Fortune is made from exploiting other human beings. period Sounds like it completely ignores generational wealth Or by playing options Yeah that’s not really talking about even close to the same thing. No one argues that you make a fortune in America by innovating and creating new trends/technologies. Piketty’s book is more focused on macroeconomic trends, and the math behind specific situations where the wealth held by those doing the innovating can grow exponentially faster the cumulative wealth of the rest of the country. I don't think you read your book lol. That’s not at all how people become wealthy lol they are dense af, maybe start with just one... If you’re looking to learn more regarding Russia’s oligarchy and lack of fiscal transparency, “Capital and Ideology” by Picketty is also a great starting point. Capital by Karl Marx. First of all, this book doesn’t counter Piketty’s arguments at all. It’s pretty clear that Watkins and Brook are focused on the US, and they argue that income inequality is irrelevant because of factors in the US. Meanwhile, Piketty’s conclusion is that wealth inequality is problem because it’s clearly a factor of capitalism, and is present and accelerating in all countries he researched for the book. Second, I’d recommend anyone who’s planning on reading the books previously mentioned here read this one after, it makes it abundantly clear how many hoops must be jumped, assumptions made, research/findings be misrepresented, how disconnected examples/thought experiments be from the real world, and how tunnel visioned someone has to be in order to think conservative economically. Just be aware I’m not talking about normal people, but about economists and very highly educated people like the author of this book. [deleted] I will be messaging you on [**2022-03-03 08:02:43 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2022-03-03%2008:02:43%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/t5baxw/putin_has_amassed_enormous_wealth_for_himself_and/hz49gqg/?context=3) [**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Feconomy%2Fcomments%2Ft5baxw%2Fputin_has_amassed_enormous_wealth_for_himself_and%2Fhz49gqg%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202022-03-03%2008%3A02%3A43%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20t5baxw) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-| [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] There is a little bit of math trickery that actually makes this claim false. > 500 dudes literally own the country These 500 dudes own 40% of the country, which is the same as everyone in the bottom 99.8% and the remaining 20% or so is owned by everyone between the top 0.2% and the 500 dudes. Not disagreeing with the overall points but just pointing out a potential mathematical fallacy for the casual observer. Also, to be a part of the top %1 in the U.S. you need to make around $600,000 a year. That’s still a fuckton of money, but it is by no means the billionaire status that everyone seems to imagine. A well experienced surgeon with other investments could be pulling in that amount, and they would honestly deserve it. People in what we consider the middle class vastly underestimate how much more they have than those who are truly poor. The median household income is $70,000, but families making over $200,000 can still feel like they’re living paycheck to paycheck depending on their expenses. [deleted] It’s not the top 1% that’s the problem in my opinion, it’s the top .05%. Would expect nothing less from Robert Reich My wife and I are not quite in the 1%, but somewhere between 2% & 3%. It’s a great life, but it’s not what you’d call a captain of industry/oligarch life. Our wealth is in our house, retirement accounts, and my ownership shares in an engineering company (privately held). Nobody’s confusing my 2016 Hyundai Santa Fe for a Lambo and private jet! But … but how will I make a bad faith argument then?! Yeah, this post is whataboutism and doesn’t matter to the discussion of what went so wrong in the Russian government to make them invade an innocent country in a war of unabashed aggression. It’s not counterproductive, it’s the opposite. It’s counterproductive to sit in the US (very large majority of redditors are American) and judge another country, which we don’t-and frankly shouldn’t-have any say in how they set up their economy. However, it is productive to consider what our own problems are and what steps we should take to fix them. One is just judging someone else when it’s none of our business. The other is fixing our problems. It isn’t counterproductive. I always forget how many people live in the states. >And ""the top 1%"" is still over 3 million people. Why does that matter? The bottom 50% is 160+ million people. Have you got source on those numbers? It's not a whataboutism though. Reich isn't saying that Russia's oligarch problem should be ignored because the US has their own problem. The GOP is working to improve those numbers... I think the part that gets me is that's a ""population"". Like those 3 million are the real ""citizens"" of America, living their whole lives in a bubble most of us will only barely touch. These aren't even mostly famous people, they're a regular but privileged class. And most things cater to them first and foremost. The flashy 0.1% is a distraction. The divide is stark (not quite Pursuit of Happiness, but gives you an idea). But it was a shock to me just how normal it all is! We like to imagine an out of touch ivory tower life, but it's really just nice things, family and friends, an American Dream life where money just isn't a factor. Most work 9-5, but for passion over survival; no worries about mental or physical health, because you have the means to weather it. Normal life drama abounds too, and it can be a farther fall with less support, but overall... It's more burgers on the grill than caviar. Yeah. Agreed. Terrible comparison by the reddit high school army. Robert Reich is prone to hyperbole to drive home a point. There is a wealth gap in the US, but comparing that to the Russian oligarchy is pretty far out there. Nobody, absolutely nobody who is bringing this up is doing so to suggest that Russia gets a get-out-of-jail free card. The point is that while everybody is agreeing that the system in Russia is fucked, maybe we should acknowledge the fact that our system has some of the same flaws. > It's funny that everyone is falling for this. Emotion is more effective than rational thought and envy is a powerful emotion. Ledtist edgelords will always argue AmeRiCa Iz THa W0rst in every situation. Lol what are you talking about dude? No one is saying that in the slightest. I swear since this conflict began in Ukraine everyone on Reddit has lost their fucking mind. If you aren’t frothing at the mouth trying to skullfuck Putin you’re basically a Russian asset. Wait you took that as giving Russians a pass? Lmfao I took that as tightening up on the American 1% We should stop saying oligarchs. The Russians are oligarchs because they were given control of the state run industry. They did not build anything, their wealth is not from private companies. Why when you hate America They certainly are the bad guys. The US wealthy elite are also the bad guys. Such is the reality of this situation, most Russians don’t want this war. Most Americans don’t want to wage war. What we see in the world is often the designs of the elite being played out through the lives of the poor. This isn’t an equivocation though. The pain and suffering in Ukraine is solely on Russia. You’re arguing against a straw man. Nobody cares a talking about that giving oligarchs free reign here. Nothing the US hasn't done to other countries. It's not empathy for the Putin but for Russian citizens and unknowing soldiers How exactly is pointing out a problem here giving Russia a get out of jail free card? And the US aren’t the bad guys with a get out of jail free card? Or do Syrian and Iraqi children not count? Iraq would like a word. [deleted] Also, the richest in the US weren’t born into riches. They may have been middle or upper middle class, but many if not most have created their fortunes themselves. >I am poor in the USA, so I can speak to that Based on that argument if the oligarchs say they don't fuck the poor they can say they are rich so they can speak to that? You clearly have a bias The oligarchs aren't killing anyone. They want Putin to stop so they can carry on living in their various mansions abroad because Russia is a shit hole Hey dude I can tell you how to spend 600 bucks and have a job making 34-50 dollars an hour AFTER self employment taxes without deductions (30%). See that? Within a week you could make as much as or more than a registered nurse or cop etc. See? Point is. Why haven't you already? That wealth is accessible to everyone so why doesn't everyone? Hmmmm. Of course we should do something. But I think when that something is done, we should look at our own oligarchs like the Sackler family (who are also probably going to get off with a slap on the wrist.) I mean, Americans kept kids in cages. Russia isn't the only bad guy here You can condemn two murderous governments at once. The Russian government loves dead Ukrainians, and the US more indiscriminately loves dead brown people in the Middle East. People are calling out hypocrisy, that's all. Both are bad, obviously. I don't think anyone is offering Russian oligarchs a pass, that sounds like a strawman to avoid talking about the economic inequality Reich mentions. The denial in this thread - about how our country works and why we didn’t sanction Russia preemptively- it’s palpable. You guys live in a wonderland because it’s just impossible somehow, mentally, that we should help save Ukraine but also we suck. It’s just too hard? How do you suppose the takeaway is that Russians should get a get out of jail free card?? Who in the world is saying this is a reason to give Russian oligarchs a get out of jail free card? You are making up arguments nobody is making. Lol yeah, Americans aren’t currently murdering people around the world as we speak. /s You do know you can shit on both Russia and America at the same time, right? No one’s saying give Russia a pass; we’re saying *don’t* give American oligarchs a pass. Who's handing out free passes? What is this comment..? Surely you can think about wealth inequality as well as the Ukrainian people at the same time? Dude your country did mass murders around the Middle East and then left them ruins. Your constitution is responsible for the suffering of millions of lives not just know but over decades and those countries will still suffer for other decades. The balance will soon restore tho Putin is just the beginning no it means we should start actually doing something about our own instead of just bitching about russia There is a lot of leftie kids on reddit who wont let a tiny invasion disrupt their soviet fantasies, BUT this thread is 90% botted like crazy. Just look at the post and comment upvotes for half a second. It's absolutely blatant. The actual worrying part is how effectively adversarial countries can manipulate western social media. So now, and only now, you could see that children is being murdered. What was, and still, your military doing to other people's children, educating them. That’s kinda the point though… doing the top 500 US shrinks the percentage of wealth not expand it. At most it can’t be more the the 27% the 1% represents. Sure, but that's only going to make the difference more stark. Obviously the top 500 people are included in the top 3 million, so if the top 3 million hold 27 percent, the top 500 must necessarily hold less than that. Devils in the details, read further. > At a combined $640 billion, BCG found the wealth of the richest 500, who make up less than 0.001% of Russia’s population, was higher than that of the poorest 114.6 million, or 99.8% of the adult population. I do not see that being inconsistent with what I said. Meaning you have at most 40% owned by the bottom 99.8, and 40% owned by the top 0.001% (and presumably that missing 20% owned by the the remaining). What are you smoking dude? What you said about his article and what he said are both true - the obligarchs control 40% of the country's wealth, thereby being more wealthy than 99.8% of the population. In his second link the top 1% holds 36 out of 136 trillion, which is about 26% (what op said) >At a combined $640 billion, BCG found the wealth of the richest 500, who make up less than 0.001% of Russia’s population, was higher than that of the poorest 114.6 million, or 99.8% of the adult population. Perhaps you should be the one reading more! And? People being richer isn't a bad thing if everyone is richer It can also mean the rest of Americans hold much more wealth. Sure, but also the bottom 50% in the US hold way, way, way more wealth than the bottom 50% in Russia. Those stats are pretty misleading though. If you're arguing a doctor fresh out of med school is in a terrible financial position because of their current negative net worth, I'm going to disagree. That goes for every college student as well. And then that negative net worth, which is temporary and that investment leads to higher lifetime earnings which are not fully realized yet, subtracts from the net worth of everyone else in that grouping. You'd have to do a more thorough analysis to really see what the truth is there. What about the money on the cloud!? :0 The whole point of this post is comparing the two countries so ya it kinda is You're comparing total population to adult population. You need to exclude the children from the 144M number to get a number that compares to the 114M figure. Judging by [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1005416/population-russia-gender-age-group/) there are about 26M ages 0-14. That leaves 118M, not counting 15-17yos. Since they have the age group as 15-19, idk how to get only 0-18yos out of the total, but the 15-19yo group accounts for 7.27M, more than enough to make up the difference between 114/118 and 99.8. Yah, it's really a whole lot better. By something like a factor of 2-3. Middle class over there is more like our lower class. Poor is poor everywhere. Plus there is not quite of an abundance of goods and services over there as we have in America. We are very lucky and spoiled in America. I for one, feel blessed to live here. I have been to Clarksdale, MS in 2014 and it was almost as ~~worse~~ bad as in the poorest parts of Cambodia where I’ve been in 2017. The poverty of the people is simply overwhelming and as a German I couldn’t believe that in the US people live under these circumstances. At least you don't get thrown in jail for saying the government is bad in the US (Also I think this comment attracted a couple bots) Also I got like 97 replies, so I am not going to reply to them all. You guya have no idea how miserable parts of Russia are. No idea You said some, so name a few rural communities that resemble 3rd world countries. And please don't name fundamentalist LDS or other religious groups. My guess it they have access to clean running water, the internet, grocery store and pharmacy. Oh, and a dollar general. Plus the poor in 3rd world countries cannot be compared to the poor in our country. What? Poverty in the us is Russia’s middle class. Fool. Russia has free public health care. It's better to be poor in Russia. Except for here if you live in some shithole like Appalachia you can freely move to somewhere there is much better economic opportunity, not so much the case in Russia. What rural communities in America resemble 3rd world countries? Not many, I'd venture. The tragically malnourished and unhoused live in cities. Where? Bro you're just incredibly wrong and this is another example of america making everything about itself. Fucking hell the complaining from you lot you don't know how good you've actually got it I heard stories from a Polish friend about what's available to poor people in Poland, and it ain't much. You may have places in the US that are riddled by meth and such, but the services available to people such as section 8, food stamps, welfare, etc are pretty substantial. It doesn't do much when it's all used on drugs tho. In general it's way better to be poor in the US, the standard of living and overall human development is better even when accounting for inequality, maybe it isn't as different as people think, but the US is noticably better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_Human_Development_Index Eastern Ky is considered 3rd world country I am not sure what definition of third world country you are using but rural communities in the US are nowhere near as poor as middle class communities in developing nations. Even native reservations which are some of the US’s least developed areas are in much better condition than whole swathes of African and SE Asia. Not quite, if you've been to some of the rural areas in those Eastern Europe countries. I've been to US reserves in the Prairies and Montana (Know Browning like the back of my hand) and the South in some poor parts. It's not the same. Now to get our poor to Denmark standard. That would be a nice 30 year goal. I understand it's much harder in larger countries, if only for political momentum. Some non rural communities straight up are third world quality here too. It’s really hard to believe until you see it You don’t know what you are talking about at all. If you have grown up very poor in the US and have spent time in Russia’s poor area, you might have something to add. But you are clearly pretty ignorant so I will guess you haven’t. Growing up/ living in economic poverty is brutal, regardless except that in other third world countries the idea of disability and things like food stamps don’t generally exist. I spent some time living in a pretty poor part of rural Louisiana and it was a GDP per capita of ~$10,000 USD per year which is pretty shockingly low but still more than some Russian cities and 10 times the poorer areas of Russia. The cost of living is lower but the level of poverty and lack of services between the US and Russia are completely not comparable. I know its like a trendy Reddit take to imply the US is a 3rd world country but people who say that have almost certainly never been to one. Yes, if you take a massive country by area, pinpoint the most rural communities with little driving economy, you will find rough areas. If there's practically no industry and nothing to draw people to the area, what exactly do you expect that type of community to resemble? > the poor there are still the same as the poor here. Imagine thinking this. The average bottom income quintile in the US is $15k, plus a huge amount of free government benefits like free health care (Medicaid). The US spends $1.16 TRILLION per year on welfare for the poor, which is additional value/income for them on top of their nominal income. The bottom quintile in Russia makes only about $1,000 per year. So the American poor start off with 15 times as much income. Russia only spends about $30 billion per year on total welfare programs, [so the US is x40] but this spending isn't even targeted to the poor, it's earmarked for things like veterans and families with young children, even if these people aren't poor. Ignorant redditors who know nothing about the US or Russian poor, just blindly saying they're the same because they think that suits their NPC programming better than recognizing basic reality. People really need to look up some poor people in 3rd world countries. Don't even go to Africa, look at poor people from Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina... Really not the same as US poor people. Not sure if you’ve actually been to Eastern Europe/Russia. Being poor in both Russia and America suck, but it sucks much more in Eastern Europe/Russia As someone who has traveled all around the country as well as to many countries on every continent except Antarctica, I would disagree with the statement that really anywhere in the US resembles a third world country. The 3rd word countries that I’ve been to had no running water, no sewage system and electricity that worked about half the time. The stoics would say that wealth isn’t about having more but wanting less. Coming from a poor rural community, most of my redneck friends would spend every dime that they had on buying things and having fun. They grew up with basically nothing, living in a trailer house and driving an old truck that they could fix. If they won the lottery, they would spend most of it. Not because they were reckless but because they’ve always had everything they “needed” and if they use it all they would just go back to a life where everything was fine for them. I also have a house and family that live in a 3rd world country. My house there doesn’t even have hot water, but the sense of community is so much better and everyone has what they need. A dollar amount in your bank doesn’t make you poor. We’re judging others because they don’t have the means to live the life that we’ve deemed acceptable. I make a fair amount of money now, but life is no better than when I didn’t Sounds like you haven’t been to a third world country. I keep hearing this narrative on Reddit and it needs to stop. There are 3.8 million food insecure people in North America, and a ton of them in Mexico and Canada. There are 287 million food insecure people in Africa. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-severely-food-insecure-people-by-region The poor in America have things like air conditioning, internet, tv etc. Come on man. People are struggling in America but comparing it to the poor in the third world is insane. 87% of Americans have AC and much of America it’s not hot enough for AC to be necessary. You think 95% of Africans have AC? This is hilariously wrong but usa bad i guess And they have a lot less homelessness in russia Keyword is some, and even then the difference is massive. Not that poor people in America don't suffer, of course, but in many ways, it is not close to comparable. What do you base that on? Have you been poor in both? The poor in the U.S. are middle class in Russia. Being poor isn’t preferable yes you’re right real controversial statement there. That said, given that you are poor, there exist situations that are better than others You don’t understand the meaning of the word preferable if you don’t understand that unless identical many people can have a preference of one over the other. They really don’t. Most rural Americans choose to live where they do. Had the opportunities but squandered them. Most 3rd world countries simply did not have those opportunities to begin with. Dude of you think America is bad, you shouldn't go to Russia, I have had the rural areas described to me as relics of the 19th century by Russians Dude of you think America is bad, you shouldn't go to Russia, I have had the rural areas described to me as relics of the 19th century by Russians [deleted] > They have a smaller middle class but the poor there are still the same as the poor here. Yeah this is absolutely bullshit. My family and I were middle class in Russia and what family I have left living there can be considered middle class or even upper middle class. They own a fraction of the things, all in poorer quality, and by pretty much any metric have an inferior standard of living. There's like... 4 places you'd want to live in Russia, maybe fewer. Every where else is either a rural shit hole or an ""up and coming"" suburban/urban area that asks you to commute 1 hour by car then 2 hours by metro to go work in Moscow. The middle class and especially upper middle class have a significantly better life in the U.S., it's not even remotely close. If you had to choose between the two what would you choose? Neither being a good option doesn’t mean one isn’t the better option. … as someone who has split his summers growing up between rural America and 3rd world countries, this is just patently false. I’m not saying poverty in the US isn’t miserable, but this is some fake news shit. Not just rural- as someone who has been in the projects in multiple cities a lot for a previous job— they are very much like a third world country. It’s not just rural communities. Have you seen Baltimore? Detroit? These are densely populated urban communities, and some of them even look like war zones. The poor in Russia are in a much worse position than the poor in the US, Russia has been in a horrible place financially How would you know? Have you lived in both? Are you serioues? GDP per capita is literally 6x higher in the US. Our poor are wealthier than most of the world's poor. Russia is basically a developing nation outside of the Oligarch class. If you're poor in Russia, you have no chance of becoming middle class or wealthy. That is not the case in the US, though it is of course difficult. This subreddit is lost. They have it bad compared to other Americans, not compared to actual poor countries. My mom use to tell me stories from before she came to the US. Hours waiting in line for one loaf of bread to share between herself and 6 siblings. They used to play soccer with a rock that had layers of fabric wrapped around it bc they couldn't afford the real thing. She lived much better cleaning hotel rooms in the US than she did as a teenager back home. [deleted] True. But I will be poor if they keep jacking up real estate tax on my houses A better way to put it is that you're far less likely to be that poor in America than Russia. The US has still maintained a really large middle class, much bigger than in Russia. I've been middle class in a poor country and poor in the US. The latter is way better. When my family was poor in America I had decent free healthcare, free schooling through university, and some subsidies like free school lunch. We lived in a heated home with heated water, refrigerator, internet, etc. When we were middle class in a poor country our home has no indoor sewage system, no hot water, and we cooked our food with coal and probably fucked up our lungs from all the pollution. They literally have big cities with Latin America tier of homicide rate, but they love denying it because Americans have to defend America at all costs Saying you’d rather live in America than Russia is exceptionalism now? Can't protest though 100%. I used to live there and while I won’t pretend it’s a paradise, I don’t think it’s materially worse than the US (depending on your privilege). I really loved living there and felt safe and well-supported by infrastructure. Americans really get on a high horse. If it’s so great, move there. I guarantee you’d come back kissing the American flag. My parents came from Eastern Europe… we are so blessed to live in America. Head on over and stay there I’ve been to Russia. Their government is beyond corrupt. The corruption stifles business and innovation. That’s why Russia has so many natural resources, but is still a 3rd world country > They get low cost university. Paid sick leave. Paid maternity leave. Universal healthcare. Have you even been to Russia? Russia is one of the most literate countries in the world. The US poor make 15x more money, and get 40x more welfare, than Russian poor. US poor also get very low cost or free university. The Russian health care system is trash, and American poor get ""universal health care"" - it's called medicaid. Oh good, they can read the state sponsored media/propaganda Sounds pretty good, comrade. Lets catch the next flight over Yea. They also live under a brutal dictatorship. Russia is shit. You guys are tearing him apart, but as an American here for the last ~8 years there are a few obvious perks over the States, granted most are Soviet legacy. There is universal healthcare, though it's hit-and-miss, but even private is MUCH cheaper than in the US (I once had dental x-rays for 250 rub, $2 at the time. I opted for a fancy dental cleaning at a private clinic last year and it cost 2000 rub, ~$30). Per law, you have a guaranteed ~30 days off (I forget the exact number, I've been private for a long time and I know some Reddit detective will call me out, but it's nearly a month). Maternity leave is valid for several months and you're guaranteed your job thereafter. Education is intense and extremely strict, but they're finishing high school (in 11th grade) with hardcore calculus and intensive language classes under their belt. And university is extremely cheap. I was sitting on my ass during Covid and decided to do a master's to better myself. At one of the most prestigious universities in Russia, I'm paying <$5k a year...for a fucking master's with a dual-enrollment track in the Netherlands (although we'll see how that pans out). While we can all agree on Russia in a geopolitical context, there are a lot of advantages over the US if we're talking social support. Both countries are dystopias for different reasons. Much lower gdp per capita + citys look like dystopian nightmare + cant be gay + much more gov control + dictatorship + warmongering Russia is a hell hole not even comperable to us standards Lol. Im sure all that exists out of metro areas > Putin and the communist government What the fuck are you smoking. Russia is a capitalist oligarchy much like the US [deleted] No clue what it's like to be poor in either. Thank god. Except it's getting tougher to afford 2 houses in America because of inflation [deleted] Read about Putin’s relationship with the oligarchs right as he gained power. Gives a lot of insight to his relationship with him today A book called ""The Shock Doctrine"" by Naomi Klein. Besides covering Russia, it also covers the Pinochet regime is Chile, which has massive copper reserves. When state enterprises get privatized, not everyone benefits, but neoliberalism calls for the prioritization and sale of everything. Russia was a wreck after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the state assets were all privatized in the hands of old corrupt party officials. The Russian parliament was going to limit the power of Yeltsin with a vote, but Russian tanks rolled in and opened fire on the ""white house"" in Russia, which was the parliament building. You’re responding to a Trump-supporting Putin apologist. She has no legitimate source. /r/conspiracy Currently reading Putin’s People by Catherine Belton, covers the people supporting Putin and who he fucked over on the come up. Great read so far for me personally. I read this article yesterday: https://www.afr.com/world/europe/pointless-russia-s-oligarchs-are-powerless-to-stop-putin-20220302-p5a0wx It basically says that the billionares have only become rich because Putin has allowed them, but he can take it away at any time, so the oligarchs really don't have any political power. They kind of support Putin because he is why they are rich, but they would kind of hate him as well because he has so much power over them. this is a braindead propaganda sub defending russia, don't believe anything here They post on conservative, Joe Rogan, Wallstreet bets etc. This person has an agenda. Google the story of what happened to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was once Russia's richest man, when he crossed Putin. The Russia oligarchs are terrified of Putin. Being handpicked by Yeltsin and being a US puppet are not at all the same. Yeltsin may have picked him because Russia was involved in a Chechen civil war and Putin was a member of one of the most feared organizations in Russia. Putin was viewed as someone who could get things done and Yeltsin trusted him. I don't think that's the same as being a US puppet. So few Americans understand this but it's so important that they do. I don't think you can really call him a puppet. More like dude was patient and biding his time after getting in to position. The Russians were denied access to NATO, plus the rest that you mentioned ""Nobody loots Russia but *me*!"" Is there always random political speculation happening in r/economy? He wasn’t hand picked by yeltsin. Yeltsin wanted someone else. Putin beat that person in the election and through behind the scenes power brokering I feel like he still supports the US powers that put him into power. The problem isn't as clear cut as the borders on a map. He hated looting so much, he decided to do it himself. Please cite your sources. Honestly it wont be surprising to me if what you said is true considering the US' history of imperialism and meddling but we need a source on that. So he was like Ankin 🦹🏼 That’s a really bold claim, one that I’d just love to see any evidence for whatsoever. Lol, when you look into it you realize Putin is kinda based for this Ha, you went back through my old comments! That’s pretty funny. I certainly called it wrong there. Biden is still a joke though. Also, I had Whataburger recently and it was great. Love that Spicy Ketchup with Hot Sauce. Communism failed all by itself. It’s a shitty system that always had an expiration date. It was just a matter of when. This guy gets it. It was very odd a few years ago to see the left sucking the dick of the intelligence community and corporate media but stranger still to see them advocating for US involvement in a war with Russia after they adhered to Soviet talking points for decade after decade. Now any criticism of US foreign policy is viewed as treasonous by liberals. For someone who grew up reading Chomsky, Vidal, and Zinn, it’s very disorienting. We are truly through the looking glass. [deleted] This is the famous ""double revolution move"" Napoleon did it as well. Napoleon was supposed to be a puppet but he turned puppet master. Marx even talked about how communists should support liberal revolutions because it could more easily lead to communists co-opting it. Iranian communists tried to do this with the Iranian revolution and they failed, ended up getting killed by the religious revolutionaries. As Putin's true worldview is being unmasked you can clearly see he isn't the pragmatist and realist people thought he was. Being in the KGB for decades shaped his mindset, and while he is against communism as he partially blames this system for helping disintegrate the USSR he loathes liberalism. He is a nationalist through and through, who admires Stalin and the imperial Russian rulers before him. He sees a liberal Russia as equating to a weak Russia. I don’t think you can use one factor to measure corruption or that the situations really overlie each other perfectly. For example, in China the communist party is supreme and although certain families have used their position within the party to amass insane wealth, there are others who have become wealthy through their own efforts and that wealth has not really bought the kind of power that it would in the US. For example, Jack Ma still has to genuflect to the CCP. In the United States, it is the political parties who have to serve those with wealth. The Russian people. Doesn't matter where you live. Most Americans certainly believe that rich run the country. >Where do you live? Here in Ohio everyone generally agrees that the rich run the country unless you're upper middle class. But conservatives think the ""rich"" (Jews/lizards) run the country which I think is a huge disconnect 13 russian oligarchs own a 1/3 of the country’s wealth. You don't have to wonder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig The word oligarchy has a meaning. This is propaganda. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/fiv434/map_of_the_worlds_billionaires_and_how_they_made/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf The median income in the US is $31k. In Russia it’s $5k. That’s a more accurate representation of equality. The problem with Gini is it’s the difference between the highest and lowest, not how bad it is for the lowest. If you look at a country with a higher proportion of the richest people in the world then their gini will be worse even if every other standard of living is higher. Just because the ratio between the bottom and the top is bigger The top 1% also pay 40% of federal taxes. Above $540,000 a year. [deleted] Income inequality is not the same as wealth inequality and the statement was indeed about wealth. The [wealth Gini](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_inequality#:~:text=%20%20%20%20Country%20%20%20,%20%202%2C882%2C740%20%2030%20more%20rows%20) paints a very different picture, with Russia as being a bit worse but with both being rather bad. This really illustrates how little income gaps affect wealth. As a fairly regular browser of 'all' this has been my first introduction to r/economy and for some reason I'm not surprised in the least bit by what I see. Source? And even then; 10% owning 95% is still not my idea of a healthy distribution. The bottom 50% has a negative net worth. Who gives a shit if he charges other rich people to tell them how big assholes they are? He presumably doesn't sustain his income on the backs of a an army of workers while he sitd back and counts the profits which is the point of the avg worker to ceo income ratio. Posting from AEI just tells everyone you are right wing and do not care about facts or reality. It's super frustrating because we have a billion problems to work on but if you think we're fucking Russia in terms of corruption and society in general, we are never going to improve because you'll have absolutely no read on the situation or potential solutions. I just have to believe that most of these people have never left their region or country, and if so, they've been to just Paris or London or something. Also romanticizing Ukraine He really should have said 0.0000001%. We are looking at like 30 people. Yes, Jeff Bezos was gifted the state owned website Amazon.com after the collapse of the Socialist American Republic Since this sub has basically turned into r/politics, fewer and fewer people have the balls to say it or risk getting downvoted into oblivion Also the bottom 1% in America live like kings compared to the bottom 1% of Russia. This even extends to countries like China, where the truly destitute are literally dirt poor. That's where we are headed tho no? That number keeps getting smaller and smaller. The point isn't that they're the same. The point is that they're less different than most people probably imagine. We have an issue where people read nuance and interpret it more extremely than intended and it kills our ability to have conversations. Yeah, in America we are smarter: we subdivise our multinationals and base them in other countries, so that it doesn't show that it's an oligarchy, even though it's the same families/people that gets all the money, power and influence in the end. But the american ultrarich, the elite, they have just the same power as the russian oligarchs, they are just wiser and hypocrites. You can think NATO is what provoked the war and still agree Russia is worse... Everything isn't black and white. [deleted] 300 million people live in the USA. 1% is roughly 3 million. Math checks out Well, sure. The top 1% is 1% of our population, as is the top 1% of Russia. So the country with the larger population is going to have a larger top 1% who's going to tell him? Wealth and income arent the same thing. Dude, you're on reddit. Literally 90% of everything on here is clickbait fake news lmao. People here love to hate misinformation and disinformation but yet post disinformation and misinformation daily. It's a giant rage-boner shit show. Calm down, comrade >Even if the wealth inequality were equal, the political power those people wield is vastly disproportional in Russia. It really isn't. American oligarchs hold just as much power. >However much you dislike lobbying in the US, it is not 1/1000 the corruption you see in Russia. Lobbying groups literally write most of our laws. If you look at popping data on public policy preferences versus policies enacted by congress, there is almost no correlation, whereas if you look at the policy preferences of the top 0.1% versus policies enacted by congress, they are massively correlated. The American public literally doesn't have an impact on public policy, it's all lobbying by wealthy interests. Even if your statement was true, (it isn't, but if it were -) it would be like comparing a disease that kills you in three days versus a disease that kills you in a week. Sure, you live twice as long with the second one, but the comparison is ultimately meaningless - they're ultimately the same thing, working the same way, with the same outcome. If your and your neighbors house are both burning down, you don't get extra points for your house appearing to have slightly less fire in it at any given point in time, because you can't see all the fire going on from where you're standing, and more importantly, both your houses are still burning down. Look at the mod list; inactives, banned accounts and genzdong users, no wonder its a shit show Thats a very convenient word when you cant defend the hypocracy. I would hope an economic subreddit would have a better understanding of communism, an economic system, than you are displaying right now. Straw man. But since you act like you're 12 and have a 5 day old account I wouldn't care to explain the nuance. I don't have the time or the crayons. They're already wearing it out like every other exaggerated term they've worn out recently. The term Oligarch used to mean something and when you heard it you pictured the evil person that it applies to. Now when I hear it I just assume they're talking about a rich person because it's become interchangeable. 1% is an annual income of just over 400k. Millions of people. Not exactly ogliarchs Most mid career lawyers, doctors, middle managers, software engineers, etc. will spend a few years making top 1% income. It’s only $450,000 a year. I guarantee you they aren’t hobknobbing with Russian billionaires. Comparing the top 1% of a country to 100 oligarchs was a bad comparison made by the tweeter. The top 1% is 1% of the country, so obviously a larger population has a larger 1%. It’s a little ridiculous, as it would be like Obama or Clinton (ie a President that wasn’t already from a billionaire family) privatizing the Post Office, the Fed, the Forest Service, etc and then given $100B in stock in all of the new private companies. I agree with pretty much everything you said, nicely put. But maybe even bezos level wealth will become problematic in the future. Amazon stock looks like it travels in one direction Yeah, most billionaires are [largely self-made](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/10/05/the-forbes-400-self-made-score-2021-from-silver-spooners-to-bootstrappers/?sh=4374918630c2) and dynasties of wealth are pretty rare. The Rothschilds aren't as wealthy as they once were and most of the conspiracy theories surrounding them have their roots in anti semitism. Or their twitter. https://twitter.com/failedevolution/status/1496913633091194880 >But if you really don't want to see more wars in Europe or elsewhere, fight for the destruction of the brutal, evil and criminal organization called NATO. That's the root of endless wars around the globe. Good to know. Thank you. Congress has an 89% re-election rate and a 13% approval rate. The average tenure of Congress is 30 years. The current sitting president has been in government for half a century. The average age of House reps is 58 years and Senators is 63 years. Nancy Pelosi runs effectively unopposed in her district and has been in power for decades. She has amassed a net worth of $120M on less than a $200k salary. I make almost $200k and don't even have a tenth of her assets despite having invested religiously. They don't work for you anymore. It's your fault. We get to vote, and that's good. But especially in the presidential race no one who would seriously act against the interests of big money makes it to be one of the choices. Remember Bernie? Whatever you think about him, he would have shook things up. So he never got the chance. I absolutely prefer Biden over Trump but the fact that most of these responses are about people defending their guy over the other guy shows just how well the system is working. Choose brand A over brand B. Choose brand B over brand A. Participate in the process and get all your passion engaged in exercising your political rights. But don't think that you actually have a choice. Seems super valid to compare billionaires who got that way by looting the State from the ones who got that way from inventing products that millions of people buy voluntarily. Comparing Russian wealth to US wealth absolutely is idiocy. None of those links come close to disproving that assertion, given I said nothing about “oligarchies”. ""We are absolutely an oligarchy"" oh boy lol can't wait to read these ""sources"" full of retotrhic 😂🤣 While our system sucks, and they absolutely have too much wealth and power, it’s nothing like Russia at least at this moment. We’re allowed to protest, as bad as the news can be we are allowed to listen to literally opposite sides of the spectrum. We’re allowed to protest without being detained or killed (the entire group. I know it’s not perfect). Donald Trump got elected in 2016. Someone who had nothing to do with politics until then. There are just so many differences, and i think people get lost in a state of this is awful, we’re just like X country. We are in a country of means where we are hopefully making decisions based upon it’s better than most, but we don’t want better than what it was or better than another country, we want better than it is because that’s how progress happens. [deleted] Some of you need to take a class on analogies I believe the term you're looking for is plutocracy. Oh so you’re saying you have equal chances of obtaining wealth in both countries? Lol anybody can become wealthy in America. Not so in Russia Putin’s wealth is literally immeasurable because it is dynastic and not public. He does not own X shares of Y company like US billionaires. His wealth is not speculative nor is it in digital assets. He isn’t a business magnate who owns a slew of companies traded publicly with public salary and stock disclosures. Russian wealth goes back hundreds if not more than a thousand years, to autocratic ruling dynasties and monarchies. Wealth that you and I could not even fathom, if every asset class that exists and some that we may have never heard of. You might similarly try to calculate the wealth of the Vatican, or the Church of England, or the Al Khalifa’s, or the Rothchilds who controlled the Bank of England. You may think we are an oligarchy because we have Silicon Valley millionaires and business magnates with inordinate amounts of wealth (that’s true) but we are hardly close to old-world levels of oligarchical dynastic autocracies/monarchies. The fact that you claim this means that you are either extremely poorly read on history/geopolitics, or you are just being dishonestly hyperbolic to demean the US, which is usually a valid charge but it is annoying this time because of how wrong you are. Well technically we are a plutocracy, so you see our system is a little but more moral. /s Truth. Citizens United made corporations able to funnel essentially unlimited money for politics. All in the public view. It also brought Russian money into US politics, and anybody else that wants to do so. The Koch family is about 25% or all anonymous money in politics. This study always gets brought up but from what I recall the last time I looked at it, it has some serious issues. There isnt much of a good reasoning for why they chose the data they did, its certainly not comprehensive, and a lot of issues can have different results depending on how a question is worded but they dont seem to address this. The other thing is the atribution of whether something passed was supported or not seems a bit arbitrary. Opinion polls tend to be fairly succinct questions aimed at one particular thing, bills going through congress are not that. How do you account for that? This isnt addressed by that study. Also reproducibility? At best this seems like ""we hand selected some data, we arbitrarily interpreted it, and we got a result to publish."" Cool bro. So Im not going to say that the opposite is true but I think this study has some clear bias issues with regard to the data they chose to analyze and how they interpreted that. The question of whether one income group gets more policies passed then another seems an incredibly hard question to get a concrete answer to and this study certainly doesnt answer it. You're just referencing bad things about America that have absolutely nothing to do with the original point. Whatever you think about wealth inequality in America, at least most American billionaires got there by actually building billion dollar companies. Russian oligarchs literally just did a 'this is mine now' with the entire Russian economy. The entire wealth of the USSR was just handed out to a couple hundred well-connected politicians. There is nothing about the American billionaire class that is comparable to this. It's just a stupid thing to say. Explain to me the language of New York State’s new cannabis law then. You really need to be told the differences between the Russian economy (half the size of Texas) and the US, drivers of wealth, and how the countries operate? Russian wealth goes way back before the USSR, but otherwise yes you are generally right. American Silicon Valley CEOs and American business magnates are wealthy in shares that are speculative by nature. This is not even close to the absolute wealth of oligarchical Russia. Oh yeah, in the US no one is wealthy because of political deals, political protection and patronage. We don’t have many more rich people besides Bezos Musk and Gates. Funny how these people are hated unless it fits peoples prerogative and point [deleted] It’s a good point that gets lost in wealth inequality discussions: wealth builds over time. Yes your average retiree is much wealthier than your average 22 year old, they’ve been earning and saving for decades. It definitely breaks down though when you start to look at billionaires and their wealth. Elon musk is wealthy because his family owned blood Diamond mines full of slaves. Elon musk has child slaves mining his lithium batteries. Elon musk’s companies have been sued for discrimination and unethical workplace practices. Elon musk is a hack who presents himself as the face of some innovation that he did not found (he was originally a failing competitor to PayPal, so he just bought PayPal instead, he also purchased Tesla) Elon musk is an immigrant who does not pay taxes, intentionally robbing the American people. I’m sure that he is a smart man in the sense that he’s clever and organized, and somehow manages to maintain a semi admirable public image, but he is a perfect example of a part of the problem. I should have specified. Not all wealth inequality is bad. Parts and portions absolutely are, and they should be combatted. That's some deep propaganda poisoning you've got there buying into the fake American bootstraps narrative. > In the US, Bezos Musk Gates etc. are all wealthy because they started a project and led it to success creating new wealth. They were born into affluence and became more wealthy by hoarding wealth produced by thousands of underpaid workers. It's neofeudalism and it needs to be combated just as badly as the old feudalism did. It's a shame, I used to look up to the guy too. Instantly lost all respect for him reading this tweet. Cursory knowledge would suggest the comparison is way off the mark. Again, it does a disservice to actual debates about wealth inequality. Don’t know how the other extreme helps either. I can point out the widening wage gap and tax disparities without automatically being lumped with the antiwork folks. It’s perfectly acceptable to point out that nobody becomes successful purely by their own efforts. I find it hard to take you any more seriously than the people you are complaining about when you use similar rhetoric and strawmen. Wonder how much money Trump has invested with his friend Putin! Lol imagine thinking the US doesn't operate on state corruption, Congress won't even stop using insider information to trade stocks and get richer. He is incredibly knowledgeable about labor issues, labor, and the relations. The problem is that he doesn’t work in the mainstream economics sphere. It doesn't really matter how the wealthy get their money. If they funal it into making political decisions, its an oligarchy. The fact that politicians make a career out of being elected and their main source of income is donations is reason enough to see that. Add onto the wealth disparity between the economic classes and representation no longer comes from the populas; it comes from the ones that can donate the most. On a weird level, politicians are doing their job; they are representing the ones that got them into office. > State corruption that's a weird way to spell lobbying....oh wait, THAT was the russian side? yeah, yah, you right, no corruption here 😬 I know right? What are the chances that a former secretary of labor better understands how Gates and Bezos became wealth than you do? The nerve of that guy. Especially when those claims are minimizing the horror of an illegal war that's going on *right now*. INB4 ""but what about Iraq?"" Yes, that was bad too. I was against it then, *and I'm against Russia's invasion of Ukraine now*. Believe it or not, multiple things can be bad at the same time! That's because the US is an oligarchy, much worse than Russia for that matter Such an easily searched for analysis that’s so obviously incorrect. Again, a bunch of illiterate yappy little dogs. Comparing Russian wealth inequality to the US is not nuance; it’s incorrect. The experts on it (Saez, Zucman, Piketty) are all very careful making cross country comparisons, given the known issues with that type of macro comparisons. I guess everyone ignores the point where I point out the US has a “bad” wealth inequality problem… The official poverty line in Russia is $154 per month… Research what happened to productive enterprises during the shift from Communism to “Capitalism” in the 1990’s, in both Russia and the surrounding (formerly USSR) states. You can take a look at how wealth is accumulated in Russia versus the rest of the world. You can look at controlling shares in petro-chemical companies, as well as personal links between politicians and the top 1%. Research what happened to productive enterprises during the shift from Communism to “Capitalism” in the 1990’s, in both Russia and the surrounding (formerly USSR) states. You can take a look at how wealth is accumulated in Russia versus the rest of the world. You can look at controlling shares in petro-chemical companies, as well as personal links between politicians and the top 1%. Not just levels. Composition; ability to maintain; mobility to those levels. Acquisition. Who here is saying it doesn’t exist? No. I never said anything about the second of Reich's arguments; that the U.S. is technically an oligarchy. I disputed (and called idiotic) his comparison between Russian and US wealth inequality. Over 20-percent of Russians don't have [indoor plumbing.](https://www.bing.com/search?pc=COSP&ptag=D090120-N9997A21ABFDD9D88F4162B1F&form=CONBDF&conlogo=CT3332016&q=fraction%20of%20russia%20that%20lives%20without%20indoor%20plumbing) It's how wealth was accumulated during the transition in the 1990's. Given Russia's natural resources (oil, gas, phosphate, minerals), and control over it, it led to massive inequities. Read Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism, Kornai, The Socialist System. As Piketty notes in my link, Russian financial data is not transparent, so Gini measures are highly imperfect (and underestimates for Russia). Putin reported $140,000 in salary... I wish. He’s not a moron. He says stupid things, oftentimes about things he’s not an expert in. No. Not at all. Some people have an actual PhD in Econ and work in the sphere, so yes, we are a bit more up to date on these issues. The Russian trolls seem to have gotten their marching orders for how to spin the invasion. And a pretty big gap between the up votes on the post (28.3k at time of my comment) and the top comment (less than 150 up votes). Something's fishy. it's a blatant propaganda account. wtf is this sub and reddit? That’s just how leftists work [deleted] theres a good video on RealLifeLore youtube channel that i think should be posted on reddit for people to see, its about why russia attacked. im against this and not defending russia but it has some info. Lol I commented something similar elsewhere. As someone on the left he makes us all look like such disingenuous morons. >Except replace billionaires with oligarchs. It effectively describes the exact same thing Yes, that's literally the point he's making. Congratulations on your reading comprehension. Eh. Steve Jobs made something, Jeff beezos at least gave us almost same day order/shipping. Oligarchs give nothing, only to the state. It’s not hypocrisy - Ukraines a democracy. The US was removing a dictator, Russia is installing one. Sure invading Iraq was wrong and based on lies, doesn’t make it even remotely equivalent to what Putin is doing So in the economic subreddit you can’t talk about economic issues because a country is getting invaded? >Musk helped get an electric car company going, Musk didn't found Tesla, he bought it >and a private rocket company going Musk got his seed money from just parents apartheid era cold labor emerald mine. >Bezos built the first online seller behemoth With huge loans from mommy and daddy and a distinctly toxic company culture that destroys lives. >Others created software companies or apps. Bill Gates' family was already very well off before he started Microsoft, and Gates didn't develop DOS, but instead bought it. >They didn't use the mafia to steal state-owned assets. But they did use political bribery to buy state assets at ridiculous cheap prices. Don't ask Elon Musk how his family built their fortune. They didn't have to. Musk gets a lot of money from the government. Bezos used tax loopholes to put small stores out of business. Corruption with the political class exists here as well. “Economy criticize capitalism and I’m sad” your comment basically Okay then maybe we should end the parts of the economy that don't produce value? Everyone builds on other people’s work. That doesn’t make their contribution worth less. Also I don’t see why you draw the line at $200b. There is not a finite supply of money. More money is created everyday not just from the treasury selling bonds, oftentimes bought by the Fed which creates dollars to buy them, but also from simple things like your assets appreciating in value. When houses in your neighborhood become more valuable, people can borrow against that value or sell to realize the cash and suddenly more money is in the system being circulated. To you, $200b is a lot. To someone in a third world country, $1m is a lot. I don’t see the validity in capping someone’s net worth subjectively. For years the government has added dollars to the system to pay for services which we’ve decided we want. That has gone okay until recently with inflation rising. We printed something like $7 trillion in the last two years. I don’t think they answer in this equation is to take money away from people who created that wealth by building things. Finally, your net worth is not necessarily your contribution to society. You can do great things without making much money. But if you start a company that is able to convince more people to give it more money, it’s going to be worth a lot. Apple is not the most important company in human history. But it is the most valuable because of its cash flows and perceived stability of cash flows. And most of the time you have to create something pretty special to be able to have those kind of cash flows. We all benefit from that. It built like 1/3 of the country’s servers. It employs a lot of people - to say it doesn’t create value because they’re low paying jobs is ridiculous. Not every job requires a lot of skill I disagree with every one of those points. I also have no interest in arguing with you as we disagree on a fundamental level. Different life experiences I suppose. Oh right, because Obama and Trump are the same guy. /s means he's being sarcastic See? This is why reddit needs the /s Voting for the president? Bro, your votes for priority should be mayor, governor, senate, Congress, president. That's roughly how our system was designed and the reason our politics is so fucked is because people ignore that simple fact. We should vote bottom up not top down. The power should come from the people. If the people only invest their power in one dude, we are susceptible to magnitudes more corruption. Sound familiar? You still get to decide. In every state the electors are chosen by the people Its still counts. Like i said the system needs updating which is what out founders intended but it suits a certain demographic well to keep it antiquated Is that due more to the electoral college or gerrymandering? You'd rather it be a pure democracy where people in cities rule over people in the boonies so they get no say at all. Creating ghost towns because of inflation. That's what you want. Local elections impact your life far more than national or even state elections. Thats untrue. We decide. Your just jaded. If no one showed up we would have another 4 years of the idiot 🦧 No. The voters chose the candidates in a primary election. Is there a peaceful transfer of power or does one person repeatedly “win a landslide” election? Putin is a gangster. No. All the parties give you the choice between their candidates. There's two major ones but that's because people vote for the two major ones. And most parties including the two big ones let people choose their nominees Because he’s on Reddit? We need Ranked choice. If the people demand it overwhelmingly we will get it. At the local level there can be quite a bit more choices and competition, my city in NY has had a 3rd party mayor for two terms. At the national level there is also the primary system that offers up a pretty good variety, but people always seem to settle one the establishment choice. Except, controversially, with Donald Trump. Hmm. So dont vote for the Russian sympathizers. Look that is true but putting any fucking idiot on the ballot like we just did with chump isnt a wise move either. You are not factoring generational voters. Your parents don’t think like you do. And sometimes you have to decide if being an idealist and losing is better than being a pragmatist and winning. Its difficult to understand but change happens very slowly as the old ways of thinking slowly die out…literally die out. ehh trump said it flat out and people just didn’t like it. not saying i agreed with stances but the man does shoot straight also, just a question: is there a form of government that would prevent this internal cooperation? i think internal cooperation may just be human nature as we can see it in all governments. even people who highly despise the extremely wealthy will show the same core thought process. Its a generational problem. Boomers were taught greed is good. Look what it has wrought. Change will come as the old guard starts to die off. I agree, but always remind yourself theres a reason people walk thousands of miles to get here. No ones walking across a continent to get to russia. They build walls to keep people in. And even though i disagree with it we build walls to keep people out. That speaks volumes. Please log off of reddit and take a civics course, or alternatively if you're a Russian troll, I hope you get deployed to the front line ASAP Theres a pretty clear distinction between the two parties. Call your local district representatives office and tell them your biggest concern is the lack of rank choice voting. Don’t bring up anything else. Just that. When you talk with others talk about ranked choice voting. The only way it can become a reality is if we talk about it and nothing else. Everything else is culture war diversions. Do you really think the only people who can do anything is the 1%? What is wrong with you? Did you not learn how capitalism works in that if there is a need someone will fill it? You’ve gobbled up the propaganda believing that only the 1% can keep the economy running. That is false. Secondly just because something is better than something else doesn’t mean we can’t complain about it. Tired of this argument that because our lives in America are better than 3rd world countries for some reason we’re just supposed to shut up about everything, that’s not how it works. Holy fuck this is so wrong Yes. Athletes who take steroids vs athletes who don’t is a good example. Yes, process matter. If a president is elected democratically vs simply taking the position by force - that is the same outcome, yet very different process. You could end all wars just by killing everybody. This is extremely hyperbolic but you can work backwards from there as to why the means matter just as much, if not more than the ends. Yes. When a economy is as endemically corrupt as Russia you get far worse situations than in the U.S. In the U.S. reform can actually occur. In Russia those few in true power have such a stranglehold that nothing they don’t want will get passed. Exactly Bold claim Thanks pop [deleted] Tell me you know nothing about socialism without telling me > You need to read up on the Panama papers and what happened to the person who reported on it vs the rich people who were exposed by it (murdered, no consequences). The Panama Papers were reported on by hundreds of reporters. Out of them, one, Daphne Galizia, was murdered by the Maltese mob, which triggered a massive popular uprising in Malta that ended up forcing their corrupt government to resign. Meanwhile, the Panama Papers resulted in three other corrupt governments being taken down, hundreds of oligarchs arrested, and billions of dollars being returned to the people. When people claim the Panama Papers did nothing, they are spitting on Daphne Galizia's memory. EDIT: Oh, and the Panama Papers notably didn't include *any* information on Americans because the company whose data was leaked didn't serve American clients. So there's that, too. And your evidence it was a US billionaire and not a Russian oligarch is what? They included almost every millioner in the world, Messi - footballer, Rosberg - F1 driver, Simon Cowell -? The list goes on. Edit: No point, just a bot. Are you saying bezos and musk had Malcolm x killed? source? Idiotic or not of an analogy, the fact remains the same The ven diagram of people who make blanket assertions and people who are always at least a little bit wrong is a circle. Why so? Our politicians are largely dependent on their sugar daddies not the voters and often vote in favor of their biggest donors instead of the benefit of their constituents. Aka oligarchy. Again its cheaper to pay a fine than follow many laws ,related to commerce and oversight, even if breaking that law is how you will make your money. The entire system is currently built to siphon money like a pyramid instead of a functional/healthy economy which would be closer to a circle. Y he speak the true true Ratio 🥰🥰 Not nearly to the same degree as Russian oligarchs. You CAN potentially become a US billionaire without being politically well-connected (many people do) you absolutely CANNOT become a Russian billionaire without being in Putin’s circle. Do US billionaires have lots of influence over US society? Yes. Is it anywhere near the level of influence that Russian billionaires have over Russian society? No, not even close. Why are you putting an actor in there? Just to deflect that Gates has been using the gates foundation to control global health policy and vaccine distribution or his association with Epstein? That musk runs an abusive racist workplace, his wealth comes from apartheid, or his slow open support of fascism? The equivalent would be if the postal service was given to a private individual from the government and then that person made opponents disappear, end up in jail, and pays the dictator a healthy sum to keep it that way. We've got problems with lobbying, but the proof is in the pudding. Our GDP is 6 times as much per person. Can't really think of the last time Microsoft or Amazon used the military or CIA to disappear people. Calling the police for trespass is not the same thing. Sure, but there’s a difference between being wealthy and then the state protecting you vs being wealthy *because* the state protected you Most mega rich in America come from a line of entrepreneurs or started a business. In Russia, they’re all old KGB guys who are wealthy because they’re close to the government. Big difference. More specifically the legal code has been slowly modified over several generations to protect them. When its easier( cheaper) to pay a fine then follow the law you know where the morality of the lawmakers lie ( the pocketbooks of others) I see your point, but you need to understand that we can all purchase assets and invest money. Everyone should be doing that btw that’s what I tell everyone (I’m a financial analyst/bartender), and I’m always trying to figure out ways of teaching ppl financial literacy, especially since most of my customers at bars need it, no offense to them. (Trust me, ppl talk, I know their stories lol) Neoliberalism is what I don’t like Can you name from the latest Forbes wealthiest list more American billionaires who got their wealth through inheritance, government contracts or straight out from privatization of state owned assets? If you can, then let's compare them to Russia's wealthiest individuals and see how their wealth was acquired. please familiarize yourself what an oligarch is. Which of our largest institutions were created by capturing state institutions? Apple? Google? Amazon? Walmart? Any? And yet you promote people like Robert Reich, who simply wants to dump even more power into the captured institutions. User name checks out Ah neoliberalism, the boogeyman of the uneducated and college freshmen everywhere! Let's talk some actual facts. In the post Soviet era, the rise of the Russian ""oligarchs"" was characterized by the corrupt seizure of former state assets primarily through criminal means. Sometimes that meant bribery, such as bribing a local official to ""sell"" a state asset (everything from power plants, to manufacturing facilities, to warehouses of goods) for a nominal price. Sometimes that meant literally murdering the legitimate owner, or competitors attempting to legitimately purchase the asset. Sometimes that meant using your position to sell assets for personal wealth or connections; Putin's original power base was secured via his position in St. Petersburg where he was in charge of privatizing a broad spectrum of state assets...which, strangely enough, ended up in the hands of friends, associates, and other partners. This ""wild west"" era lasted from the early 90s through Putin's first Presidency in the early 2000s, a time during which Putin used the powers of the state apparatus to crack down on oligarchs that did not back him. As with the ""wild west"" era, this era saw a wide variety of businesses stolen and redistributed to Putin's allies using tools ranging from the state's legal system (declaring owners criminals and seizing their assets), to violence and murder, until the oligarchy was solidly behind him. Since that time, dissident oligarchs have continued to see their assets seized, been thrown in jail, and some have died in...murky circumstances. To compare it to America, it would be akin to having Elon Musk having taken control of Tesla after murdering the original founders, or threatening to do so and then ""buying"" the company for pennies, Bill Gates ""buying"" MS-DOS from the Federal Government (with Paul Allen being the government official in charge of the sale and later being revealed to own a huge stake in the company under a wide range of aliases and shell companies), and Nancy Pelosi being richer than Warren Buffett by virtue of ""investing"" in companies that ended up with 9 and 10 digit government contracts. To compare the two shows such a staggering lack of knowledge, it's frankly breath taking. Lmao dumb commie “everything bad is neoliberal.” I agree with you. Down with neo-liberalism! Up with free markets! Menos Marx, Mais Mises! It’s sad that you can’t understand what I wrote. I didn’t say that at all. I pointed out that Russia is MORE authoritarian and that Reich would take actions that would lead us in the direction of authoritarianism. Not to less authoritarianism. Another appeal to authority, cracks me up. Of course, not ALL economists believe that wealth inequality is a problem to solved. Thomas Sowell has written about wealth inequality, the historical data, whether it’s a worthy goal to end it, and so on. Ya, that logical fallacy is called ‘appeal to authority’ lol! It seems the logic your proposing, along with Reich, is that since wealth inequality is causal and results in an authoritarian state, then wealth equality would result in a free (or how about relatively free) state. Yet, we have thousands of years of history that show wealth inequality is ever present in every society. It seems obvious that to equalize wealth would take state intervention, intervention we do not have no, so the increase in authoritarianism is axiomatic. Then to maintain that equality would require constant vigilance of a very powerful bureaucracy. The more equal the target for wealth, the more government it will take to make it happen. Imagine the extreme where all wealth is distributed evenly tomorrow. That condition will fall apart immediately. As soon as your kids want to open a lemonade stand the engine for wealth inequality raisers its ugly head. Ya that fits better, probably only 30,000 people. Anyone with more than $93,000 is in the top 10% worldwide. That's not usually what people focus on when they talk about inequality. They usually are referring to the population within a single country. Went from comparing US wealth concentration to global wealth concentration without drawing a distinction Okay reddit See? The FBI was kind enough to knock first before lhxkgzmg.svzmgx y ohllclyc See? This guy gets it 👍 Glad to hear that you know who Robert Reich is, but I am definitely not positing that he is psyops for the Russians, comrade_pantone. Although his ideas are a little more socialist than is my taste in politics. I am merely alleging that the OP is definitely NOT the former US secretary of labor and is in fact a shitposter trying to deflect the indefensible occupation of Russian forces in a sovereign nation by quoting a high ranking politician and author (who makes money on his opinions) saying that the US has a lot of money in the top one percent (though they are the wealthiest nation in the world, so naturally there is more money) so they are somehow the same thing. And even if that was the case, how could you still defend the socialist nature of such a country when the commit more human rights violations against their own people than the US has in 100 years of war with other nations and terrorists...but mainly it was a joke. Eagerly awaiting your reply, and I wish you the best in this f-d up world, thanks. The 1% of richest humans on earth. Look it up! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You-need-34k-income-global-elite--half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.html Just go get a job buddy Biden State of the Union last night just said 10 million of them are open since last year. Or be broke and beg for food. I honestly couldn’t care less. Broke boy. Would you rather be impoverished in a high cost of living country with infrastructure and aid or a broke country with low cost of living but without any infrastructure? Socialism != communism. As a Norwegian I really really hate people like you that try to use us to push socialism, when we are not socialist. Honestly, go fuck yourself. That’s literally the definition bro Sure it is... it is just distributing the wealth to the party leaders. Communism doesn't even have any money involved in it lol I should elaborate actually. Communism doesn't have the ""money"" we are used to. In some forms of communism there can still be ""payment"" but it looks nothing like what we have now. Isn't that a problem with any system with a government? It seems governments tend to bloat over time, corruption will always exist where there's money to be made. Law-making and enforcement of law opens the doors to the possibilities of corruption, how can that ever be avoided? One side approaches this issue by reducing the governments role and power as much as possible (classical libertarianism) and the other by pushing the power from a hierarchical structure to the masses (socialism). Most every country lies somewhere between these two on the spectrum, but I've never seen a country with no corruption. Even if you have a perfectly working government today, what's to prevent someone from abusing their power at some point in the future? The US tried a system of checks and balances but clearly that's degraded greatly in the past 200 years. It's because these guys go that far back. What he doesn't mention is that capitalism seems to create the exact same patterns. Not exactly, it's more crony capitalism. The Scandinavian countries with high standards of living are also capitalist. It's the cronyism and lobbyists keeping America down. What do you think existed before Russia? The Soviet Union perhaps? Do you think wealth made it back down to the people then? Do you even know who these Russian Oligarchs are? Oh that's right! They're the same families that had land and power during the collapse of the Soviet Union! You know nothing. Because the US has a socialised economy where the govt. can pick winners and losers, no different than Russia. >and socialist government Norway isn't socialist, having progressive policies =/= socialism. In a lot of respects Norway is actually quite capitalist, more so than say the USA. >socialism: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. Norwegian companies are private enterprises, means of production, distribution, and exchange are all private. You're arguing for petro-states. Norway could be an absolute monarchy and still have pensions and government hand-outs for its residents, just like Saudi Arabia or Alaska. That's not democratic socialism, that's ""sitting on top of massive oil reserves, letting the State take the wealth that generates, and handing out crumbs to the Plebes""-ism. The Great Depression is almost exactly like the fall of the Soviet Union as far as wealth redistribution. >What do you think libraries are? Police stations? Roads? Public Schools? These are all socialist institutions No they're not, you can have a capitalist nation with public services. Government =/= socialism. Socialism is when the people themselves own the means of production and exchange. Me and you don't own the library, it's not evenly owned by the workers in the library. A library, road, or public school have absolutely nothing to do with socialism. Can people please stop conflating public works or policies that help the poor with socialism. They're separate from capitalism and socialism, they're just services provided by the government through taxation. True capitalism isn’t possible in an authoritarian state. Whispers: exactly. That’s why communism will never work. That’s what it always turns into. The Soviet Union was. These Oligarchs are the same families that held wealth and power during the Soviet Union era. Do you think the wealth was distributed among the people then? Lmao. How is that relevant? Biden falls up a staircase 3x Nah Yeah, fuck that idea right off. That’s literally the underlying basis for the shit that is happening in Europe right now; a dying despot’s lust for communism’s glory days, which were absolute dog shit. I legit can’t tell if sarcasm or the Russian trolls are getting really bad at this. Poor guys must be working overtime with all the worldwide hate toward Putins war on a sovereign state Ah, yes. Communism is the solution... (It's definitely not) It would actually be better to have a better tax system with brackets beyond 500k. Someone making $10MM a year should not have the same percent as someone making $500k. I'm unfamiliar with the capital gains tax structure, but having it heavily graduated also would ensure someone profiting $1k isn't paying the same percent as someone profiting $1MM. And close all the damn loop holes that allow rich people to game the system. Also undo all of Trump's bullshit permanent corporate tax breaks. Increase corporate taxes. The criminal amounts of money politicians get funneled by lobbyists and special interest groups should be addressed, also. A lawmaker with $100MM is going to make laws for the rich. There is only one kind of person who doesn’t want to work and gets angry they don’t have equality I think you misperception what kind of person made this post. It’s not a poor person. I think that depends on what your doing with your money. Go ahead give a crime lord money and watch the feds take your ass down You mean comparing apples to oranges. Either way I think this is the final straw I need to shut this down. Comparing other countries to The United States. This is the scenario- I take a dumb and it looks like Russia. I’ve been to Russia on business trips and the only people who virtue signal are people who have a beef and don’t even live here. I could take a dump and it would look like where your from. I think Russia and other countries it’s far easier to abuse a system involving money. Especially communism. All the little kidddos think that communism works well your seeing right now that’s a blatant lie. Russia sucks and their system has been flawed before the Cold War. Capitalism is turning the rupple and cutting your economy in half. I don’t care about paying a bit more for gas. My family lived through the Great Depression. Only communists complain about economic inequality. Your a communist and your hiding under the guise of a Citizen of Capitalism I really feel like this thread was intended to attack capitalism This is a problem with government, not wealth inequality. All I know is—Russia only has oligarchs (draconian word) and we have billionaires (aspirational word) Lmao He does, but the redditors that misuse the words over and over dont Yes. https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/ According to a real source its 38.8%, while they control 20.1% of the income. I can't read your very biased NY times post due to a paywall so I don't know what their reasoning is for their number. That’s not an effective tax rate, it’s including unrealized gains. The actual effective tax rate of the top 0.001% is 24%… That's 8% effective tax rate, not 8% of overall taxes. Nobody pays taxes on their accumulative wealth. Totally, right. Like Elon paid the most taxes ever in our history last year. Good. **[Fred Hampton](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton)** >Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist. He came to prominence in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party, and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the antiracist, anticlass Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Desktop version of /u/Green_Bulldog's link: --- ^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete) It’s hilarious/sad to see the dissonance in capitalists. “Don’t feel entitled to someone else’s labour”- meanwhile billionaires literally siphon off the labour of thousands of workers. Every time I had an extra dollar it was easier to get the next one. I don't see why that wouldn't be true up to any amount. It is just easier to make more money when you have some. Psh, you're overreacting. Sure there are as that one time the Russian poor murdered their rich masters, and that other time the French poor people murdered their rich masters TWICE. And the half dozen times the Chinese poor rose up to murder all the rich people... But what are the odds ot happens again? I am today’s working class and it’s easy for me to say Good luck getting rich that way Learn skills to make your labor more valuable in the company, treat your labor as an investment leading you to different more profitable jobs, and your wealth will exceed minimum wage. Learn to do something besides flipping burgers or mopping floors. Take responsibility for your own destiny. You sound broke It stems from people being envious of a successful person. The wealth or super-wealth of another person had no effect on your life, except for wanting what doesn’t belong to you. There’s wealth to be made, if you go out and make it. Make yourself marketable and you’ll have companies paying you what you’re worth. Your labor and ingenuity are what creates your wealth. Wishing to tax or steal someone else’s wealth will not improve or affect your life whatsoever. Truth. That's not even close to the truth. There are a few examples, but we have 100 senators and 435 congressmen. Also, this is besides the point, but a few studies have shown that people with inside information (one study was with politicians another was with people who had hacked the SEC's earnings site) only make money money about half the time... The bottom line is most politicians have money before entering office - they don't make money insider trading. Puppeteer- the 0.001% of Americans who are the ruling class. Corporations. Puppets are the politicians. The strings are made of cash in which to control the puppets with. Citizens United made it legal for unlimited amounts of money to fund political campaigns. Under 50? Check these out. http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-cost-of-financialization.html?m=1 https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ Watch When Capitalism Hits Home Read deaths of Despair. Read Pity the Billionaire. I was assuming this is only talking about the specific salary given to the president Sure you can, kid. You can do anything you want. Now, the effort you can't learn. That has to be inherent. Dude I have a “middle class” job and I’m struggling to stay above water and I don’t live beyond my means. I am poor. It’s definitively true lol Not a fact Because US bad obviously and everyone else in the world including actual dictatorships and oligarchies is just a product of US being bad Sorry I fucked up your pedo libertarian circle jerk echo chamber with a dose of reality Look at his post history. He only posts negative stories about a small collection of topics. He posts the same stories over and over again with no indication that he’s looking to engage in conversation. He’s clearly very motivated to spread a few very focused negative themes. Check it out. I’d be curious to know what you think. Indeed a valid question, to a degree, but then I have to counter question... Why is it only bad if its specific numbers? Is it a contest? That's how it sounds like its being treated. Shouldn't it be committing the act as a general? I know numbers have some bearing, but people emphasize that too much. The problem is willingly committing the acts in the first place. Sometimes war is inevitable and it happens. People die, others murder. Numbers only prove who was more effective at doing ehatever they did, which does garner reason to be wary, or observe, but we're all just as guilty at our base for simply doing these things to begin with. There was a time when these tables were turned. We could ask a different, but similar question: *""between Russia, America, and China, have we killed the same number of civilians with nuclear bombs in the past 100 years?""* Well, America is the only country to use nuclear retaliation. How many peaceful people were killed with those? So how different are we, really? Killing is still killing, no matter how or when it was done. If numbers are the only deciding factor to who's good and bad, then we better be going through the entire History of those countries and tallying all people killed throughout and comparing. Wrong, like so wrong in fact its laughable you even would think something so divorced from reality [deleted] Good point. sage advice for any human. thank you :) The same goes for the state that I live in. Point taken. America is just not an oligarchy though. American people decide who gets to govern. The worst you can argue is that money can influence politicians and influence public perception through advertising, but both of those could easily be overcome if enough of the populace cared about an issue. There are issues with representation and inequality in America, but if America is an oligarchy, there are very few democracies in this world. Nope not even close I don't even make 6 figures. But if I wanted to put in the effort I know I could. We are talking oligarchs here. [deleted] Completely agree, we are so fucked. There's another one I really like as well, they do a great job of visualizing this stuff. https://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig [deleted] If you persay leave a banana peel on the top of the stairs, and I fall down because of it, you technically didn’t make me fall. It isn’t just a comparison. But i need a counter argument. Because this %1 thing is almost a pop up news whenever something about wealth distribution comes up. But that won't show the correct page or prove what I said It does, see methodology and source at bottom of the page. This isn't about Democrats or Republicans. Can't you see both sides are controlled by the plutocracy. Republican or Democrat, neither side represents our wishes. Our recent ancestors fought and died for livable wages without having to work 80 hours a week. With giant corporate entities amassing all the wealth, it leaves the workers nothing to live on. Pretty soon everyone will need ""handouts"". We all pay taxes. That is why these programs are created. My tax return is moot. I made too much money. I'm single and live on my own. I didn't have enough money to eat this week. I wish I got a fucking handout. . So? At least we don't outright jail political opponents and or kill them. That makes it a poor comparison already Have 3. Suck it https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/21/fact-sheet-us-assistance-ukraine The only claim I can’t substantiate is where they say Obama spent $5 billion to support riots and anti-government activism. What I am seeing is that Obama gave this money to organizations within the Ukraine that then used it, I don’t see any thing linking the Obama administration to the actions of where the money was spent. However… I wouldn’t blame you for connecting them Right after sounds reasonable in the case of gun control since it's a topic related to mass shooting. The conflict with Russia is going on right now and the topic in the OP doesn't have the same connection as guns and mass shooting, at least in my opinion. It just feels like taking the topic of Russia and moving the focus elsewhere instead of on current affairs, like what they are doing to Ukraine. The OP stated "" The top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the entire middle class. That sure sounds like an oligarchy to me"". You just can't say it is an oligarchy based on that. Those in Russia truly have power we can't imagine, in other countries it's not like that. Why does this matter? Capital in the 21st Century essentially takes the existing debate on income inequality and supercharges it. It does so by asserting that in the long run the economic inequality that matters won't be the gap between people who earn high salaries and those who earn low ones, it will be the gap between people who inherit large sums of money and those who don't. Piketty's vision of a class-ridden, neo-Victorian society dominated by the unearned wealth of a hereditary elite cuts sharply against both liberal notions of a just society andconservative ideas about what a dynamic market economy is supposed to look like. Market-oriented thinkers valorize the idea of entrepreneurial capitalism, but Piketty says we are headed for a world of patrimonial capitalism where the Forbes 400 list will be dominated not by the founders of new companies but by the grandchildren of today's super-elite. Seriously, I didn't think it was that easy to summarize the core thesis. I'll speak as a myopic American; this is the work that has dominated my adulthood in scholarly reading. It was instantly recognized as an achievement, and its reputation only continues to grow as more get the time to read and reflect on it. The only other work I've seen have nearly the influence from this century is the biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. I implore all to read the summary provided by timfduffy of Capital in the Twenty First Century. I admit the book is a real slog as most serious works are, but the article does a good job of boiling it down and looking at criticisms. Edit: To be faaaaiiiirrrrrrr, the book has MANY other ideas in it, it's fairly sprawling. It’s an excellent book that makes an important point but it’s also in the Top-10 books that clever people must own but which they’ll never read. See also “A Brief History of Time” and “The Bible”. ty both thank you Its also a [Documentary](https://youtu.be/TqkjyI1QD2A) Thank you! Saved and ready to read after work and quick break When Piketty estimated the share of inherited v. earned wealth in Paris, he made an assumption that inheritances do not change the consumption by heirs. Do you think Paris Hilton keeps her inheritance in index funds and just spends what she has managed to earn herself? This is the main weakness of *r > g*: rich people spend money, the richer they are, the more they spend. Heirs and heiresses are not known for their humble lifestyle. Thank you! His newest book is great also, translated into English the title would be “A Brief History of Equality”. Not quite out in English yet though I think. Without economic growth, capital gain can also come from simply accumulating other people's capital. For a concrete, down-to-earth example, imagine a company which breaks into houses and steals people's money. Or a landlord that rents out apartments but stops doing any maintenance. Their stock would go up, without any kind of economic growth involved. It just gets constantly moved through the system of non-owners by way of debts and interest to continue letting it balloon. It's feudalism 2.0. You will own nothing ""and be happy"". Wealth concentrates itself to the top with our current economic system, with those who are wealthy defining power through simply that wealth and use that influence to keep the status quo. It comes from access to cheap credit At the end of the day we live on a small planet with finite resources, so it’s a zero sum game. Any increase in your wealth is by definition at the expense of everyone else competing for the same finite resources. From the backs of the working class and magically inflated valuations of whatever values those in control need to be inflated at a given point. There is only one kind of real value…. The work that it takes to extract something from the ground or grow it and the value to society of a given truly necessary service. And even those values get distorted constantly. Other people whose job it is to simply move money from one place to another or people who “lend money” to others have long controlled these things and the values of their work has been overwhelmingly inflated for eons. Who controls what people consider to be reality controls the values of the things in that reality. So think carefully about what something or someone is actually really worth. Debt. Very simple example: If you are a landlord, you can still raise rent 3% in one year even if GDP growth is negative for that year. Capital gain is a subset of economic growth. Capital gain is sustainable when it matches the growth of the rest of the economy. IE: capital that becomes more valuable to society through increases to production efficiency or yield and allows the excess resources to be used in other productive ways. When capital gain is higher than the rest of the economy it is actually misvalued. We are valuing it higher than the real value it creates. When we do this, and when that value is realized, that additional value needs to come from somewhere. It comes through a loss in value of the whole economy and we see this as general inflation. The US has a been guaranteeing capital growth at all expense for the past 40 years. So much of our expectation is tied up in the idea that our investments will always appreciate, from the rich all the way to the middle class with their retirement investments. We will change rules, stop worker protection, allow anticonsumer behavior and borrow money just to make sure the stock market line keeps going up even when the economy drops. Look at COVID. You have supply chain issues, you have people all over losing their jobs, you have companies struggling to manage work in a pandemic, you have companies in a labor shortage. But yet despite all of this the markets go up. What you also see is a lot of government assistance to the biggest corporate entities and a lot or borrowing and printing money. This is because we have been able to delude people into believing that the economy is the stock market. We show that the stock market is strong therefore we conclude the economy is strong, and for people who primarily own capital thats closer to being true. They will just complain about things like rising costs and blame it on workers being spoiled and asking for too much money forcing an increase in prices. America manages its perception of prosperity very carefully. Look at a chart of the American GDP and it is too perfect. It's unflappable exponential growth. Its a similar thing with its markets but with unavoidable dips here and there. But look at something like GDP to debt ratio and it starts to look like the meme with sexy homer with all his fat pinned behind his back. The point is, America will always ensure capital grows even when the economy really says it shouldn't. Every time this happens, it comes at the expense of the whole economy. This happens through inflation. But the promise that America has made is that capital will always grow faster than inflation. So unless were actively building real economic value as this capital grows, this will ultimately result in extreme wealth inequality and a kleptocracy. Because whenever the rich feel that their money might stop growing we are quick to take the difference from literally everyone else to ensure it doesn't. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. [deleted] It depends on the system. Temporary inequality happens in ecosystems, but not long term inequality. It all depends on the time scale being investigated. How tf did u end up here? How did you arrive at this conclusion? It’s basically just saying we need a progressive tax to check untethered money accumulation. Which is when our country was in its heyday during Eisenhowever’s presidency…..strong social nets and like a 90% tax on the highest bracket. There is no government that is 100% anything. The most successful government will be mixed and we used to be much more of a socialistic capitalism…now heading towards unchecked capitalism. It’s not sustainable. How did you even arrive to the realization of equal societal value between fast food workers and small business owners? It's like an answer to some totally different question. Creating tiers of winners and losers is part of the problem. >this is exactly why every truly socialist country is painfully poor The average capitalist nation is poorer than Cuba, my dude. Wealthy capitalist nations only exist by exploiting billions of people in crushing poverty in the global south. It means the average of all kinds of loans and investments in the economy. Basically how much does your 401k grow on average if you just set it to ""balanced"" and forget about it. They just copied that verbatim from Wikipedia. Are you’re asking if wealth inequality also applies than bitcoin then yes Same. I am all about some personal finance/investing topics and this is a new concept for me. It is so basic, but someone eloquent It's like if you have 2 vacuums, but 1 is stronger than the other; which one sucks up more marbles? Duh! Not really. We just need to fix and simplify our tax code. We can use the funding we get from increased taxes to increase investigative and lawyer power for the IRS. It would certainly be worth it. I see you have built up an immunity to iocane powder. You see in Russia they *steal* their citizens wealth Here in America, being gentlemen, we insist that it be *conned* They invaded for oil and gas, sounds familiar? Oligarchs are high on fossil fuels, they act like addicts. Invasions and wars happen that don't get the united reaction the west has had this time. Perhaps you are just less cynical than me, but I don't believe Western governments take united action like this unless there are powerful actors behind the scenes. And in this case I think western oligarchs see an opportunity to crush the Russian oligarchs and then run some disaster capitalism (shock doctrine style) in Russia when the dust settles. That said, if the price of Ukraine not being defeated and absorbed in to Russia, with all the death that will bring, is that western oligarchs will further consolidate their power, then so be it. Their reckoning day will come one day anyways IMO. No, but also yes. We're in a class war, friend. Welcome aboard. Or watch apartheid orphans shovel emeralds for their dads. Biiiiig differences here, yessir. It's SUPER hard to get into. I gave up :/ Is there a reader-friendly book for an educated but not-professional-academic audience that covers the same ideas? I came here to comment this haha. Incredibly dry, incredibly good. Ha this sounds like me recommending some of my favorite movies. Just like lord of the flies huh? Misery does love company Try listening to it as an audio book. Not. Not as boring as The Wealth of Nations. Better title would have been The Price of Corn. Sounds like a good audio book for next holidays road trip to family that's funny, i just recommended *Ordinary Men* to people in another post on here. it's a book about the holocaust and the men that carried out the tragedy. a good book, an important book, a book that i recommend to people and it's also really boring. Gimme the readers digest version. Is the US just another oligarchy? he has a ted talk that sums up the key points in 20 minutes, obviously its a shallow explanation compared to the book Thank you, and thank you. It was modeled after Capital by Marx and Engels, another famously boring but important book Why say in 10 words what I can say in 1,000? I'm not suggesting Piketty's work is flawless, but the Anti-Piketty book was bankrolled by a bunch of oligarchs. Have you heard the physics joke premise that goes along the line of a physicist saying “ok, if we assume the cow is a perfect sphere in a vacuum…”? The joke being that the physicist can solve a problem on paper by making assumptions that don’t exist in reality, because a cow obviously is not a perfect sphere nor in a vacuum. I’m not an economist, but I do see a lot of economic arguments that revolve around the assumption that people behave “rationally” in any given circumstance, and that “competition” between people and businesses or whatever is some kind of law of the universe that works perfectly to bring costs down, quality up, etc. Anyone who lives in the real world can tell you that neither of those assumptions are true all the time, or even most of the time, nor are those definitions worth a whole lot (in my mind anyway). And yet those two assumptions seem to form the bedrock of a lot of economic discussion. Maybe I’m wrong, I haven’t read the book. I’m not commenting on his character, I just find some of his arguments on this subject to be pretty sound Exactly this. He also postulated that men are better than women in the STEM fields because their brains and biology were superior 🤮 Oh yeah - he along with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin also called chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born - an accomplished and intelligent woman - crazy because she was trying to call out the dangers of the poorly regulated derivatives market which became a catalyst for the 2008 financial meltdown. She was right, they were wrong. And yet, Larry Summers continues to speak from some perceived position of authority. He's a chauvinist idiot hack devoid of original thought. Listening to him is a terribly nauseating experience. Fuck that guy 👎 >returns on capital outpace GDP growth, where is that money coming from? They can come from foreign investment, which is a big reason why many off-shoring/multinational companies are growing so rapidly. > If returns on capital outpace GDP growth, where is that money coming from? It can only come FROM the GDP growth This sounds like Marx but with more math Except if you had actually read even a cliff notes version of piketty's book, you'd know he admits economic growth has exceeded the return on capital since the 19th century. It currently still exceeds the return on capital. In your opinion I guess! He wasn’t critiquing it in his capacity as an academic. He was invited to a panel to discuss the topic in his capacity as a former treasury secretary. I don’t know if you read the news but he’s also put out an OpEd about every week for the last 4 months in various papers It leads to it, sometimes, but also isn't the only lead. Instead, you're skipping to ""deaths by blood loss"" as an indicator because guns cause it and then conflating all gun accidents in the same category. What's the actual problem we want to solve? People having shitty living conditions. We need metrics that show how shitty people's living conditions are. No it doesn't. It's a secondary metric. Wealth inequality isn't a driving factor, it's being poor. You're arguing that a person is fat because that person lives by a McDonalds. It's a secondary metric at best. It's for correlation and to work people up with jealousy. Rich people don't consume more resources than the average. Most of their wealth is illiquid or immobile. It's an overtaxed metric with no mechanism to explain it's direct effect. That's like saying a bodybuilder is ripped, so he must be healthy. So many conspiracy theorists on this thread. Sounds like you're a conspiracy theorist, so I won't try to convince you. The wealthy don't consume much more resources than the average. They're not monsters who way 100k kcal/day an and fly around 727s. Their influence over you is limited, only appearing when citizens allow congressmen to be influenced by cronyism. If you have hot water, hot food, clean drinking water, a roof over your head, a smartphone, and the ability to message on Reddit, you are truly privileged. I have family in a third world who can't say that same. Wealth inequality is a distraction. What matters is creating a floor since we as a society have sufficient resources to do it sustainably. The pursuit of wealth helps the mobilization of resources to make cheaper products through investment; not to say that it's always efficient, but it's more efficient than central planning. Central planning is only useful to maintain peace and order, as well as funding research that the private sector will not take risks on, but to later capitalize on. > A dutchess born billionaire who contributes no meritocratic benefit to the world has identical wealth accumulation as someone who gained thier wealth through the creation of value. I'd love to capture that as a metric, but wealth inequality doesn't and people are pretending it does. One of my statements addressed this ""unfairness."" All the royalty in the world wouldn't be able to solve world hunger if they surrendered all their assets. There is actually a lot of mobility in the upper wealth brackets. Eventually not contributing to society leads to poverty. Loaded terms...cause a frenzy without a solution in sight. I find these echo chambers of thought boring. Thank you for your well thought out response. Correlation is not causation as you are most likely aware. Wealth inequality is a meaningful metric, but not a direct metric. It's used by politicians to justify bloated ineffective and inefficient policy that are hard to reverse and tax the system of excess resources. If only policy used hypothesis testing with controls versus throwing feces on the wall. Tax payer money to audit inefficiencies and to conduct studies is a better use in my opinion; otherwise, it's theft without an equivalent return of value. >a society of slaves That's very disingenuous to ""quality of life"" in his ideal metric. He's saying we need a metric that actually reflects our goals rather than the stand-in that inequality has become. What metric would want ideally? probably something more specific than general wealth inequality...same as OP. Wealth inequality...the gap between the upper and lower quintile... Not really, the people who are educated enough and had enough experience to be able to take risks on technological/societal changes are almost always already wealthy. So like how theres 600,000 people in jail for marijuana, while rich people simultaneously own dispensaries. Napster allowed anyone to upload and download artists music without their permission and with no payments. Spotify gets that permission first and pays the artist. Its different. [deleted] Which isn't always a bad thing It's a book about the *creation* of fortune. None of the Russian oligarchs have generational wealth, not one. According to the fact that actually respected economists don't endorse his work. It's nice to know that online libraries exist, but the unfortunate reality, from my experience and perspective, is that it doesn't matter what information you make available to people, their bias's will ultimately rule the day. In other words, Truth, capital ""T"", pales in comparison to ""t"" truth that too many seek as confirmation in the Age of Information. That's.... What? There's data in the literal book,, the grundrisse, in his newspaper articles. There's plenty in Lenin's imperialism book. Plenty I'm the work of Ernest Mandel. Michael Roberts is also a good economist to check out. WTF are you talking about? If you want some *specific* data you'll need to be specific about what you want. But claiming he had none is ridiculous. Anwar Shaikh actually uses empirical data to prove neoclassical models and assumptions are incorrect and builds his own theories off that of classical and Marxian economics. His book ""Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises"" really is incredible work and I'd recommend you check it out. Edit: I just realized I already replied to you elsewhere lol my b What thesis? You are talking about absence of financial market, where money itself is an item for sale. I do not understand enough on the subject to feel comfortable to leave a comment on it. But we *do* need a reward, feedback mechanism for someone who done better in life - it could be just cash piling up, it could be something else. That is inequality by definition- I’m not equal to Le Bron, because he has an exceptional abilities and is rewarded for that, while I do not have any of that (how much is rewarded is a different thing), but inequality between me and him has to be present. Inequality is fair. The Pareto Principle is not simply a group of functions. It is a theory that states (in the most abstract sense) that it is often the case that a small minority of inputs is often responsible for a large majority of outputs. Describing it simply as ""a group of functions which define a decreasing number"" is a grossly oversimplified claim. f(x) = 20 - (1/10000000)x would fall into that definition, which would have nearly an imperceptible difference in the area under that curve for every unit X. More specifically, it is a specific kind of power law probability distribution. One that happens to rapidly change in value for very small changes in X when X is close to 0, but then change very slowly in value the further that X gets from 0. This effectively means that for a defined range X (say in this case, the total population of given country) the majority of the total value Y as measured by the area under the curve (say in this case, the total wealth per individual) is unevenly distributed towards smaller values of X. The Pareto Principle in and of itself is not the cause for this, but the fact that this principle is observable throughout nature suggests that it can reflect the natural state of equilibrium for many different systems. This doesn't mean that wealth inequality is just something that we have to just deal with. But it does suggest that if we wanted to do something to make things more ""equitable,"" we might be pushing up against a proverbial ""force of nature."" One might argue that one reason communism failed is because of the pareto principle (ie ""from each according to his ability, to each according to their needs"" sort of directly contradicts a pareto distribution). Edit: meant to include a ""not"" in there I don't know if the analysts help but once capital gains eclipse spending, and without estate taxes or wealth taxes, there's nothing stopping growth from going to billions and higher Aah yes the Great Depression policies. Sure I’ll get right on that. I've read Capital in the 21st Century and I don't think there's any way you can really ""disagree"" with hard data. Modern capitalism is eventually going to run into the fundamenta problem of the fact growth is not interminable and the whole system has been held up by shocks (two world wars) which provided artificial periods of super high growth I was just adding the addendum Piketty himself is so disilussioned with it he's a full blown anti-capitalist now Truth. I picked that up the year it was published as a ""free read"". Ended up taking some study to get through it. The funny thing is, you can watch crypto and see all the things unfold again.. He says things that feel truthy but they aren’t actually descriptive of reality. * In the US, the top 1% owns 27% of the total wealth. * In Russia, the wealthiest 500 people own more wealth than the bottom 99.8% combined. * In the US, the wealthiest 3 people own more than the poorest 160 million Americans combined. All of these statements are true, but what I'm musing over is just how different a reaction can be evoked all by true statistics but some seem so much more appalling than others. If you say the richest 3.3 million Americans own 27% of the total wealth, sure, that seems high, but it doesn't sound *that* absurd, but if you say 3 people have more than every single thing in this world combined owned by the poorest 160 million Americans then it sounds like it's time to grab our guillotines. Thank you, I knew the math was not right, and I was about to do the research myself There is also a difference between the top 1% of income earners and the top 1% of total wealth. Why would a surgeon “honestly deserve it?” Creating economic value doesn’t necessarily create societal value lol. But largely agree Echoes of this with trump cos dissemination of contracts during COVID . Guess we know where he learned it from . Not really interested in wading in to this argument, but referring to _Robert Reich_ as ""the twitter dude"" is pretty peak Redditor. [deleted] In Russia they steal it, in America we con it out of you. While the latter is more polite the former is more honest in a way. >or their families were self made This is a distinction to russia, but it doesn't really make it better - inheriting this amount of wealth will eventually create people completely detached from reality that never lived like ""normal"" people and have an insane amount of power compared to them. It's essentially feudalism. No matter what the stance on income and wealth taxation is, we should all agree on high inheritance taxation, or even capping the amount of money an individual can inherit. I have no problem with someone who made their money during their lifetime, sure you could argue they exploited workers or whatever but you can make workers protection laws, that's not an issue of taxation. But i do have an issue with someone who generated zero wealth yet is filthy rich because of what some ancestor did. There’s no such thing as self made lol Self made my ass. Those people you listed were very privileged, white, and most of the work their companies do are done by their workers, not themselves. The US also has similar cronyism and mafia ties as well. The NY waste management system was mafia run up until recently. The fact is, capitalism enables theft and corruption. Every corpse that gets shipped back to their families. > self made lol Yea, in Russia the oligarchs bow to the government, in the US the oligarchs decide the government. So very different indeed. Which some would say is distracting from the invasion of a peaceful country. Or deflecting attention from the aggressor. Exactly. Broad inability to grasp that two things can be bad in equal measure and nuance is important in discussions is why America has been considered a nation of retards since W Bush Anyone arguing the two are similar is absolutely warping reality to fit a fixed narrative. Plus, there are plenty of Russian apologist chiming in here. Interesting how this is posted at this time, like the OP is trying to increase support got putin by saying Russia is equivalent to the us But why though it's literally brought up in every political discussion, heck Biden brought it up last night. WE HAVE BEEN. Holy fuck. There's posts everyday about wealth inequality across a variety of subreddits, in the news, on Netflix, on Twitter, across multitudes of social media platforms, in schools, etc the list goes on and on. This guy trying to pivot and equate Russian wealth inequality is an absolute idiot because they aren't even close to being comparable. Why do you pretend like this is some hidden secret in the US that no one knows or talks about? It's incredible how people will quite literally pivot any conversation to pretend they're woke and that there's information being hidden at all times when in reality it's talked about and discussed constantly Ad nauseam. The amount of people who think the U.S is actually a third world country disagrees... Maybe it’s not the time to look at ourselves when they have started an invasion? Also: The word oligarchy has a meaning. This post reads as propaganda. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/fiv434/map_of_the_worlds_billionaires_and_how_they_made/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf I don’t see our wealthiest forcing an invasion of Canada. Russian oligarchs are rich AND own the government and military and judicial. Our rich assholes can lobby, probably own some politicians, but don’t control everything by fiat. Have you looked at the account that posted this? It's blatantly a propaganda account. >[Confirmed: US imperialists wanted to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine since at least 2019](https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageImperialism/comments/t4zkj0/confirmed_us_imperialists_wanted_to_drag_russia/) >[Biden’s “State of the Union”: Confronting internal crisis, the American ruling class turns to war](https://old.reddit.com/r/jimmydore/comments/t59or5/bidens_state_of_the_union_confronting_internal/) >[US imperialists are about to get what they wanted from Russia's invasion of Ukraine](https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/t2or6z/us_imperialists_are_about_to_get_what_they_wanted/) >[Powering Putin: U.S. imports of Russian oil soar as domestic energy production plummets](https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/t4ik1y/powering_putin_us_imports_of_russian_oil_soar_as/) >[The US is an oligarchy where 3 billionaires hoard more wealth than half the nation & working class people aren’t guaranteed healthcare or a living wage, yet Biden & the Democrats are on TV pontificating about bringing “democracy” to the world when we don’t have democracy at home.](https://old.reddit.com/user/failed_evolution/submitted/?count=75&after=t3_t4dyq4) Oh and here is the ""ops"" twitter: https://twitter.com/failedevolution https://twitter.com/failedevolution/status/1496913633091194880 >if you really don't want to see more wars in Europe or elsewhere, fight for the destruction of the brutal, evil and criminal organization called NATO. That's the root of endless wars around the globe. And that is why classic propaganda is so effective Eh now it’s you who is misrepresent a position Hypocrisy sucks and it’s okay to point it out, it only becomes what about ism when you use it as an excuse for bad actions. If you’re condemning all bad actors acting similarly you’re pointing out hypocrisy and people need to hear it even if they don’t want to. I am a leftist and I am not saying that at all, what are you on about? I love America - try to expand your world view I think Americans are just self reflecting on our own situation and some parallels. I don’t see anyone saying we’re worse than Russia. You’re dumbing down the conversation. I don't know about ledtists, but when Trump was asked in an interview if Putin was a killer, trump's immediate reaction was to say America had done worse. So, does that make Trump a ledtist? https://youtu.be/G8-VB-XkjKQ I'm tired of the narrative that you cant be critical of the actions of USA, without it being seen as excusing russias actions. Both can be bad at the same time Why are you trotting out the specter of leftist edgelords? Is there one nearby? Are we in danger? He’s confidently arguing against his own little strawman. If you’re not constantly virtue signaling on Reddit how is anyone supposed to know you’re such a good person? >They did not build anything, their wealth is not from private companies. My man is coming for Insurance companies. It's 'Ukraine' and not 'the Ukraine' Consider supporting anti-war efforts in any possible way: [[Help 2 Ukraine](https://help2ukraine.org)] 💙💛 [[Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Ukraine)] [[BBC Styleguide](https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/u)] ^(Beep boop I’m a bot) ""Nobody cares a talking about that giving oligarchs free reign here."" What? Hold the USA accountable, hold Russia accountable, that's all I ask, I know it's too much to ask, but I am compelled to keep asking it. I take it all back. Russia has done nothing wrong, please stop private messaging me, I regret sincerely posting in this subreddit, please just leave me alone I take it all back, russia did nothing wrong, please stop private messaging. Youre right, russia did nothing wrong, please stop private messaging **[Operation Condor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor)** >Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor; Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents. It was officially and formally implemented in November 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Rich people are born rich. ? I am bias because I'm poor? They support Putin because he allows them to live the opulent lives they do. He needs their support and they need his. So if we disrupt their opulent lives they will stop supporting Putin, or that is the hope. I hope this explanation helps The top 500 people in the US absolutely own more than 27% of total wealth Hello again internet friend! I was worried that you weren't reading very well! Now I worry that you are unintentionally comparing apples to oranges! You quoted that the American 1% owns roughly ~~27%~~ (actually 32%) of America's *wealth*. However, you juxtapose this with a statement that Russia's wealthiest 500 own more than 99.8%. This is not 99.8% of Russia's wealth, but more than 99.8% of Russia's *people*. These are two different statistics. Silly internet friend, why would you compare wealth to people?! Internet friend, if you want to compare two things, you should quote two of the same things. investmentwatch mentions two percentages in the same sentence, implying that they can be compared. Having more wealth than 99.8% of the population is not comparable to owning 27% of a nation's total wealth. Hence, asiochi is correct in pointing out that this comparison is invalid. If the comparison had been 40% of wealth vs. 26% of wealth, the comparison would have been valid. But that's not what happened here. It’s not until they start funding elections and change laws to serve them like giving tax breaks to big corps and using tax loops to not pay for the services they’re using. Also how the lobbying problems and controlling the media is huge, anti unionization and using ppl for cheap labor. Everything is okay in moderation but not in its extreme. I love capitalism but I hate extreme capitalism If it’s off the backs of the rest of the world then yes it is They aren’t though. Lol. The striations are probably more distinct The funny thing is this ""more wealth"" is imaginary for most people. They are paying the bills and just getting by, some struggle to eat or pay bills. The more you learn about other cultures you really realize people are all the same on the most basic levels and they all have the same struggles regardless of their countries economic status. No, the top 10 percent of Americans hold almost 70 percent of the wealth here. The top 1 percent hold about 30 percent of the wealth. The rest 90 percent share that small slice of the pie. I suggest you study sociology and understand wealth gaps more. Source? I knew people who lived in Colombia south America. A single mom in Canada has a similar standard of living to a doctor in Columbia. They made friends with a business man. He owned a couple shops in Manizales. He had 2 30yr old cars. You can only drive downtown 3* a week with a car. If you want to go downtown everyday you buy two cars. He was fairly well off by Columbia standards. He emigrated to Canada to start again from almost nothing. Poor in north America is not the same as poor elsewhere. You live in the imperial center. Not so much blessing as much as dumb luck. > Poor is poor everywhere It's not though. In a well functioning welfare state the poor are much better off than they are in weaker states or even rich powerful states like the US that just don't want to help the poor. It's not luck. We've created the most powerful military force on Earth to defend ourselves, led in science and innovation, culture, freedom and choice. Yes, we've grown lazy and complacent, but the nation is brimming with potential held back by overregulation, beaurocracy and taxation. Imagine what America could be, if it tried. The next generation of what defines a nation. Exactly Poor in the top level countries is not poor everywhere (third and fourth level countries). Travel more to places that aren't tourist destinations. Lower class, working class, and the poor are the same thing. Lmao. Americans and Europe are single handedly destroying these world with their overconsumption and exploitation o third world countries for their resources i don’t know how can you just feel proud of that [deleted] Do you have pictures to share? Not that I don't believe you, but it's not so easy to find pictures that go with other people's experiences. [deleted] >bad as in the poorest parts of Cambodia where I’ve been in 2017 Tell me you've never been to a third world country, without telling it to me, Ok beep beep, I've been to Cambodia and Clarksdale... wtf are you going on about? I mean yah there are some shitty blocks in Clarksdale but cmon my dude, there was no running sewage in the streets, there was no entire generations shitting in the lake/creek in 2014, let alone 2000. You can't even compare the two, it betrays all sense of reality. > as a German I couldn’t believe that in the US people live under these circumstances. Check out your own country. I was blown away when I first arrived to a train station in Munich, it felt like a third world country and I was harassed by several beggars. My friend who was with me was robbed during the same trip and neither of us have ever been robbed in the US. Pick pocketing in Germany is insane Woher kommst du? Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch [deleted] What were you doing there? Aid work? The UN actually rated Alabama 3rd world. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/alabama-black-belt-un-poverty-expert-extreme-developed-country-sewage-crisis-roy-moore-philip-alston-a8105886.html%3famp I have lived in the south my entire life. I visited Germany a couple years ago and the people I talked to had a very strange but understandable view of the US. They basically thought that the entire US was from Houston Texas. Rich cowboys. This view probably comes from American movies so if that is your glimpse into America it makes sense. I don't think I could get the point across that some parts of the US are insanely poor. Like 3rd world poor. We concentrate so much of our wealth at the top it is truly insane. Poverty in the US is pervasive, and devastating. The range of poverty is also tragic. It goes from abject homelessness, to homed and employed yet lacking the ability to meet needs. Poverty in all forms shares the same traits- a lack of met basic needs being triaged minute by minute. I remember a large part of the US political spectrum being very mad at a UN mission to investigate extreme poverty in the US. Everyone from the libs to conservatives and libertarians was complaining. I lost a lot of great articles that I had bookmarked. I'm sure you can DuckDuckGo and find a lot Like this https://www.newsweek.com/alabama-un-poverty-environmental-racism-743601 Should've visited Ruhr I've lived in MS and visited south Africa (2016) and there's just no comparison whatsoever. You sure you weren't in a rich area of Cambodia or something? The average salary in Cambodia is roughly a fifth of the US poverty line. I’ve been to some of the poorest parts of the country, and I can say with absolute certainty that nowhere in the US is as bad as the poorest parts of Cambodia. I went on a family trip to Detroit in 2010 with my family and we were legit worried to leave our car most of the time. I had never felt that unsafe even in supposedly unsafe third world countries. The stark contrast in wealth between different regions in the U.S., and to a lesser extent, Canada can be quite stark. Yes yes we get it we aren’t as bad as Russia. Doesn’t mean we still can’t point out a huge problem in our own country and do more to try and fix it rather than saying “at least we aren’t as bad as those assholes” Unless you say the government is bad and then show proof. Then you'll say you're a ""traitor"" and you'll have to hide in an embas for years. You are more likely to get thrown in jail in the US than you are in Russia. We just prefer other bullshit reasons to throw people in jail in order to get the slave labor force that we want. This is, of course, ignoring things like COINTELPRO or [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/t5baxw/putin_has_amassed_enormous_wealth_for_himself_and/hz4bfmk/). This could just directly be considered ""get thrown in jail for saying the government is bad in the US"" do we ? check out oliver stone prequel a 1900. we’ve been arresting dissidents in this country since 1906 That is true Blm protesters don't exist? Or like... most protest movements? You do get put on a list and called a white supremacist though. What do call all the arrests of peaceful protesters this past summer Many in the US get thrown in prison for smoking weed with dark skin, that’s… also not good. Conditions should improve everywhere, oligarchies and rigged systems everywhere need to be changed, long story short. Freedom of speech is important though, for sure! Weren’t there unidentified federal goons in Portland kidnapping people for saying the government is bad? There’s no real freedom in the us, russia, or any other capitalist shithole BS. USA will not hesitate to massacre if there is a danger to the capitalist system. History classes you need to take. In America, true if you want to be dumb and poor or homeless but the minute you object the inequality and that spreads even a tiny bit, they will crush you. Do you know anything about the cold war, how govt jailed anyone suspected in socialist ideals? Let's skip cold war, do you even recall what happened to the movement ' occupy wall street's. Yeah right they disappeared and it was only a matter of time before they started to mass murder all. Do you even recall what happened to ' David koresh' clan? Yeah right! Perhaps not yet. Though, all the tools are in place for the security state to come barreling down. I don’t doubt for a second, that if the United States began to find themselves on their back footing… that would quickly change. Yet. Give the right a few more years Yes you do? How many times are Americans going to see people plucked off the streets in protests amd not see that as being arrested for saying the government is bad? Cops shot people and abducted people during the BLM protests. Yes buddy but USA is the land of dreams and richest country, don't put that bar so low just to feel better about the situation Yet* There is one side that would love to be able to do it and they tweet about it all the time. Yet. Give it some time, America will come around There are absolutely more freedoms for a poor American... But, it's important to note that we have a prison population that is enormous, and mostly due to making things poor people and the anti-war left people so illegal. Anti-Crt laws are literally prepping to throw teachers in jail or fire them for saying things like, ""redlining happened in our city,"" or ""the prison industry disproportionately affects Black Americans,"" or ""this used to be a Sundown Town in the 80s."" The GOP is trying to turn the US into Russia. No just shot by the police by looking at them funny, or by being any color but white. Unless you criticize a police officer to their face and don't have the money/clout/time for an attorney to appeal to higher courts. Which is a niche and exists in many other countries, admittedly. But most people don't think of the police as ""the government"". Yes it’s a very good thing it’s impossible to get arrested and jailed for arbitrary and capricious reasons in the US. Ron desantis enters the chat No, just for being black, poor or disagreeing with a cop. So much better. Sorta, they just wait till you're organizing a liberal leaning cause and collect info on you till they feel you pose some threat, then they spy on you till they can dig up or produce something damning or kill/let you get killed a la MLK. Yeah but you get shot by police for being black, not too cool Sleeping in your own bed as a free law abiding citizen of color gets you shot by our police. If u are black person in usa tho No. You get thrown in jail if your black or brown and jaywalk! You don’t even need to say anything Yet…. Many were arrested at BLM protests, and OWS before that, and yet other protests before that. Might not get thrown in jail for that, but you will be thrown in jail for the crime of being poor. But you can be thrown in jail for being poor. But you can be shot if you're stopped on the street and don't do exactly as you are ordered. State troopers in Austin just beat the shit out of someone protesting Greg Abbott's ridiculous new anti-trans bill. So no, that's not quite the case here. Just shot for no reason while you are sleeping Just shot in the face coz the po po has had a rough day So says the country with the world's highest incarceration stats What's the incarceration rate in the US again? Russia has a total population around 100M and 500,000 in prison. The USA has a population just over 300M, and a prison population of about 2m. I'm not sure the USA is much better concerning the likelihood of being thrown in jail for bullshit. One of these nations has the world's largest prison population, and it isn't Russia. We'll just lock you up for something else, U.S jail [population] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries) comparison. We are just as fucked. Hope there's a silver lining to this somewhere. Remember when that scientist from Florida got arrested for releasing true COVID death numbers? And how Chelsea Manning was tortured and imprisoned for exposing American Military war crimes? And Edward Snowden? You get thrown in jail because the US government institutes laws for legal slavery Well I got tear gassed and watched people get thrown in prision two summers ago for doing just that. To be fair we were walking down a sidewalk with signs 35 minutes before curfew. US has the highest incarceration rate in the world btw. I way higher percentage of Americans get put into jail than Russians. Whether you would rather be arrested for protesting or having a blunt in your car is for you to decide which system is better I guess. It really would depend on who you are. If you’re someone with money and influence like Navalny, you’ll be seen as a threat to the regime and put in jail. If you’re just some working class schmuck on the other hand without a platform unlikely. All bets are off if you go to one of these public protests though. We do, and have at times, done exactly this. Civil rights movements in our past and very recent pasts were exactly this. I hate to burst any bubbles but in very recent memory people were being abducted into unmarked vans during protests in our own cities. Is it as blatant and to the scale of Russia currently? No, but, point is we have very, very little high ground morally if any. Yeah, you get shot instead. BLM. No, but we very much put people on jail for being poor/homeless. And the US very much imprisons a larger portion of its population. Where's Assange or Snowden? BLM and extinction rebellion enter the chat… You kind of do not yet I feel like we are forgetting the OWS protests. Government and oligarchs (or as Americans call it, the 1%) are the same all over the world. No, you get shot for being black instead No, you get choked out in the street or shot to death in a hotel lobby. Ask Fred Hampton if he thinks this is true Unless you live in Florida You just get shot instead People get thrown in jail for saying the police are bad in the US. I meant shot to death. Tell the local leadership off and watch as you get pulled over and ticketed for 'reasons'. Did you forget about the BLM protests? You just get shot with rubber bullets and bludgeoned if you protest about it... oh wait This argument has forgotten about the pie and is content with crumbs. Until the Y'alliban has its way. [deleted] [deleted] Not yet. We as people have to be extremely vigilant so as not to let this happen. Our country is just as capable of descending into authoritarianism. thats a much more recent developement than youd like to believe though theres a lot of unlawful arrest payouts, and dropped charges from George floyd protests that say that isn't completely true You wanna look at the us prison population vs the rest of the world? America has the largest prison population in the world. They’ll find a different stupid reason to lock you up. The game is rigged. I mean, MLK did. Huey Newton did. Fred Hampton did. All assassinated too. Meanwhile in the real world, US holds 20% of world's prison population who are used as literal slave labor. That's higher incarceration rate than USSR had under Stalin. [deleted] You can though, depends on a cops mood No I definitely do. My family move to America being poor Russians to poor Americans in a rural community in Texas. The only difference is that in Russia we have the support of family. Here its nothing but fake smiles and pats on the back while you starve. I’d wager you have no idea how miserable some parts of the US are, too. [deleted] True You also have no idea how miserable some parts of America are. I’m not going to sit here and compare the misery of different populations That’s why I was opposed to OP’s comment Lmao you have just shown your bias. Just because you haven’t been to these places doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Check out the extreme poverty in some of the extremely isolated Native American reservations (that don’t have access to clean water or a “dollar general”). Also look at Allen County in South Carolina. A lot of places in the U.S. with underserved populations, unfortunately mostly minorities, but also including Appalachia and the rural west has some extreme poverty. Now you can make the argument that there is more access to opportunity and services here in the US (which is very true) but the claim that is rather be poor _____ than ______ really seems to lack awareness of the brutality of poverty and how bleak it is regardless of where you live. There are tribal lands and areas on the Texas-Mexican border that approach developing-world conditions. But that doesn't detract from the fact that you're right. Guess you never heard of flint. Have you ever been to Mississippi lol Or any ghetto in America They're rough. I say this as someone who grew up in a ghetto in Mississippi. Some areas in American ghettoes are essentially warzones also. There isn't a single place in the US that is anywhere close to a 3rd world country. Not to mention people are trying to compare a small area to a whole country, and its still not even close. Some say ""homeless encampments"". Those arent places, those are just a group of homeless people who have banded together with how and where they choose to stay/live. Around them? Thousands/millions of other people living in apartments, houses, have running water, paved streets, restaurants, etc. 3rd world countries dont have that kind of stuff everywhere like we do. This is more about how jaded most on reddit are than what the truth actually is, and theyll do everything they can to seem right when theyre not. Are there shitty places in the US? Of course. Every country has them. Are they 3rd world level of shitty? Not even close. I could take you to areas in Baltimore, Philly and Detroit that absolutely resemble third world countries. The poor in Russia are NOT the same as America. It’s far, far worse. They don’t want the western world to see that though. >My guess it they have access to clean running water, the internet, grocery store and pharmacy. Oh, and a dollar general. Have you been to rural Louisiana? At least a third of the smalls towns I've been to in the south did not have clean water, or a grocery store. 7% of Americans don't live within 7 miles of a grocery store [according to the US department of agriculture](https://web.archive.org/web/20171019203758/https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/documents/floridainternationaluniversitymedleyfooddesertproject.pdf). And according to the [The FCC](https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progress-reports/eighth-broadband-progress-report) more than 7% of Americans, mostly rural populations, still don't have access to broadband internet. I fully understand that America is a very prosperous country but they have absolutely left their rural communities behind. Edit: To back up my anecdotal noting of there being way too many towns with no drinking water [According to consumer reports](https://www.consumerreports.org/water-quality/more-than-25-million-americans-drink-from-the-worst-water-systems-a2953057934/) 25-30 million Americans don't have access to clean drinking water. >My guess it they have access to clean running water My guess is that you haven't seen any news in the last ten years. Aside from Flint, many communities have issues with excessive lead in the drinking water https://www.nrdc.org/stories/causes-and-effects-lead-water#:~:text=High%20lead%20levels%20have%20been,isn't%20limited%20to%20cities. The middle class in Russia lives in homeless encampments? I don't think you know that much about US poverty if you think it can be compared to any middle class people. Who is “you lot”? I’m not complaining about anything, just making an observation. Right and that is my point. Services don’t mean anything because most severely impoverished people either don’t know they exist or don’t have the means of accessing them. Extremely isolated Native Americans on the reservation don’t exactly have access to most services Right, just like OP did with Russia lol To account for population: North America (Canada, US, Mexico, Carribean) has a population of 592 million. 3.8 million food insecure people is 0.64% of the population. Africa (the continent as a whole) has a population of 1216 million. 287 million food insecure people is 23.6% of the population. Nearly one quarter of its population. Africa has 36.88 times as many food insecure people per million, than anywhere in North America. My dad is from a village in Ghana with no electricity or running water. Try again They have it really bad compared to other first world countries though, much worse than it should be How does it look like in her country now though? Many countries struggled after the war and are way better now. America is getting worse. Poor is poor wherever you live. Depends on the country. Poor in Flint, MI? I would rather be poor in another country that I could walk, and fill up a bowl of water knowing it’s clean. The bottom is the bottom. But I would rather sleep on sand then concrete. In the US, if you’re homeless, there isn’t many places to sleep or places to go. You can’t hunt your food like in other poor countries. That’s absolute fantasy HouseS??? Holy fuck dude lmfao you are never going to be poor take a deep breath Yeah the cops in America would never kill protestors or organizers First of all, you won't really get charged for protesting in the US, the cops will usually just beat you up, put you in jail for a couple of days and release you. This was happening a lot during the Occupy protests and more recently during the DAPL protests. So we do the same thing, but have a different way of going about it (for now). Secondly, this is slowly changing. Around 10 states passed laws saying that it is legal to run over protesters with your car if they are ""blocking the road"". Around 20 states have passed laws saying that you will get fired or lose government contracts if you protest Israel's illegal occupation and war crimes in Palestine. And once those laws are on the books, it is easy to just amend those laws to include whatever the state wants to include. IMO, Russia is just further ahead in some cases, but very much going in the same trajectory. US is ahead in other ways, like the massive prison-industrial complex. Are we pretending like blm protector weren't arrested for peaceful protest? Are we pretending like the cops didn't line up college students and peper spray them while they were handcuffed? Or just sitting on the ground doing nothing? It's crazy how quickly people forget because they want to believe they live in a ""better"" country. So if they could protest it'd be better than america? And a teacher gets paid, what, $1000 a month? Not quite a utopia Guy listed paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, high literacy, and so on, but 'no protest' is the important thing here? Get shot in the face with a rubber puck in the US. Where is the high horse? Saying you’d rather live in one country than another is not being on a high horse The United States is not the bastion of democracy it once was. I have actually traveled outside the United States. Im married to a Russian who immigrated here along with family. I don’t hate Russia or Russian people. I disagree with the war and the actions of the leader but that doesn’t mean everything in the US is okay. >if you don't like it, leave Moving countries, especially without citizenship, is a logistical nightmare. Wanting your country to be better does not mean you want to abandon it. You can want something to improve and love it. good luck with your health and education! What a complete cop-out and dismal of peoples concerns and issues. Resorting to ad hominem attacks shows you have nothing constructive to say in response to my comment. I think it’s ridiculous that people from the United States think the country is the best at everything and in every way imaginable. Russia has serious issues but the United States does as well. We live in a corporatocracy. The will of the people is ignored. Deaths of Despair is an excellent book. Lower life expectancy than our parents and grandparents Declining birth rate 6 yrs and counting Housing as a spec investment bought up by private equity firms at 30-50% above asking and they pay in full. Goal is to turn the country into a nation of renters. I’ve seen the ads trying to convince our people that renting is an asset!?!?!? Hell NO. Home ownership is a core tenet of the American dream and the single most used path to building inter generational wealth! Widespread homelessness. The visible homeless are just the tip of the iceberg. Families where both parents work at homeless. The most expensive, least efficient for profit healthcare system in the world. People die of easily treated conditions due to inability to pay. Piss poor educational system and it shows! Look at our ranking worldwide. Higher education is a scam like subprime mortgages were and people have to take on debt to gain an education and that still doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to land a job that allows you to support yourself. Lack of universal healthcare Lack of mental healthcare. The streets and the jails are the asylums now. Thank Reagan for that. No sick leave No maternity leave No mandatory vacation time We say we are all about the family unit. No. That’s a lie. We do nothing to help working families. The United States is a failed state. The United States is isn’t such a developed nation either. In many places we have third world standards of living. Actually some areas are worse than what I’ve experienced abroad. Both nations are dystopian nightmares. You sound like someone who thinks they know how a situation is but has no real experience. If you think our education system, our healthcare system, and our social safety net is great then I have nothing to say to convince you. I’m an adult woman who has lived at various income levels in my life. You are incorrect in your statements but I won’t change your mind. The only welfare anyone receives in the United States are the billionaires and multi national corporations. Capitalize the profits and socialize the losses. Look at the United States! We get two parties that are just one in the same. Different sides of the same coin. The people do not matter here. We don’t care about health, education, upward mobility, those are lies. Well stated! Americans and Russians are always shitting on each others countries, and I'm just here, sitting in europe and thinking... Well looks like I'm in paradise then Sounds like you’re not LGBTQ or a minority. TBH it sounds like all you've said is that Russia doesn't have the problems that have been solved by every developed country besides the US. Sure, those are perks compared to the US, but you'll get comparable perks moving almost anywhere in Europe, Australia, the more developed half of Asian countries, etc. Sounds like the United States! We have book burnings, don’t say gay law proposed in Florida, Texas is going after trans people. We have warmongering here! Hello military industrial complex. We have eroding democracy. We have a political party that tried to overthrow the country. We have serious issues here. Russia isn’t perfect and neither is the US. Metro or not has no bearing on my statement. I was gonna say, just losing access to healthcare alone because your poor and don't have a job is already scary Is it why he also dodges taxes and busts unions? Don't pretend like Musk actually believes in those things. putin kicked some ass getting into power but that was decades ago now they understand each other. putin is gonna take care of the oligarchs as long as they take care of him. very trump like I even noticed on some stats that their economy dropped when he came into power for a few years. Then kept a steady decline as he kept invading countries. They’re literally doing the exact opposite Lmao like the legitimate sources you have about Trump and Putins relationship. I don’t like Trump but y’all gotta stop spreading the Trump, Putin bullshit. It’s not real. Pleas explain how Biden or the Democratic are doing anything good for America’s. Lol Cool I’ll check it out That sounds like old school Stalin Russia where the people in charge didn't even understand the concept of money. When you have that much power and everything is provided for you money doesn't even matter. ‘It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?’ Almost seems like everyone is full of shit I can’t keep up anymore [deleted] Yeah, there is absolutely no evidence Putin ever worked with the US on anything. Dude basically hasn't shut up about how much he hates us since the fall of the Soviet Union. Putin was hand-picked because he was obedient and dutiful during his service to Yeltsin's close ally Sobchak and later in the President staff, nothing more than that. Clueless westerners like to make a big deal out of his KGB carreer (which was over in '91) because it sounds cool and fits their mental image, but he was never anything more than a small time officer, paper pusher while in there. Later stint as director of FSB was only a year long - just a stepping stone towards ministership. No. Chechens weren't extremists, they were just an ethnic group just like estonians, latvians, polish etc etc. When all the other ex-soviet countries started to gain independence, Caucasian regions where many ethnic groups wanted their autonomous regions to gain independence, such as Georgia, Chechnya, Ingushetua etc. Russian people were in a really bad circumstances economically and quality of life sucked. Putin with being the head of KGB and having contacts, orchestrated explosions across the various cities and painted chechens as the culprit and being muslim extremists, which worked brilliantly in the really orthodox retarded conservative society that had just invaded Afghanistan. Many nationalistic and xenophobic russians believed in it and Putin gained popularity and he was voted (though that election was far from a fair election). He then basically sent first army of untrained soldiers to weaken the region and after that he basically bombed the whole region with cluster bombs and thermobombs. After that he set up the current dictator to that region to control it. It would help if OP could provide any evidence to back up their claim. There is absolutely no evidence Putin ever worked with the US on anything. Dude basically hasn't shut up about how much he hates us since the fall of the Soviet Union. Most dont see beyond Putin=bad. Well, he presented himself as the US puppet, or else Yeltsin wouldn't pick him as his successor. Maybe he was always playing the long game, this doesn't change the fact that WE believed he was a puppet. There is absolutely no evidence Putin ever worked with the US on anything. Dude basically hasn't shut up about how much he hates us since the fall of the Soviet Union. I remember this. I really doubt that Russia expected to actually join NATO, they had to know they wouldn't be accepted. I'm 99% certain of this. That fucked up everything, and was on purpose to reach the current stage. The US oligarchs are playing with nuclear fire to plunder Russia's natural resources. Basically, yes. He wanted the looting to be done by Russians, not by a foreign power. I lost the link to the digital edition of [this](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/94e197_4bb58bbdbaaf4c67ae98a6b266702f44~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_480,h_632,al_c,lg_1,q_90/94e197_4bb58bbdbaaf4c67ae98a6b266702f44~mv2.webp) celebratory piece in Time, where the US openly brags about doing it. Congress also approved $10 billion for ""economic recovery of Russia"", at least $2 billion went to Yeltsin's election fund - a huge number even for today. You can find lots of sources on this, but I suggest going to the library and finding this edition of the Time magazine, because it includes celebratory quotes from US politicians bragging about it. Also, Yeltsin afterwards bombed his own parliament and we supported him because we ""love democracy"". - [edit] A bunch of US consultants talk about their tactics [here](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-09-mn-22423-story.html). They don't mention the funding, of course. Sometimes I check history's to see if the poster is a muppet. I disagree with most things you post, but you're alright. Whataburger is the tits and I miss it. Read one real history book, I'm begging you. People will stop laughing at you as much. To be fair a lot of this sub is libertarians who want to buy children on the market Lol yeah I just heard another friend who probably said the same thing. It’s probably running through their circles. MFer wants to be Czar and/or Emperor. Dang Maybe Q-Anon Alt rights but to act like that's every conservative is very disingenuous Yes ""the elites"" like... Hollywood. 🤣 500 billionaire own 40% of American assets whats your point? 3 US richest prople own more than half of the population. In America, three people at the top own more wealth than half the country combined. That's worse though. The fact that these people are so much better off than the poorest of their countrymen and think that's OK is disgusting, immoral and unpatriotic. If you’re just talking income, then you need to talk about consumer index. You need to compare rent, food, etc. No it isn't. Those numbers are meaningless without including PPP. Russia beats out Ukraine by a substantial margin too. >The median income in the US is $31k. In Russia it’s $5k. That’s a more accurate representation of equality. No, that's equally (or more) meaningless. All you've done is describe the exchange rate. Yeah that's how progressive taxes work. They don't need that much of their money to still be way more fucking rich. Holy shit they're gonna be broke in like a couple years When you are that rich you’re only profiting off of other people’s labor. So you are taking a share of their time and labor. No one should be that wealthy. It’s unethical. The rise in taxes is not equal. It stops. It jumps 12% from the 1st to 2nd bracket. Ridiculous. A d it should be fucking higher. Trickle it down motherfuckers. Earn more money, pay more taxes, that is just how percentages work. Nah Robert Reich is not that much of a dumbass, just that the economy resembles an oligarchy which is does. Gotta compare like to like, not a few hundred people to a population of millions the phrase ""the 1%"" doesn't mean literally take the population and divide it by 100. Really depends on the state but [here’s](https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/9210897002) a USA Today article. Just took a quick google search. Networth is a really crappy way of looking at standard of living. A NFL player who makes $10m a year may have negative networth from spending all their earnings on lambos and borrowing even more money for their lifestyle. That technically makes him ""poorer"" than a Chinese farmer living in a shack with no debt. Income is way more important than wealth. I just googled it you dunce, i have no idea or no care for the source of which there was multiple showing he is a multi-millionaire. Are you claiming he is not very wealthy himself? >we are never going to improve because you'll have absolutely no read on the situation or potential solutions Not only won't they not have a read on the situation or potential solutions but the fact that they hold such irrational views that aren't based in any sort of reality means they'll simply continue to hold those irrational views regardless of any improvements or gains made. I agree the US has many problems, but many of those problems pale in comparison to the shit that goes on elsewhere. Most of these people have never left mommies basement,never had to live in the real world and most definitely never lived in a 3rd world country that they compare us to... And everyone else who wanted to sell shit online had to give him 50%, while the state took another 25% as a tax. Yup. God damn American corruption. The only difference between russia and america is that America launders their corporate oligarchy through congress. No, but he *was* gifted the startup capital for his business by his extremely wealthy parents. Let's not pretend like the US wealthy are that wealthy because they contribute a proportional amount to society. > Also the bottom 1% in America live like kings compared to the bottom 1% of Russia. Having seen and been related to a LOT of homeless drug addicts, this is like comparing the F you got on a math test to your classmate's ""F- see me after class"" They don’t understand what poverty means in other countries. Russian poverty is destitute. Last year, the average Russian was earning 6500 USD. Sure, they’re living, and all, but it doesn’t really click for Americans until you put it into dollar amounts. Outside of the biggest cities, Russia is underdeveloped and in need of help. Edit: For the dipshits that want to make it more complicated than it has to be, we can use the PPP. You shouldn’t need to be told an iPhone is a luxury item for someone who earns 6500 usd a year just because you can buy some shitty backwater home that has shoddy heating. Most poor Americans have some kind of smart phone and internet access. Our poverty is entirely different. https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm Uhh i think the bottom 1% are all just living in cardboard boxes dude. America has more social programs so they can get a decent meal and sleep in a shelter i guess. [deleted] Eh... 553,000+ are homeless so they're literally living dirt poor in America, but even then it's still a better dirt poor than Russian dirt poor. Um. Source? Lol I fail to see how a foreign country's poor people makes it acceptable to ignore our own poor though. There are no good people in war. ...Still think Zelensky has become a war hero, at least for what he's done the past week. How dare nations sharing a border with a country that has shown time and time again that it will willingly invade its neighbors want to join a defensive alliance! Your rebuttal is whataboutism Real genius stuff there buddy [deleted] I appreciate the transparency glad to know there are people with functioning brains out there Bud you have just drank the kool-aid far too much and it is insulting to the Russian people who have fixed elections, no right to protest, and wealth so insanely concentrated in the hands of a few hundred people to compare our situation to theirs. I highly recommend you actually spend a few hours reading about the history and situation of politics and oligarchs in Russia before saying something so ignorant. Or go to literally any professor of politics or social studies and ask them their opinion. Read the comment at the top of this chain. It's like saying a steak and a hot dog are the same because they are both made of meat. You seem like the type of person that would buy RoseArt crayons instead of Crayola. >Now when I hear it I just assume they're talking about a rich person because it's become interchangeable. Because that's literally what the word means, ya dingus Well then we are comparing oranges and apples and the comparison is void. We should compare our 0.1% to the russian 1% and then we would see that our ""top elites"" aren't that different. Edit: I mean, I understand that we have more rich people here. But we have the same problem here too: a few ultrarich oligarchs that play behind the scenes for their own agenda and use politics, economics and alliances to reach their goal, to the detriment of the population. Maybe just a future look at what we'll eventually become. Still, his wealth is pretty much all just on paper. He owns stuff, for sure, but what he actually ""owns"" outside of his business is nickels compared to what Putin owns. What's the reason for this disconnect? Why do we all agree that most career politicians are dogshit yet keep electing them over and over and over again? Not trying to be smart, genuinely curious? This is misleading. It makes it look like we hate our representatives but are powerless to replace them. In truth, we hate OTHER people’s representatives, or the action/inaction that congress takes but which we do not blame our representatives personally for. > Nancy Pelosi runs effectively unopposed in her district and has been in power for decades. She has amassed a net worth of $120M on less than a $200k salary. She has a husband, you know. He also makes money. She didn't get that rich off of her salary alone. You could have invested $200k in Amazon in 1997 and sat on it, and you'd be worth *way more* than $120 million right now. It's like an episode of the Simpsons where Kang and kudos run for president and say you have to vote for one of us, it's a two party system. That being said, people in this country are generallly idiots. They elected boebert and Taylor Greene Well, in fairness, this comes form the ability to perform insider trading whilst being exempt from insider trading laws. Fucking ridiculous considering their decisions directly impact the companies they can invest in > She has amassed a net worth of $120M on less than a $200k salary. This is the most disingenuous thing I've ever read. Her husband owns a venture capital firm. He is the rich one, not Nancy. She doesn't even trade stocks. She just married a rich dude. Also there are Republicans in Congress way richer than her, from far more fucking disgusting things than owning stocks. Why attack Pelosi when Rick Scott is sitting on a half billion dollars he got from defrauding medicare patients? Love that you have a throwaway to say shit like the failing of an entire nation lies solely with individuals. And over 90 percent of elections are won by the candidates with more money which is particularly impactful the more local a race is, and 40 percent of Americans can’t afford a 500 dollar emergency. Guess where those politicians with more money get that money from? It’s not as a simple as “vote good” Last time I checked pelosis worth a quarter billion. I love when she brags about her ice cream collection during the pandemic it's like you have no idea that * pelosi comes from money * most of the money comes from pelosi's hugely successful husband [deleted] ""On a 200k salary"" Now who is being disingenuous? You act like they don't all do side work constantly on top of their insider trading I heard Nancy is very guilty of Insider Trading but I cab neither confirm nor deny the electorate can change things but we’re divided. we’re free to protest, vote for who we want, lodge complaints about bad business practices. it is very different than in russia. the 1 percent there makes their money very differently than the 1 percent here. You don’t even have $12M? Why’s it this guys fault lol Members of Congress are not the oligarchs in this country, much like members of the Duma are not the oligarchs in Russia. Focusing in on Congress, while not unimportant, is a distraction from the real centers of wealth and power in the USA. You're* I was going to ask why you singled out Pelosi but then I looked at your post history. Oof. It sounds like you are using numbers and statistics to falsely display a narrative. You said that there's a 13% approval rate for Congress, but you didn't specify how this works. Someone in California can disapprove of Congress because of Mitch McConnell, but they may be feeling positive towards their representative. What matters is how their constituents feel. None of what you say matters if you don't take into account the constituency of each congressman 58 isn’t that old, really, I’d be more interested in the median age anyway. Far more concerning to me are people in congress who are almost certainly suffering dementia and basically at death’s door, like Sen Feinstein. Without getting into the merits of Biden himself, I think a long history of government experience is a good thing for a president to have. I remember not liking Obama in the 08 primary - 4 year senator seemed fatuous. lmao you supported trump bud Gerrymandering creates less competitive districts and encourages voter apathy, also our government is seniority-based and grants more power to the members who get continually reelected. This creates a system where the people who are at actual risk of being voted out and thus have to cave to public pressure are most often the weakest members anyway and do not have much power anyway. The system also creates some perverse motivations for the voters, because if you have a significantly senior legislator representing you it gives more power and thus more representation to your district. This creates a possible combination of voters knowing their current representative is both corrupt or selfish and also able to do more for their area than replacing him with a new genuine politician who would start at the bottom of the rung. So selfish pragmatic voters could continue to prop up bad politicians just because they give them more personal return than a newbie would. I agree, at least partially. People need to get off their asses and vote in primaries and elections. This could be a very easy to solve problem if people made the right decisions. It's an absolute embarrassment that the second worst candidate in the Democratic primary in 2020 got the nomination out of voter apathy, and then got elected solely because the incumbent was such a shitstain. Very true! But it’s not like there are better options… Marry a venture capitalist in SF in the postwar era through the rise of Silicon Valley and you too can build a ridiculous fortune after 60 years. You could argue, without proof, that her position of power has enabled her husband to generate more wealth, but I haven't seen any evidence of that and I don't think he's done particularly better than others in his position. It would be ridiculous to amass that much weath if her household income was just $200k. But she's not the breadwinner. >She has amassed a net worth of $120M on less than a $200k salary. I make almost $200k and don't even have a tenth of her assets despite having invested religiously. Her husband is a hedge fund manager who makes way more than $200k. They never have. The US was founded by mostly wealthy men who thought the country should be run by and for the wealthy. And that’s what has happened for the most part. Sure and instead of paying taxes on money earned to the same system they profit from, they loot the state through ~~ bribery and corruption~~ lobbying and campaign donations to get people elected to rewrite the tax laws to their benefit. [deleted] What did Elon Musk invent https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/t4ml49/poll_shows_majority_of_us_voters_blame_corporate/hz0bpmz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3 Reading some of the comments here, you might be onto something LMAO you're right, the US is actually much *much* worse. the best single indicator of who will win any election is the amount of money candidates have to spend. and who's got a lot of money to donate to political campaigns? corporations and the wealthy. it's pretty near impossible to run, much less win, without the support of ""big money"" so money rules the game So you didn't see the Princeton study they linked to? lol keep coping, those links *absolutely* disproved your assertion. arrogant c*nt The second one takes numbers from a 20 year study that compared public opinion surveys to actual government policy. Just look at Medicare for All. It is supported by 87% of democratic voters, but less than half of Democratic members of Congress. Hell, a public option is even supported by 70% of all voters, but thats going no where in our political system. Princeton did a study that revealed we are in a oligarchical state. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy This study is already 8 years old. Almost a decade old and things have only gotten worse. Ok but the original post was talking about economic power. You can protest and speak but that won’t have any impact on US foreign or domestic policy. You think the powers that be are shivering in their boots when you nicely ask for a police permit to have a little rally? That’s even a better strategy of control than what Russia does, because it gives us the illusion of power. > Someone who had nothing to do with politics until then. I think you should research Trump's past a little more if you believe this. Plus think about it - which ensures complacency among the public better. 1. Oligarchy with political repression 2. Oligarchy with bullshit trappings of democracy where we focus our energy to elect one capitalist warmonger or another Don’t really see the difference. Plutocracy I guess means there’s a few more rich people who control everything? Seems like a distinction without a difference. Whether it’s 1 guy, 50 guys or 500 guys… it ain’t you that’s for sure! Did I say that? All I said was the statement that Russia and the US are both oligarchies is true. Will also say that the US has the worst social mobility of countries it’s commonly compared to economically. As of 2020 according to the WEF, we are #27 and Russia is #39… so closer than you might think. Absolutely not true that “anybody can become wealthy here.” That doesn’t even make sense. Our system wouldn’t work without low wage workers. But regardless, your comment had nothing to do with my original one. The definition of Oligarchy says nothing about how those billionaires got their wealth. Point stands that our political system is controlled by a wealthy few. What are you saying? That if the denominator is bigger, then the country can't be an oligarchy, even if the % controlled by the elites is similar or even greater? US and Russian economic systems are similar, the percentage of wealth and power held by the elites is similar. So essentially, the reason we aren't as bad as Russia is because we have more money? Wow what a weak response. If you can’t answer the most basic question, maybe don’t discredit the entire article as “idiocy” you clown. [deleted] This is a false argument. A tiny minority don’t negate that most wealth is created in the US by building things that people want. The tiny sliver of people abusing power or stealing don’t negate that. Damn. Maybe the workers should have started the business then? Muh labor theory of value 😭👶 >stole the wealth created by their workers and hoarded it In the US business wealth is distributed to shareholders not workers. Workers are paid relative to other workers. Can't hire talent -> pay goes up. That's why you have mid level SWEs pulling 200-300k+ in total comp annually- demand is high. And for in demand positions you often do get paid significantly in equity. salaries in many positions have suffered due to a lack of collective bargaining / demand... So yeah. I'd still say that's better than russia. more than half of americans have exposure to the stock market It breaks down as soon as you look at the wealth trajectory of young people now versus young people 30, 50, or 70 years ago. The middle class is hollowing out because for all the people climbing the wealth ladder an equal number are dropping into poverty. More Americans in both absolute and relative terms live in poverty today than in 1970. okay sure but he still has done more than a lot of wealthy oligarchs. at least there's a valuable product being produced in his wealth generation. Oh the diamond mine lie, nice I dislike Elon Musk, but I doubt you could source a single one of these claims. The diamond mine thing is dubious at best and he isn’t on speaking terms with his father. He did not buy PayPal, PayPal bought his company. The Tesla point is such a stupid red herring. Tesla was founded in July 2003 and Musk became the largest shareholder in February 2004. They existed for literally 6 months before he took control. Give me a fucking break. He does pay taxes, he actually was in the news recently for having a multi-billion dollar tax bill. “I get my opinions from social media” Actually yes all wealth inequality is bad. There's no good kind. Yep it’s very hard to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you’ve never had any boots”… The original point of that saying was to point out that it is an impossible feat. Whoa there be dragons 🐉 hooooarding 😩💰💰 Me too. I'm old enough to remember him in Clinton's cabinet. I thought he was great at his work and a good communicator. Now this. Oh well. I know nothing about day to day life in Russia except the propaganda the US government gives out. You disqualify yourself from conversation with your idiotic last sentence. Thanks for proving my original point. If you think the antiwork / anti capitalism / woe is me attitude is straw men on Reddit, then you aren’t an accurate commenter. Again, I wasn’t looking for a debate of this toxic fact. I was just letting the previous poster know he’s surrounded on a hive mind platform of people that blame “the system” rather than themselves. [deleted] Trump had like less than $4BB at his wealthiest. There are anonymous political agents in the DC beltway that have 10 times his wealth and you’ll never know their names because they’re real money movers. Your Trump gotcha makes no sense here and is not applicable. The problem is that he’s a professional personality now and no longer an economist. That's actually why he knows what he's talking about, because that sphere is a rotten ball of self serving groupthink. Basically, here we don’t want to change anything because when WE’RE oligarchs we want all the benefits too! They’re both about the same in terms of inequality but in raw figures the richest Americans are richer than the richest Russians, meanwhile having nothing means the same thing in both countries. > Comparing Russian wealth inequality to the US is not nuance; it’s incorrect To clarify: This act of comparison is... invalid? I'm not sure I understand. That doesn’t disprove my statement. The richest Russian only has 29 Billion dollars. The richest American has 223 billion. The poverty line in the us is $1,133 per month. That means the income of the richest person is 196,822,594 times greater than the poverty line in America. And only 188,311,688 times greater than the poverty line in Russia. The cost of living is almost 10 times cheaper in Russia so an unweighted dollar amount is completely useless. In fact, after doing the math the average Russian has more buying power than the average American. Ouch… $140k. Oh the joke. Then what's the problem? Cool, the dude’s accomplishment list, citations, and contributions to policy that have resulted in real changes that combat inequality are pretty significant. Milton Friedman was an economist, I wouldn’t trust him on how to combat inequality either. I understand why they do it and that it is effective, but if you step back for a minute it is pretty funny that all the Russian propagandists have as ammo is ""are we really any worse than the US"". Like they can't even in all their dishonesty and distortions of reality pretend that they are actually better. No, the best they can do is equate themselves with a country they ostensibly think is horrible. That should be a good indicator that the country putting out the propaganda must be a real shithole. Yup. Ive also found they have a two comment limit for addressing my trolling but they have many downvote so you disappear. The reddit algo works in their favor for media control. Might have to go until Russia goes back into its little turtle shell and fucks off. Its clear they're behind a lot of division right now. Knew I’d see r/neoliberal posts in your profile. You Rockefeller republicans are all the same. Nah just useful idiots. Plenty of them on Reddit. Yup. This many upvotes on this subreddit (Economy) in a such a short amount of time is not usual at all. This post is super sketchy. check the comment history of the mods. this whole sub is just russia and china propaganda [deleted] What are you talking about? The left has been way more pro Ukraine than the right has. The face of the right (Trump) literally said this was a smart move by Putin and that we should try it on our southern border. So a country feeling threatened by Putin that wants to join to a defense alliance to make sure it doesn't get invaded by Putin somehow makes the defense alliance the aggressor here? You do realize that makes no sense right. Putin attacked Georgia in 2008 and invaded Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine then decides that it wants to join NATO to make sure it doesn't get invaded again and that's NATOs fault? I've seen the video you are talking about and a lot of it is concerning energy concerns. However, none of those reasons still justify what Russia decided to do. That video also mentions that Putin felt threatened by NATO due to some geographical reasons. Even that doesn't justify anything. Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine then decides that to avoid getting invaded again it would be a good idea to join a defensive alliance. So Ukraine independently decided to take steps to defend itself against Putin is somehow NATOs fault and somehow justifies him invading Ukraine against? That doesn't really make sense. [deleted] Yeah, we have Jeff Bezos. But he didn't make his billions by taking over the Postal Service, murdering the upstarts at UPS, and having FedEx executives thrown in prison until they agreed to sell the company to him for pennies on the dollar. The US has appointed many dictators in foreign lands. Jeez, you're dumb as fuck. The emerald mine was worth 200K. You think that's a lot of money? Ask anyone with real estate in LA how many hundreds of thousands they sitting on. You're a dumb fucking idiot. >Bezos used tax loopholes to put small stores out of business. Holy shit no he did not. What kind of 1st grade take is this? Any tax loophole available to Amazon during its founding and growth was available to every other retailer. Amazon didn’t even crush small stores. Big box retailers did that decades before Amazon became a thing. Amazon created a completely new way to buy stuff. Any retailer that died under Amazon did so because they couldn’t compete with the convenience and variety offered by Amazon’s new e-commerce business model. And yes, Musk got subsidies to develop **green technology** as did many other companies since it’s a priority of our country to curb carbon emission. Musk happened to be the one who figured out how to build stuff consumers actually would adopt. Those aren't even in the same ballpark. Tesla got a loan that it paid back in full. Space X sells space services to the government and won a contract for it in a competitive bid. Saying ""well, the US has a tax code, so it is just like stealing assets of the state owned by a former communist regime"" is just a bad argument. Some parts a profit motive makes sense. Other are best run by the local or federal govts and there's plenty of space on the spectrum with govt tax incentives or subsidies for more desirable outcomes or having having the customers and public outright own and run them. Well true, slaves also technically create value, but I'm not sure if it is the kind of value that people value nowadays (other than the slave owners of course). You don't learn how unfair the world is until you experience it for yourself. Ah my apologies fair point, well put. Would you say our system would work “correctly” if we were to embrace the right order of operations as you’ve laid out? or are there changes you’d want to see? Electors are decidedly not chosen by the people but they almost exclusively vote according to their district. It's still a dumb idea but they're not elected. Illusion of democracy. What you mean is it’s still better than Russia. Russian votes still count too, just far less democratic then America. You’re vote does not count at all? Look at bush v Al gore … and trump v Hillary both trump and bush had less peoples votes and still won so please explain how you’re vote helps.. I mean the electoral college kinda goes off popular vote but they can do whatever the duck they want. The peoples vote does not matter Not really when private lobbyists control how those elected officials act. Also a true democracy has more than two options we live in an ultimatum at best. You should read some Chomsky Nope, the founders designed it precisely this way. Someone in a city should have no say in what happens on a farm in Kansas. Yes Probably a mix of both going on Not really, people who don’t live in cities are still people and I think they should be heard and entitled to the dignity of being a person, first and foremost. but I dislike the way the current system almost makes it necessary to think of one group as lesser, and even reflect that in the power of their vote. I don’t exactly have a solution to this in mind since It’s an extremely complicated conundrum, but I still think voicing concern about it will spread ideas around. Do you have any thoughts on the current system? Changes you’d like to see or goals to reach? There is literally a nationwide push by one of the two parties to disenfranchise as much of the population that votes for the other party as possible. You're either naive or just straight ignorant if you don't believe that The two party system is also just endemic to the system as set by the constitution. So unless billionaires in the 1780s are to blame… Except yknow the 2016 lawsuit against the DNC where their lawyers said that they have no legal obligation to run a fair primary, and the judge agreed. >""[I]f you had a charity where somebody said, Hey, I'm gonna take this money and use it for a specific purpose, X, and they pocketed it and stole the money, of course that's different. But here, where you have a party that's saying, We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we're gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have — and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That's not the way it was done. But they could have."" Source [here](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dnc-argues-in-court-we-dont-owe-anyone-a-fair-primary-process), but an easy Googling will find you multiple sources Wow, democracy sure is great that’s why Hillary was president because she won the popular vote where the people choose their leader.. wait.. what the fuck. Why are these scumbag politicians voting and what is the electoral college??!?!? The guy who lost the popular vote got to be president? Wow, hurray for “democracy” amirite bud. Lol, as long as they’re party approved. Legally the two parties are private organizations, a candidate could receive the vast majority of the votes in a primary, and the party has zero obligation to platform them. The primaries are a farce It’s still a two party system with an internal agenda it’s more of an ultimatum at best Didn't the DNC say in 2016 that they have no obligation to choose the candidate most voted for in the primaries? I wish I had mirrored the transcripts of the court case, but Bernie's campaign sued the DNC and the lawsuit got thrown out because they're a private corporation and can basically do whatever they want with their candidates. 5 or 6 states pick primary candidates lets be real. like by the time pa got to vote in the primarys it was already bidens. thats bullshit. voting should all be same day so politicians have to court everbody the two main political parties in the us always “win a landslide”. they work together when it comes to blocking other political parties from gaining power. I don’t think we had a peaceful transfer of power when the gallows were brought to Congress. neither idealists nor realists will make any real progress. we need to be have idealist goals through realist perspectives. that’s the only way i can foresee meaningful change. the next generation really arent much better. we were raised by them and it rubbed off. some of us went far left but not enough of us. the liberals in this country will never allow progress, typical of ibs I’d imagine plenty of people would’ve voted for someone like Bernie (as example) but he wasn’t allowed to run. the world is so much easier when everyone you disagree with is a bot isnt it Interesting, have to dive further into this Complain about it, sure. Equate it to the situation in Russia, nonsense. People in the west now live better than anywhere else in the world in any time in history. And yet incels like you cry about it, if you don't like it go to russia, china or one of those islamic countries and then lets see if you still complain about america. Those 1% make it possible for the 99% to live life and a high quality life at that. really tell me a place where life is better for the average people than here in the west china? russia? islamic countries? japan? That is a good one! 👍 Edit: On a second thought, if such athletes get caught (and they do), they get banned and can't compete. So it is a very bad and different outcome. I'd still call that ""a process"", whereas outcomes would be what they do to the country. In your example, I presume, you imply that democratically elected president will do good, whereas the one, who used force, will unlikely do any good. And those are very different outcomes. Agreed. There needs to be some regulation. Too much can be stifling but there definitely needs to be some. Tell me you know nothing about capitalism without telling me It’s sad how many of these people talk completely out of their ass about everything when politics is literally their life. You’d think they’d read even a tiny bit about the Panama papers before namedropping it. And they continue to do exactly the same shit with different shell companies. They're all the same people, that's why so many have property here. Yes everyone with a different opinion is a bot, that's some real big boy reasoning you've got there deep in your circle jerk chamber They're saying that people who threaten the American elite don't tend to do particularly well for themselves. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-convicted-felon-investigate-vernon-unsworth-thai-cave-diver-2019-10 what fact, exactly? You're actually just a fucking idiot that's so obviously filled with privilege considering you can't even imagine what an oligarchy actually is if you're comparing the United States to one. > Again its cheaper to pay a fine than follow many laws ,related to commerce and oversight, even if breaking that law is how you will make your money. Spoken like someone who has never been involved in any sort of business decision in their life. Keep at it champ. It's reddit, just downvote. There's no ""ratio""ing like on Twitter because reddit actually has a dislike button. What are you? 12? Jesus... you base your opinions on up vote ratios? Get off the internet. You're too dumb Lmao https://imgur.com/gallery/iB4PVRk Elaborate on Musk's wealth coming from Apartheid? I haven't read up on it but a close relative of mine grew up in the same country, went to Uni with him and works in a similar field and he told me Musk was not born wealthy. The oil companies very literally do this to pipeline protestors but sure ok buddy There's no functional difference once you've got the wealth. All the oligarchs there grabbed a piece when the US completely fucked up their way of life so it could exploit their markets and resources. They literally rode the same wave that plenty of US companies got rich from there, but everyone's mad because all the spoils were supposed to go back to the west, and some uppity locals got in on the game too. Who's wealth came from literally murdering the idiot rich nobles of the Russian Empire because they ignored the poor until it was too late. Hint hint. We all can do that with extra and I do. It's a pretty steep, uphill slog from the bottom is all It’s rather nitpicking to suggest that because the wealthy in America don’t directly amass their money from the government that they aren’t oligarchic in any way. Many, many of the wealthiest individuals are as obscenely rich as they are as a result of loopholes in the law, weak prosecution and funding political campaigns so they have a congressman/senator/president in their pockets. They’d still probably be top 1% without these things, but the gap wouldn’t be so stupidly wide if the laws were designed to prevent their manipulations. Sure they make their money “legally”, but it’s only legal bc their puppets in DC make it so. Been going on for decades now But rich people bad taxes good The seed money may be from inheritance but plenty of people squandor seed money. Very few can take 50K and turn it into something like Amazon The Cargill family, Rockefeller family.. >Which of our largest institutions were created by capturing state institutions? Apple? Google? Amazon? Walmart? Any? Most of our utilities, HUD, the internet... The capturing of state institutions in the US already completed by the end of the 70s. And it's actually the main reason for the fact that giant corporations like Apple, Google have been created, or increased their power enormously. They've been in charge for 40 years, so yes blaming neoliberalism for every major political fuck up in that time period is completely valid. You've clearly not been to a US protest recently That's not what an appeal to authority is, and I never claimed that all economists believe anything. I just said some economists agree. Even then, a perceived logical fallacy is a better argument than using a vague understanding of ""basic economics"" as a proof of your opinion. And for the record, mentioning Thomas Sowell like that is what an appeal to authority actually is. If you're looking for an academic debate on reddit, posit your claim with evidence that supports it first. No one can refute an argument that doesn't exist past one's opinion. Nice try, though. Why do you think you’re better equipped to comment on economics than Reich? Ok, then also the [top 20 billionaires own the same as the bottom 50% ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2015/12/04/top-20-billionaires-worth-as-much-as-half-of-america.html) of the US. When you say “with more” do you mean in the bank, or as income? Just curious where I fit Follow the chain of the other person who pointed this out. It's the same in the US. I was trying to make a broader point of how bad the issue is. Oh, I am also willing to admit when I am wrong, unlike most people on the internet. Given your comment history, you seem to have strong opinions on politics, so if you convince me that my previous comment is wrong I will write a retraction post or something tantamount. That's just a little challenge to keep it interesting instead of just an insult battle, which would bore me to death. Best of luck. Ah I thought we were just talking about the US. Cause 30k here is poverty >The 1% of richest humans on earth. Look it up! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You-need-34k-income-global-elite--half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.html Lul, daily mail. You need 800k to be in the ""globabl 1%"" first of all. www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-wealth-report.html Secondly, youre using old homeless numbers. We're at 2.2% homeless post pandemic. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahar/2020-ahar-part-1-pit-estimates-of-homelessness-in-the-us.html Whats more, the concept of the poverty line is IMF and world bank manipulation to claim capitalism brings people out of poverty http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66592/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_LSE%20India%20at%20LSE%20blog_2014_Aug_blogs.lse.ac.uk-Exposing%20the%20great%20poverty%20reduction%20lie.pdf lol what a goofy person Read the last line of their comment. Also, the oligarchs literally come about when the country converted from communism to a market based economy. Welfare != Socialism So the government takes 45% of your wages and does what with it? I love dumbass redditors being confidently incorrect at the most easily debunkable shit. Google the definition You could have typed communism into Google and hit enter in the time it took you to type this idiocy. It just dosen't pay lip service to the idea of empowering the workers with any type of control. The workers are both the means of production and the consumers of that production. I agree, and I dont think its getting better either. We seem to be moving toward an oligarchy. Crony capitalism starts at the top, with a debt-based money supply controlled by the very people who profit from its inflation. Money, being naturally barren, to make it breed money is preposterous and a perversion from the end of its institution, which was only to serve the purpose of exchange and not of increase. -Aristotle It’s both capitalist and socialist. And it’s far more socialist with collective government and cultural mindset than the US. So this is communism because it's authoritarian? Get the fuck outta here and read a book lmao True capitalism always leads to authoritarian states. Which also inherently proves why capitalism is inherently equally flawed as well: unfettered greed. No, that's why they weren't truly communist lol. You're proving my point. Russia isn't communist. LMAO you have absolutely no grasp on the reality of Russia or it's recent history First off Russia is not communist nor desires to be. Second calling yourself a communist does not make you a communist (just like calling yourself a democracy does not make you a democracy see North Korea). Also the shit going on in Europe has far more to do with nationalism and fascism expansion than anything remotely close to do with communism. How dogshit was your education that you think Russia is communist What loopholes? The us has the most progressive income tax system in the world. Go ahead and tell me what that is then Okay, nobody said he was exempt from being eaten That's really really funny, considering how many counterexamples there are readily available to you on Google dot com Pretty disingenuous to argue the benefits and faults of any economic system when they are corrupted by authoritarian governments. In the US, billionaires are made by creating businesses that the rest of us invest in, driving up their value. In Russia, they're made by stealing government industry, making your opponents disappear, racketeering, and unfettered regulatory violations. Like comparing a doctor to a cocaine distributor. Of course the pay a large share of the overall taxes - the make the most fucking money. Imagine what we could do if their effective tax rate was out of the single digits. When you get enough you can buy the state and have it legislate your guaranteed profits And you think these people just randomly decided to revolt for no reason? That does not mean you’re not out of touch with the vast majority. Even then, that still fails to address my point about past strategies proven to uplift people in poverty Are you okay? There’s a big population that is just looking to be moderately successful and get by with fair to proper benefits and salary, much less “rich”. Good luck getting rich without being so first. Psh, that sounds too much like work. /s Thanks throwaway maga loser. My daddy didn't own an emerald mine I hear you bro, and I’m right there with you, but I firmly believe there is always a way up, especially in the US. I worked full time and went to school full time until I graduated. It’s easier now than before bc I make more but I’m still grinding just as hard as before. It’s good that you don’t live beyond your means tho, have you tried living beneath them? If you don’t already do that lol. I’m not saying we have it cupcakes and rainbows, but to pretend it’s worse here is laughable. I like Robert and his son Sam but the comparison is less apt than some of you are making it out to be. You sound like an edgy 16 year old wearing a Che shirt. I do think the US nuking japan was a terrorist action and was despicable and reprehensible. BUT they did at least attack Pearl Harbor, first, and had done such wonderful things as the Rape of Nanking and my grandfather was active in the pacific theater, winning 2 purple hearts, and I'm pretty happy we nuked them instead of having him participate in an invasion of their homeland to end the war. So I don't think it's such a ""similar"" question, because mine specified >invading totally peaceful neighbors and I don't think the nuke on Japan during the height of WWII was ""similar"" to invading a peaceful neighbor, at all. >Why is it only bad if its specific numbers? Is it a contest? Isn't it? Is that not exactly what we are describing? A contest, between these countries, to see which is more moral and dignified, and which is lower and scummier. >we better be going through the entire History of those countries and tallying all people killed throughout and comparing. I disagree with this too. I think we should include some multiplier factor based on temporal proximity to modern day. Use your numbers. Prove me wrong. The poverty line in the US is $1133 per month and the richest person owns 235 billion dollars. The poverty line in Russia is $154 per month and the richest person only own 29 billion dollars. That means that the inequality is objectively larger in the US. Pop of American: ~330 million Top 1%: (330 million) * 1/100 ~3.3 million In a democracy the people elect representatives who represent their interests, In America the elected officials only represent the extremely wealthy and the corporations. Lol okay. You just don’t want to be rich? Okay chief What are you talking about! People are being killed at one of the highest rates in the world and you say so! People are being incarcerated at one of highest rates in the world and you say so! Maybe you and your so! Should open your eyes! I know, and am grateful for the opportunity and freedom being here affords us. it's just troubling how much influence the ultra-rich have in our government. I'm pretty sure almost all of the bills over the last 50yrs or so were written by lobbyists or the corporate attorneys of the companies the legislation served. >patrimonial capitalism Even in my hell-hole 3rd world country (or so much so because it's a hell-hole?), you can observe this often now among new entrepreneurs. Try and start a business then find out that your competition are owned by sons and daughters of the ultra-rich. Yep. Fuedalism 2.0 Inheritance is an interesting concept I’ve thought about. I grew up in upper middle class. I’ve never been good at school, but at an early age I found two mentors who spoke and taught me about real estate and how to invest etc, I found the field so I did at as young an age I could, with a 10k loan from my mom. I had no idea it would grow to the wealth it currently sits at. I now have many friends in more marginalized communities, and I can see how deprived they are of the kind intellectual capital I had. A lot of their kids are quite smart, work hard and will go to college, and I wonder if they’re going to get what they need from that. I know I didn’t get that from college or high school. I got it from observing family and from my families support. And every year my real estate holdings grow to a ridiculous rate due to leverage and inflation etc. doesn’t feel fair and it doesn’t feel like I’ve done enough to deserve this kind of windfall, but it’s also completely counter to human nature to just give it all away in response. It’s weird, and I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I’m not sure I’ll inherit much if at all, but what I got in terms of expectations and mentorship has paid off massively, and a lot of people simply don’t get that. If I were to talk to some of these friends about saving to buy an investment they’d think I was some kind of alien, it’s so foreign to (most) of them. I don't understand the ""why does this matter?"" part You should really put quote marks around this side it’s lifted from the vox article directly If you earn a huge salary you are rich. I you pay people the large salaries, you are wealthy. Ironically, many of the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of yesterday's super elite (with notable exceptions) did not and do not have the wealth of those on the Fortune 400 list. And, the top 10 people who are currently on that list are all entrepreneurs. It seems that there often is a regression to the mean in terms of the economic performance of family descendants. And the initial wealth tends to become less concentrated over time as multiple heirs split the proceeds who then have multiple children that split those proceeds again (a tree structure of distribution). This is in addition to families who had multiple spouses and went through expensive divorces, families who had a very large number of children, heirs who engage in expensive lawsuits over their inherited estates, heirs who earn little income yet spend their inheritance to fund a lavish lifestyle for almost a century, and patriarchs/matriarchs who leave a large portion of their wealth to charity (among other factors that corrode wealth concentration over time). Again, *with notable exceptions*. This is not to discount the fact that there *is* inequality of opportunity that is in part tied to family socioeconomic status. Which is how aristocracy arose in the first place, we just keep repeating the same shit patterns over and over again I would say it matters because currently, the forbes 400 is made up of a lot of visionaries who gave us things like the iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, Tesla, etc. It's saying that soon, the Forbes 400 money and power will be given to their kids who may or may not have a clue what to do with it. Inherited wealth doesn't really exist outside of leftists taking points. Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg didn't inherit their wealth. Something like 85% of the current millionaires in America didn't inherit anything. Those super rich families you so dread have usually squandered whatever wealth they might have by the 3rd generation. The Fords and Waltons being obvious exceptions, except that the Waltons are only in the second generation. What makes you think conservatives support a dynamic market economy? Is this a truly held belief by conservatives you know? Not conserving the rightful place of people in the natural order? I thought that inherited wealth tended to practically disappear within a couple of generations? 70% of wealth lost in 1st generation, 90% by the second. Or does this phenomenon not apply to the ultra rich? That entire second paragraph gave me Good Will Hunting bar scene flashbacks. We’ve already had a modern golden age of wealth; the children of those giants of wealth have pissed away every dollar and their children, in turn, live almost common lives now. The people commenting here below me who relate stories of children/spouses of the wealthy owning businesses are saying that they use their wealth to undercut the competition .. running their businesses at a loss. Pissing away their parent’s wealth to run a business “for fun”. 100% sadly. Or just call it fascism. I leave this here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses This is why work needs to be reformed in ways that gives each worker an equal stake instead of leaving all decision making and power to those that merely have capital to invest. Bosses and owners are no more important than the workers that produce for them and they need to be reminded of that either by workers forming unions or walking out and halting production. We all still have power to change and as we've seen before, change can happen quickly. This is why I like sky high estate taxes. Let entrepreneur's have money for their innovations, but if their kids want money, they should have to earn it themselves. Sounds like royalty and monarchies are being developed again in some manner Excellent comment. The rebuttals to the inheritance thesis amuse me. Yeah, people fall into and out of the Forbes 400 all the time. So what? That data set is full of holes in the first place. Tracking 400 outliers and arguing from there isn’t a good strategy. Another interesting book, going back a little further, is Capitalism and Slavery https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/02/capitalism-and-slavery-eric-williams-back-in-bestsellers-list >The contentious core of the book by Williams – who was the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago for 25 years until his death in 1981 – was that *the abolition of the slave trade was not born out of humanitarian wishes but of economic necessity.* Unexpected letterkenny To be faaaaaaaaarrrirrr Uh, to be faaaiiirrr - Squirrelly Dan Lol, feels accurate. I’d add “The Intelligent Investor” to the list. Brief History of Time is a shame if people don't read it, it's written genuinely for lay-people, and is one of the books that really sparked a deep love of mathematics for me (Oddly, I never got all that into physics, but the through-line is the still the same) I read all of the Hitchhikers guide and the other books so I can drop quotes on Reddit. I don't have time for that stuff. On a serious note, I did read HHGTTG and it was fun but I really don't get why, when i read comments involving it, people go nuts over it. It was enjoyable but felt really repetitive [deleted] True: Though I would wager that the majority of returns on capital actually comes from hidden deflation, in particular cost savings that come from technological advances and outsourcing labor and manufacturing. Of course financial bailouts factor large as well, and are more in line with the outright theft your're talking about. Hmm. The end result of such capital gain without economic growth should probably look like an increasing accumulation of wealth by an ever smaller group of individuals. Good thing we haven't seen anything like that. > Or a landlord that rents out apartments but stops doing any maintenance. whoa that's pure fiction right there /s [removed] > Or a landlord that rents out apartments but stops doing any maintenance. No need to be a slum lord though, yeah? A 'good' landlord would have the same effect of capital gain without economic growth by maintaining the properties and using the profits to buy more properties. Over time they add no significant value to the economy, but gain control over more properties. What you're referring to is the economic idea of mercantilism- that the only way to improve your wealth is by improving your current account balance (exports - imports). However this is quite literally a mediaeval way of thinking, think 14th to 17th century, and has since been replaced with modern economic theory (capitalism). One of the key issues with this idea is that it's impossible to maintain a surplus CA, as a positive net exports account would result in an inflow of capital, leading to appreciation of the currency which then would make it relatively more expensive to export and so the CA would begin to reverse. It also struggles with ideas like absolute and comparative advantage, but you can look those up for yourself if you're interested in economic history. Seems fair. Not like you could attempt sharing how it's different, since you know more than me. Super open minded of you, good man. I think that as you increase the time scale, any free market system tends toward inequality, barring major events like wars or mass deaths. I can’t think of a single case where this isn’t true, even in communities that profess to want equality at a small scale. what kind of question is that? someone left the gate unlocked... so..what do you do for a living. how do you pay your bills? I like to have some idea who I am supposed to be arguing with. no. you are juggling my words. Ty for the clear and concise answer! I mean thats... pretty obvious. Saying ""the rich get richer due to interest on inveatments"" is way simpler. Yes. “In their system, it’s man exploiting his fellow man. In our system, it’s the other way around.” This may be an unpopular opinion but I have been thinking this whole time is this how the rest of the world sees the US when we invade other countries? Like Iraq. Very similar situation. We made up a reason to invade then launched a full scale war and toppled the govt. because there was oil in the area. Pretty similar to what is happening in Ukraine. They have large natural gas reserves and a pipeline that connects Russia to Europe. The west didn't care about Ukraine before this war, I doubt they will afterwards, they're just a convenient pawn to use against Russia. A lot of people think that after this war, Ukraine will be built up like Japan and Germany but I'm not so sure. Obviously, it's not a good thing for them to get absorbed by Russia but when their infrastructure is destroyed and economy is destroyed after this war, they will be owned body and soul by western oligarchs especially with them borrowing money from IMF and World Bank for this war. I don't know what that will look like but it won't be good. [deleted] Because it's practically an academic text. Turns out, the academic ""elite"" actually know more than you in their respective fields. huh I gave up twice (so far) Sounds like a sick book 📖 https://www.versobooks.com/books/2255-thomas-piketty-s-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century There is a documentary based on the book on Netflix Recently tried to listen to a much less academic economics book (Trade Wars Are Class Wars), and I had to constantly rewind to better understand concepts and I eventually switched to the e-book version. I think you need to read the book to grasp anything (if you’re like me you will re-read several passages half a dozen times). Plus it’s like 700 or 800 pages so the audiobook must be 30 hours. The other comments are saying there is a very abridged version. Maybe check that one out instead if you’re planning on listening to it. [deleted] These oligarchs have to defend their interests, after all Warren Buffet said that the class war exists and the top 1% is winning it because they are united and know how to divide the bottom 99% >Anyone who lives in the real world can tell you that neither of those assumptions are true all the time I mean, you're saying this in a website where *the law of demand of supply* is thrown around to supposedly explain certain situations, even though it refers to a concept that considers a direct relation between two single economic agents in a state-less world that requires utterly unattainable conditions to find equilibrium and to be efficient, so clearly not anyone who lives in the real world can really tell you that. The thing is that all of those concepts are merely a theoretical foundation to try to create a model that could be developed and eventually extrapolated to match our reality and real economies, and that's well known by any (at least) half-assed economist but not everyone else, and that's why you see what I mentioned in the paragraph above. Econometrics is really where the fun begins, and it is part of the reason why some economic schools of thought like Libertarianism are considered irrelevant to mainstream economics. You should really read the book, though. It's pretty good. All my homies hate larry s Edit cause i forgot to add respect to brooksley born’s name. Someone who fought tooth and nail to do the right thing. Yet larry is the one that still gets cited. Fuck those dinosaurs. The men as individuals. Not as a gender right? Your first sentence is quite misleading if I remember the incident correctly. Foreign investment grows the GDP though. So the question remains the same. Unless you are claiming foreign investors are simply giving money to American oligarchs, for funsies. Because if you are saying ""Well, money comes in from foreign countries and is invested in growing our economy, but some gets skimmed off the top for the richies to buy more nesting yachts"" then yes, we are in agreement. That's what happens. Money gets skimmed off the top. The rich are taking more than their fair share, shrinking the share for the rest of us. Piketty wants to be Marx of 21st century. *Das Kapital im 21 jahrhundert*. Unfortunately, his math is not up to Marx, and he is quite a bit conman lying about his sources. If that is an attempt to dismiss Thomas Piketty's work, it's a poor one. If it's not, then what exactly are you getting at? Maybe you are saying Marx was right about capitalism? That's a dangerous thought to express in this sub. People get pretty touchy about critiques of capitalism here. I'm convinced that economics, as a discipline, exists mostly to make the rich and powerful feel good about themselves. The ""science"" of economics has all the real world predictive power of reading goat entrails, so there must be some other reason the field exists. Then what's his central thesis? I'm sure you can make a quick summary of his main point if you understand it so well. Spell it out, don't just say what it isn't! His credentials are the basis of most his arguments. Split that hair any further and you're likely to blow us all up, dude. [deleted] There's objective ways to measure quality of life. Calorie consumed is one. Also, technology present in a given household or by person. In addition, if common citizens can create businesses with limited and reasonable barriers to entry, that's another. Yeah, but one looks like it’s “let’s talk about wealth disparity” and the other one looks like “all the rich people are heroes who are better and smarter than you.” I’m basing that purely on the recommendation posts, and I’m happy to be wrong. They did the same thing to the growers when it became legalised. They made the licensing fees so high that your average small time grower can't afford it and the wealthy can -- overnight allowing the industry to be dominated by a few big players. Such innovative minds! [deleted] You can, in no possible way, create something to be sold multiple times all by yourself. your labor tops out way before you can produce 1 million of something. All the people that help you to sell 1 million things are being exploited - you are paying them less than what you sell your product for. labor exploitation is so bad you may only get 1 penny on the dollar of value you create Please explain how exploiting people is a good thing for the majority? Edit: since someone is too stupid to back up their claim, I'll follow up with this... ""At first they came for the communists"". Whatever benefit you think exploitation has won't last for long. Because soon you'll be the exploited one. Exploitation is a finite ""resource"" and you'll be in line for it soon enough. Unless you are the exploiter, someone will come for you...and when you run out of people to exploit, its your head on the pike. not a bad deal for exploiters Weren’t those oligarchs granted control of the various national industries? Not exactly self-made, if that’s the point you’re trying to make. [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] Yep, I totally agree. Sadly, we live in times where both these unacceptable levels of inequality exist and access to data has led to disingenuous framing of whatever point a person has predetermined to make. My wife passed along a video of Tulsi Gabbard commenting that the Ukraine situation could have been avoided had Biden taken action. While this is true, it could also have been avoided had Trump and Obama both taken action since the root of the current conflict goes back to 2014. You can see how this framing of a seemingly true statement totally misleads the listener and lets them resort to their preferred biased narrative. Edit: For those wondering about the 2014 reference, I was going by this very interesting lecture. It is also being referenced in other responses. I wholly agree that this can be tracked all the way to the fall of the iron Curtain. https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4 It is time. Inequality is worse now in the US than at the time of the French revolution. The richest 3.3 mil owning 27% is that absurd. 20% of Americans have a negative net worth though, so its really not that dramatic. Literally any random American with a positive net worth is worth more than the poorest ~66MM Americans combined. I own more than the bottom 65 million Americans. The bottom 20% of Americans have negative value; if you have any positive net value at all, you're already better off than the bottom 65 million Americans. The combined value of the bottom 160 million Americans is barely a tenth of the 50%-90% of Americans, the 90-99%, or the 1% If we took the wealth of just those three richest Americans and redistributed it, every single American would be life’s out of poverty. Currently about 40% of Americans spend at least a year in poverty conditions before they turn 18. Top 1% owns more then 27% world wide? That math doesn’t check out either. 160mil is almost half of a the US so how does top 1% only own 27% if the top 3 people own 50%? “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” A lot of Americans don’t have any wealth but they’re not really “poor”, either. If you don’t own a car or a house or a 401k, you basically have no net wealth, even if you’re making $40k a year. Like I own a house which means I have a higher net wealth than probably half of Americans. It’s important to view things qualitatively as well as quantitatively. None of the three Americans you’re talking about inherited their assets. None of the three Americans you’re talking about stole their assets from the people of America. The billionaires in Russia arrived at their fortunes through illegitimate means. There are two completely different sets of realities at play between these two geographies. The issue in the US is why are there so many poor people. Getting rid of the billionaires in the US is not going to have a single positive impact on the bottom half of the country. So, clearly the billionaires are not the issue. The people in the bottom half were there long before Microsoft, Amazon, or Tesla. The issue in America is far more nuanced than a handful of people who have made billions from industry changing companies. ""3 people have more than every single thing in this world combined owned by the poorest 160 million"" - This statement has never been untrue at any point of history! The only difference was that all the wealth (raw materials, resources, labor) from developing countries was systematically raided by colonialism over 4 centuries! And that wealth was then redistributed to the western settler colonies (USA, Canada, Australia, Argentina) for producing higher end stuff Now that the wealth is getting redistributed back to the poorer countries people are waking up to the ""injustice"", ""inequality"" of capitalism. To further that point. The wealthiest 3 people in the US have lost more wealth than xxx million people since the beginning of the year. That is one of the oddities of going after wealth. It fluctuates significantly. Try and become a surgeon and you’ll see why. They work extremely hard, take on massive amounts of debt, are dealing with life threatening situations. If anyone deserves to make the money they do, it’s people in healthcare. Surgeons, doctors, nurses. Is that up to you to decide? If society seems to like/consume the product or service you're offering and your business is successful, I would say that's societal value. More like organized corruption think alike. The difference is when cronyism appears in the U.S. it’s widely reported on and denounced. In Russia cronyism is how things are run. Reich is also a twitter NIMBY, which is sad He spouts a lot of shit Not exactly how it happened. Yeah, he was privileged AF, but these stories of African blood diamonds are greatly exaggerated. His father has some investment in a minor mine, not a blood diamond mine, if I recall correctly. [deleted] That's just internet bullshit. It was essentially made up by a publication; Musk took out student loans while in college. Rich people don't do that. Also, pays taxes. You can't fake a form 8949. [Debunked](https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?utm_source=url) Self-made If you ignore that massive support structures these people had pushing them onto succeed via all the funds they would need, the ability to work in peace without worry, and the initial investment in all their ideas that allowed them to get off the ground. Very comparable to some guy with a great idea getting reprimanded at Mcdonalds for taking old food home so he can afford equipment. Self-made assholes, billionaire's off the back of everyone else. Bezo's isn't self-made, tore his way to the top off the back of the working class. Was debunked a while ago He got 40k from his father for his first startup and the rest from various investors I'd say getting 40k is an achievable amount of money for most americans Do you smell shit? Oh it's just the bootlickers in here. It's a class war and they'll never realize they're on the wrong side either way it spins. >Musk literally inherited wealth from his parents who got it in African blood mines. Why does everyone assume just because a mine is in Africa its a bloody organization? Musk's father owned shares in a Zimbabwean mine, as much shares as lots of other investors he was by no means the owner. The worst part of all this is no one have provided any link proving all the claims of slavery, blood conflict or whatever for these mines. Yall just assume because its in Africa it has to be a conflict mine. Because Africans just can't just a decent mining operation right? We're just a bunch of savages. Volontary exchange is literally stealing lmao only on reddit you can hear thhings like that Ah yes the age old con of selling you things that you want for a profit. I’d much rather be stolen from than to willingly exchange money for goods and services. Peak Reddit Jerry seinfeld He literally defined it. [deleted] This is too oversimplified and wrong definition of capitalism. Were US billionaires made their fortunes honestly? Probably not. But the difference between Russian oligarchs and US billionaires are miles apart. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, etc had to create something (even if they didn't create it). They had to lead a company. Were they righteous and honest in all their endeavors? No. But they made their fortunes through capitalism. They made their fortunes because the world saw the products they offered had value. Do you see value in windows? Yes. Do you see value in Amazon? Yes. Do you see value in Tesla? Yes. But the big difference is that these are products we don't need in our daily lives. We opted to use these products because they bring value. On the other hand, Russian oligarchs own state industry like energy, food, telecomm, trade, etc. Can you live without electricity in Russia? Definitely not. You will freeze to death. Do you need food? Yes. Russian oligarchs use basis of basic human rights to make profits. In US, you don't see billionaires owning energy or water. Most of the essentials are regulated and partly state owned such that they are runned without corruption (situation may vary but it's the law). In Russia there is no law against Russian oligarchs holding your livelihood as hostage. We are using the term self made liberally here. It's to show the big difference between Russian oligarchs and US billionaires. Should US billionaires have that much wealth? No. But did they take over state owned companies to build their wealth? No. Most US billionaires own private companies that provide products and services to the economy that the market deemed valuable. Russian oligarchs own state own companies that provide products and services to the economy that are basic human rights. I fucking hate it when people try to compare Russian oligarchs to us billionaires. Yes our current capitalism is not good. But it's far better than what Russia has. Are we suffering under tyrannical government? No. Are we drafted into a war we have no idea about? No. Are the US billionaires controlling our lives? No. We have a choice not to shop at Microsoft, Amazon or tesla. We have other options. In Russia, you either take Gazprom or die. Our version of capitalism at least gives options between competitors even if they are few in numbers. Racist > Which some would say is distracting from the invasion of a peaceful country. Distracting from what? Should people be staring at the war 24/7 and just forget about their problems? Those some are people that can't hold more than one thought at a time. That would be dumb to say. People can handle multiple topics. >Which some would say is distracting from the invasion of a peaceful country. Or deflecting attention from the aggressor. Distracting the general US population? Why does the Russia/Ukraine conflict need the average person's attention? (media money, fear mongering, manufactured consent??) First of all, these two things are *not* bad in equal measure, one of these things is orders of magnitude worse than the other. Second, if you're going to pretend to be on the left, don't use the r slur-- it's a dead giveaway you don't actually believe the BS you're saying and are just trying to deflect blame from Russia's war crimes. Robert Reich is a world-renowned economist that has worked under multiple presidential administrations. You’re a fucking moron. It's not that hard to notice. They're post in Communist / GenZeDong subs, blame the Ukraine war on the US, and call for the destruction of NATO. >[Confirmed: US imperialists wanted to drag Russia into a war with Ukraine since at least 2019](https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageImperialism/comments/t4zkj0/confirmed_us_imperialists_wanted_to_drag_russia/) >[Biden’s “State of the Union”: Confronting internal crisis, the American ruling class turns to war](https://old.reddit.com/r/jimmydore/comments/t59or5/bidens_state_of_the_union_confronting_internal/) >[US imperialists are about to get what they wanted from Russia's invasion of Ukraine](https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/t2or6z/us_imperialists_are_about_to_get_what_they_wanted/) >[Powering Putin: U.S. imports of Russian oil soar as domestic energy production plummets](https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/t4ik1y/powering_putin_us_imports_of_russian_oil_soar_as/) >[The US is an oligarchy where 3 billionaires hoard more wealth than half the nation & working class people aren’t guaranteed healthcare or a living wage, yet Biden & the Democrats are on TV pontificating about bringing “democracy” to the world when we don’t have democracy at home.](https://old.reddit.com/user/failed_evolution/submitted/?count=75&after=t3_t4dyq4) Oh and here is the ""ops"" twitter: https://twitter.com/failedevolution https://twitter.com/failedevolution/status/1496913633091194880 >if you really don't want to see more wars in Europe or elsewhere, fight for the destruction of the brutal, evil and criminal organization called NATO. That's the root of endless wars around the globe. Those same people have never left the US. > Maybe it’s not the time to look at ourselves when they have started an invasion? It's always time to look at ourselves. There will always be major pressing issues that can distract us. We have to multitask or we will never get anything of substance done and people and institutions will never be held accountable. Also, in terms of actual actions, it's a relatively small portion of the government and population that can actually do anything about the present war. The vast majority cannot and while it may be handy to follow the news a bit, that vast majority can still put their efforts to the other problems that they are in a position to solve which often includes our problems at home. In other words, many more Americans (in government and not) are equipped to work on wealth inequality today than are equipped to actually address the current war and Russia. We benefit from having some people focus on one issue and others on another. > The word oligarchy has a meaning. This post reads as propaganda. > > https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy > > https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/fiv434/map_of_the_worlds_billionaires_and_how_they_made/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf I would say many people who call the US an oligarchy are familiar with and using the definition you provided. It's fine for you to disagree, but it's not a productive disagreement for you to just call it propaganda and move along. With respect to your first link: Many who see wealth or power brokers as a defining force in government action would say that the US is ""government by the few"" in reality. Many who see those entities as using that effect to insulate themselves from oversight and regulation and policies harmful to them do see the use as ""a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes"". With respect to your second link: This doesn't really indicate much of anything. Both narratives can come up with their own explanation for those numbers or whether those numbers even matter. Which people become billionaires and why (even within those subcategories) totally impacts the reading of whether the map shows an oligarchy and the map can't contain that nuance. Also, the map obscures how many billionaires there are to the population as a whole, which may be key in a person deciding whether that power is held by the few. The map also is biased in time: If you allege that in recent decades it got way worse to the point of oligarchy, then a map counting anything that happened in the lifetime of anybody presently alive is not an accurate representation of that and counts a lot of things from farther back in history when we did have different laws, industries were less consolidated, less money was thrown into campaigns, etc. So, the map itself doesn't really favor either side of the debate. Lol, US oligarchs force invasions of other countries all the time. They're just more subtle about it. You can be a leftist without being an edgelord, whatever the folks at r/genzedong may seem to be illustrating. Whataboutism is implying that the US is the same or worse. The US doesn't have to be a golden standard, just say Russia action bad. No, the fact that one group does something doesn’t mean everyone who does that is part of the group Yes, and there are many aspects of the US that I will criticize. But the point the OP made is not an accurate one. You just got to the heart of over half of internet debates. Inability to hold disparate ideas that are seemingly conflicting due to absolutist team thinking. Check OP. Stupid cell keyboard. I don’t even know what I meant anymore… How would you old them accountable? Yeah, I never messaged you pal. Where did I say Russia did nothing wrong? I’m just pointing out that America is just as bad. Depends. Do you have evidence that oligarchs ""fuck them poor "" or are you saying thay because you feel like the oligarchs are fucking you They already stole all the money after the fall of the Soviet Union. They don't need him anymore. The only reason they stay 'loyal' is cuz Putin will stick some polonium in their tea if they don't. I hope this explanation helps. I mean…. It’s a mathematically impossibility if the 1% (which is much greater the 500 people) only own 27%? Maybe you can argue my source is invalid? the federalreserve.gov is pretty shady. Not very good with numbers are ya bud The top 1% is roughly the top 3,000,000 that includes the top 500. if you combine the top 500's wealth with the wealth of the 501st-2,999,999th wealthiest person in America they have 27% of the wealth. Lool, american education time um Math is hard my guy >You quoted that the American 1% owns roughly 27% (actually 32%) of America's wealth. [Curious, the federalreserve.gov list for 2021-Q3.](https://imgur.com/a/wC6DJNf)\` `36.81 / 136.9 = 0.2689` Obviously, nothing you've said contradicts anything I've said. I never made any such direct comparisons. Sorry if you may have made them on your own? >I was worried that you weren't reading very well ... Honestly, the ad hominems are undermining your argument. We gonna make an appeal to authority next or what lol? I suggest you reread both of comments, because none of your points are true. Any percentile in the US is significantly wealthier and better off than their counterpart in Russia I don’t think you’d find a middle class Russian out there who wouldn’t change their lot for a middle class American. Just because people can be in debt in both countries doesn’t mean that consumption levels are anywhere near comparable. The amount of luxury the average American has in their daily consumption vs almost any other country is enormous. What you said makes no difference. If group A of 10 people have more money than group B of 10 people you can't just say it's because the richest person in Group A has more money than the richest person in Group B. You also can't say just because person 1 in Group A has X more money than the other 9 that means Group B's 9 have more money than Group A's. All 10 people in Group A may have more money than all 10 people in Group B. This is basically true when comparing the US to Russia. The middle class in the US, and even the working class in the US, have more wealth than the middle class and working class in Russia. The fact that America's 1% has more than Russia's 1% doesn't deny this fact. I know tankies on reddit really want to convince themselves that Americans have it worse than everyone else in the world, but I encourage you to travel and actually see what it's like for others in the world. And not just Denmark and Sweden, but Laos, Philippines, Madagascar, Egypt, etc. Do you really need me to source that? That's like asking a source for the sky being blue. So which is it, then? Is America the decadent imperial center, or as poor as Russia? Because those are mutually exclusive statements. …can he not feel blessed to be that lucky? The US is actually a welfare state with safety nets. There are more poor being housed, fed, and clothed in the US than most other countries can imagine ever having to care for. Overregulation lol? We are at each other's throats right now essentially because of completely unfettered capitalism. Capitalism is great, but there needs to be regulations, or else companies will fuck their customers. A great example is internet/cable providers. They are one of the least regulated and all of their customers hate them, but we have no choice, and they prevent competitors. I swear to God Republicans want like a cyber punk type distopian future where 2 companies own and control everything. We do not lead in freedom btw, not even close. Also I agree with your statement about taxes, but would like to modify it. We simply need to tax the lower classes less, and the wealthiest more. This includes mega corporations. We also need to start planning a UBI now. When automation takes over, it will be necessary, might as well get a system in place. The time in history when America led in those categories were the times when America taxed and regulated it's way to being there. The great America we're trying to go back to, that was built on something very similar to the modern day Democratic platform. You've lost the script, man. You benefited so much from the new deal and then let Reaganomics radicalize you. The worst states economically are the lowest regulated and taxed. Alabama and Mississippi are examples of what NOT to do. They don't have strong enough infrastructure to get themselves better off and it's because they keep voting for people who won't make it a priority. Lmao. This is some bullshit. Better pick up your bootstraps and start ""trying"". Is overregulation the new code word for shifting the tax burden to everyday Americans so we can handout hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to the richest in society? It’s always fun listening to the bootlicker arguments for why Americans need to lower their standard of living more so that the rich can get another round of taxpayer subsidies and bailouts. Prepare for downvotes by ignorant leftists... Right, because China and India are doing stellar jobs. Look at how clean their countries are and their support for human rights! 🤣🤣🤣 I don't think it means what you think it means. Direct currency conversion is a terrible metric for measuring poverty. In my country $60 will keep a student comfortable for a couple of weeks, even a month if you only spend it on food and that is if you eat 3 times a day. (I know because I've lived on a similar amount) [deleted] Even my little city in Wisconsin has a poor area with run down houses full of drug addicts man. Milwaukee is a shit hole and scary in many places. I can easily believe other places in america in some spots look like hell too. Chicago has a massive area that's abandoned that looks 3rd world and is a warzone from drug dealers. We have it. We just keep it hidden from the media well cuz the richest country in the world wouldn't look so rich if everybody know alot of us were starving. Just looked it up on Google street view. It does not look anything like what the poorest parts of Cambodia look like. There are some buildings that haven’t been maintained, but there are also very nice houses, very normal looking houses, and standard small town businesses. Look up the street view on Google maps Just Google Maps Washington Park, IL and street view around a bit. I’m from Mississippi, nearly 40 years now and have visited third world countries. It’s not even close. Mississippi has some very poor areas but nothing like what I’ve seen in third world countries. Most of Europe has working (read: at least not as bad as american) social security. [deleted] Yea he's an idiot lol If you piss and shit in the street and live on a hill does that count as running water? /s I couldn't believe someone would suggest such nonsense, but then look at how many people are defending it! My Gf travelled Europe and while she confirms this your statement, the difference is that Germany is marketed as the ""Land of opportunity"" where poverty doesn't exist It’s a problem in Europe in general. You would have even more fun at some chicago train stops! I remember a northwestern PhD student got hit in the head with a stray bullet at the train station my first summer :/ Aus Mainz, in der Nähe von Frankfurt. Coast, Madison, Oxford, etc are completely different than the other parts of the state. It’s two different worlds. No, they really didn't. Because it's a pointless cheap shot. It belies a total misunderstanding of what ""poverty"" is, using made-up relative-to-ourselves terms. The UN is a global organization. The poverty-level income and standard of living in MS is better than the world typical poverty level by a factor of 10! 3/4 of the world population lives on less than a third of the typical poor Mississippian. We are better in many ways and also worse in many ways. This post isn’t saying that though. This post is creating a false equivalency between the Russian and American economy. They are not at all the same. Yes, America has its problems that should be pointed out but to say: > is it really all the different? Fucking yes. [deleted] The problem is people will whine about it online but won't vote. They won't go out and vote for their congress people and sentators, but they will bitch all day. Diffrence is here anyone can become rich Do you get it though? 98% of Reddit is “America bad”. But don't you get it. Russia bad!! The west should never be criticized 😇 Yea but it’s also stupid to do a direct comparison, like OP of the tweet. It’s cringe and wannabe edgy. Lowers discourse Yeah but you’re implying those people are doing nothing, so I’ll imply that you’re doing nothing by correcting them. Where is the link to more research? How many of your local representatives, state representatives, and federal representatives have you contacted? Why have you not shared this information with us? This post is literally calling America an oligarchy and saying it’s comparable to Russia. That is simply not true at all. America has some big problems, but it’s a first world nation with freedom of speech, democracy, and little corruption. Russia is a dictatorship in practice with no guaranteed freedom of speech and endemic unavoidable corruption. Not comparable at all. In my opinion the more important issue is if there exists an equality of opportunity. If every individual has the tools available to them to amass wealth then the system is fine. If it is not possible to work hard and move out of poverty then there is a serious problem. Equality of outcome is not so important, but everybody needs the opportunity to live well. Based on my experience you can still study hard and get a decent job in America even from a position of poverty. I am not sure if this is possible in Russia. >rather than saying “at least we aren’t as bad as those assholes” Stop trying so hard to say your privileged American asses do have it as bad as those assholes then Maybe isn’t the right time when they have started an invasion? Maybe it’s not the time to look to ourselves? That's the mentality that wins elections for corrupt parties all over the world. Bunch of voters in Croatia literally say ""They might be stealing, but we get some of it, too"". And you know what do they get? $50 or so once year in form of pension bonus. The poor and uneducated are easily bought. Two weeks ago minister of economy was arrested, another minister will be arrested in a week or so, I've actually stopped counting how many had to leave their posts under this PM for doing criminal corrupt shit, somewhere between 15 and 20 in the past five years, and the PM gets upset when media write about how corrupt his party is. FFS, they got in court as a criminal organization for stealing from the budget and selling strategic companies to other countries. And they have been in power 15 years from the last 20. Why? Because ""they might be stealing but..."" mentality. Whats this then, some green herb not for cooking! 20 years in prison for you hard labor. Oh, you defrauded 2000 people and scammed 5million dollars. Heres a slap on the wrist and 6months in jail you already served before the trial ended. Good day sir. Oh, and dont worry, your 5mill is still there. /s [deleted] No, having a higher percentage of our population in jail doesn’t mean that we have a higher chance of ending up in jail, that would come down to reasoning of how they arrest new people. Let’s say we stop arresting people in five years, but for the next five years we arrest 1/3 of the population: in this hypothetical example even in 30 years we would have the highest percentage of our population incarcerated, but your chance of being put in prison would actually be a lot less if we were not putting anybody in prisons for some reason. While you’re most likely correct, unless you have other data, all we can confidently say is that a higher percentage of Americans are incarcerated than Russians, or Chinese. If you want to get into the reasons why that is, or the likelihood of current arrests ending in incarceration, you’d have to bring out a bunch more statistics and connect them all. We do, but on a scale far smaller than in Russia. [deleted] Not mention that some protesters where killed by white supremacist and the us gov did nothing. Usually they back those list inclusions up with suspects own racist postings tho cuz they racist Sure, if you’re affiliated with white supremacists. 1 guy 70 years ago vs 4000 in four days Rarley. Now look up Russia protest arrest and then think for a moment. Any were riots. Also the police action was not state-sponsered, unlike Russia. The George Floyd protest were, in many cases, riots. In Russia, 4000 people have been arrested in the last week for chanting stuff They are dying out, actually. (Conjecture, but US history is my hobby) But everywhere else you are better off. Also not a counter to my statement. What? Yup, but we're not there yet, unlike russia Irrelevant. Many gorge Floyd protests escalated into riots, the Russian ones did not, and yet more Russians were arrested yesterday than in all of the George Floyd protests. Cool. Just know that Russia almost certainly is underreporting thier #of incarcerated Least we don't do this https://inews.co.uk/news/russian-school-children-arrested-for-laying-flowers-at-ukraine-embassy-and-holding-no-to-war-signs-1494704 But not by the government. Source At least we don't do this https://www.google.com/amp/s/inews.co.uk/news/russian-school-children-arrested-for-laying-flowers-at-ukraine-embassy-and-holding-no-to-war-signs-1494704/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/inews.co.uk/news/russian-school-children-arrested-for-laying-flowers-at-ukraine-embassy-and-holding-no-to-war-signs-1494704/amp I live in west. North Philly is exponentially worse. Been to South East Asia and at least they have great weather and beaches. But it sucks when you realize how poor most of the citizens in those countries really are I am sorry I can't believe you. I am from India. And when we talk about extremely poor places here the misery is unfathomable. The median salary in Russia is $7000 USD We can look at the stats though. Google to the rescue! * [25% of Russian citizens live off **$146 USD per month or less**.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/482512/russia-population-distribution-by-monthly-per-capita-money-income/) * [19% of Americans receive one form of welfare or another, the worst off are gifted more than **$750 per month**.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/05/04/the-average-us-welfare-payment-puts-you-in-the-top-20-of-all-income-earners/?sh=5b778c3c316f) (half receive less, half receive more) **Conclusion:** US Welfare recipients are given **five times** more money to live off of, than Russia's bottom 25% are paid at their jobs. Kansas is a drive away Allen county SC does not exist. The one actual example you provided that isn't just a broad description doesn't exist. Native American reservations aren't legally American are they? But, yes, they are absolutely horid but our government doesn't run or have a say about those places. So how did I show bias again? And yes, there are different levels of poor people in the world. A lot of USA poor are extremely obese because of the cheap processed food they eat and a lot of it. They can get clothes, food, pretty much anything to live if they need. Some even have PS4s. And phones and smart TVs But the poor in India are extremely skinny because they may eat 1 meal every 2 days. And that's if they are lucky enough to find work each day to make enough to eat. And that's after living in a cardboard shack and wearing the same set of clothes for years. This is a level of poor that you don't seem to grasp. It's much better to be poor in the USA then India. If you state somthing as a fact you should provide proof if asked Interesting it looks like you're just wrong. Everything I can find has them in a much better place than your implying. There is a city outside of Dallas without running water. Poverty in the US runs a wide range, is way bigger than people think, and is largely invisible. Yes, 1 city. Name 5 others. Then go to Mexico and give me 1 city where you can drink tap water [deleted] You mean the place that now has clean water because the government quickly acted to fix the problems caused by a few dumbass local politicians? [deleted] It's amazing that you know there are no places like that in America. Cabrini Green was peachy, the Bronx in the 70s was great, and when the city police dropped a literal bomb on a neighborhood in the 80s, well, that wasn't that bad. Flint‘s water situation definitely didn’t fit the image of the „first world.“ Anyhow, I’m not sure if it’s useful to compare the US to a third world country either way, because the „third world“ is so large that conditions vary quite a bit. Like, are we talking Indonesia? Argentina? I‘d expect that most people worldwide, including in the „third world,“ do have access to roads, internet, and running water, but infrastructure overall isn’t as developed and there‘s a relatively higher proportion of rural areas. For me the meaningful question would be „does the lifestyle of the working class reflect the country‘s relative wealth,“ and I don’t think it does. I think the poorest employed people here are typically worse off than those of comparably developed countries. Google Sandbranch Texas. [deleted] You can. He said rural communities. That's why I asked. I know there are many nice 3rd world countries that look better than a lot of places in America. I was just curious what rural communities he thought were bad. [deleted] Being poor and being homeless aren't the same thing. When you think poor people are just homeless you know how out of touch you are. If you think “the globe” is Western Europe, sure. If you think you’d rather be poor in Suriname or Eritrea or Uruguay or Thailand or Papua New Guinea or Sudan or Afghanistan or Kazakhstan or Morocco or……. The average poor household in America owns a car and an A/C unit. [deleted] He could be in debt up to his eyeballs for all you know. /s You dropped this https://external-preview.redd.it/kj6oc3pW0Lord482UFdyJ5GGIFK9oRC24QWpSyWdvh0.jpg?auto=webp&s=71d4d85b2f68c681ba89c992e679fa866e7dd1c8 What percentage of protesters get killed? > First of all, you won't really get charged for protesting in the US, the cops will usually just beat you up, put you in jail for a couple of days and release you. This is absolutely false. I've been to dozens of protests over the past 5 years, and this has never once happened to me. Even in the rare circumstances where the cops did go ham on people, anyone arrested is released within hours. And you're right that America was until recently moving in a Russia-like direction... because of the Republican Party, who are *funded by Russia*. To defend the parent post, they said ""jail"" not ""prison"". Not all blm was peacefull they were riots just like capitol Sure cops are bad but so are rioters Not trying to justify cops actions just saying To find the level of repression you see in remote parts of russia/former soviet states you'd need to go back to the Trail of Tears style of rule. They really aren't comparable. We can condemn both, but let's not engage in whataboutism. Navalny alone should prove the point. Imagine if Trump imprisoned Biden. But get killed in Russia, I guess. Did you miss the part of your story where your spouse and their entire family left Russia to come to the United States? I'm not some ""USA is always right"" douchebag, but that's some seriously flawed debate style you're using. And if labor could actually move between countries easily countries would have to compete with better labor protections but ^somehow ^that ^doesn't ^come ^up ^as ^much ^as ^^corporate ^^taxes... Tnaks ! Well, I paid for my own college when I was a student. Debt free. Because hey, this is a novel idea, I worked for it. And I have three teenagers that I’m paying for, and they also are working. It’s no one’s responsibility to put my kids they college but mine and theirs. You’re obviously failing pretty hard over here so like I said before, why don’t you just move to Russia if you think it’s so much better? Nobody is stopping you. I’d be careful criticizing the government once you get there though. That’s a privilege only whiny “American” losers like you get to have. Tell me you’ve never stepped foot in the 3rd world without telling me. Ha. “Okay”. The US has problems, but it’s still 100x better than Russia. There’s a reason the US is a 1st world country, and Russia is 3rd world. Sure bud That’s the point. Parent comment was comparing Russia and the US Did not say us = perfect Yeah those are all the govs fault Diffrence is the huge amount that russia opresses that us dosent Most of usa is accepting Thats becouse florida wants it that way if you want it diffrent there are plenty of states thats the beauty of america Democrats tryed to frame a 17 yr old for murder of three black americans when they were white Democrats had hundreds of blm riots Democrats and rebulicans are both equaly stupid partys Both have racist Both have idiots Both have power hungry senile old men and ones with orange hair The fact you believe that shows me I'm talking to one who has no knowledge of Russian geography or infrastructure. [deleted] Putin never kicked ass getting into power. He pretended to crack down on corruption, but really what he was doing was forcing the corrupt oligarchs to give him 50% of their plunder. He pretended to be protecting Russians from terrorists, when it was Putin himself who orchestrated the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. The man has been a corrupt, lying murderer since Day 1. He's just gotten much worse at hiding it over the years. The oligarchs have no power at all, they are managers and piggy banks for his economy. They can be ordered around, forced to spend their own money on government projects, and their companies seized and traded in a whim. If they disagree, they are removed one way or another. The power lies in the inteligensia, who also coincidentally control all the more important strategic business in the country. They are loyal politically not economically. What oligarchs took care of trump and kept him in power? Dude didn’t even get a second term, if he had this behind the scenes agreement with the powers that he then he would still be in office, no? I believe it [deleted] >Lmao like the legitimate sources you have about Trump and Putins relationship. I don’t like Trump but y’all gotta stop spreading the Trump, Putin bullshit. It’s not real. This you? >One of my favorite things to do is go on the politics sub (pretending to be a democrat) and get them to admit things that they would never openly say. Only a matter of time before I get banned 😂 It's worse than that: the media class lying about Putin ""hacking muh democracy"" basically prevented any diplomatic process that could have prevented this war Well can you blame them? The media spreads lies. That entire Russian probe was found to be completely fabricated but these ppl are so obtuse and ignorant that they still believe it. Pleas explain how Trump or the Republicans are doing anything good for America’s. What could be easier? The most leftward Democrats want to emulate the exact policies of economies currently with the world’s highest living standards and longest life expectancies. They’re advocating for additional education funding, which might help you extricate yourself from your apparently abject illiteracy. Christ, learn to write if you want to have a political discussion, you absolute cretin. Andropov was actually a moderate and tried to limit the excesses of the party bosses and bring in new blood. That be like the head of the CIA getting elected President in the US Yeltsin literally phoned Clinton for his go ahead when he make Putin prime minister. To be honest with you, the US hasn't done much for Russia. I can understand how he became a figurehead for some Russians. He's pretty much anti western. It's why so many ethnic Russian's in Ukraine and other countries decided to break off and join their ""home"" country. They didn't want to be supported by the west. You're exaggerating the circumstances of what happened in Chechnya. Boris Yeltsin was an anti-establishment figure who played a major role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. While in office, Yeltsin transformed the Russian economy from a centrally planned command economy into a capitalist free market economy. The United States loved all of this, it was exactly what they wanted. So, needless to say, Yeltsin was important to the US. He and Bill Clinton were kinda buddies. Clinton was very supportive of Yeltsin' policies of liberalization and democratization. Clinton promised Yeltsin strong support and financial assistance to meet his goals. Things weren't perfect, there were still tensions between Russia and the US, but the narrative in the US was that the cold war was over, capitalism and liberal democracy had ""won,"" and we had reached the end of history. Yeltsin was the leader of a liberal democracy, like the US. Yeltsin was a friend, and that friend chose Vladimir Putin to succeed him. When 9/11 happened, he did cooperate with u.s. Prior to 2007 Putin was somewhat pro-U.S. This entire thread is a series of unsubstantiated claims, I don’t think I’ve seen a single recommended book to follow up on. Yeah, autocratic dictator who invades a neighboring democracy for no good reason = bad. Can't believe that's a controversial statement. Yeah, they should see the context and realize he's even worse than they probably thought. > Maybe he was always playing the long game, this doesn't change the fact that WE believed he was a puppet. Fair. Yeah I think Putin was indeed playing the long game. He was KGB, so shrewd long term plans wouldn't be surprising. [deleted] Honestly, I think there was a bit of genuineness behind that. They probably somewhat expected it, but you also have to keep in mind that the former Soviet Republics-especially Ukraine and Russia-are rich in natural resources, and were ripe for the taking. It was honestly a mistake on the west’s part for not exploiting that if they wanted to avoid a future opposition to their hegemony. Not to say I would’ve supported that, just saying from the US/NATO perspective, that would’ve been the smart thing I'll give it a read thanks! So that he can see every state that ever tried communism turn into an ultra-corrupt fascist state? Every self-described conservative is a dumbass, so I won't give them the benefit of doubt The 3 richest Americans own 0.32% of total US wealth. The 3 richest Russians own 8.6% of total Russian wealth. There is literally an order of magnitude difference here. I didn’t think people could own other people any more Would you rather: Be a median income earner and have $100k a year, but the 1% in your country have an average of $100B in net worth Or Be a median income earner and have $10k a year, but the 1% in your country have an average of $8B in net worth? Because in example one you have a significantly higher quality of life based on income and better purchasing power, but the Gini is lower so that scale says that’s the worse country to live in. Adjusting for PPP it might be closer to $12k as the median That's what the exchange of labor is. You're paid a salary for your labor, its not unethical. So you’re saying that if for some miraculous reason you inherited a billion dollars, and some one told you to give some money to , oh I don’t know somebody living with their mom at 30 and doesn’t work, you wouldn’t take offense to that? You would just hand it over? Trickle it down? These 1% provide a hell of a lot more resources to the country than the complainers who wanted everything handed to them for free. Yes it literally does. It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/01/25/top-1-percent-your-state/9210897002/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/01/25/top-1-percent-your-state/9210897002/)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) No, that's not how net worth works. Having a million and buying a Lambo still leaves you with the same net worth. It isn't until the Lambo deprecates in value and all those shaky investments go up in smoke that his net worth becomes zero or negative, and from that moment the NFL player probably SHOULD count as functionally poor despite owning a Lambo. Meanwhile, he can make a million and invest 1.2 million and technically not have any income - and pay any tax - for the year. The rich are actively encouraged to work towards zero income for tax purposes, and they know how to do it. Elon Musk paid ZERO income tax over 2018. You also can't argue that a mom living in a car at 500 dollars a month in the US with 10.000 in debt is 10x better off than that Chinese farmer living in a shack making 2 dollars a day. It's both shitty day-by-day living. I'll agree that net worth isn't the complete picture, but income is so much worse of a comparison. > i have no idea or no care for the source That is why you fail. I think you should research how Russia's oligarchs achieved their wealth. It has no USA comparison. Oh boy are you way off track here. The oligarchs in Russia were gifted tax payer funded state run industries, making them super rich over night, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Jeff Bezos was gifted startup capital with money his parents worked for. Taxpayers didn't pay for Amazon, so there's nothing wrong with that. Just like your parents helping you with a house downpayment with money from their own pockets isn't somehow unethical. Nor are you some sort of parasite if the house you buy increases in value (I mean you didn't EARN the money, right?). >Let's not pretend like the US wealthy are that wealthy because they contribute a proportional amount to society. Jeff Bezos is wealthy because people voluntarily used his service, no one was forced to use it. If you don't want Jeff Bezos to have your money, don't give it to him. If I were you I'd be asking why the money you are forced to surrender to the government is being used to bankroll free healthcare and subsidized college in foreign countries and not your own (assuming you are American). If you don't care about that, it seems pretty silly to be mad that Jeff Bezos is wealthy because he owns shares in a company he built that his parents helped him fund. He's not the one funding foreign state services with your paycheck. [deleted] It’s stupid to use dollar amounts because purchase power differs drastically by region… The cost of living in Russia is way cheaper though. Me. I've lived with and helped poor people in all three countries. Try getting some life experience before calling me ""delusional."" That number includes ""homeless"" people who aren't living on the street at all, they're living with friends or relatives. If you think there's 553k people living on the street you're a complete moron. Also that's way, way less than 1% of the US population, fwiw. I fail to see how I claimed our poor should be ignored. I'm just pointing out that it's not useful to compare two countries that are extraordinarily different. It was a poor comparison made by the tweeter. That dude (in my opinion) is a grifter of the Dem-Soc ""movement"", and often uses Bernie talking points, in this case poorly, to attract followers. >3 million vs a few hundred? Damn The top 1% of Russians would consist of 1.4m people as their population is about 144m people. Our top 1% is 3.3m people because our population is about 330m people . Saying top 1% versus 100 people doesn't make a whole lot of sense. He could have compared the richest 100 Americans to 100 oligarchs in Russia, and would have had a stronger argument, but alas, Robert Reich is a known idiot. Our wealth gap isn't as bad as Russia's, but gets worse every decade. [deleted] No, it's literally not ya dingus We surely seem to be trending that way. I mean we're already not far off. The US is a crony-capitalist country bordering an oligarchy at this point. As [/u/throwaway3569387340 said down further](https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/t5baxw/putin_has_amassed_enormous_wealth_for_himself_and/hz40p2m), >Congress has an 89% re-election rate and a 13% approval rate. The average tenure of Congress is 30 years. The current sitting president has been in government for half a century. The average age of House reps is 58 years and Senators is 63 years. People say its us citizens who have let them maintain their power but we're hardly given a choice. Everything is about money and the average citizen doesn't have enough to play the game. Good article that I found informational. Seems to come down to money nearly every time… https://cusdi.org/faq/why-are-sitting-members-of-congress-almost-always-reelected/ Probably that the country is more or less 50/50 split on how to fix things. Democrats keep re-electing Democrats and Republicans keep re-electing Republicans. Until one side gets a bit more political control or both sides start to agree nothing can really change. [deleted] Most voters like their own representatives (or believe they’re as good as it gets) and think if the rest of Congress was like them the country would be moving in a better direction. The people who vote for their opposition must necessarily be a minority of voters, and I suspect there’s a lot of people who don’t like Congress but don’t vote (or can’t vote due to voter suppression and/or socioeconomic conditions) so they are counted in the “like/dislike Congress?” polls (making the dislike of Congress even more intense) when their opinion is actually irrelevant For more about this from experts rather than random Reddit commenters, I would research Fenno’s Paradox, which refers to this exact situation and has been the subject of a lot of political science research Because the corporate media has total control over who gets to run for said offices. They only give screen time to the people who will maintain their interests so we are left to pick the shiniest turd as the candidate. America is a democracy on paper but I’m not sure what to call it in practice because the things we want never seem to make their way into policy A lot of them run unaposed because they have the funds to be a politician as a career. How they get those funds is almost exclusively through donation. And even if they aren't unaposed, the other candidate is likely in the same boat. If you don't have the funds, you can't compete in any real way. People not voting in their town and minor state elections probably lends to the problem. Most people only turn out for presidential and senatorial elections but by then it's too late cause then you only have a red asshole and blue asshole to choose from. Mostly the large voter base which doesn't look into the very real corruption in our government, ie, the boomers and older Millenials There’s a fear that the “other guy” will win, so everyone votes party lines regardless of how dogshit the candidates are. There is literally two parties. You take your pick between one shit stain or another Propaganda from media owned by mega corporations. We’re not inherently stupid Because these types of polls usually ask if you approve of your representative and then follow that up with your approval of Congress. Someone who voted for AOC in her district probably loves her, but hates a moderate congress. Because running for office scares away anyone who isn't a monster already. Partisan politics. Democrats are a center right party and republicans are a right wing party. No matter how much show they put on, neither wants the other or themselves to succeed, they keep an equal balance and people pissed off at eachother so the blame stays off the rich. That’s why issues like gun control and stuff like that stay at the forefront of politics. The second it goes on to how most people are a few paychecks away from losing their livings, the parties will make big news off of something small to get the news to distract people It’s a combination of things. First off lack of funding to run a competitive campaign is near impossible for some average citizen. There will always be funding so the politician is beholden to them if they plan to run for re-election. Also politics are dirty. I’d argue 95% if not all our politicians have been victims of some sort of honeypot trap. Whether sex or shady business dealings. So a random Joe with no political experience will typically get eaten alive without proper backing. The Godfather trilogy is actually an outstanding fictional representation of how America functions. A guy named Ed Durr won in Jersey as someone with no experience. I didn’t look into him much but I don’t believe one bit he didn’t have some powerful GOP protection and funding. The media tried their white supremacy card on him but it didn’t work. The system honestly needs to be blown up and rewritten. We shouldn’t have politicians serve more than 4-6 years. There should also be funding limits so elections can’t be bought. People don’t run on ideas to fix anything anymore. It’s all WWE bullshit Shit like “Vote blue no matter who” and partisan hackery. People see D or R and auto vote for people based on whatever their personal perceptions are and do no research on their candidates. Because if voting made a lick of difference, they wouldn't let us vote. All politicians at the federal level are dogshit and most on the state level are too. I'm sure a lot of them go into it thinking I'm not gonna be bought. The ones that stick to that last a term or two at best, the rest get bought off at the first offer. Because the US is not a democracy. The political system is specifically designed to railroad people into voting for whatever the elites want. With multiple ways to veto the poors whenever try and steer the political system off the desired path. Regular people really have zero say in how society is run. Then there's the world's most sophisticated propaganda machine. Capable of convincing people that they don't want healthcare. They don't want fewer cops threatening to kill them at random times. And that the villain of the week has WMD or whatever. That it's China and Russia's fault that the richest country in the world can't provide the basic material needs of its working people. Then of course there's the cops. The elites prefer to mainly use them against brown people and the homeless. But they'll use them against everyone else if they have to. The moment enough Americans stand up to resist the status quo, the night sticks and rubber bullets and killer robots will come out. Because we live in a 2 party country where if we don’t vote for the crappy politician, the other party will win. The country is so divided that anyone is better then the other political party. They are paid by oligarchs thru dark money political contributions and use those funds to fund their political campaigns at levels their rivals cannot manage. How can you, as a poor (or at least not rich) person win? Once in a blue moon you have an AOC type come in and upset the system but it’s few and far between. 13% according to the above comment. Money talks. 2 reasons. 1, It takes money to win and the easiest way to get money is to sell out to corporations. 2, The corporate media controls who gets covered and coverage equals votes. Even if a rare Bernie manages to get grass roots support, the media just has to lie that he's unelectable in a general election vs trump. Hundreds of millions of people are not going to search through polling data to discover the exact opposite is true. Because we don't actually keep electing them. Sure, we do, but what do you think the average voter does in America? Studies the ballot and knows who the best choices are? No, they barely know who is on there. And 60% of the country doesn't even think to do that, they just don't vote at all. You don't have to risk being caught rigging the election when apathy propaganda does it for you. Once you have all the legal ways to rig an election on point, then you only have to do a little bit of illegal activity here and there, so small that no one persecutes it. Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you! Bill Hicks Because it’s all the other politicians that suck, yours is ok. Biden v trump is an example. A lot of people think Biden is terrible but trump is worse. Same with Congress. Therefore you get terrible approval ratings yet voted back in A number of reasons. Part of it is main stream media refuses to tell it like it is. Their management have their opinions and use their platform to express it. It is rare for them to diverge from that. A large portion of the voter base is actually silent. Voter turnout is low. That means most people know it’s dog shit but might think the alternative is dog shit too, or worse, think it’s all rigged and don’t bother. A large part of the voter base is actually not up to speed and don’t know that much of what is going on. How many just go to the polls having read on the subject 5 mins or less. They might be dems that always vote d or the opposite. Lastly, while many agree Congress is dog shit, but not their specific congressman. In pelosi’s case she has no opposition. Any democrat in that district agrees with her and wish more of it. They hate congress because overall she doesn’t get her way. My 2 cents. Or dogecoin. The reason for the disconnect is that most Democrats do not have enough grassroots support to fund a campaign, so they depend on oligarchs for campaign funding. They don't bite the hand that feeds them, so their constituents end up being the people that paid them, not the people that voted for them. The main reason is actually the voting system itself. It benefits incumbents and always results in a two party system. This is due to the spoiler effect: Say the democrats split into a left-wing party and a moderate party. While this does represent the population better, it benefits the Republicans the most. That's why third parties don't work, they help the party that's on the other side of the political spectrum. This means that voters have two practical choices: someone I really don't like and someone I somewhat dislike. Now the twist is that a politician who wants to become wealthy has an interest in widening the conflicts on social issues. They are more emotional and don't cost money. For example: abortion. Polarizing this discussion means that someone that's for example against abortion can only vote republicans, even if they might be for increased taxes. But something like inheritance tax is boring while the ""war on Christmas"" makes people angry. This system discurages real change and structurally benefits the status quo while every issue is forced to be discussed in a black or white (we or they) format, actually discouraging a consensus. And while everyone is in a shouting match with the other group, politicians can quietly loot the Treasury because voters only alternative is someone from the other side that has the total opposite stance on the issues that anger them the most. Tons of good answers below. My two cents is the way the filibuster has come to be used. By default you are rewarded for doing nothing. You get to attack the other side, with a scant record to defend or explain. The senates inability to do anything allows the house to virtue signal, as any vote is guaranteed to be meaningless. Get rid of the filibuster and let the chips fall where they may. It’s very easy to call democrats socialists or trump the antichrist. Much harder to explain why you voted to restrict Medicaid expansion or why you voted for a green new deal when people actually get to experience the results of your actions. Because democrats/republicans widely decide who runs against current elected officals. Califorina is never going to vote a republican into congress and nancy pelosi just tells the dnc to not run anyone against her. Look what happened to bernie. We can only vote for those who actually run for office. It takes lots of campaigning to get lots of votes, and it takes lots of money to do lots of campaigning, so the candidates usually most likely to run & get elected are those who can drum up enough money to pay for big campaigns - which inherently rigs the process. There is no shortage of better potential candidates, but there is a shortage of better-*funded* potential candidates. It won't/can't change until campaign finance & lobbying laws change - and those laws won't change as long as officials (& their donors) rely on them to get (& stay) in office. That's easy. Money. Campaigning for office takes tons and tons of money. Guess who has an easier time securing money for their campaigns? Might be that it's people who have an interest in maintaining the status quo for those with money to give. It's the one thing the American right and left politicians have in common. It's not *impossible* to have a successful grassroots campaign and take office without selling their soul (or more accurately, being true to their soulless self), but it's uncommon enough not to be a relevant factor. It's because you need a lot of money to run a successful campaign. Even a local election for some admin job can run you thousands of dollars in campaign spending. When the entire political system runs on manipulation of public opinion, which requires huge amount of funds, it naturally incentivize those who already have a lot of money to use their wealth to influence the process. Once the system runs like that, it keeps feeding itself in a feedback loop: winning is about reaching as many eyeballs and earholes --> need money to win the election because need ads, blogs, opinion column lines, horsetrading favors etc. --> gets elected and be beholden to your donors --> push legislation favorable to rich donors --> election coming again --> need money to win, and so it goes on and on. Soon, as a politician your entire orbit revolves around getting money for your next election, calling up favors, dispensing favors, trading favors and it leaves little to no time or energy to actually govern for the people who don't actually contribute much funds for your next campaign. It has become such a joke that senators and representatives actually spend a lot of time in phone booths basically telemarketing people who might fund their next campaign. Since a person only has 24 hours in their day, they have to maximize the potential of each call and so naturally gravitate towards the richest shitfuckers in their state. And rich shitfuckers never give up their money for nothing but goodwill and morality. They always want something in return, their ROI. Whether it is by accident or by design, the American political system has been thoroughly captured by the moneyed class, and over the decades, other parts of the country has been molded to suit the interests of that moneyed class. It's a vicious cycle and there is no way to reform or correct this. This is why America is a plutocracy. A country with a government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich. People fear change, even if it's ""good"" change. The movie ""The Distinguished Gentleman"" hits so many nails on the head as far as Congress goes, and the main premise of it is a grifter runs for Congress using the same name as the recently-deceased Congressman whose seat was vacated and wins it handily, and then basically learns Congress is the ultimate grift and even too slimy for him. Because the US has two parties, one is conservative and the other is fascist. Neither one is willing or even capable of changing the issues in the country, and national propaganda has made it so the common belief is that a vote for a third party candidate is essentially a waste of your vote. Because these approval rate polls mean nothing. When asked ""Are you happy with government?"", people aren't all thinking of the exact same government. Liberals will think of the government that locks immigrant children in cages. Conservatives will think of the government that lets immigrants flow unimpeded across the Southern border. Because people don’t like “the other guys representative” People seem to be offended that a body which represents a lot more than them doesn’t do exactly what they want. Because nearly every fucking person I know of every age hasn’t voted in every election….let alone their primaries. When you look at polls of the average American compared to the average American voter, the average American is much more progressive and looking for change in a positive future than the average American voter. A lot of the vocal bitching comes from people who don’t vote for whatever stupid excuse they have Boomers and their crusty parents vote every time all the time. And they love the status quo. It’s pretty simple, actually: people disapprove of Congress more broadly but approve the work of their local representatives do. I’m sure 99% of AOC voters disapprove of Congress, but the vast majority very much still support her. Money buys power in a corrupt political system. People generally hate congress, but like their representative. It's a function of the system being bad, not necessarily the politicians. Totally correct. The polling is apples to oranges. People hate Congress but usually strong support for their elected representatives Nah we hate certain of our own too, who haven’t fulfilled campaign promises and owned up to their bs. Don’t kid yourself. I hate my representatives. I am nearly powerless to replace them, bar some illegal actions. Not once in my adult life have I been represented by a politician whose views overlap mine even by 50% or so. When we actually look at real policy that gets passed in Congress the majority of it could come from either Democrat or Republican lobbyists. What we see in the news is political theater meant to make us feel like the two parties are diametrically opposed in values but they are more alike than different. Sure, the Republican Party plays dirtier than the Democrats but their policy is not all that different except on inclusiveness. This is *also* misleading because it fails to recognize the larger problem: that we vote for the representatives that are running, and there's a barrier to entry to who those people are that has nothing to do with suitability for office. In order to be a credible candidate, in most cases you have to 1) belong to one of the two major political parties and 2) have the money to support a year long advertising campaign both in media and in person. That means that for the most part, anyone running for office won't be overly critical of the existing political structure (save to criticize the party they don't belong to) and must have enough wealth or support from those with wealth to forgo gainful employment for at least a year plus the ability to project their image, name and platform into every form of media we engage in for the same amount of time. That eliminates *pretty* much everyone in the US. It certainly diminishes the degree to which any given candidate will be willing to break from their party's inertia. We vote for the candidates who run, but not necessarily who we would vote for if more people *could* run. Her and the husband just so happened to become the most successful traders in history. Nothing to do with insider access, she’s just that smart!! Yeah. If I had a crystal ball or a time machine. Or Nancy Pelosi's husband's ""skill"" How is that an argument? ""If only you were smart enough to be able to get lucky on massive investing gambles or had access to insider trading information you could have made ridiculous returns too!"" I'll take the downvotes from people who didn't watch the shitshow last night and say it. Can we include Trump AND Biden? The last State of The Union was embarrassing. He muttered through the whole thing. We gotta be honest about the Democrats here too man. Edit: You can say he has a stutter, but that's always been the case. The dude who did the VP debates, and the guy talking last night are totally different. He's 79 years old! Too old to make decisions. Nah man, she’s a good little saver, compound interest over eternity is a thing /s You vote for the people who are doing this to you. That’s almost as bad as those assholes” Thanks for the depressing correction. You mean the husband whose stock trades beat every hedge fund and investment house in the world, including Warren Buffett, by 57%? Yeah. That's TOTALLY normal. Defending Pelosi, who has a 9-figure net worth, in a thread talking about the oligarchy. Well done. Define irony. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to amass $12M in assets in a decade? That's 200x the median US income. Oligarch: An oligarch is one of the select few people who rule or influence leaders in an oligarchy—a government in which power is held by a select few individuals or a small class of powerful people. Anyone with a 9-figure net worth and sitting in Congress is an oligarch. Period. Microsoft fought the US government and the government lost on appeal. Bezos is so anti-competition that he sells his competitors' products in his store, rents them computing resources on his cloud, and licenses their content for his video service. Give me a break. Honestly? Tesla shares. Successful companies that are tackling real long-term problems at a rate that most thought impossible. People want a bivariate world… It really is an example of privilege to say that and have no idea how wrong you are… Yeah, russia really has their economy figured out…. Average /r/genzedong mouth breather Didn't both Bernie *and* Trump outspend Biden during the last election? Or does that not count because it torpedoes your galaxy brain argument lol? It actually doesn’t matter who wins the election anyways, they simply pay whoever wins to work in their interest anyways. I must have missed the part about wealth inequality in there. Could you tell me the page it’s on. Oh. That’s cute. You can’t even type the full word you want to call me? Little lap dogs nibbling at my heels… Get banned ya limp dicked troll. Medicare for All, the specific policy plan put forth, is not supported by the majority of Democratic voters, that’s stupid horseshit. Universal access to healthcare is supported by Democratic voters and politicians, the means of getting there are what people disagree on. M4A loses MOST of its support when you actually break down what the policy is. When you tell people they can't keep their health insurance, all of the sudden they don't want it anymore. I love your vetted references, and you’re right. It’s essentially a soft feeling of mainly false security. It is still leaps and bounds better though. And “knowing you will get killed” if you speak out is a little different than just being able to do so. We may have economic faults, and the government may do what it wants, but standing up for what you believe in is at least viable in America. You may not get anything done, but you won’t “commit suicide” I have read Alexsander Dugin’s Geopolitics. I get that Trump was targeted by them, and wish Trump was never president. I’m just saying we are still different than them. Flawed, but in a much better position. Fair enough. > US and Russian economic systems are similar They’re not, at all. The types of jobs, companies, industries, exports, imports, and trading partners are vastly different. Do you think the Mexican economy is extremely similar to the American one? > if the % controlled by the elites is similar It’s not similar. Russia has an economy 1/6th the size with 117 billionaires with a larger share of their country’s wealth than the 700 billionaires in the United States. Plus Russia’s billionaires are not accountable to voters in any way, shape, or form… and they literally are the government. The United States is unequal flawed democracy, not an autocracy. Yes, a petro-fertilizer state is comparable to the US. Grand analytics skills. Probably highly sought after in the labor marker… Well, unless money is the economy (it’s not) and the other two things at once. No. It wouldn’t be that… It is a hilarious argument. ""If their GDP is below a completely arbitrary number, like half of state of Texas, then they can be an oligarchy, if their GDP is above this arbitrary number, then they can't be."" If that was true, all that Russia needs to do to stop being an oligarchy is annex a few countries to increase its GDP above this arbitrary number and u/EconomistPunter would be happy! A tweet is not an article, sunshine. Plus, didn't discredit the whole thing. Discredited the notion of ""wealth inequality"" being similar in the two countries. But hey, reading must be a fucking challenge. I provided a link. Read it. Just because assets aren't gifted directly to oligarchs like they have been in Russia doesn't mean that the wealthiest class hasn't been the largest direct benefactors of government expenditure. Sure, it's not as blatantly corrupt as Russia, but that's a pretty low bar don't you think? I don’t think it’s as tiny as your assuming it is. Maybe it’s not most, maybe not have. But definitely not a tiny sliver. >He does pay taxes, he actually was in the news recently for having a multi-billion dollar tax bill. That sounds great but it’s a drop in the bucket. He still pays a lower percentage then the middle class > Earlier this year, ProPublica published an investigation showing Musk and several other billionaires paid no federal income taxes in 2018. >Between 2014 and 2018, Musk paid $455 million in taxes on $1.52 billion of income, according to ProPublica, despite his wealth growing by $13.9 billion over that period. >According to Forbes, Musk is worth over $244 billion on paper, making him the world's richest man. Because Elon musk worshippers get their opinions from where? I’m stating literal facts about where the man acquired his wealth and that he’s not a real engineer he’s a master manipulator (maybe you like that) That’s an idiotic take. Do a modicum of research before coming back. Ahh yes absolutes Where is the history of the world has there been a society without any wealth disparity? So the wealth inequality between an 18 year old who just graduated high school and a 50 year old worker with a family is bad? Or the wealth inequality between a Neurosurgeon and a McDonald crew member is bad? Lmao nice This is fucking stupid bro you really think an 18 year old dog walker should have the same exact wealth as a 65 year old welder who has an entire lifetime of salaries and investing and saving and asset accrual behind him? Are you even old enough to own a 401k account? So you think perfect wealth equality is something a country should strive for? And yet here we are with a nation full of propagandized zombies earnestly believing it Luckily there are plenty of resources out there to self-learn. It’s so obvious I feel odd that I have to explain it. Large companies require mass numbers of educated workers who are safe and can get to/from their job. All of those things are provided by society. Your head may explode if you find out about tax breaks and government subsidies. This is absolutely backwards. Trump was/is Putin’s puppet. Edit: for anyone curious. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022/02/11/fact-check-did-trump-biden-sanction-russia/6735826001/ Murray Rothbard’s quote is so spectacularly dead on for you… This is so untrue it’s insane. The richest US people are rich in majority speculative assets that didn’t even exist 20 years ago. 40 at the max. The richest Russian oligarchs have wealth that is immeasurable in asset classes that we don’t even know about and have amassed their wealth through dynastic corruption of the course of hundreds of years. Russian autocratic oligarchs have been richer than US billionaires before the US was even a country. Do you know how rich monarchies were? The Vatican? The Church of England? The Bank of England? Cross country comparisons can be made. They are very difficult to do. But what I am arguing is that Reich is making a bad faith comparison. Simply because outcomes may be similar in countries does not mean that the processes that lead to those outcomes don’t matter, which is what he asserts implicitly. Edit. I linked an article by Piketty that points out the lack of transparency in Russian financial data, which makes it very difficult to actually identify any measures. Mityakov at Florida State has some research papers on this measurement issue. Not sure where you got 10x; I’ve seen about [three times more](https://livingcost.org/cost/russia/united-states), with some estimates about 4. I also don’t believe any criteria that doesn’t estimate Putin at significantly higher than the richest Russian. I also misread. I thought you said difference between richest and poorest as a group, rather than an individual. I’ve always seen group comparisons; never the absolute min and max. The optimal level of wealth inequality is a concave function You don’t get to pick and choose “appeals to experts”, when you personally aren’t one. Sorry. More than comfortable with my own expertise in the area. I’d argue Piketty is more versed than Reich and I in this area, and he doesn’t even pretend to make these claims. I'm a progressive who campaigned for Bernie in 2016 and Warren in 2020, which you can clearly see from my 5-year plus comment history. Try harder. lol mods here are literally fascists and active in r/GenZedong Until I find a leftist that’s not an idiot it’s the same thing Liberals aren’t leftists. You clearly haven’t read any leftist reporting or social media stuff about this Wait, when you said ""This post is dumb"", did ""post"" refer to the actual post or the comment you were replying to? I dunno, we have people that seem to be damned determined to destroy our post office and other institutions. Sure like 50 years ago… and even then it was through covert operations where the CIA funded oppositional forces. If Russia just did that (which it does continue to do) then you would not see the level of backlash you are seeing now. That’s how they got away putting the president in place in Ukraine pre 2014. This is completely different. This is a full on invasion on par with nothing we’ve seen since WWII. This was back in the nineties, dumb fuck. And also, 200k is still 200k more than most people have to start a business. Go sit and spin, fucknuts. Very legal, very cool, very immoral Amazon does under price some things so smaller competitors cannot compete and then rises the prices back up after competition is killed. I think people still value it implicitly because they use the service. I don’t expect companies to act out of the goodness of their hearts, it’s a transaction for them, just as it is for the employees. One day we’ll get our wishes of higher wages for everyone and then automation will take over and then we can do nothing forever Our richest citizen is in a lawsuit with the US government over tweets. He does not “run the government” Yea, I'd like to see the electoral college function as it was supposed to and not as bloc votes. The general public shouldn't even pretend to vote for the president. It's a farse to distract us from the real politics that actually influence our lives. If we focused on governing ourselves as Republic we'd all be a lot better off. For starters we would have a LOT better chance of procuring moderate presidents who actually cared about the country instead of being a puppet to their party. What are you talking about you vote for the electors. The state selects the electors based on a statewide election The vast majority of people live in cities. You would prefer the people who live on farms to not be heard or treated the way they want to be. Those fukn lobbyists need to be arrested. After Trumps failed insurrection, companies promised not to fund those fake elector jerks but their lobbyists still paid them out!!!! Stop focusing on federal control and pushing for federal control. That is literally the solution. We are realistically supposed to be like individual countries but consolidate for some things to be done at a federal level like military and currency. Laws and even subsidies should be done at a state level. The federal government gets way way more money than they should. Social security is a huge problem for the south because older people frequently move to the south or midwest because it's cheaper and/or warmer. Not that social security is exactly the problem, but it destroys metrics. I agree Raw number or adjusted for inflation, literally zero of the founding fathers were billionaires. The electoral college ain’t great but it beats the choice of Putin or Putin they can do whatever they want but so far they haven't. Also it's important to note that the DNC isn't a single entity with a single mind and a single goal. This is incorrect. The two party system arises naturally from a winner-takes-all election. Here is an example to demonstrate. Lets say I would like a more liberal president and start a new party. Before I start my party the Dem is at 55% and the Rep is at 45%. Now my party does well extremely well. However, I'm obviously not convincing conservative Republicans to vote for me, what I'm doing is getting the more liberal Democrats who feel the party is too right wing to vote for me. Lets say I actually get the majority of Democrats on my side. My party now holds 30% of the electorate. The Democrats hold 25%, and the Republicans hold 45%. I have taken the victory away from Democrats and given it to the Republicans. Essentially, I made the president less liberal by running a more liberal candidate. Another way to look at it is if we start in reverse. Imagine there already is a multi-party system. There are 10 equally sized small parties. Lets say the 2 most liberal parties decide to merge. Now there are 9 parties, 8 of them equally sized and the 9th twice as big as the rest. So it easily wins every election. The conservatives see this and want to do something about that. So the 3 most conservative parties team up and become the biggest. Now there is 7 parties and the big conservative party is the biggest and wins every election. So the big liberal party now has to merge with the two more center-left parties in order to become the biggest party again. This goes on until you're left with 2 big parties. As you can see in a winner-takes-all system, there is only one outcome and that is a political landscape with 2 major parties. The only way to get more than two parties is a system where power is distributed by percentage of votes. So if you get 20% of the vote you get 20% of the power. Wrong. Third parties steal away votes from main parties ensuring victory for the opposing side. If we instituted ranked choice voting our entire political system would begin to change. [removed] By the way what party was responsible for that gallows? The incumbent is OWNED by Russian money laundering. By American standards that was a shit show. By Russian standards it was peaceful. It was a fair and free elections without any assassinations, coup, or civil war Go suck more wealthy cock you dumb motherfucker. Fighting for other peoples wealth and have the nerve to call other people incels? Since you want to bring the discussion down tho this level because your brain can’t function beyond this level fuck off. Besides it’s impossible to be an incel with your mother around ✌🏽 Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, NZ, Finland, Germany, Switzerland… developed countries where wealth inequality is actually low It doesn’t matter whether they do good or bad. Lets say that either way, they do bad. The process is still important, even if the outcome is bad. Sometimes, even with a good process, bad outcomes are possible. Thats ok. There are no guarantees of outcome. Process is what you can control. When did I make a claim about capitalism? Which US billionaires are also Russian Oligarchs? Hahahahahaha the “elite deep state” is going to be so angry about this comment. Better watch your back, schizo ""investigate"" and ""frame"" are not in any way the same thing do you have an actual source that Musk tried to **frame** that person? There’s huge inequality everywhere. It’s just a fact. I am not saying we are one rather we are slowing moving towards one. Quite literally corporations have been granted more rights and protections in 30 years than the entirety of American society. At the same time the wealth gap has been expanding nearly exponentially and the influence of this money is starting to change elections and more importantly policy. We are closer to being an oligarchy then a true democracy. You can close your eyes and pretend you senator will listen to you without that fat donation check but you are delusional. Actually I sit on the board for two different companies. You can make whatever assumptions you want. For every case of companies choosing to do the right thing and being praised for it there is 100 lawsuits for misconduct or investigations for breaking regulation. I am not saying all business is bad/evil/etc but the legal system is set up in a way to favor them when your making 1billion off faulty contract and only charged 100 million for being caught that is just a proper business expense. lol ik i think its half r*tarded and funny obviously ironic bro u gotta dig deep and unearth the layers what a boomer Ratio That invalidates my point about western oligarchs how? Or are you just getting paid to give cover to billionaires? His family owned an emerald mine, either you're lying or you're friend was, but he born rich as fuck Oil companies are not oligarchs, and eminent domain exists in every society throughout all time. Maybe you advocate for private security and police forces to remove people doing illegal shit? Like Russia... like.... oligarchs? I think the word everyone wants to say but doesn't know is ""Corporatocracy"". Yes, being rich is being rich. Not my point. How they get the money is extremely important. What if all the billionares in the US were just Nixons friends? There's a massive difference between *how* they got rich and that matters a ton. Is our system perfect? Fuck no. But it's not as blatantly imbalanced and corrupt as Russia and it's insane to think otherwise. Yeah true, it def takes longer when you start with zero capital 😂 believe me I know Good argument for anarcho-capitalism, you've made there. If people just stopped buying shit on Amazon Bezos wouldn't have any money. Why don't they just stop? Well, taxes are good, yes What about the people born into poor families? Who don't get an inheritance? How many people can turn debt into something like Amazon? Utilities, which operate at the state or city level, and have low regulated profits. And then a government agency, and another regulated industry. Wow, that’s like all of America’s billionaires! Solid solid stuff there. Everyone hears the news about those electricity selling billionaires, project building yacht owners. Finger on the pulse. Ok, it’s clear you got nothin’. All the best. I never said that. However, Robert Reich is a lawyer, not an economist. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2013/09/10/robert-reichs-f-minus-in-economics-false-facts-false-theories/?sh=5810c6f7507a Well, that's not true. Total household wealth in the US is $144 trillion. The top 20 billionaires don't combine for $72 trillion in net worth. https://www.reuters.com/business/us-household-wealth-gain-q3-smallest-pandemic-era-fed-says-2021-12-09/#:~:text=Dec%209%20(Reuters)%20%2D%20U.S.,from%20the%20coronavirus%20pandemic%20began. Net worth. Median US household income of $69,000 is higher than 99% of the world: https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i 1. You can edit comments 2. Looking through comment histories is very cringe and embarrassing, just paints you to be insecure in your arguments 3. Russia is not socialist. Seems like you think yourself to be a lot smarter than you are, my friend. If you’re not even aware of what financial system that Russia organizes itself under in current year, I can’t really expect you to hold a conversation about all of this. You might be finding yourself bored to death by most conversations because you’re not getting the subject material lol It is relevant when OP is trying to pretend America is an oligarchy when it is in fact the most prosperous and wealthy people to ever exist (including the poor). I lived in a real oligarchy for 19 years. Yeah. The poverty line in the US is wealthier than 99% of the human beings alive in the world. That’s how unbelievably fucking lucky we are as a society. You're totally right, of course, but OP doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'd understand that nuance. I got [chu](https://www.google.com/search?q=communism+definition&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS757US757&oq=communism&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i433i512j0i131i433i512l3j0i433i512j0i131i433i512j0i131i433j0i433i512j0i131i433i512.3494j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) bro That's because they never democratized the workplace just the government (to varying degrees) That will be for us, the masses, to decide. Again, social policies do not make a country socialist. What makes a country socialist is the workers owning the means of production, which is not true in any Nordic country. No. Capitalism is fettered greed. It is greed fettered by the market and competition and customers preferences. It is under state control where green becomes unfettered because people can now ignore the fetters of competition and customer preferences and markets. Russia = \ = Soviet Union. Two separate nations. Russia isn't communist. Soviet Union was. Also, I can't believe people still say ""the sOvIeT uNiOn wasn't true cOmMuNiSm"", I suppose we can end this here. You're so lost. Define recent history. Trying to argue that Putin’s craving for the USSR of old has none of the former stench of the communist shit that plagued Eastern Europe is quite absurd. The underlying premise then is that those countries and their people were subjugated against their will and lived under authoritarianism. Seeing how senile Putin has gotten You mean the ongoing misinformation prerogative back by Russian troll companies which are now primary targets of the CIA be careful commie you might end up tied to one of our chairs We might see it fit to take the companies that back paid misinformation and info theft out too while we’re at it. Because communist countries just love saying how great they are Spoken like a true communist. There’s nothing wrong with what I said. As a wise man once said anything looks good on paper and of course a communist is going to defend communism. That’s some Ted Cruz bullshit. This is 2022 not 1901 You're moving goalposts, we're not talking about how much they should pay, we're talking about you responding to a guy who said they pay the greatest share with this irrelevant statistic. This is where these assholes stop dead in their tracks. You don't *work hard* to become a dragon sitting on a mountain of gold. There is always very little nouveau rich in every era precisely because the old money does everything in their power to **retain that power**. This shit is what causes empires to crumble. Sure you have breakthrough cases every once in a while, like a once a century thing like capitalizing on a *very* rare situation like buffet or the new tech oligarchs, but majorly the rich class is comprised of inherited wealth which is set up in a way to just grow more, while kneecapping all possible competition. I was being sarcastic. Yea but moderately successful isn't equal to the top 1%. You're welcome. Take responsibility for your life or live with the consequences. Makes no difference to me. Then start your own. Get to work. When it comes to oligarchs controlling our lives? It is. The biggest thing we have to think about here, is if you're openly thinking, or feeling that its a contest, that's pretty horrible of humans in power, and humans in general, if its the common belief among us normal people. We let those same people tell us what to do all the time. This puts us all exactly where I was initially getting at with wealth and human power, and shows that these people do behave similarly, and there are no real differences between mindsets. Though the actions taken do differentiate, the basic mentality is the same. We learn sure, but ultimately we're still perpetrating the same behaviors as we did thousands of years ago, still electing positions of power that all corrupt. A president is basically a king, queen or an emporer, they still do all the same things. The only difference really is people learn how to be more efficient at what they do. Its still learning, it still changes, but ultimately it all produces the same repetitious results. all you have to do is do away with academic nonsense and its obvious, would you rather live in America with $1133 per month or russia with $154 per month? if you cant answer this question you are either ignorant of what that situation would mean in russia or just a bit dense. also it should go without saying that someone having more money than you does not effect your life, ""inequality"" is completely irrelevant to quality of life. If the people decided to get rid of a representative and replace him with someone they liked better, they easily and regularly could. That’s democracy. When did I say that? The point of what my original comment was that anyone who wants to be rich can be. [deleted] Beauty companies owned by the daughters of actresses, health food companies owned by the sons of professional athletes, tech startups owned by the nephews and cousins and sisters and aunts of other already established and ultra-wealthy financial CEOs. This is literally already America. You don't have to imagine it happening in the future because it's already been happening for decades. It was like that in the west as well. The internet and embracing technology has really disrupted that. There is another one… a paper… “the rate of return on everything” mathematically describes why if you don’t have a stack of cash collecting money for you now… you are fucked. You can never keep up or get ahead… it’s almost statistically impossible. And for the people realizing all this including the title of the post… welcome to reality now go actually vote for someone who can win and will do good. Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. This whole shit storm took more than a generation to happen and it will take that long to unfuck it. Get going…. **We can’t do it without all of your help.** More fundamental than that: Piketty basically proposes that we never stopped living in feudalism 1.0. The colonial through industrial eras were periods of huge economic growth for a connected few, where the merchant class could grow wealth at a greater rate than existing landowning aristocrats, but the underlying mechanism for inheriting wealth never changed. The crises of the first half of the 20th century disguised this for a time, and the baby boomer generation lived in a period where economic growth outpaced returns from wealth, but the status quo (which Piketty says we've returned to since around 1980) is lower growth than wealth return, which leads to rising inequality. Essentially, he says the postwar period was an economic blip, and were living in a reversion to the norm. This is consistent with a lot of the economic phenomena we can see today: for example, the cost of owning a house is growing hugely almost everywhere, and a lot of people seem to think that's some kind of unsustainable bubble; many don't realise, though, that a massive proportion of people were renters throughout history. Even up to the outset of World War I, fewer than 25% in Britain owned their own home. The growth in house prices we see now isn't the outlier, it's the reversion to the norm, and it has a long way to go yet - historic ratios of house price to average income are more than twice what we're seeing even now. You think when Fuedalism went away all their money did too? Or it just transferred to big business. You are right, it's against human nature to give it all away. Which is why we have to tax the living fuck out of the wealth of you and people like you. Also, take 90% of your inheritance after the first $300,000 or so. We shouldn't rely on the goodwill of the wealthy because it doesn't really exist in a meaningful way. That’s the question they are answering. At a certain point, they get so wealthy as to be basically immune, yes - look at something like the British royal family, who have so many assets that even outside of state backing, the only way they could bankrupt themselves would be is they were deliberately targeted for wealth distribution because they have do much stuff and do many assets they can't outspend their income **[Bread and circuses](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses)** >""Bread and circuses"" (or bread and games; from Latin: panem et circenses) is a metonymic phrase referring to superficial appeasement. It is attributed to Juvenal, a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE and is used commonly in cultural, particularly political, contexts. In a political context, the phrase means to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace, by offering a palliative: for example food (bread) or entertainment (circuses). ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) You got the reference! Good for you! Oh you’re so right, if another person on Reddit tells someone “who’s interested to learn more about investing” to go and read it… I don’t doubt it, and it’s less a comment on the book itself than the sheer number of people who have it on their shelves but couldn’t tell you a single thing about it. My father gave me money if I worked for it. Generally equalling out to minimum wage at the time. The possibilities that open up with access to wealth is too numerous to count. If you're a business owner that cuts labor costs, aren't you directly taking money out of the labor share of GDP and putting it into the capital share of GDP? It seems like the natural process of running an efficient business will accumulate GDP to capital unless there's a strong incentive to reinvest. That has only been the case for a short period of time. The wealth of the Victoria era and the Belle Époque era in France had more to do with rent seeking behaviors that were afforded to the already wealthy due to the class system and the wealth that accumulated over the generations prior to the Industrial Revolution. > in particular cost savings that come from technological advances and outsourcing labor Yes, if you pay desperate people a wage that allows them to survive, it costs less than paying people that are trying to achieve a meaningful sustainable life. Are you saying paying people based on their need vs based on their value as a virtue of capitalism? I thought that was just the usual landlord. Also increases the rent every year despite doing nothing. Maintenance adds value though. A maintained building is more valuable than one that has been neglected. Reflecting this, in a competitive market, being a landlord wouldn't be very profitable. You'd make a bit more than the cost of maintenance and mortgage, since anyone could build their own housing and compete to lower the prices until it's no longer profitable. The US, and Canada even more, has an artificially restricted housing market through anti-building legislation which turns renting into a racket. It also doesn’t take into account the various kind of profits that can be achieved. For example, no one doubts that Peter Thiel’s $500,000 seed investment in Facebook wasn’t worth hundreds of millions of dollars when Facebook IPOed. That’s entrepreneurial return on capital based on an entirely new product and marketplace being “invented” He didn’t need to go, like, collect $1 from every person on earth to realize that gain. Basically he embezzled his companies into bankruptcy so they've gone bankrupt but he himself probably has not been bankrupt? Seems reasonable to me. Rich people spend other peoples' money (peoples including corporations now). Tell me how 3 casinos on the Vegas strip fail during a huge boom of activity. >any free market system tends toward inequality This is essentially the point that Picketty makes but unfortunately seems to forget by the end of the book when it comes to suggesting what to do about the problem (can't blame him, it's looooong). Ivy League STEM That is not at all what he was saying when he explained the thesis nor is it really a point. Well it’s not written for the layman for a reason because it’s much more nuanced than what you just said. Well the rich only have like a quarter or a third of the money so mostly it's other people getting richer. It's not an unpopular opinion. That is definitely part of America's reputation around the world. I'm Canadian and that's absolutely how I see the American government. And similar to this situation, I don't blame the American people. I'm aware you guys don't really get to decide those things. To be clear, I'm not saying ""America is just like Russia"", there are large differences of degree. Read up on Saddam Hussein and realise that he isn't really on the same level as Zelensky. That doesn't necessarily justify the invasion and regime change in Iraq, but he truly was an evil dictator. Yeah, this is pretty much how the rest of the world sees the US. I’m not a Russian supporter at all but some of the hypocrisy coming out of Americans over this crisis is mind boggling. Clamouring to support ‘poor defenceless Ukraine’ while they have spent the better part of a century invading and launching coups in poor third world countries whenever they want more resources or a friendlier regime. It is very similar, but you guys get the benefit that most european countries don't think ""are we next?"" when you invade because you don't invade our neighbours and the people you kill are not that similar to us. And that's a HUGE benefit because let's be real there is so much shit going on in the world it's not possible to care about everything and stay sane. Yes, this is exactly how the rest of the world sees the US. This is how many Americans see the US, too. And where would one find this summary? its funny that youre acting so cuntist for an appeal to authority. there are plenty of fields where academics have amassed thousands of hours of research and knowledge, and theres plenty where theyre spouting bullshit for funding. learn to read and interpret academic texts at a basic level and read more than just one paper so you can get a more holistic view. don't just appeal to authority on a paper you found, otherwise you can join the antivax crowd and their disgraced academics. on the topic though, piketty, from what little ive seen from him, is reputable and not some fringe weirdo that eschews his own field for crockery. he aligns with what i believe and offers good reasoning to it. The basics is really just supply & demand + having the power to create new necessities = wealth for ever. You know what it's called? Not on US Netflix atm, apparently. They just give me a list of 'related' content. Thanks! That was exactly what I was hoping for and makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the response, and I will definitely try to read the book, as well as some of the others mentioned. I already have something by Piketty but the name is escaping me. I’m very interested in any academic resource that increases my ability to dunk on Libertarians, is econometrics a part of any of the books mentioned or should I look elsewhere? >Foreign investment grows the GDP though. I'm talking about companies investing in foreign assets, not the other way around. If a company produces and sells goods outside of its home country, then that doesn't count towards GDP. For example, Tesla makes cars out of Shanghai and sells them in China. I'm don't think that counts towards U.S. GDP, but counts towards Tesla's return on capital. Please tell me more. I haven't been able to find a valid criticism of Pikety other than a hand waving ""maybe wealth inequality isn't so bad"". Are you for real? He says that's going to change and we're going to shift into a neo-feudalistic economy where inheritance dominates wealth. He provides no evidence that this is the case. Ok don’t bother reading it then. I think it’s informative Boom. >Think of two compounding functions. One which starts with an enormous starting point and another which adds enormous amounts over someone's life. >The person who had the larger start will always outpace the person who adds to thier wealth. By nature most wealth is non meritocratic. I agree, but the rate is important and not constant. Driving new wealth is important while protecting old wealth is not. Without the distinction, looking at inequality isn't enough to make good policy. Policy should be tailored to what is actually happening rather than assumptions and guesses. And, at least in denver, there's mostly chain stores. So even worse. Some dude is absolutely in jail for selling weed on the very street corner, literal adress, that a now big box chain marijuana store runs. It's a fucking joke. But hey, at least minorities aren't successful. Dude, before spotify you had to either buy individual songs or albums. Spotify is free and you can listen to their whole catalog of music with ads every 30 minutes. [deleted] All I'm saying is everyone exploits, and it's not always a bad thing. Pretty hard thing to argue against imo We all exploit YESS. When the disagreement is pop ""economist"" columnists vs economists with Nobles or Clark medals, I know which side is probably correct. Doesn't take any particularly high level of intelligence to follow that line of thinking, but it probably does take some strong deficiency of intelligence to believe the opposite. Yep I have read Vol. 1. Only part of Vol. 2. Have you? Since we’re namecalling here, ok cocksucker, who the fuck do we blame then? Because clearly you have a phd in the history of wealth gap. >the Ukraine situation could have been avoided had Biden taken action. While this is true What sort of action could have prevented the war in Ukraine? The root of the current conflict goes back *much farther* than 2014. It truly comes off as a Trumpian talking point right now to be spouting that Obama’s administration was responsible for this. The conflict has its robots going back way earlier than 2014 > Yep, I totally agree. Sadly, we live in times where both these unacceptable levels of inequality exist and access to data has *led to disingenuous framing of whatever point a person has predetermined to make.* This is the most comprehensive statement I have read in a long time. It makes me wonder more about what this is doing to humanities psyche over time. > My wife passed along a video of Tulsi Gabbard commenting that the Ukraine situation could have been avoided had Biden taken action. While this is true, it could also have been avoided had Trump and Obama both taken action since the root of the current conflict goes back to 2014. *You can see how this framing of a seemingly true statement totally misleads the listener and lets them resort to their preferred biased narrative.* How do we approach this narrative that this has an effect on the listener? And in your opinion, are the facts that you mention (theoretically) good or bad, for humanity, ultimately? I'm curious what share of wealth you think the top 1% should own. I agree that wealth inequality has grown out of control, but it's difficult for me to come up with numbers. Maybe quintiles is easier. If each quintile had twice as much than the one below it we'd get x + 2x + 4x + 8x +16x = 100, or 30x = 100, so x=3.33. That means the bottom quintile would own 3.33% of the wealth, the 80-60 percenters would have 6.66%, the middle of the pack would have 13.33%, the upper middle class would have 26.66% and the top quintile would have 53.33%. Interestingly, that's [pretty close to the actual distribution](https://www.statista.com/statistics/203247/shares-of-household-income-of-quintiles-in-the-us/) Maybe a better way to start would be to say that the middle quintile, being the middle should get 20%. The next 30%, and the top 40%, but that only leaves 10% for the bottom 40% of Americans. It's actually pretty tough because I don't think it's unreasonable to say the top 20% should earn double what the average earn, I mean being a doctor or lawyer or engineer takes a considerable amount of time and money to learn the requisite skills, but if we think the middle 20% should have 20% of the wealth and the top 20% should have twice that, how do you propose dividing the remaining 40% between the upper middle class, the lower middle class, and the bottom quintile? I do think both the top 1% needs to come back towards the middle a bit, and that the ultra-wealthy having more than the GDP's of some countries is crazy, but once we start actually slicing the pie it's tough to come up with something that feels good and the bottom quintile is always going to get peanuts. Edit: It was keeping me up, so I thought, what about if instead of each quintile making double the one below it, we did 50% more. Then we'd have x + 1.5x + 2.25x + 3.375x + 5.0625x = 100, or 13.1875x = 100, or x = 7.58. So in this scenario the poorest 20% would have 7.58% of the wealth, the lower middle class would have 11.37%, the middle class would have 17.06%, the upper middle class would have 25.59% and the wealthiest 20% would have 38.39%. This seems more ""poor favored"" since the middle 20% are getting less than 20% of the pie. Maybe the most reasonable solution then would be to start the middle quintile at 20% and try to go for a very egalitarian society. So the middle quintile gets 20%, the upper middle class gets 25%, the top 20% get 30%, which would leave 15% for the lower middle class and 10% for the bottom 20%. This also doesn't feel great because now going to school for a decade to become a doctor only gets you twice what the lower middle class is earning and only three times what the absolute lowest paying jobs offer. It seems weird to spend 10 years in school to earn < 100k a year. Anyway, long post, but I'd be curious what you think we should do in an ideal society. 20% of Americans have a negative worth. And that's not that dramatic? Having 1 dollar makes you richer than 66M Americans and that's not dramatic? What is dramatic?! I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but I don't think it'd be quite that simple. Giving Bezos another billion dollars has much less inflationary pressure than giving 100,000 people all $10,000. The top 1% own 27% of the total wealth in the US. The richest 3 Americans have more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans combined. There's nothing contradictory there I think it’s for history to decide. I’m curious about the longterm net value of Facebook in retrospect. Yes, it’s for all of us to decide and I think it’s apparent. I’d say Nestle’s track record of global human rights violations are more of a societal negative than the provision of tasty beverages is positive. IG Farben may have been great at making chemical products but that probably doesn’t morally outweigh them supplying Zyklon-B to the Nazis. Saudi AramCo generates the second most value of any company on Earth - and it funds one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet Consumption is not based on, nor necessarily results in, societal good Yeah Robert Reich is a total loon Yeah. It was emeralds, not diamonds. The fact that people assume just because a mining operation is situated in africa there has to be a blood conflict around it shows how racist most people are. I mean, my dad didn’t graduate high school and his dad was a homeless orphan. Investment in a minor mine seems streets ahead of any thing us normies grew up with. > near Being awful generous there. Bezo's parents *bought ownership* of the company in the initial investment rounds. Very different. Still a good thing for him, but it was part of $10 million raised. There are two issues here. 1: It isn't hard from the position he was in to see that the myriad increases in speed, accessibility to markets, etc. offered by the internet. Perhaps a randomly selected person may not have done it, but ultimately there will be a person that will. The point is, whoever that would be would never be of any special value, and it absolutely is required that they have a shit ton of free capital to make it happen. 2: It seems you might be under the assumption that any value was actually generated by undercutting competitors and destroying a huge part of American industry and allowing an essential monopoly to run unchecked. Ultimately, all we really got from Amazon was the ability to be petulant shitbags when our criminally cheap goods we'll throw away in a week don't arrive in 2 days, because apparently we just can't destroy the world fast enough. And worked at a McDonald and lumber yard Get the fuck out. You're rich man's cock gargler. Apologies for kinkshaming. What's your point bro? By these standards, no one is self made and everyone is taking advantage of each other. Welcome to society. Omg why leftists always have some insane standard for being self made. We all stand on shoulders of giants to some extent. Many but certainly not most. Aren’t you guys on break due to the whole Russia-Ukraine war? No. Both poor and rich fight together in Ukraine. The real divide is among nation lines not class Perhaps you don’t read well? surplus value is theft In the end it’s a distinction without a difference, but it is a more enjoyable road to hell. And when it comes to ipads and lap dances you have a point, that’s my choice and I’m not being coerced by anything, when it’s bread and houses and basic medical care I don’t really have a choice and if those services are used to extract my wealth at a greater rate than I can reasonably be expected to accumulate it then it’s only slightly more enjoyable than being stolen from. I'd say Oprah first. Yeah, she has problems but she was a poor black girl in the South who became....well, Oprah. You don’t think Jerry had any family or friends that helped get him show times around NY? You think if Jerry had no friends or family he would’ve still risen through the comedy club scene in NY? I don’t know the answer, just something to think about. She didn’t earn it bro, she’s privilege enough to go to medical school with support of her parents/government, there’s people in different countries that don’t have the same opportunities to go to school due to supporting their families with economic expenses, education does not give you wealth, wealth gives you higher education and gives you higher probability to grow that heritable not self made wealth Lmao, I am racist against myself? Its not racist to acknowledge that white privilege is a thing. Also that Elon Musk's privilege is a direct result of apartheid South Africa. Hit dog holla They’re people who cab prioritize the worst war since WW2 over an arguably minor problem in one country On Ukraine though, I have noticed that literally anything that is not ""Putin bad"" gets downvoted into oblivion. Like literally no other discussion can be had. I don't mean the invasion of Ukraine, but ancillary or other topics as you just said > People can handle multiple topics. We still trying to convince people there isn't a global conspiracy by scientists to kill/control us with Covid...your asking to much for asking people to think about two complex things as once when they can't understand a basic one such as it being illogical that all of the doctors on the planet randomly started saying the same wrong thing. Lol no they cannot. You're right! I don't believe in anything I say and I too used the ""r slur"" once. While I agree with your first point, your second one is harmful. People are complex, not as simple as the Rep/Dem stereotypes that you have. It's not impossible or even uncommon for a person to be deeply opposed to GWB and yet also not be on board with liberal speech reform. They are totally different issues and people's attitudes on the two can be totally independent. These stereotypes and purity tests where any one viewpoint a person has locks them into the entire platform another person stereotypes is why our dialog, communication and capacity for understanding each other is so deteriorated. Not Robert Reich, fool, I like that guy too. I mean the OP. And as we know, anyone who has worked in a presidential administration never has a bad take or ulterior motives. I just spent 4 minutes of my life thinking of how to argue. I can’t. You win. You've assumed that. True. Tbh I was more referring to when i try to explain how us imperialism has a lot of the blame for the Ukraine crisis becoming what it has become, people always say I'm a Putin supporter or whatever All good man, we all want the same thing, world peace. We might not always see eye to eye, but I'm pretty sure we all want that. I'm tired, and I'm sure you are too. I hope that you stay safe wherever you are. War crime trials for a start, but I already mentioned that I'm just a poor american, I dont make policy in my country, why do you care what I would do if I had a say in it? All I can do is vote and make comments on the internet, I'm not the person you should be yelling at So your point is we should not pressure the russian oligarchs because it wont accomplish anything? I am now suspicious that you are a russian oligarch lol Clearly ripped the bong too hard last night, my bad You don't understand what you're talking about. Lemme put it in groups like how you tried. Imagine the country's wealth is 100$. The 1% group will take about 27$, the 10 percent group including the one percent will take 70$. The rest which is the 90 percent will share 30$. I am not surprised that you do not know about the wealth gap in the U.S. They did a study about it here and most people were shocked to hear about the wealth gap and thought the wealth gap was more reasonable than the 10percent elite taking 70% of the American wealth. Also don't assume that I haven't seen enough countries and people because that's just reddit and you don't know me or anybody here. I mean, yeah. The bottom 50% hold only 2.5% of US wealth. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSB50215 So no, it’s not so obvious since the bottom 50% of the US is dirt poor compared to the wealthier 50% (or more specifically the top 1-10%) No they're not. There *are* poor people here that are as bad or worse than third world countries. But having *any* kind of property here will make you usually better off than the rest of the world. Our waste is wealth in our specific context. those are only mutually exclusive if you dont understand what the word 'inequality' means i think A blessing is divine in nature. Luck is material. r/ShitAmericansSay is calling, lol. [deleted] The US has nearly triple the population of Russia The US is similar to most other countries. But some countries are better than the US at this. There aren't very many well functioning welfare states in the world at the moment. You are out of your mind of you don't think that there is a ton of regulations in the american economy. [deleted] That's not what I'm talking about. Don't tell him what typically happens when Private companies take over government functions... I'm not a republican, or partisan at all, and I don't care about ""reaganomics"". I don't know why all of you flip your shit and go off on these wild political tangents. To me you are the radicals. > The time in history when America led in those categories were the times when America taxed and regulated it's way to being there. America was the wealthiest nation on Earth by 1871 and has been a bastion of science and industry since the start of the 19th century. There were almost ZERO taxes and regulations back then. You don't know what you're talking about. Those states are the least regulated because they have to be to function. Anyways, this is not even what I was talking about and honestly don't have any interest in arguing with fanatic political partisans about it. You guys are so cultish that you can't have discussions even about vague concepts without shit flinging or agenda toting. No, it's not. For some reason the word overregulation triggered all of you. That's a vague term that could mean anything and like half a dozen redditors applying some political stereotype to what I said. Dont they got like 1/3 of total global population and are developing countries? Basically countries still ongoing industrialization, Europe and the Anglo sphere got a 100 year head start. What’s laughable is how fast China and India have been able to catch up with you guys while at the same time dealing with more issues. I am pretty sure it doesn't mean 30x more consumption These numbers are already adjusted for PPP... You had me at drug addicts. >Even my little city in Wisconsin has a poor area with run down houses full of drug addicts man. You lost me at ""houses"". That's luxury to most humans. Tin shacks with no running water and shitting in the street (but at least you live on a hill!) is closer to average. [deleted] Bro, theres a huge difference between poor treatment of addiction, and destitution Surely there's more to qualifying the level of misery people are experiencing than the condition of buildings yes? Would you want to live there? Why not? Would you begin to feel miserable if you did? Europeans travel quite a lot, do you? > Washington Park, IL I just did. Looks like a lot of PA suburbs outside of the ""nice stuff"", meaning, a lot of PA suburbs. Lots of poorly maintained houses, trailers, broken down cars. I get that. I've seen plenty of it. But that is very, very far from what you'll see in poor areas of Russia. Unfortunately I can't give you a google street place. I'll see what I can find. [deleted] Ich habe für 4 Jahren in Stuttgart gelebt [deleted] It's not how it works at all. Poor person in Poland may have less money coming in but they have full access to medical care, can get anywhere on public transport for very little money, they buy seasonal fruit and vegetables around the corner dirt cheap or grow their own because land ownership is not nearly as concentrated as in USA and their kids can go to the same schools wealthiest kids go to since there's very little ghettoisation. And then Uni is free and government will pay maintenance grant. How does that compare? [deleted] The post reads, > is it *so* different? Is it **that** different? No, it's not. There are differences for certain. But American billionaires have ""doing horrible crime and getting away with it"" in common with Russian/Eastern billionaires. That part is not so different at all. I doubt the post was saying the United States as a whole is in the exact same situation. We have not been in a war economy since 1945. The US spends around 3.5% of GDP on its military. During WW2, at the height of the war economy, over 40% of GDP was spent on the military. While the US spends a larger amount than most economies by GDP, we actually spend a lower figure than does Russia (around 4% to 5%). Or they vote and don't understand that they're aligning with bad politics just because the person they vote for is ""good on popular issue X"". The amount of voters is currently at an all time high... Best not rock the boat then, might be you next eh buddy? Jesus christ.. Lol no So many people don’t want to, apparently. So strange that the majority of people talk about their personal realities. No it doesn't, it actually promotes discussion rather than silencing it. Like many subs do already. You could draw a lot of parallels between those two countries, like wars, propaganda etc. No less than the ""sO mOvE tO [3rd world country]"" try-hard gotcha! comments, but keep being a milquetoast neoliberal I guess lol The quote is by Robert Reich. He’s an American economist who served multiple presidents from both parties and was Clinton’s labor secretary. He’s consistently vocal against American oligarchy Agreed, people who distract from real criticisms by making inept comparisons that fail to hold up on examination are so counterproductive. Now instead of arguing about a factually correct claim, you have to argue about a stupid tangent AND you are stuck being wrong. > and little corruption **LMFAO**. I wish I had rich parents so I could be this fucking dumb. The fact those drug laws were specifically implemented for the purpose of criminalizing perceived political opponents kind of blurs the line. >“The Nixon Campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar Left, and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” -John Ehrlichman, Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon. (Insert these are the same thing meme here) The war on drugs, particularly marijuana, was 100% politics. Considering the reasoning for many of our drug laws (especially marijuana to target low income minority communities) I would say they are closer than you probably think To be fair, the average person is more likely to be a weed user than a politically vocal critic, even in rusia. The purpose of the drug war was literally to lock up political opponents and protesters No. They are exactly political prisoners. You really don't think most drug charges are political in nature?? idk, i watched to friends get beat up and locked up then charged, ended with probation, for an anti war protest like 5 years ago So what do you call Manning and Assange then? [deleted] Yep, went to a dozen BLM protests in my area, never got arrested once. In some places breaking the law became ""being outside after 6pm "" And those who did get arrested, didn’t get arrested for just being being a blm protestor, they got arrested for doing something else, as much as people would like to believe otherwise [deleted] Protesting is gathering to state grievances. It just can't be about the people in charge. Otherwise jail and beatings. Oh no that was amazingly wrong. The problem with the protests was that they were shutting down non-violent protests that were not causing disruption to traffic, walkers, etc... using violent, harmful, and sometimes lethal force. There were tons of people arrested and straight up assaulted by police officers during the BLM protests that broke zero laws. Liberals are so fucking strange. I'm anti putin as well. Buy you don't have to sweep America's problems under the rug to be anti putin. Yep, the person you're replying to basically just admitted they're a nazbol. According to whom though? That could be anyone, if they oppose communism. Why not? You were willing to engage in ridiculous anti-white supremacist talk. I'm sure Putin says the same thing. Are you Russian and are you there. That is the only way I'd take your word for it. no not really. 95% peaceful protests. And your statement supports rather than negates the fact that people in the US are in fact thrown in jail for protesting/ ""saying the government bad"", the thing you want to be different between the 2 countries. How ignorant can you be, these are well documented facts every minimally educated person should know. > While the United States represents about 4.2 percent of the world's population, it houses around 20 percent of the world's prisoners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate > In The New Yorker article The Caging of America (2012), Adam Gopnik writes: ""Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag under Stalin at its height. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries And the fact that US prisons are slave labor is also well documented https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-america/406177/ It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://inews.co.uk/news/russian-school-children-arrested-for-laying-flowers-at-ukraine-embassy-and-holding-no-to-war-signs-1494704](https://inews.co.uk/news/russian-school-children-arrested-for-laying-flowers-at-ukraine-embassy-and-holding-no-to-war-signs-1494704)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://inews.co.uk/news/russian-school-children-arrested-for-laying-flowers-at-ukraine-embassy-and-holding-no-to-war-signs-1494704](https://inews.co.uk/news/russian-school-children-arrested-for-laying-flowers-at-ukraine-embassy-and-holding-no-to-war-signs-1494704)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) I dont think he knows what ""extremely poor"" means Not trying to nitpick or belittle what you’re stating, but cost of living is what bites in to a salary - compare costs of living in relation to salaries. And then factor in cost of living. You decided not to take cost of living in to account? Why? Probably meant Allendale. To be helpful, you are expressing the terms of [absolute poverty](https://www.poverty.ac.uk/definitions-poverty/absolute-and-overall-poverty#:~:text=Absolute%20poverty%20was%20defined%20as,also%20on%20access%20to%20services.) There is a lot of good philosophical literature on the subject by Thomas Pogge. And you are right, it is extremely rare to find absolute poverty in the U.S. it mostly exists on American Indian reservations. You are a very good example of Dunning Krueger syndrome. You know little about Native lands, less about poor areas of the U.S., and nothing of third world countries. Two ears, two eyes, one mouth. Try using the first two more than the last one. Did you not read my comment? I provided some examples that you could easily type int google and see for yourself. Unless you want me to baby you with some links I mean they're technically correct. 1.6 million Americans don't have access to indoor plumbing. America has 330 million people so you're bound to find something. It's just that comparing it to Russia where 20 percent of people don't have access to indoor plumbing is extremely dishonest. It's like talking about the antebellum south and saying slavery is still an issue today. The second statement would be fine in a vacuum but seems ridiculous juxtaposed against the first. America has a population of 330 million. Of those, 1.6 million don't have indoor plumbing. Even for someone living in extremely poverty a lack of running water is extremely abnormal. The tap water is only bad for non locals. Lmfao do your research. Google exists its not my job to serve you information because you are embarrassed and need a win. The entire state of TX is a giant water violation. You are more likely to get bone cancer as a texan because of the amount of radium in the water (Brady TX being the hardest hit). Thats an area larger than several poor countries. (3rd world just means they didnt participate in ww2 lol get educated and was turned into a slang slur for poor countries so congrats on the flagrant use i guess) Montezuma's Revenge is just not having the right gut flora and fauna. Locals won't get it as easily. Here's a whole 5.7M pop state with drinking water out of the tap http://datos.nl.gob.mx/n-l-poblacion-en-viviendas-con-acceso-a-servicios-de-agua-potable-por-municipio/ Not sure you even know what that slur means. The term is meant to denote a country that did not participate in ww2 or 1. It turned into a slur because the countries were often poor. Its a city that has very recently poisoned its people with lead in the water. Brady TX and TX in general is another place with bad drinking water. Your chances to get bone cancer go up simply by living in tx. The slur is just a slur and i promise you have no idea what life is like for those people. Plenty regular dudes doing regular things. Its just a strawman argument to avoid the real issue that our poverty class should not exist in a country that leads the world. They were without clean water for years and gaslit about the reality till a third party source tested the water. Entire family lines have brain damage. If you choose to believe the same government that lied thats your choice. Everyone is innocent when they investigate themselves. You are ignorant. Thats a choice. https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-where-most-residents-lack-running-water-2021#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20Alaska%20and%20New,Native%20and%20American%20Indian%20populations. Jackson MS doesn't even have clean water rn. Nor do they have a waste disposal system. So garbage is piling up, and water isn't clean enough to drink. Its bad. You can always tell which people are super privileged on reddit because they are so detached from what poverty in America is like. Dude doesn't know. There are projects and ghettos that would defy everything he has said. I used to live in LA, downtown in fact. Used to drive down skid row here and there to get to where I was going. You know what skid row is lined with? Office buildings, businesses. They aren't shanty towns built with wood and scrap metal. Just because homeless people decided that's where they wanna setup there stuff doesn't make it a third world country. A third world country is where [stuff like this](https://www.compassion.com/Images/the-compassion-legacy-day-22.jpg) is a living condition for a MASSIVE number of people. We dont have that in the US. The poorest people in the US outside of the homeless which make up only 0.17% of the population(most of which still live somewhere, but living isnt stable) don't live somewhere even remotely close to that. 24.4% of the homeless population is centralized in just 2 cities as well. I remember a clip I saw from 90 day fiance on youtube that shows you how much those of us in the US have NO idea how good we have it and really are ungrateful. Sounded like you are skeptical they exist. They’re in the cities and rural communities. Mississippi delta area maybe? Yea I can, thanks for the input though. And yes I’ve been to 3rd world countries. I never said anywhere here resembles them EXACTLY. But there’s glaring similarities. Actually in relation to salaries and cost of life Russian middle class fares pretty good. I've been in both US and Russia and even the less rich areas near Kazakhstan wasn't bad like some afro-american ghettos I've seen in Georgia or south Carolina or the many homeless favelas around the country. They also have public health care which US could afford if they just made some cuts to military expenses. All houseless people live in poverty, but not all people in poverty are houseless. If the middle class in Russia is the same as people in poverty in the US then they must have a substantial houseless population. I’ve been to villages in Lebanon and Syria and live in Los angles. Oh no the same shit is here in Los Angeles, I say this with confidence. Full blown starvation and hopelessness and danger. They don’t have goats tho Lol, you have a very interesting opinion of poor. It's pretty hard to own a car and an A/C when you don't even have a home, a good credit rating and job to finance a car or even money for gas and electricity if you somehow manage to get your hands on those things. Poor is poor. Acknowledging poverty in one region does not disrespect poor people in other places. That's like saying that acknowledging a broken leg is disrespectful to people dying of cancer. should probably sell one of those houses then Too fucking many? Huh? At DAPL protests the cops used a water cannon on the crowd of protestors in like ~30F weather. What protests were you at? >And you're right that America was until recently moving in a Russia-like direction... because of the Republican Party, who are funded by Russia. Huh? The beatings of Occupy protestors happened mostly in blue states, with blue mayors and governors overseeing it. The same goes for most BLM protests and so on. Chuck Schumer said that he wanted to make a federal law banning protests of Israel his top priority in 2021, but then he luckily got shut down - but not because not enough people in Congress don't want to do it, but because Republicans refuse to work with him, even tho this is something that Republicans love otherwise. Just because it hasn't happened to you dosent mean it dosent occur lol People in Portland and Minneapolis were literally abducted by cops in street clothes in unmarked vehicles and fired on indiscriminately with ""less than lethal"" rounds. Those are not red cities. Just because it hasn't happened to you does not mean it doesn't happen Getting arrested and released can cause you to lose a job, and the waterfall circumstances that happen after that can permanently ruin your life. Lmfao no way. That happened a lot during the George Floyd protests. Where you at all of them? Lol found the capitol protester What % of blm protests were violent, do you honestly think I’m not debating. I’m just casually posting on Reddit. My husband and his family left due to antisemitism when the USSR was still a thing. They have gone back many times. I’m actually doing pretty well and don’t have much to complain about in my personal life. That doesn’t mean that I can’t care about others and the state of the country I have called home for decades. It’s not all about the individual. You assume that I must be personally affected in order to discuss such things. I have not been rude to you. I have not made baseless accusations against anyone. Ad hominem attacks always invalidate whatever point you may have been trying to advance. imagine seeing ""oh my country has problems"" and thinking ""get out of here then asshole"" as opposed to ""oh, how do we fix them? Let's fix them"". Real smoothbrain response lol I have traveled to developing nations. Some are definitely third world. We have areas that lack indoor plumbing in the states. Hookworm, a disease of poverty, is endemic in parts of the southern states. Do you know how those terms came about? I don’t think so because it you were familiar you wouldn’t have used incorrect terms. I’m a girl but okay. I have seen the poverty and undeveloped world conditions in the United States. I’m just saying the United States has very serious issues and has no right lecturing others. I understand the rural areas are different. Same as the United States. Some areas lack indoor plumbing. Same in the United States. Aha I see. Apologies for that misreading and for the erroneous reply based on that. I think I’ll take a little break from commenting on Reddit for a bit. This is the second time recently I’ve made a similar mistake so best I take a little Timeout. I mean, in his first two terms (1999-2008) Russian GDP grew by 94%. That's why he still has support from older Russians, especially those who lived in the Soviet Union. Not defending him or his current actions, just saying ""corrupt, lying murder"" is not his only legacy Source: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/19/long-read-russias-economy-under-putin-in-numbers-a66924 I was discussing this with some people yesterday. Regardless of if it’s true or not, based on his perception if he had just retired after his term as Medvedevs PM, he’d be remembered as one of the greatest rulers of Russia. It’s so ironic that in his quest for legacy he ruined whatever he had built up trump was all about giving businesses everything they wanted. cut regs, etc. Add to that the trump tax cuts have benefitted businesses and the wealthy tremendously, while a few crumbs were thrown to the 99% (the corporate tax cuts are permanent; the tax cuts for the rest of us expire in a year) so trump got tremendous support from big money, as evidenced by the size of his campaign funds. but all that money wasn't enough to make up for the fact that trump has never won the popular vote for a thing in his life and he got his ass kicked again, and this time the undemocratic electoral weightings weren't enough to save him Didnt Russiagate waste billions of dollars to conclude there was no Russian backing for Trump? Lmao what public comments. Saying you like Putin is far from proof of the cooperation he was accused of. Also if you have been keeping up with recent news, you will see the DNC’s involvement in starting these allegations Lmao got me. But if you look at some of my other comments I’m not exactly a Republican either. Except the Russians did, actually, hack our democracy. And the West was trying to negotiate up until the moment the tanks started rolling. Hell, Macron and Zelensky are *still* trying to negotiate right now. It's the Russians who refused to play ball. Unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and those without a high school diploma all reached record lows. Unemployment for women hit its lowest rate in nearly 70 years. Lifted nearly 7 million people off of food stamps. Poverty rates for African Americans and Hispanic Americans reached record lows. Income inequality fell for two straight years, and by the largest amount in over a decade. The bottom 50 percent of American households saw a 40 percent increase in net worth. Wages rose fastest for low-income and blue collar workers – a 16 percent pay increase. African American homeownership increased from 41.7 percent to 46.4 percent. This is a joke…. Right !!! Our current economic situation is horrible.. inflation like we haven’t seen in 40 yrs , cost of living that can’t keep up with inflation , gas at $4 a gal , war and conflict around the the global, Open boarded Yea I sure could use a mean tweet right about now. Thanks to the Democratic and there horrific policies and a weak president I’m a lot worse off now than I was during Trump leadership. But you keep telling yourself that the Democratic have your back 🤣 Yes. Additional education budget absolves the democrats from the many other terrible pieces of legislation that they either fail to pass, or pass and it affects literally no one. The arrogance in your comment disgusts and astounds me, truly. You certainly aren't getting politeness points. > advocating Talk is cheap, let me know when they actually do something. Always like Democrats to call names. You can’t have a legitimate conversation without resorting to name calling and insults. As soon as you do that, you lose. Additional education funding???? Funding isn’t the only issue when it comes to education. Some of the worst performing schools systems in the U.S. have some of the highest per student funding (look at Baltimore). The destruction of the charter school system in NY by the Dems and their refusal to support vouchers to allow low income students to afford better education shows that they are only interested in solutions when it helps the Teachers Unions. George H W Bush Dude, do you really think that the Ukrainians in those regions want to be part of Russia? Which part? Maybe I'am dramatizing a little bit if my relatives were killed in that war and have been killed and are now currently being jailed and or tortured and killed for just expressing even the tiniest amount of disagreement with the regime. Lol do you actually think he attacked them without a reason? Thank you Lmao. So many people have this idea that because US= bad, and Putin opposes the US, that we should apologize for or water down his shit. Nah, Putin is even worse. The head of the Russian state meeting with US heads of state makes him a puppet? Do you people know anything about the world? Russia is a member of G8, of course they’ll meet and will have had many meetings on global policy and diplomacy. If he’s a puppet, he does the US’s bidding. Where is any evidence of that? They were expecting to exploit it anyway. That is the ""cool"" thing about neoliberalism, all you need is capital. Borders or countries don't matter once you've imposed neoliberalism. That is why traditional annexation wars rarely happen anymore, since the exploitation happens through other means. God damn try to actually look at the underlying causes (the US interfering directly) Hopefully you can move away from such divisive ideology There is a difference but honestly not as much as there should be. We have a serious problem with our western ""oligarchs"" and saying we're not as and as the most unequel nation on Earth is pathetic bar. Yeah, you fail to mention inflation. Fake numbers don't mean anything. I'd rather live in an economy with less inequality because my dollar goes further and its less immoral. Its not an even trade and its a deal made under threat of starvation and homelessness. Its not a deal made in a vacuum. You agree to it under duress. Its wage slavery. The rich always gets the better end of the deal by being a parasite of those who actually do the work. How someone feels about their own financial self interest is irrelevant to what's right or fair. Inheriting =/= earning. If I inherited a billion dollars, through no effort of my own, I wouldn't be whining about paying taxes on it. dude if I inherited a billion dollars I'd be doing that kind of shit all the time. you could drop $100k on some rando once a day every day for the rest of your life, and it would have less impact on your net worth than the average American giving a homeless person $5 Would you let 99 children starve, so the one who didn’t need it, wouldn’t get a free meal? So to your question, I wouldn’t take offense to that. I would be fine to be taxed on that billion. Even one million, because I pay my taxes. Because what I get in return is so much more. I don’t have to hunt. I don’t have to cut down trees to burn for heat. I am protected, children can go to school and receive an education. How come you didn’t ask me about the fact that I would be paying a lot of taxes, but Walmart (or other corporations) are not paying a fair wage so we have to pay their employees healthcare? That is a pretty tall strawman you got setup there. The 1% provides nothing. The 99% are the ones making, selling, moving, and creating value. Literally an physical impossibility for 1% to provide more resources than the 99%. Fuck off [deleted] Those 1% are parasites, sucking the value made in the production model from workers and commodities alike. Of course scum recognize and adore scum, goody boys like you will always sit on the laps of handlers. I don’t know if your 2 braincells can comprehend this but those 1% don’t “provide” resources bud, they extract it; do you think wealth just spawns out of nowhere? It is made from extracting resources and converting it into commodities/services. Getting richer means extracting more resources so where in your black hole of a skull do you get the idea of them “providing” from? Aside from that, I’d rather parasites not leech of my tax dollars. Provide resources? You can't eat money. Are you telling me a billionaire is giving me free water or making my burger? No, laborers provide. The 1% are parasites. no it literally doesnt. but if it really means that much to you (it doesn't, youre just concern trolling), I can say something more unwieldy like ""the guys at the top"" >No, that's not how net worth works. Having a million and buying a Lambo still leaves you with the same net worth. It isn't until the Lambo deprecates in value and all those shaky investments go up in smoke that his net worth becomes zero or negative, and from that moment the NFL player probably SHOULD count as functionally poor despite owning a Lambo. They don't buy the Lambo with cash, they spent the cash on parties and decorating their crib. They borrowed money to buy the Lambo. >Meanwhile, he can make a million and invest 1.2 million and technically not have any income - and pay any tax - for the year. The rich are actively encouraged to work towards zero income for tax purposes, and they know how to do it. Elon Musk paid ZERO income tax over 2018. Except they don't do that. Plenty of high income earners spend more than they earn and do not invest. They have a negative networth. >You also can't argue that a mom living in a car at 500 dollars a month in the US with 10.000 in debt is 10x better off than that Chinese farmer living in a shack making 2 dollars a day. A NFL player who makes $5m net a year and spends $6m has negative networth and yet they're obviously massively better off than the Chinese farmer. And the mom living in their car with $500 a month is definitely better off than the Chinese farmer making $2 per day. I've been middle class in China and poor in the US, the latter is much better. I was literally raised by a single mom earning a dollar more than the minimum wage. >I'll agree that net worth isn't the complete picture, but income is so much worse of a comparison. Nah. Answer my question smart ass, do you claim he is not super-wealthy? Here is a bunch of other sources on his wealth: [https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/politician/democrat/robert-reich-net-worth/](https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/politician/democrat/robert-reich-net-worth/) [https://www.wiki.ng/en/wiki/robert-reich-net-worth-income-salary-earnings-biography-695051](https://www.wiki.ng/en/wiki/robert-reich-net-worth-income-salary-earnings-biography-695051) [https://moneyinc.com/robert-reich-net-worth/](https://moneyinc.com/robert-reich-net-worth/) [https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/democrats/robert-reich-net-worth/](https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/democrats/robert-reich-net-worth/) [deleted] There's a *very* significant difference between someone helping me buy a house for my personal use, and someone helping me establish an exploitative business empire so I can make billions while forcing people to piss in bottles and doing my best to bust their unions. Let's imagine the oligarchs in Russia weren't gifted state-run institutions; but rather, their parents' institutions. Would it suddenly be fine? Would their control in and influence over the government now be completely ethical because their ventures weren't tax-funded? >Jeff Bezos is wealthy because people voluntarily used his service Jeff Bezos is wealthy because thousands of hard-working engineers, designers, programmers, warehouse staff and delivery drivers built and now maintain the service that people voluntarily use, and he takes the lion's share of the profit because he's the one with the big chair. Amazon isn't ""his service."" At best it was his idea, but built and maintained with the labour of countless other people who are denied the full value of what they produce because of the structure of our economy. >If I were you I'd be asking why the money you are forced to surrender to the government is being used to bankroll free healthcare and subsidized college in foreign countries and not your own I can ask this while also being against the institutions of capital, lmao. I think everyone should be entitled to free healthcare and education, and I *also* think billionaires shouldn't exist. This is a really absurd diversionary tactic, the idea that you can't both be mad at rich people and *also* think that government funds are being allocated improperly. >assuming you are American I'm not. >If you don't care about that I do. Again, we can be mad at multiple things. *Amazon* provides incredibly useful services. I.e., those over a million people are the ones doing that, not Bezos. Therein lies my point. You act like Bezos is responsible for all that Amazon does and he only employs those million people as an act of charity. They're the ones making the money. Sure, it’s not perfect. It’s meant to be simple and easy to understand. My point is that the countries aren’t comparable. If you want to use the PPP, then sure, but the PPP tells an even more bleak story than comparing average incomes, yet it’s less understandable to the average person. https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm [deleted] Saying that people who live in alley ways and die on the street “live like kings” is more insulting than anything I said to you. I understand why you don’t want to talk tho, I wouldn’t want to elaborate either if I had such a nonsensical opinion Our wealth gap is actually higher than Russia’s. Our standard of living just higher because we have a larger middle class. He likes to buy the shittier brand of crayons that never work (RoseArt) instead of getting Crayola crayons which are the gold standard of crayons lol That’s only if you’re under the assumption that somehow it’s impossible for us to change the voter turnout rate. All of the differences between close elections are always **far** less than the number of people who are able to vote, but just chose not to vote. And that doesn’t even get to the people who are not yet registered to vote, but who are legally eligible to register to vote.. Or the debate is limited at 2 voices. It is kept this way by design obviously. There is enormous social pressure baked into the system to keep poor/avg people blaming other poor/avg people for the issues that are caused entirely by the American elite. The only way forward is to bridge the synthetic divide between left and right and start looking UP. That is what will cause real change which is why you have real money behind these stupid astroturfers popularizing subs like r/enlightenedcentrism or whatever it is to try and discourage or mock people who actually want to work together. The two party system is broken but the bigger issue is nobody with integrity and a will for change wants to run for political offices. Were all stuck with mostly greedy people who dont care that much about their constituents. No, you seem to only be talking about the people who actually vote. If you look at the difference between polls of likely American voters, and polls of all American adults, you’ll see that the average American adult is much further to the left than the average American who’s actually likely to show up and vote. And then young people on the left (and on the right, but it’s more hypocritical coming from the left haha) are the same fucking idiots that say that voting doesn’t matter, I don’t fucking understand it at all, it’s like the answers right fucking there that we need to all participate more, and then we wonder why we’ve got issues that other developed nations don’t when were the developed nation with like the lowest fucking voter turnout rate in the world. >50/50 split on how to fix things No, it's a 50/50 split on which shitty option is slightly less shitty while also hating the other 50. I could list a dozen ideas to fix things which aren't even part of the political discussion because they are all corporatists and would never entertain the idea. Find me a candidate that suggests putting labor on the board of a company, and I'll show you a candidate that gets no media attention or funding. Considering some of the representatives in congress, this really doesn't say much about the voters. I can honestly say I know both of the senators from my state, Corey Booker and Bob Menendez. Bob is a typical north Jersey dick, but Corey is an actual decent person, who always treated my staff really well when he did events there. Never treated them like wait staff, but humans. Bob, on the other hand, acted like a privileged twat. Most people don’t vote just because. If we had half as much civic engagement as we do, things would be radically different, but then again, people only turn to civic engagement when their comfort is disrupted. I’d say generally, the current state of affairs is what the people want. I think my representative is complete dogshit. Yup, this is the main reason here. The media controls the coverage of candidates. I tried to vote in my local election but I couldn't find any information about some of the candidates online. Mail in ballots were very helpful because I could look up all the names in my own time to figure how who I wanted to vote for. Keep asking [why](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys). Behind messaging from the media are financial incentives. No they don’t, not at all. It’s like you guys don’t understand that the people who we vote for and win local elections now are the same people who run for regional elections in 10 years, state elections 10 years after that, and federal elections another decade after that. When you’re voting for your highway superintendent, you’re also voting for a potential state official 20 years down the line. Also, maybe you slept through history or government classes, but on paper we’re literally a democratic republic, not a democracy… I get your point, but let's not pretend the majority of voters are doing any real research on candidates. They're picking D or R and whoever is noted as the incumbent. Lmao you can’t even spell unopposed but you’re trying to pretend like you understand how politics work What makes you think we can vote oligarchy out of power? No. Because competitors can’t get their foot in the door. The already elected officials have the funding, resources and ties to those that can get them re-elected. Someone with fresh ideas needs to work for years to get to be a contender on the ballot, and by that point they are typically corrupted by the system. This is a dark question but.. do you think it will change as boomers start to die off? I hope so. You mean the boomers and gen xers. Amen This is not true, and to the extent that it is kind of true, it does not indicate agreement by the parties. You get a much better perspective on their legislative priorities by looking at what each party tries and fails to pass. Most of the time, you do not have one party in power with a super majority, so anything too extreme simply cannot pass. And democrats, when they are in power, have to deal with the fact that (1) the party contains both the far left and the center left (and maybe the center right), so they cannot get a majority of the party for anything sufficiently progressive, and (2) they respect the fact that their legislation affects more than just the people who vote for them and so they make a good faith effort to negotiate with republicans, who in turn negotiate in bad faith. For both those reasons, what they vote on is often watered down from what many in the party would like, and even when it isn't, it has no chance of passing. When democrats are not in power, they feel like they cannot simply be obstructionist, only filibustering the most vile, most extreme, most heinous legislation. As such, judging congress on what actually gets passed gives a very skewed view of how they would legislate with a bit more power. Democrats would be a little bit better. Republicans would be significantly worse. But even then, there is still enough differences in what each party passes when in power now that they are clearly still very different, even if they are both quite business friendly (with one side trying to find a balance between labor and capital, and the other side trying to give capital a rim job). But judging based on congress right now is definitely skewed, because despite appearances, democrats do not control the senate. Even if you count Manchin and Sinema, who do not seem to support the deomcrat's legislative agenda, you have 49 democrats and 1 indepdent, plus the VP. That is enough to get them the majority leadership, but not enough to get them even a majority. He bought and sold real estate in the Bay Area for the past several decades and then started giving seed capital to the tech companies that started growing in the area. You'd be really really rich too if you had done that. They're also nowhere near the most successful traders in history. Most successful traders in history? Since when did they beat Rentech? Shut the fuck up and stop lying. >Her and the husband just so happened to become the most successful traders in history. This is just a flat out lie, they're not even close. Pelosi's entire trading strategy is buying deep itm tech leaps. It works when the market is going up every year but her latest positions have tanked in value by 50% in a few months. I'm just saying, she's old as hell, she's been in Congress collecting a six-figure paycheque for decades, and she's in the perfect position to buy-and-hold for long periods of time. There's always this implication of corruption or insider dealing underlying these types of observations that has never seemed warranted to me. Both parties have refused to progress in the 30 years I’ve been alive. Now that they have started to, the Democrats are going more towards their European equivalents while the Republicans have become more and more tyrannical and extremist in their views and patterns- at least from what I’ve seen > The last State of The Union was embarrassing. He muttered through the whole thing. He has a stammer. It's literally a medical condition. Find something to criticize him for that doesn't make you look like an asshole. At least Biden has a legitimate stutter problem. Trump just has a vocabulary of a 4 year old, and talks in nothing but conjecture. You can't even really compare between the 2, because 1 has a cult following of twits, and the other haa supporters that actually criticize him for not doing a great job, and avoid making fun of his disability. When your go to is insulting a literal disability, that he actually handles extremely well, then your argument is invalid. The best saver in the entire world apparently And you are a coward who'll only criticize people through a throwaway. much of their wealth comes from her husband's heavy investments in stocks that include Apple, Disney, Comcast and Facebook. some of these investments occurred while pelosi was working on anti-trust legislation to better regulate the tech industry [deleted] Why would you expect to have a 10th of the assets of a high-earning octogenarian who's also been investing religiously when you've only been amassing wealth for a decade? Compound interest leads to exponential growth. If you religiously put away $120,000/year for 50 years, you'll only amass $7.6 million or so in the first 25 years, and the next 25 years will get you an additional $41 million. >or influence leaders [In academic research](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B), America's oligarchs include rich individuals, but also our powerful organized interest groups representing wealthy corporations and industries. Nancy has a 9-figure net worth, but Facebook has 12. [The total wealth of all members of Congress combined wasn't even $3 billion](https://rollcall.com/2018/02/27/wealth-of-congress-richer-than-ever-but-mostly-at-the-very-top/) a few years ago. That is too much, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to America's corporate wealth. The levers of real political power in America are in board rooms, not the floor of Congress. [deleted] He bought his way in via shares, but he did not invent them. Yea… Yea… Did he invent electric cars? Or the technology in Teslas? Bro his cars are dog shit they just had to recall like 25% of them cuz the front hood was coming up and blocking drivers vision 😂 Btw Elon not gonna fuck you no matter how much you simp for him I hate to tell you this You’re right in saying the wealth divide in the US isn’t as severe as it is in Russia, and that the Russian people suffer more under oligarchs. However there’s no doubt not just reading the comments on a Reddit thread but taking a serious look at our current political system’s level of exploitation it’s hard to deny that America is infested with aspects of oligarchy particularly in career politicians with absurd net worths as well as the 1%’rs who have the collateral to play the game with them, no it’s not literally Russia but to be honest I think Putin’s ‘presidency’ is a nightmare version of someone similar to Trump having no checks and balances and literal freedom to fuck with the constitution so that he can run the country like a corporation that squeezes everything to the last drop for the benefit of himself and a few rich buddies, we don’t have to be at that point yet to know we’re in the wrong direction if you read for comprehension you'll notice i said money is the best *single* indicator of who will win an election. (if money isn't a factor on who wins, than why is so much being spent?) >A quite different theoretical tradition argues that U.S. policy making is dominated by individuals who have substantial economic resources, i.e., high levels of income or wealth—including, but not limited to, ownership of business firms. >A landmark work in this tradition is G. William Domhoff’s detailed account of how elites (working through foundations, think-tanks, and an “opinion-shaping apparatus,” as well as through the lobbyists and politicians they finance) may dominate key issues in U.S. policy making despite the existence of democratic elections. Philip A. Burch has exhaustively chronicled the economic backgrounds of federal government officials through American history. Thomas Ferguson’s analysis of the political importance of“major investors” might be seen as a theory of economic elites. Most recently, Jeffrey Winters has posited a comparative theory of “Oligarchy,” in which the wealthiest citizens—even in a “civil oligarchy” like the United States—dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth and income protection. Page 566 [removed] Yes without a doubt our political system is better. I will qualify this a bit though - we are not perfect. The massive wave of protests in the US summer of 2020 were met with intense political repression snd state violence. Peaceful protesters beaten down by police. Feds spying on protestors, and kidnapping them in unmarked vans. I’ll also say, because of the complacency of the American people, their (relatively) comfortable economic conditions, and the immense propaganda we are served - there really is no reason for our government to repress as much as Russia, if you agree that any regime would be primarily concerned with its own survival. Protests here call for things that don’t actually threaten the power of those at the top. And when they do, such as defund the police or The Battle for Seattle, they are met with state repression. In Russia, protests against the very existence of the regime itself are far more common (and that’s a good thing). Some examples: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-seattle-police-in-1999-set-the-terrible-example-others-have-followed-since https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ferguson-death-mystery-black-lives-matter-michael-brown-809407/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ferguson-death-mystery-black-lives-matter-michael-brown-809407/ 6 Ferguson activists killed in “violent, mysterious ways” is not a coincidence the petro-fertilizer state is comparable in the sense that it is an oligarchy like the united states, yes The fact that Russia's GDP is twice as reliant on oil & gas as the US GDP (around ~8% of US GDP is oil & gas, while around ~15% of Russian GDP is from oil & gas) is completely meaningless to the question of how much power, wealth and influence the elites have. First you claimed that the size of the GDP matters, now you are claiming that energy sector size in relation to GDP matters, but none of that matters to the question if a state is an oligarchy. Russia would still be an oligarchy if the makeup of their GDP was different. Replacing oil wells with nuclear reactors would change nothing, as long as the money & influence from those profits still flow to a small number of... oligarchs. Ok then explain it to me. Define the difference between the US and Russia regarding oligarchy. Explain how US oligarchs do not have an even comparable type of power as Russian oligarchs. Explain it like I'm five. If you can't explain something to someone who doesn't know what you know about it, you kinda aren't qualified to be talking about it. Oligarchy is when your country is poor it's called a democracy when your country is rich enough to vaguely pretend to answer to anyone but the richest oligarchs. That is why the only people who always get what they want every election are the mega rich Oh boy, school got out early today. Still dodging the question huh? The person attacks are telling 🥱 I definitely don’t agree. The government largely takes from the rich and gives to the poor. If you don’t believe me, try to abolish taxes or parts of the govt and see who objects. It’s not the rich arguing for more government and taxes. His wealth increase has absolutely no bearing on his tax liability because it is solely due to the increase in the worth of his assets. This isn’t news, and this is how the tax code of virtually every country in the world works. > He still pays a lower percentage then the middle class by design. the US wants to make the US the best place to start a company so they make the tax system very favorable for business owners. this DOES directly benefit the working class individual so long as they arent paycheck to paycheck. US market has outperformed international equities pretty significantly in the recent decades. the US problems are extremely minor on a global scale. Nobody pays taxes on wealth. If the weird Musk fans do get their opinions on social media, but that shouldn’t encourage you to do the same. You aren’t stating facts, you’re regurgitating garbage people circulate on Reddit. His family did not own an apartheid diamond mine in South Africa. His father (a politician in an anti-apartheid party) owned a share in an emerald mine in Zambia, which doesn’t have the history of apartheid or conflict mining you’re suggesting. He’s estranged from his father anyway and the mine seems to have dried up years ago. He is directly involved in the design and production of his products. There’s an interview online where gives a long tour of SpaceX’s Starship facility, and it’s evident he actually understands the technical details. To my knowledge Tesla had not sold a single car before Musk became involved. He just paid the highest tax bill ever. I don’t understand how he’s robbed the American people when his companies have created thousands of jobs and revolutionized space launch. I have, but go ahead and assert that your blind jingoistic nonsense is somehow correct because you guzzled propaganda your entire life You're never gonna be the feudal lord so it's really funny you defend the system that produces them Scratch an economist and a fascist little baby cries Bro hey bro yo bro sup bro did you get that from a Ben shapeeno video bro sick debate bro great talking points fuck those people starving in the streets bro gotta uphold Austrian thought amirite bro So this online form isn't here to help educate each other and debate topics. It's just here to belittle and insult people who aren't educated and for the people who are to pay themselves on the back Again, anagram for “oblivious”: “It’s perfectly acceptable to point out that nobody becomes successful purely by their own efforts.” In your mind every lawyer, doctor, entrepreneur, small business owner, etc have been aided along the way. In fact you are so certain of this - you say NOBODY has ever been successful on their own. You may sit in depression and blame the world for YOUR shortcomings in life. The reality is your decisions led you to where you are. Never forget. Interesting how this comment section is full of people attacking the US from the left and from the right, but what they all have in common is defending Russia's war crimes... It's no crime.... Wow you really don’t understand how wealth is accumulated. Sheer ignorance right here. The Bank of England are not a bank FFS. Do you still think I'm an idiot? Statistics and propaganda are like peanut butter and jelly. Ultimately the US wealth gap is higher but they have a larger middle class. Still though, the standard of living between the poor in Russia and the poor in the US is pretty comparable. The wealth distribution reminds me of America in the 30s. It wasn’t until after WWII that the American middle class began to flourish. I imagine Russia has bright days ahead of it. It may take a while though and a few wars before they get there though. Optimal, compared to what? According to who? How do you know this? Uhhhh you certainly can, for the same reason a heart surgery consult would go to a cardiologist and not a neurologist. I have one dude with a laundry list of accomplishments on one side, and some dude on the internet going “ummmmm ackshually this is wrong, source: trust me”. don't bother, this is a fascist sub. look at the comment history of the mods here. they aren't progressive, they support fascist regimes like russia and china while pretending to be left wing What were you a plant for Pete? All I’m saying is spinning Reich as Russian disinformation is peak Hilary neolib nonsense. There are oligarchs here. And Russia. And all over the world running most of it. It’s just a fact. Just because we all have smart phones and big tvs doesn’t mean we aren’t getting fucked. Fascism and GZ in the same word? Lol [deleted] Counterpoint: r/conservative [deleted] The US backed the current Ukraine government. Are you seriously trying to tell me the US doesn’t still meddle with foreign governments? LOL you dumb fucking idiot. Go back to anti work you dumb fcuking NEET. Of course 200K is a lot for a loser like you. [https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r](https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r) Not only you're a fucking dumbass but you also repeat myths about the ""apartheid"" mines. LOL like a fucking loon just repeating some conspiracy shit. Have fun loser. Blocked. It's immoral to offer a cheaper and more convenient way to shop than going to Sears? This is a hilarious claim considering Amazon was the small player not the big box retail stores. Correct me if I am wrong, but to summarize you are saying that if we voted (or put more of our efforts) in the more granular Political sphere, it’ll force the higher spheres to moderation because the higher offices depend on them? or is my notion of republic incorrect here. Would that really lead to a more moderate presidency? It makes sense in writing but I don’t know enough about the mechanisms behind it to be confident in that conclusion (based on what I know which isn’t a lot tbh) I mean... you vote to choose how the electors vote. You do not choose who the electors are. Theoretically they have the free will to vote how they want but that's almost never happened. And to head off the next criticism, yeah, you can vote in the primaries too. Don't blame Zuckerberg for you, and 70% of the electorate, only caring about politics for one general election every four years. That's on you for your dereliction of duty as a citizen of a democracy. The minority who live in rural areas shouldn't be deciding how the people who live in big cities get to live. Then you also agree that an increasingly smaller portion of the population gets to decide who is in charge You're right. The choice between Trump and Biden was much more meaningful, as there are actual legitimate differences between them. For instance, I can't stand Trump's obnoxious toupe while I find Biden's sensible, old white man hair much more soothing to the nerves They did actually give Bernie less funding than Hilary, which was what the lawsuit was about. And they're legally allowed to do that. About 1/3 of people didn't vote in 2020, in 2016 more people didn't vote than voted for either candidate. Me voting 3rd party doesn't take a vote from either ""side"" because they never had my vote. maybe after a decade or two of dems only getting 25% of the vote theyll figure out they cant win without us and make some concessions to the left instead of moving right every year thanks for the brief explanation true, but the two main parties would never enact a law instituting ranked choice voting or single transferable vote voting because it would lose them a lot of the power they have. that’s why i think the 2 main parties have a shared monopoly on their power- can’t vote for a third party because it will weaken the main party you are closest to supporting, but only a third party would be ok with a voting method that would weaken the 2 main parties Someone that shares the same opinion as the President of the United States is a Russian bot? Your world must be so small. “For the first time in our history, a president not just lost an election; he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol,” Biden says in a speech marking the first anniversary of the attack on the US Congress. So gallows aren’t peaceful? If you were heading out on a journey by sea who would you ideally want deciding who was in charge of the vessel? Nationality is so irrelevant to most of them, that's literally the point. When you've stolen enough resources you're effectively stateless and can do whatever you want. Nothing ""elite deep state"" about it. Martin Luther King Jr was literally assassinated by the US Govt., it's not a secret or a conspiracy. This is all literally public. The Govt. sent letters to MLK Jr. trying to blackmail him into killing himself, and when that didn't work, they just did it themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO ""Beginning in 1969, leaders of the Black Panther Party were targeted by the COINTELPRO and ""neutralized"" by being assassinated, imprisoned, publicly humiliated or falsely charged with crimes. [...] giving written approval for limited wiretapping of Martin Luther King's phones ""on a trial basis, for a month or so."" Indeed, there is plenty of inequality. That doesn’t mean that other people are worse off or poor. I just think it’s hilarious. If you dig even a little you'll find that every US based oligarch either had or made such connections very early on. The US just lies about it more and the media plays interference and PR for them. I don't think it's that important in the discussion of the outcome of being an oligarchy - public policy is controlled by the wealthy who can lobby for their interests. How that wealth was accumulated has nothing to do with the definition of what an oligarchy is. The US meets the criteria Exactly. Millions of people voted billions of times to make Bezos rich. Taxes that are used to fund bombing in the middle east? Taxes that are used for corporate welfare? Taxes that are used for simingly good causes but in reality feed crony hospitals and Universities which in turn increase prices? Those taxes? Now seriously, taxation is only as good as the causes it is used for, and in the US taxes are overwhelmingly used for terrible causes. That's not a bug, that's a feature of letting people spend someone else's money. It's not unique to the US, all countries use tax money for terrible causes. I would much prefer keeping my money and spending it as I see fit. Literally what a business loan is. FYI cable/internet and other telecom industries (utilities) have 100% produced billionaires (Comcast, Verizon, etc) and they were propped up and essentially created in scope and means with things like tax-payer funded (private profits) infrastructure, tax breaks, and competition-busting regulation by the federal government. It’s not a surprise that Comcast is a huge democratic donor year over year. Clinton was big in the telecom utility sphere. “[Babby’s first debate](https://i.imgur.com/ROXLfyo.jpg)” The bottom 50% holds far less than 50% of the National household wealth, so you’re arguing with inaccurate assumptions. The bottom [50% is only roughly $8 trillion](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/) so yes. It's very true. You don't understand inequality do you? It's much greater at the bottom. The bottom 50% holds far less than 50% of the National household wealth, so you’re arguing with inaccurate assumptions. >Total household wealth in the US is $144 trillion. According to the [popclock](https://www.census.gov/popclock/), there are 332.5 million people in the U.S.. If we divide that $144 trillion by the entire population of 332.5 million, each of us would have $433,082.70. I sure as hell don't have that much money and I don't know anyone who does. Why are you discussing the world? What does a house cost elsewhere? How about a meal? 1. Sure, I could edit the comment, but that detracts from the entire point of a conversation. 2. I don't care what I look like to you. 3. I never said that Russia is socialist, I said they have a socialist nature, which comes the history of their government. Seems like you are a textbook narcissist who is on the internet to anonymously insult people instead of having a conversation. I am not bored to death by most conversations, just this one. I rescend none of my statements. Good luck being the way you are. P.S. Mixed economies are far from being capitalism when your main export is controlled by the government, and YOUR LEADER tells the top businessmen what economic decisions to make. Pure socialist economic systems are hard to find because they don't work. Though both Russia and China have been making slow progress toward pure socialist economies for years, but that is neither here nor there. Goodbye. ""lol"" This may be so but we're far from ideal for most Americans. The middle class is shrinking year by year it was the middle class that made the country as strong as it is. I think you've missed the point completely. Its not really the oligarchy that's the point. Its the wealth inequality that the OP is pointing out. And the fact that equal opportunity for riches is a myth. You have to start rich or be connected politically to have a chance. Look over every single one of the mega billionaires in the U.S. Almost all of them started off from rich families are children of political power families. The game is rigged folks. Not affording food or rent is still not affording food or rent. No matter where u are in the world I think you forget one thing our cost to survive is higher as well Unrelated but OP that made the post has spammed it in every leftist sub and It flopped every time. But it hits 27k upvotes and 18 rewards in r/economy , ridiculous knowing that OP is a Tankie with a clear Russian bootlicking agenda. He even posts in r/GenZedong. It’s not worth having conversations in this sub when people fall for those kind of baits. Thats the thing, the masses dont have any power in an oligarchy. We might not be one yet, but we already hardly have any power under this crony-capitalist state. Currently I dont see that improving in the near future. You are all essentially saying the same thing. And social democracy came out of socialism. It was a best of both worlds idea. Granted in the US they use the word oddly and social democracies are capitalist states if anything. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy) You do realize that competition is mostly a lie right considered massive merges over the past few years. Quite literally a handful of companies own most the general products because they buy out their competition to lessen it. We have a massive conglomerate/monopolization problem here. True capitalisms isn't fettered, as soon as government start using policy to modify the market the natural control mechanisms are already lost. Now instead of the state controlling and ensuring (theoretically everyone gets what they need) we have a handful of random people who get to decide who gets what including food and water. I consider communism a dictatorship of the proletariat. I don't consider Soviet Russia that. But its besides the point. The OP was conflating Russian oligarchs to communism. Which it clearly isn't. Incredible you even remember to breathe If you are going to post on an econ sub you could altleast spend 5 seconds learn what communism is or at least what it isn't. Communism? I was talking about our democracy here in the US No, that's America, economic powerhouse 2022 that has 6 times the economic power per person as Russia. Look at your list of billionaires, and tell me how they made their valuation. (Hint: It's not profits or revenues) It isn't irrelevant, their statistic is misleading and paints a false picture of the tax burden the wealthy actually face - and the effective tax rate illustrates why. The richest people in the country should make up most of the taxable income - they're the richest and have the most taxable income. No shit sherlock. The average worker pays a far larger % of their income in taxes, and that's money they actually *need*, money that would immediately go into the local economy if it wasn't sent to the gov. If the upper tax bracket was 95% on income over $1b *they'd all still be billionaires* **and** we could afford stuff like universal healthcare and schooling that actually helps people. They'd be responsible for even more of the total tax income, but that's the point isn't it? No one in america is sitting on billions of dollars. There’s a lot that do and are still faced with dead end jobs/positions, lack of transparency, and fear of constant termination… thanks for the silly, over simplified, and pointless regurgitated lack of thought tho. The economics understander has logged on No, it’s not. We’re at late stage capitalism, yes. Is it a shit show, yes. Would I even say we have oligarchs? Yes. Is the inequality between oligarchs and lower class as concentrated here as it is in Russia? Lol, no. >""inequality"" is completely irrelevant to quality of life. Are you fucking serious? I think I’m done here. Public policy in America aligns with public priorities %0 of the time, aligns with wealthy interests %100 of the time, regardless of who is elected. The politicians bend to the will of the billionaire class. This means America is ruled by the wealthy for the wealthy and by definition is not a democracy. Yeah, and I'm speaking from a start-up's perspective. You look at these companies and wonder how they can push prices that low while doing so much marketing/ads. Then you find out that the owner is a daughter of millionaire abc AND this is just one of her companies. Hooray. Yep, most of the people who started all the big companies today only got the chance to because their parents were wealthy. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos.... Yeah. People forget how much more nurturing they get as children when they come from wealth. Even if someone’s parents didn’t cut a check directly to them, they were still handed many opportunities that gave them a huge advantage. I went to school with someone whose family is worth billions. They’re incredibly wealthy themselves, I’m taking being gifted multi million dollar houses for birthdays, yachts, entire garages full of undriven super cars rich. They claim to be self made. It’s so infuriating for someone like myself who grew up in a working class family to have someone that was gifted everything in life on a silver platter brag about being superior to me when they started off having already passed the finish line. The entire downtown of my town is business owned by rich housewives who have resturants and thirft stores that are only open 4 hours a day and closed on weekends. They are finnally being pushed out by zoning and landlords putting strict designated business hours in place. [deleted] Elon Musk Worked for one company that had a massive internal PR campaign to make the owner into a simple man who started with a beat up pickup truck and a dream. There is a major road named after the guys father running right through the oldest part of town. Got me curious, he’s not self made at all and has been given every edge and privilege in the world. He only started the company because college was too much work. “And go vote…..” Local, city, state and National. There is a way out of inequality if we engage our democracy to bring hereditary accumulation to heel. Sounds like the reason the monopoly board game was invented To be honest stacks of cash are going worthless...assets, you need assets. I understand your point however. Personally I think we need a single issue candidates that refuses any vote which doesn't include the removal of money from the political system. Anything less is hacking at branches when the root needs to be cut out. Get enough of those folks in there, and you can put up a constitutional amendment that makes it illegal to receive funds from anyone, that all campaigns be paid for by tax money only, and based only on how many signatures you get during a primary run. Then you can solve for run-off elections, national healthcare, monopolies, rights and freedoms...anything will be free of the taint of greed. Until then you have just astroturfing and bought politicians. >go actually vote for someone who can win and will do good. I might be overly pessimistic, but I really doubt that's possible in the US at the moment, at least on a national level. Looking in from the outside, your election system is so broken (both historically and by design of the ruling groups) that there's no real choice. Basically, you can choose between the Republicans, who've been all but openly corrupt for a while and are going batshit insane recently, and the Democrats, who are less open about their corruption, but are, at the highest level, controlled by a small group of rich oligarchs. Sure, there are some good people at the base of either party, but they can't do much. Even people who seem pretty high up, like Bernie and AOC, are ultimately powerless. The only way out that I can see is if the republican party continues to dismantle itself enough to lose any hope of winning anything. Then the progressive ""left"" wing of the Democrats can safely split off and do its own thing. We voted for Biden and hes not interested in changing anything about how the economy works. https://fee.org/articles/what-9-of-the-10-richest-people-in-the-world-have-in-common/ Thanks for the write up. Makes a lot of sense. I had no idea about house prices pre WW1; I always assumed a higher proportion of people owned their place. However, I grew up in Australia and perhaps the colonies had a better rate of ownership compared to ""overcrowded"" European cities 120 years ago I guess I always thought the contemporary economy is fundamentally different but there are parallels with history. I suppose given an entire generation was able to reap the benefits of the post war ""blip"" it seems like it was a very long time but in the grand scheme of things wasn't really I think there was a period in time where you could work an average job and buy a piece of land that's your own but that has disappeared in most places. Your income is a pittance relative to what you could've purchased 50 years ago. I don't think the aristocracy lost their money or it transferred. I think more money has been generated hence inflation, but big business and generational wealth had abused their capital to create wealth inequality not seen since the middle ages We had a good thing in the 60s and 70s but we've almost fully regressed, imo I guess I’m skeptical that this solution would actually work. Maybe taxing inheritance would work, otherwise, I’m not so sure. Allegedly... there is a fix for Capitalism... Www.thefixforcapitalism.com >an efficient business will accumulate GDP to capital GDP is a macroeconomic measure that is usually the sum of household consumption, public expenditure, private investment and net exports [C+G+I+(X-M)]. What do you mean with GDP here, and what is the ""labor share"" of GDP? Do you mean household consumption? Do you mean using revenue to reinvest into capital? Also worth mentioning that capital in this case refers to buildings, machinery or whatever that is used in the process of generating that business' output, and is part of the private investment (I) portion of GDP. > Maintenance adds value though. I would say rather that it maintains value (that's why it's called 'maintain'ance). Not maintaining the building lets the value degrade. > in a competitive market, being a landlord wouldn't be very profitable. You'd make a bit more than the cost of maintenance and mortgage, since anyone could build their own housing and compete to lower the prices until it's no longer profitable. I don't think that's necessarily always the case. Physical location, renter demand, and reasonable and fair economic and legislative restrictions on building can push profits up. I'm not saying that being a landlord *ought to be* something that is very profitable, I'm generally on the side of 'landlords are too often parasites' but I recognize that property rights are complex and there are cases where rental profits are going to be high. I guess my position on the issue is just that government really needs to take a more active role in monitoring the rental cost situation and addressing the underlying factors that lead to excessive rent (for example, by reducing the importance of proximity with superior public transport options, creating incentives for development of a greater number of locations where proximity is desirable, and disincentivizing the use of property exclusively as a store of value, etc.). What you’re missing is that money isn’t actually wealth.. Money is a chit system that we use to exchange real wealth. Real wealth are the means of survival: land, clean water, food Theres 100 units of resources on the planet and we both have 1000 chits. You’re shifting the chits from my column to yours and calling it a growth of wealth when there’s still only 100 units of resources on the planet. While I couldn't tell you the answer, I do appreciate the clarification very much. Goes to show my point otherwise still stands, rich people can dodge tax all too easily. My example, admittedly, was based on fictitious remarks I've picked up over the years. dum housepainter, here. actually worked for a living. you were saying? Lol naw dude. The 1% literally own half the stock market. One is a giant land mass in the East, and the other in the West. No, but I have to imagine if our government doesn't act soon we'll get a fun guy just like Putin in the white house. Then it's game over for our crippled democratic system. For sure, I'm not saying Saddam was a good guy but there are plenty of other horrible world leaders and the US isn't doing anything about them and it's most likely because they don't live in areas with oil we can take. He was our evil dictator... until he wasn’t. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, An Introduction, by Stephan Kaufmann and Ingo Stützle. http://versobooks.com. About 70 pages. I found it in a library. Try https://www.versobooks.com/books/2255-thomas-piketty-s-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century Cliff Notes. Duh. ;-) I did a search and Vudu has the documentary, now I don't have to read! https://www.vudu.com/content/movies/details/Capital-in-the-Twenty-First-Century/1437547 I second this [deleted] My guess is you just go outside and scream ""WHAT THE ABSOLUTE *FUCK*?!"" at the top of your lungs and see what happens. Thank God he aligns with your views /s Piketty argues that it’s all about the capital:income ratio Also exploitative behavior the whole way. Isn’t the point that literally the concept of capital accumulation and financial leverage are literally part of the equation that the old school style of thought that you indicate in your comment were missing? Like with what you wrote, you’re completely missing out the fact that somebody having $100 million spread between Apple, Ford, Facebook, and Johnson and Johnson doesn’t actually really help the supply or growth at all, but it absolutely helps their money grow…and their tax rate on those gains are lower than the tax on my paycheck… New skin for the old ceremony. It's the same name Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Guess they kept the same title https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5723056/ They must have taken it down, or maybe I watched it while visiting Canada. You can probably rent it pretty cheap like on Google or Prime It's unlikely, the average Joe can understand simple statistics but Econometrics can go a bit beyond that, so there's no use. It's merely a tool to economists just like psychometrics is to psychologists. Even the concept of capital or in this case the growth rate of capital (r), seems to be confusing for some folks in this thread (albeit it's understandable), so Piketty only goes as far as adding graphs and some statistical data in it. If you actually want to get into Econometrics I'd suggest giving Wooldridge's ""Introductory Econometrics"" a go, it's a bachelor's level textbook so it's still easy to grasp, especially if you have solid knowledge in math and statistics, but again, remember that there isn't much use into learning it unless you intend to build mathematical models. I'd suggest reading its initial chapters and trying to solve some of its exercises, you can start building simple OLS models using R (it's stupid easy if you know anything about coding) using macroeconomic data to find obvious relations like effects of private investment on GDP, and eventually trying to build more complex models. It's a pretty fucking cool subject because you get to actually see in numbers how given actions by economic agents or even policies affect our economies. The sad part is that unfortunately it won't help you with dunking libertarianism since it's a feeling based ideology, there's really no reality to it. I mean, you can build models to disprove it but those folks don't usually believe in math. lol Ah, I see. you're saying they are stealing money from foreign GDP, not from our own. Got it. Last I checked we only have one planet so just take the planetary GDP, the planetary return on investment, and do the same analysis. If total return on investment grows faster than GDP, the only place the money can come from is the real economy. The rich are siphoning off money from the rest of us, it's the only way investment can grow faster than GDP. The money has to come from some place! The rich are parasites on our economy, siphoning off money that could be invested into growing our GDP, and putting it under their control. If this were a true meritocracy, then return on investment would never outpace economic growth itself. Because the only way to measure merit in this case is BY GDP growth. The rich deserve their wealth because they grow the GDP, create jobs and all that, right? But if they take more than they produce by way of economic growth, they are parasites. Plain and simple. >For example, Tesla makes cars out of Shanghai and sells them in China. I'm don't think that counts towards U.S. GDP, but counts towards Tesla's return on capital. Well, you think wrong. GDP includes Tesla's markup. They pay Shanghai $40k, sell for $100K, GDP is +$60k. The question is where did the $60k come from? GDP increased without any additional work, where did it come from, where did it go? The first criticism that comes to mind is he uses pre-tax and pre-government transfers to analyze income inequality, which is either incredibly deceptive or incredibly sloppy Yeah, I don't think you read the book. Here, I'll link to the wiki page on it, so others can see that you have ZERO understanding of what Piketty wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century [deleted] please provide 1 actual example of a person who has sold a million of something that doesn't employ other people to help them with that. If you can't employ people with a living wage then your business model is wrong and should not be supported by our taxes Okay provide examples [deleted] [deleted] an American invasion of Ukraine. then Putin wouldn't be able to invade it without risking nuclear war. ezclap Nothing, the only card the west had was to agree to Putin’s demands that Ukraine never be allowed to choose to join NATO which is a nonstarter and not enough to stop him anyway. That or completely stopping Nord Stream 2 which again wouldn’t have been enough to stop him. As one professor that had a talk in Chicago university 2015 said, the only option was to make Ukraine neutral... Do not expect that to be answered with more than ""i feel like he could have done something"" or a claim that the USA president is the most powerful person in the world a can do anything he wants to - except forgive student debt. Deny ukraine permanently an entry to NATO Not pushing for a nato Ukraine.. like many predicted would cause a war. Hopefully this ends soon A second Minsk agreement perhaps. The only thing I could think of would be a ramp down sanctions plan instead of ramp up. The moment Russians entered separatist Ukraine, full ban from swift, technology, travel, and every other option executed, saying they can all be reversed if you leave. I don't think it would have stopped putin though; it would have alerted the Russian people to just what they're in for sooner. Edit: typ0 Wasn’t Bill Clinton president when Ukraine signed most of those security assurance treaties and deals with Russia and NATO? Your value system is illogical. Lawyers don't work any harder than garbage men. They have only won the genetic and geological lottery to be born with the IQ and privilege to go to law school. Dedication is the most valuable trait you need to be a lawyer. My dad is one. We should be paying more for jobs no one wants to do, like flipping burgers or butchering. That is much more work than being a landlord or lawyer can be. Why do you think anyone deserves more than anyone else? Do you think its OK to let your family go without? Aren't we all related? Why can't all property be public and everyone gets a chance at everything? Can you imagine a world post money? Would your ideal world have inequality? Dude people finance things they can’t afford all the time. A large chunk of people you’d consider “upper middle class” are broke as a joke. Just the way it goes. It's not that dramatic because it totally ignores the point of debt. If you have a negative net worth so that you can live a better life and earn more in the future that's not a bad thing. Who's in a better position, someone who never went to school and is making 30k, or an engineer earning six figures and paying 8k of those to student loans? A homeless man or someone with a 500k mortgage? Bezos liquidates over a billion in his stock every year to spend. How is this better than letting the poors buy food? Ahhh the poorest 160 mil. Missed that word. My main point is more that no one person decides what is ""societal good"". Consumption of beverages and bombs are both a result of someone, or rather large amounts of someone's, deciding those things have value. Consider the opinion of someone with Russia for a neighbor. I imagine they may say it's in their societal good to have bombs/weapons systems for defense, built by people who provide them for the best value. If those people are also the war arm of an oppressive government, then our hypothetical Russian neighbor should be able to shop around and arm themselves from more ethical sources. I guess I just mean to say it's all very gray shades of what one considers to be ethical. I'd like people to not shop with nestle, support authoritarian evil ass governments and all the other shady shit. I just don't see that happening without a collective effort to either make it profitable for those companies to do the right thing, or a ridiculous amount of regulation that might end up just worsening the problem. I was thinking it was emeralds, but couldn't recall for sure, and was being too lazy to look it up. As I said, he's privileged AF, there is no doubt about it, but I've held interests in mineral mines, and I've never made even double minimum wage. Yes, he has considerable more interest than my few shares, but investing in mining companies is common. Also, the mines, if I recall properly, weren't, exactly, lucrative, nor were they blood diamonds.There are reasons to have issues with him without stretching things into more than what they are. His parents were part of the initial $1M round, not $10M. Showing that something is untrue that you don’t like doesn’t immediately make it cock gargling lol [Maybe that is the point? That no one is selfmade.. check out inspirational speech from Arnold](https://youtu.be/ta2zW-llIgo) I agree. I’m afraid to accept any help from my family because I want to be self sufficient. It’s dumb. Almost everyone I know who’s successful has had help in some regard. lol, you think a poor Russian has more in common with oligarchs than they do a poor Ukrainian? [deleted] Not sure why you’re downvoted when it’s true. We are absolutely conned out of many things here in the grand ole US of A. Sure would be nice if some things changed for the better while I’m alive. Nothing crazy. Wait so now people supporting you in success means you’re not self-made? Jesus….. you people are something else. If he didn’t have a family he wouldn’t have been born even ! But that’s not what self made is [deleted] Yes you are Worst war since WW2? Let's ignore Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, the Balkans or Irak Anything that isn't 'Putin bad, stupid and failing' gets downvoted. It's okay to acknowledge that Putin is a dictator that started this war for domestic political reasons, but also point out that it's somewhat rational geopolitics. It's okay to point out unfortunate parallels between Russia and the West. None of this makes you a Putin apologist, although you should be wary of being mistaken for one. People can't cope with moral ambiguity though, so everything gets reduced to 'goodies' and 'baddies'. This submission made it to the front page, so that is an obvious lie. And this submission was started by a Russian propaganda account. The existence of a group of extremely stupid people is not a reason to not have multiple nuanced, intelligent conversations at the same time. It’s the responsibility of people to hold themselves to a higher standard and be willing to learn about multiple complex and important issues, not the responsibility of society to only address one complex issue at a time. Frankly, your argument is a really stupid one, and is the exact display of faulty logic you purport to have a problem with. Nobody is saying that Russian oligarchs and the clear oligarchy that exists in the US are equivalent in their scale. Nobody is saying that addressing the US’s oligarchy is mutually exclusive with helping Ukraine. Nobody making these arguments is responsible for addressing false equivalencies and whataboutisms that people create around them. The argument that the US A) is in many ways an oligarchy, B) is better about hiding that fact by being less blatantly evil about it, and C) experiences tons of societal damage as a result is completely valid. It is not invalidated because somebody cannot be bothered to understand that at the same time as eastern European geopolitics. EDIT: Anybody saying that it’s Russia apology to compare the US to Russia as a way to say that the US is also doing poorly at addressing wealth inequality and corruption is a fucking idiot. Implied in that statement is *literally* the fact that Russia is the worst when it comes to these two problems. Why do you trust doctors? Most people don't need to be convinced of this. In the US is the same 1/3 of adults with a contrarian personality type that are driven by their identities to have non-cooperative tendencies. So are you saying you are incapable of handling multiple topics? Because I assume you consider yourself a person also. So OP directly quoting, verbatim, a tweet that Robert Reich made today somehow has an ulterior motive? What are you talking about? Wow good point. Robert Reich isn’t some leftist radical, he’s marginally left-of-center, and has been focusing on income inequality for decades. If you’re suggesting he’s secretly pro-Russia, or that he’s bringing this up as a means of strengthening Russia’s image, I don’t know what to say, other than that’s fucking stupid and you don’t know what you’re talking about. Well yeah, what other purpose is there. When I broke a door handle by yanking it hard I went like my little bro smashed your favorite cup and hide it from you. The purpose is to redirect and make light of your actions. Don't pretend they are bringing up America just for fun. You're honestly exactly the type of person I think should be heard. I'm not trying to yell at you at all. I just don't want the people who are equal to eachother blaming the other for something they control. The Russian army is fodder just like we would be if the US invaded anywhere else. My point is that the oligarchs aren't killing anyone like you originally stated. Nothing more and nothing less. Lmao The wealth gap has nothing to do with this. You're taking a conclusion you want to talk about and trying to shoehorn it into a completely unrelated discussion. One group having more money than another group doesn't mean that it is only because the richest person in the first group has more money than the richest person in the second group. It doesn't matter if the richest person in the first group has 10x, 100x, 1000x more money than the rest of the people in their group. That doesn't preclude the fact that everyone in the first group has more money than everyone in the second group. Group A: 1 person has 46 dollars. Each of the 9 others have 6 dollars each. Group B: 1 person has 12 dollars. Each of the rest of the people has 2 dollars. You're trying to argue that the only reason that Group A has more money than Group B is because the top 10% have the most money. But even without that top 10%, the remaining 90% would have more money than Group B all by themselves. Then, you're trying to shoehorn some political argument in saying that since the richest person in Group A has $37 more than the rest of the people, those other people must be worse off than everyone in Group B since the difference is only $10 there. Your logic doesn't work. You're trying desperately to introduce politics into a very simple mathematical reality. Now, to apply it to the real world, what you're trying to say is since the wealth gap in the US is more than other places that means everyone not in the 1% in the US must be worse off than everyone in every other country. That simply is not true. The wealth gap may be less in Russia or Cambodia or Egypt (for example, haven't seen the data) but the average American is much, much, much better off than the average person in those countries. I know people here want to pretend that the US is some 3rd world country so they don't have to take responsibility for their personal failures, and there are some very real issues in the country. But there's a reason people are literally dying to get to the US (and other Western countries). For the record, I'm not American, and I've lived in several countries on 4 continents. Americans need to get out and see the world more. Yes, and 2.5% of total US wealth is still $3 trillion, while 100% of total Russian wealth is also 3 trillion. Not only is the bottom 50% in the US way, way wealthier than the bottom 50% in Russia, they actually have as much wealth as *all* of Russia. It's hard to overstate just how large the gap between US wealth and Russian wealth is. Sorry bud but our poor have much easier access to food and water than actual poor people in third world countries. i dont think these people know what the Imperial Center is, and by the sounds of it, what Extraction Capitalism is. Anyone who invokes nature as a blessing hasn't spent enough time struggling against ""Mother"" nature. Take a hard look sometime on where most government spending goes in the US. We have a pretty well functioning safety net. Some would like it to function differently, but it is obviously still there. I marvel sometimes that people here in the US don't know facts about their own country: the US government pays nearly 70% of all medical bills already. That one bothers the left wing and the right wing of the political spectrum for different reasons. Here's a sneak peek of /r/ShitAmericansSay using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [""Social Distancing is Communism""](https://i.redd.it/egyqj4abujl61.jpg) | [314 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/lzkswb/social_distancing_is_communism/) \#2: [Did you know our servers survive on your tipping kindness?](https://i.redd.it/7brv8vmqyq961.jpg) | [774 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/n7lm1k/did_you_know_our_servers_survive_on_your_tipping/) \#3: [Europe Sucks.](https://i.redd.it/nrmn2sfpaif71.jpg) | [1338 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/oydsuj/europe_sucks/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot) Youre missing the key part that medical debt makes you go broke, at which point you end up qualifying for Medicaid. So its ruthless to people who have a bit of cash and a chance to move up, but there is protection at the bottom When did I say there wasn't? I do know there needs to be more, however. For whatever reason, Republicans think if someone is going to make 50 million instead of 75 million, they will abandon the endeavor altogether, and I've never understood it Turns out running that equipment is expensive and not profitable. When I came to the East coast from EU, I was pretty dumbfounded to have 100Mb being advertised as ‘Fast Internet’ while in the little town I came from you could not even Get cable (or fibre) Internet that was that slow… The best working model is outsourcing to private companies under strict performance settings with heavy financial consequences when these are not met and have the privateers bid for limited-time contracts and redo every few years. Then let's have a dialogue. How do you propose we **de**regulate and lower tax in achieving anything close to what America once was? 1871? The year the Ku Klux Klan Act passed, huh? Good choice of year to pick for regulations that you claim didn't exist. The time when people still effectively counted as property and contributed to GDP? Yeah **I'm** the one whitewashing history. >fanatic political partisans LOL. I'm about a centrist as they come and I dislike all parties. Perhaps you're just so partisan you can't see the realities of life. You say they have to be? If we take that at face value, the follow up would be to ask what they need to do to not have to be? They are consistently last in all aspects of education and are known to have poor infrastructure. They need to invest in their state and their people. Their problem is that they don't do either all that well and instead just occasionally give tax breaks for some company to set up shop there. Their policies are set up to compete against the 3rd world and then they lose on both ends. There are states that are more republican leaning than average that don't suffer from the problems these states do because they see the value of the things they need to do. It's not a partisan issue. Because “over-regulation” is a buzzword for Republicans. You used a buzzword but are now surprised people interpreted the word as it’s typically used? Are you serious? [deleted] Nice whataboutism. Yall are coming in like flies on shit on my comment. I finally feel loved! <3 [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] I would say I travel fairly regularly. Well, at least pre-Covid I did. In 2019 I spent time in nine countries on three continents. Over the last two years I’ve taken more road trips, but I have also gone to Hawaii a few times and spent some time in Mexico (Baja is only 20 minutes from my house). It has one of the highest murder rates of any city in the US, at ~90 per 100,000. Its just outside of East St Louis, IL. Around 1 out of 5 houses are burned down on many roads. But, yeah, Russia still probably has it beat. It's not hard to do. Before this invasion I was looking around lesser known Russia and went around looking at Google reviews I found them pretty funny because they were full of locals trashing the working conditions and pay. After that I realized I have it pretty good (American) Oh yeah we're all stuck in capitalist hellscape that's warming fast. The entire coast is like it’s own state. Like at Bay St Louis the growth has been ridiculous I’m from Mississippi. Land can be cheap here. First two years of community college are free to high school graduates. If you are poor, you get Medicaid, housing, food stamps. We have access to a selection of cheap fruits and vegetables, both seasonal and not seasonal, that would seem obscene to someone in a third world country. Public transport isn’t common, though my town does provide transit during the day via a van for free, just call them and schedule it. I was talking about Russia. Unless you believe they are third world urban slums than I don’t know why you brought it up. Dude if you think there’s no difference between the Russian oligarchs and the American 1% then there’s no conversation to be had. They are drastically different. The whole point is pro Russian propaganda... Hitler also got himself and a few others rich, is it So different? Obviously. we spend more than that.. Is it really fair to compare it to GDP instead of total budget? US GDP is way higher than the federal budget Source on the 40%? That’s gotta include the revenue of companies that were directed to do certain things by the defense production act, otherwise I’d be incredibly impressed if it does not include that figure. No look at the facts 60% of all bilionaires are self made aka first gen 80% of milion Stop acting like there is no social mobilty in america If you want socialism move to north korea or venezuela Its everyones elses fault your failing Right? Dont need to rock a boat i am not inn. idiot Not that they dont want to but dont try Takes many years and determenation that people like you dont have i'm all for discussions like this, but isn't pretty easy to see how this can be a trojan horse for disinformation/whataboutism? Like russia's classic go to for kompromat etc.... That doesn’t change anything about his stupid tweet. It’s just true though. Corruption is a thing in America, and more common than in a lot of other 1st world countries, but if you ever go to a country with an actual corruption problem you will see how good Americans have it, assuming you’re American. If you aren’t American, I’d like to know what makes you think corruption is a widespread thing here at all. Plus my parents are not rich at all. In the United States I've never been pulled over and told I have to pay a bribe right now for a crime I didn't commit or else I have go to Jail. I've never then had the cop decide I didn't have enough cash so I need to go to an ATM and get more out. I have had that happen in Mexico, a country with an actual corruption problem. Oof [removed] [deleted] Racist politics and racism No, you're ignoring time. While in most circumstances you'd be correct, in reality it is possible that there is a new government in control of a jurisdiction, and they kept some prisoners, thus the % of the pop. in prison wouldn't correspond to the new laws. But that was just a simplified hypothetical. A practical example would be the states that decriminalized cannabis but didn't vacate all sentences relating to cannabis. Like setting government buildings on fire and looting malls Do you have a source for this happening in a protest where there was absolutely nothing else happening? No break ins, no personal injuries from rioting, the likes of that? Just a peaceful protest getting tear-gassed and shot at? [deleted] [deleted] That doesn’t make sense. It was a statement. But you see how easy it would be for the people to get behind the government’s oppression of the people. Prime example right here. “It’s ok as long as it’s THEM, but it would never happen to me.” Nice edit. I’m not engaging with ridiculous anti-communism talk. Says the admitted white supremacist. Fuck off. Yes, cause he is a liar nobody in Russia can contradict. Ok shill My point initial comment was far too low effort. I believe you are trying to avoid the reality that the US is far more just than Russia. I am not saying the US is perfect, but it is certainly bullshit to say Russia is worse Think about what you are saying and than realize how dumb comparing the US prison system to the gulags is. **[United States incarceration rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate)** >This article focuses on the incarceration rate. For a discussion of incarcerations more generally, see Incarceration in the United States. In September 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world at 716 per 100,000 of the national population; by 2019 it had fallen to 419 in state and federal prisons per 100,000. Between 2019 and 2020, the United States saw a significant drop in the total number of incarcerations. **[Comparison of United States incarceration rate with other countries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries)** >The United States has the highest prison and jail population (2,121,600 in adult facilities in 2016), and the highest incarceration rate in the world (655 per 100,000 population in 2016). According to the World Prison Population List (11th edition) there were around 10. 35 million people in penal institutions worldwide in 2015. The US had 2,173,800 prisoners in adult facilities in 2015. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Min. wage in most parts of russia is only enough to survive. Food and shelter, then no more money Which varies greatly across this entire country. Can’t rent a 2 bed apartment near my house for less than 1500. 50 miles away you can get a trailer for 400. Just rent alone is 13.2k/yr more. So to live in my area (which is actually low priced compared to most places within 10 mi) means you have to make $13.75 to be equivalent take home pay (after housing) for minimum wage 50 miles away. This is why people need to work on increasing local minimum wages instead of the federal. Trying to make federal high enough so that anyone in the country can support themselves, or their family, is a fool’s errand. Inevitably the money will flow upwards, increasing rents above minimum wage. Rinse and repeat. On second thought, I own my home, it’s my biggest asset. Forget everything I said. $20/hr federal minimum. To start. Yes! 100%. Russia is much more expensive when you consider their cost of living relative to their poverty level. I should have included that, thank you! Housing is comparable (5x more in the US) but food is much more expensive in Russia relative to the US. Yikes, a gallon of Milk in Russia is $2.70 USD, so given that they have 5 times less money to spend on food, that would be like a gallon of milk costing $13.50 in the US. Wow. Dramatically higher cost of living in Russia. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Russia&city1=Amarillo%2C+TX&city2=Bryansk&tracking=getDispatchComparison Its pretty clear to even the casual observer that even with cost of living into account russia sucks. Jeff Bezos cost of living is much larger than yours. What does that say about his lifestyle compared to yours? Yes, cost of living in Russia is much higher relative to their poverty. I explained this to the other person who asked your exact question. https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/t5baxw/putin_has_amassed_enormous_wealth_for_himself_and/hz5iwoa/ I really don't see this as helpful. You say to listen/read, but don't provide anything, making the comment nothing but antagonistic. I was talking about you critizesing him Nothing else calm down I'm really curious about this statistic. I expect it excludes people with undrinkable water (like we'd describe in developing countries), or people that have intermittent water, or have had their water turned off because poverty. I'm guessing it's a very low estimate... But what is it even counting? People with housing that also don't have plumbing? People without plumbing? Does it include people living in cars? Does it include people in shelters with broken plumbing? Is it a single day snapshot rather than ""people who have lived without plumbing over X days""? Been to Mexico a few times and not a single native drank tap water and all said not to and that no one does. BULLSHIT Third world country is defined as: A developing country is a sovereign state with a less developed industrial base and a low Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. Do my research. Everything says the same thing you dumb ass https://travelmexicosolo.com/can-you-drink-the-water-in-mexico/#:~:text=If%20you're%20traveling%20to,don't%20drink%20the%20water! https://travelmexicosolo.com/can-you-drink-the-water-in-mexico/ And if you want to try to claim this. It's because the locals build an immunity to e coli. But only in this specific location. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thetravel.com/water-safe-for-locals-not-for-tourists/amp/ exactly. we cant pretend their water is pristine. but to locals its not much different than the standards we see here in USA [deleted] Did you expect them to someone replace the entire water system of a whole city overnight? The response was immediate, it just took time to do the actual physical work [deleted] Gotcha. Skid Row good because office buildings. 10 years of real world exposureThey also have public health care which US could afford if they just made some cuts to military expenses. That's not true. US Military Budget 2022: $715 billion Projected annual costs of M4A: $3 trillion https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2022/FY2022_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30857-6/fulltext The federal government spends nearly twice as much on Medicare and Medicaid combined as it does on the military. It's not quite that simple. That is absolutely, laughably false. The median US household has more disposable income than any country in the world, [even after healthcare spending is taken into account.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income). It’s literally more than [double](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1227797/russia-household-disposable-income-per-capita/) that of Russia, even after accounting for cost of living. Your personal travel experiences are irrelevant, we have something called data that shows how insane your claim is. I visit Lebanon very often and besides the refugee camps people live really good there lol. It’s all coming down now though since the corrupt warlords government have completely drained the country And yet, what I said was not false. The average poor household in America has a car and an A/C unit. I'm all for fighting poverty, but you'll recall this thread was talking about how it's WORSE to be poor in America than anywhere else in the globe, which is laughable. Not a real answer. Post a definitive percentage backed by a citation. You can’t possibly be SO DELUDED about how shitty American police are (which I agree with) that you’re actually stating that every protester just gets beaten and arrested? You’re comparing it to, and even trying to say it’s WORSE than protesting in fuckin Russia?!? What world do you live in? That simply does not happen. Majority of protesters go undeterred, and more often police are even deployed to ensure protester safety. Cops suck, but idk how you feel good about going on the internet and just commenting complete nonsense. You saw the riots on the news fire and gunshots are not peace Blm is the govs way of dividing people based on race Divide and conquere 20-50% were prob violent But most republican protest are not violent nore or most other protest Most of the big blm riots were not violent not against racist but againt anyone who disagrees Literally nobody here claimed America is perfect. Every country has their problems. Russia has a lot more than we do. Imagine thinking complaining on Reddit is helping 😂 Yeah no that’s complete bullshit, nice try though. If you’re going to make up stuff at least check Google first. Plumbing and Sanitation rates https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/23557/access-to-basic-sanitation/ Prevalence of hookworm disease https://www.nature.com/articles/nrdp201688/figures/1 Do you know Russia is shit hole country? I don’t think so, because you keep arguing with me PS - Putin is a dictator that kills or jails any political opposition. That’s Russia’s problem. They would be a lot better off with a free and democratic political system. I really dont give a shit what gender you are?? Pointless whataboutism is exactly that. A pointless exercise to appear intelligent. Every post you have made recently is defending Russian action by undermining the US...pretty suspicious tbh. Yeah, and Hitler did a great job pulling Germany out of the Great Depression, too. So I'm sure that's what we should all remember about his time in power, right? /s >I mean, in his first two terms (1999-2008) Russian GDP grew by 94%. Price of oil during the same time went from $19 to $130. Putin had nothing to do with it. Billions? Are you high? Here's the Senate Intelligence Committee report: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf No, quite the opposite. It proved, beyond any doubt, that russia backed trump and was heavily involved with his campaign staff. The only link that failed was did trump himself take money from russia. And that is simply because he obstructed, prevented every attempt to investigate his campaign finances. Did anyone actually read the report? It demonstrated damning evidence of sweeping Russian interference in the election in favor of Trump, but failed to prove collusion/conspiracy due to incomplete evidence and false/declined testimony. [deleted] Putin is a murderer. Saying you like a murderer speaks volumes for the person who says it. As a federal attorney who has read every page of the Report On The Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, I encourage you to read it as well instead or relying on inaccurate regurgitations from news publications. The report was incredibly damning and indicated that Trump DID conspire with Russian oligarchs to undermine the election. What they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt (due to several counts of obstruction) was that those oligarchs were were acting on behalf of Russia. Whenever you find yourself in the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. No evidence of Russian hacking, only Hillary loving cat ladies believe that. Russians refused to play ball as far as what? Letting America do whatever they want in their backyard? How would we feel about a Chinese-Mexican alliance which put Chinese missiles on our border. America and Ukraine have broken every agreement wrt this situation over the last 30 years. Plus Zelensky has been complicit in war crimes in the Donbas region which our evil lying mass media has failed to cover for some reason Funny how it's still not as bad as you equivocating one side's incompetence and malfeasance with the other side's constantly blatantly attempting to make shit worse Yeah, that’s a fair frustration. Regardless of which side you fall on, the Republican strategy is a winner: block anything substantive using the Senate filibuster, and then blame Democrats for their inability to get anything done. It works. I view it as bad faith governance, but you can’t argue with the results it produces come Election Day. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I wasn’t really trying to have a legitimate conversation, since the question I responded to wasn’t a legitimate question. While we’re on the subject, in light of the last half-decade of rhetoric, are you really going to argue that it’s the democrats who are solely guilty of excessive name calling? After four years of Donald Trump making up juvenile nicknames like a schoolyard bully? There are plenty of valid criticisms of the left these days, but yours is either flagrant hypocrisy or a stunning lack of self awareness. They voted to become part of it in 2014. Why is it so hard for westerners to believe that not everyone wants to a part of the west? Yep, some people actually prefer Russia to a Ukraine controlled by the west. It's hard to believe but it's true. I still think you are exaggerating. > no _good_ reason Why are Russia oil wars worse than USA oil wars? Ppl shocked to discover that more then one bad thing can happen at a time Good point, and you’re unfortunately not wrong. *sigh* Yea. The only reason a system who’s idea was to “centrally plan” everything (which is fucking stupid and impossible) failed is because of a CIA agent who went to public school. Delusional conspiracy Went real fast from ""read one history book"" to ""...ok actually nevermind, but consider a whole lot of special pleading"" Hopefully conservatives can move away from such backwards, hateful, ignorant, anti-scientific, anti-human, negative economic ideology Again, not my point. Your statement was highly misleading and heavily under-represents just how lopsided wealth distribution in Russia is. You think economies with less inequality has less inflation? Where in the world did you get this crazy idea? So if you quit your job its impossible to find a new one? Weren't people going on about the great resignation. Did all those people starve and go homeless? >Its not an even trade and its a deal made under threat of starvation and homelessness. Its not a deal made in a vacuum. You agree to it under duress. Now do vaccine mandates. I don't suppose you were on the side of the truckers in Canada recently? You would if that billion turned to 1 million. >you could drop $100k on some rando once a day every day And people would look at that rando's $100k and your $1 billion and chastise you for being so unequally rich and only giving such a tiny amount of your wealth away. That turns into demands that you up that 'drop' to at least $1 million and give it away to 10 people a day. That's only fair. I’ll admit this. I do think that there is such a thing as too much money. The honorable thing to do is spread the wealth. Be a good steward and give back. People with billions can affect whole communities. That should be voluntary though, I just have an issue with someone else telling me what to to with my money that I earned. But, I do agree with the gist of what you mean. Pussy!!! Poor triggerd little liberal. Your college tell you Capitalism is bad? When you’re referencing a percentage when regarding statistics people are going to take that percentage as a literal number Shocker Show me where I made that claim. > The American illusion is that the people at the top stay there through exceptional hard work and talent This is no illusion in the private sector when it comes to leadership, not so much in the public sector. In private sector leadership if you make bad choices, one of two things happens: 1. Your board of directors tosses you out 2. Your company gets devoured by better managed competitors There are few exceptions, like private sector entities that have a monopoly on certain services, where it makes sense (e.g. water, electricity) but for the most part this is the rule. This is the reason you don't own a Nokia phone, and why [this guy lost his job.](https://www.slashgear.com/nokia-ceo-olli-pekka-kallasvuo-ousted-as-ex-microsoft-stephen-elop-steps-in-10101568) >Let's imagine the oligarchs in Russia weren't gifted state-run institutions; but rather, their parents' institutions. Would it suddenly be fine? Yes, undoubtedly. One of the scenarios is stealing my income, the other isn't. One scenario is forcing me to make someone else rich, the other isn't. >Jeff Bezos is wealthy because thousands of hard-working engineers, designers, programmers, warehouse staff and delivery drivers built and now maintain the service that people voluntarily use This is a silly argument. This is like saying people that sell honey are parasites because the bees did all the work. ""Businesses are bad because they give people jobs"" is a silly argument. >and he takes the lion's share of the profit because he's the one with the big chair. Which quarterly report are you basing this on? Jeff Bezos's wealth is because of his ownership of stock of the company he built. I am interested in seeing that the majority of the company's profit is actually going into his bank account. That would be surprising as I would expect the majority of it would be reinvested, and bezos only owns a tiny fraction of Amazon. Send me a link to the financial statement you are referencing. >Amazon isn't ""his service."" Technically correct as he now only owns 10 percent of Amazon stock, but I see you went in the wrong direction. There is no correlation between profit and labor, I'll be happy to explain that to you in very simple terms if you need me to. >I can ask this while also being against the institutions of capital, lmao If you don't want Jeff Bezos to be rich, don't buy stuff from his company. If you don't want other people to buy stuff from his company because he has more money than you, I don't know what to say to that. [deleted] This is stupid, what do people spend on rent in Russia, In America people spend half of their monthly paychecks on rent, unheard of in a lot of places in the world. In Nigeria people pay for rent yearly because it is so little compared to paycheck, leaving all they have for food and education. You need better education. First you insult me, and now you want to have a conversation? Go fuck yourself. Name one person that you know that has ""died on the street."" I'll wait for you google about people you don't actually give a shit about. You've lived a life of privilege, and now you want to pretend like you have any idea the kind of suffering that happens every single day all over the world. Hmm, no kidding. Can't say I'd doubt it. The point about higher standard of living makes sense in how it could appear skewed in ""our favor"" though. I honestly don't know a whole lot about the wealth gap in Russia, because, like I wish the rest of my country would be, I'm more concerned about taking care of stuff here than commenting on the economic situation of a country I have no power over. Intentionally. Or people like you thinking the president is more important than Congress? It's kind of amazing people can perform the mental gymnastics required to believe simultaneously ""There should be more than 2 major political parties"" as well as ""If you don't agree with me, then you are sympathetic to my enemy."" What do you mean by design? I wish we could blame all of our problems on rich people holding us back, the unfortunate truth is that the average person cares more about having a good day and having fun with their family than caring about the future trajectory of our species. And they select for clicks and attention, so the most bombastic fool in the room is going to get the microphone. Radical polarity is an inevitability when our attention spans are turned to whoever said the most outlandish thing most recently. But “the media” is also the local newspaper that you probably haven’t bought or subscribed to that is failing. Thankfully there are too many localities for the media to be able to significantly affect local level governments. Which is why I believe that government should be from the bottom up Cat vn cm op wit n rgrmnt cn yoo oh no not a mispelled word on the internet! what will we ever do? You'll probably never fully get them out since there needs to be a severance of politics and businesses, but grassroots matters. Whether or not people like AOC, she went to damn near every door in her district to talk with the people and they felt more heard by her than the incumbent Democrat she ran against, who ran unopposed for a long time, who couldn't give a flying leap about them. If there's enough of that than you actually have enough people in the house to shift the focus back to what is more aligned with the voters. What makes you think that we can’t? Because I guarantee if you’re talking about the US you’re going to be referencing an election that did not have more than a 90% voter turnout. So until we have more than 90% voter turnout for 4 to 6 years straight, I don’t understand how any of us could think it’s democracy instead of ourselves that are failing. Well said Yes. Voter disenfranchisement and fraud will only get more common to try and combat the sea change though. It’s one many have thought about for a while now, so you’re not alone. Unfortunately, these subset of voters are holding this entire country back due to being out of touch, and tone deaf with the direction the world is moving in. For the boomer reading this where it doesn’t apply, I’m not talking about “you”. But disproportionately boomers are to thank for these “old world” policies and traditional “nuclear family” values, that are losing their grips. Both parties have large tents that include differing factions. We should look at what actually does get passed in Congress because anything else is somewhat irrelevant. The two parties are still primarily motivated by expanding business access and rights. During the Trump supermajority Congress was largely unable to pass anything of significance other than their tax breaks for the ultra wealthy. I don’t really want to belabor this point as I vote Democrat and won’t ever support the Republican Party, which in and of itself shows that I know they have different ideas about governing. The two parties are both right of center with only “progressive” candidates (Bernie, AOC, etc) falling center-left. You're really defending the rich on reddit. We eat them here bud If she invested every penny of her salary in an index fund, in 50 years she still wouldn't hit $120M. Seriously. You can't be that naive. >Democrats are going more towards their European equivalents while the Republicans I WISH this was true. Last night Joe Said \-FUND the police \-Border pandering anti immigrant talk(Trumps talking points) \-Talked about reducing drug prices, which he has the power to control via executive order \-Barely mentioned climate change At this point, it's fair to say both parties are fully corrupt. He used to be a much better speaker. His age is what is showing. Man it wasn't just stuttering. A lot of what he said was nonsense. I've watched Joe since he was VP. The man is not healthy. I voted for him, I'm not some Qtard. >At least Biden has a legitimate stutter problem. Trump just has a vocabulary of a 4 year old, and talks in nothing but conjecture. It was beyond stuttering. Again I expect people who didn't watch to be upset. He said Iranians instead of Ukrainians. There were a ton of word salad moments in his speech. I would go back and watch the speech. He was coughing hard and does not look healthy. We don't need a senior citizen as the commander in chief.... My main has been doxxed before so, no thank you. It doesn't make anything I said less factual. Lying how? Nancy Pelosi DOES have a 9-figure net worth. That makes her a part of the oligarchy. In other words, they're doing [exactly](https://www.hastycart.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20315413002_front_a06_@2.jpg) what every [grocery](https://www.naturevalley.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/NatureValley-Sweet-Salty-Almond-EN.png) store has been doing for 80 years? That's a compelling argument. ""Inventing"" is perhaps a little imprecise. [He's not an actual co-founder, but he contributed most of the Series A funding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#History) -- it's a defensible argument that Tesla would not exist as a public company were it not for him. I think that makes my characterization a fair one. They're way, way more desirable than Tesla vehicles. What’s your point? He bought his way into Tesla and then sued Tesla for the right to call himself a co-founder retroactively. He didn't invent anything involving Tesla. I’m doing just fine without him. I’m just glad I’m able to view people objectively and not automatically hate anyone richer than me. Any ""checks and balances"" in the US are merely illusions of the political duopoly that services capital That’s not wealth inequality as Reich meant it. Keep searching. I didn’t realize I called this subs messiah an idiot… I would invite any dipshits to spend a month in Russia. I said the economic differences, of which size is but one measure. Why are you on an Econ sub if you can’t grasp that simple fact? And yes, the resource rich nature of Russia is important. Google the resource curse, spend a week looking at it, then come back. Because I never mentioned oligarchs. Reich has two arguments (is wealth inequality that different; are we an oligarchy). And I only touched on the former. This was literally your first argument and it is hilarious. What I like is how completely made up and arbitrary it was. ""What number can I pull out of my ass so that the US is excluded"". Amazing. >You really need to be told the differences between the Russian economy (half the size of Texas) Well I think that's a oversimplified way of looking at it. I think the government enables the rich to become richer by exploiting the poor. How many thesauruses did you consult to use jingoism… So you can’t name one? Lol pathetic ? This is just embarrassing. Get off the internet for a day or two dude No, but people Should come in here with at least a basic understanding of economics. For a guy who claims to want honest discourse you seem quite bent on personal jabs and straw man arguments. I tried, have fun. Hopefully this invasion brings about actual changes to Russia. Putin is too dangerous to be in power. Where is anyone defending Russia here? Im 3/4 through the entire thread and haven't seen it once. Yeah, neither is the Vatican. Where did I say you were? I’d suggest you pick up a basic math book and learn what optimization means. Then you can read any books or articles by Piketty, Zucman, or Saez, or start by reading this [HBS review](https://hbr.org/2012/01/how-much-inequality-is-necessary-for-growth) A neurologist is not an expert on heart conditions, so that’s a shit comparison. Many economists work on wealth inequality. But hey, doesn’t matter to me if you don’t believe me. Amusing to consider you want to waste your time. Unsurprising the low value… But, hey, Rothbard sums up people on this thread perfectly. Being loud and vocal while ignorant of economics is prevalent. I have many highly educated communist friends. Their takes on everything are pretty ridiculous. They all either support russia invading Ukraine or refuse to talk about it and do whataboutism shit. Finding one who isn’t balls deep in propaganda is pretty hard Republicans are idiots but I go days without talking to one or reading their comments. Leftists are everywhere online and in my career. They’re both equally stupid and fall for propaganda in my experience. Ok, no, then I did get the context you were talking about. I was mocking you It's like [this comic](https://imgur.com/gallery/IwCXBXY/comment/373559913). He's calling attention to the cognitive dissonance many Americans have where they're fine with all of our billionaires and demonize all of Russia's. The US does not “meddle” in any foreign democracies currently. It certainly doesn’t invade like you see Russia doing. But the CIA backed coups of democracies was a Cold War era tactic that has ended. Now when the US interferes it’s in places like Afghanistan and Syria to push back against dictators. I’m not defending those actions there, I’m just saying it’s not comparable to what Russia is doing now. Hilarious comment by someone who could not write decades ago. Example of this tactic, the Gazelle Project: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0017.209?view=text;rgn=main >One Amazon practice that Stone digs up will likely make publishers cringe. In what Amazon’s book team called the Gazelle Project, small publishers were singled out for a special bullying tactic. If they were not willing to capitulate to demands for better terms, Amazon retaliated by turning off its recommendation engine and other automated systems that make a publisher’s books more visible to shoppers. Yes, there is more accountability. The closer the power is to the people is the more accountable politicians are to who they represent. When they are held accountable it incentivizes them to be better trustees. Most Americans aren't left wing socialists, or right wing idiots that believe Trump is anything but a con artist. And if we removed the popular vote (which isn't in the constitution) and actually followed how the government was written out. Then our representatives would search out the best middle men who better represented the majority of Americans. Rather than the caucus bullshit we have now that attracts extremes from both parties and they select the party candidates. Which has meant for some time we end up with candidates that are ride polar opposites of issues. You can probably guess I'm not a fan of a big federal government either. If you wanna smoke pot, move to Colorado, if you want guns to be illegal, go to California, if you want abortion to be illegal go to Texas, of you want hookers and casinos go to Nevada, we don't all need to live by the exact same laws. Federal government shouldn't be trying to force us. People should be able to live how they so choose (freedom right?) And be able to do so in a like minded community. Also in this we dilute the power of the president, and the less focused we are empowering one individual, the more that power is distributed to the people. Other way around. You vote to chose which set of pledged electors electors your state will send, but in some states they can vote however they want No, they shouldn't. That is why you have mayors and governors. Restore power to the many instead of consolidating it into the federal level. Unironically, yes the difference is significant lol Oh boy middle class redditors coming in to remind everyone that there was no difference between Trump and Biden because they're so well off they're unaffected by who's in office. So do we just keep on moving the goalposts? At some point can't we just agree that Putin changing election law to stay in power isn't comparable to what's happening in the US? why didn't you vote 3rd party in 2020? Our system is flawed i agree but comparing it to the oppressive mafia state of Russia is not honest. If Russia is a democracy why have they had basically one “president” for the past 20 years? Its a joke. This isn’t an opinion. I dont know what your getting at. Nationality is very important to the Oligarchs wealth. Out of curiosity, how old are you. Hahahaha it’s honestly sad to see how many people are so incapable of higher level thinking. You’d be a farm peasant a couple hundred years ago HAHAHAHAHAHA I’ve read the church commission report about COINTELPRO and it doesn’t say MLK was murdered by the government and no that is not confirmed literally fucking anywhere. Please read about the shit you believe because you’re reading propaganda **[COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)** >COINTELPRO (syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) (1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations. FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement and Black Power movement (e. g. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Source for that? I call BS. https://imgur.com/gallery/iB4PVRk But in their government taxes only go to UBI and healthcare. Nobody would misuse tax dollars in their government. Pelosi and the “squad” aren’t at all proven to be super corrupt Ok taxes could be good and really are necessary for a society to run. I know all of that bad shit happens too, mostly at the federal level but a lot of good things can happen from them too And if they fail on their first try? Like so many people do? They wouldn't be given a second business loan, they'll just be in crushing debt. The wealthy will get to try again, and again and again, and still live in comfort. This guy gets it 👍 I see, you got nothin’. You just confirmed some of what was in the article I posted that you didn’t read. No worries, I know you’re doing the best you can . This might help you in the future to not be so boring: https://www.conceptdraw.com/examples/paul-graham-disagreement-pyramid I wonder how many hours a week do the bottom 50% work on avg. It’s just an honest question btw not poking fun Sorry, I misread what you said. I read that you meant they have half of the total. Maybe if the stock market tanks that will change. The wealth of those billionaires is largely a product of owning large numbers of shares of companies that have had share price growth over the past 10 years. I responded to the other response. I misread his comment. If you live in the USA, you very likely do. The retired people who live near you probably aren't telling everyone how much they have saved throughout their career. To accumulate that much wealth, you need to save $50/month in a retirement account throughout your career. And anybody who managed to pay off their home has a large net worth in their house alone. For people in their 60s, $433k would put you in the 64th percentile, which is greater than the median but not exactly rare [source](https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/). If you are young, I would certainly encourage you to learn about the importance of saving and investing, and get started early. [This is a great video](https://youtu.be/0xSdnV46oeA) explaining how much you need to save to become a millionaire if you start in your 20s, 30s, etc. Considering that $433k in retirement only translates to about $1400/month in income using a safe withdrawal rate, I'd encourage you to set your sights higher than that. If you didn’t care you wouldn’t comment lmao They do not, in fact, have a socialist nature. I don’t think you understand what socialism, to be quite honest. It’s just this buzzword that represents what you don’t like. Take the L and move on big guy lol I agree. It's not, you just haven't created anything. Create a product or service, market it, employ, create wealth. Just because someone has done it to the extreme doesn't mean boohoo unfair. Actually the point is America being an oligarchy. Not affording food or rent in America? Are you talking about 0.2% of America’s population that lives under that? Those are amazing numbers. But go ahead and keep pretending that you have big problems. Look up any country in South America, Central America, Africa starvation/homeless rates. You live under a rock with this argument. Yikes dude. Just..stop. You need to watch some documentaries of poverty in other countries Very good points. And this post has 30k upvotes, but the top comment only has 150-ish upvotes. Reeks of a botnet artificially boosting it to the front page. Twitter and Facebook are (finally) cracking down on Russian manipulation on their platforms. Clearly, reddit isn't doing the same. Desktop version of /u/Boxsetviewoftheend's link: --- ^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete) Yes, social democracy’s are capitalist states, which means they aren’t socialist. Socialism demands the workers owning the means of production. Yes, it is an idea that came out of socialism, but it is definitely not socialism. Without gov we wouldn't see most of those mergers etc. Gov induces overhead that requires larger scale to compete, this results in large mergers etc. Actual competition means people being able to start their own competition. It’s so very clear that it triggered you when I said Russian and paid. Why don’t you keep spreading your lies amongst your own people instead of on social media sites trying to influence the minds of westerners. We have enough people here who don’t realize communism doesn’t work period. If I offended you then you really are a Russian spy get him I don’t know what country you live in? But we’re more free then any other country in the world. Disregard my last post there’s some other guy talking about communism in the mix of inequality argument. Besides pretty sure we’re doing just fine beating communism face down in the dirt Once again, this is a completely separate argument. He gave a percentage. You gave a completely unrelated percentage while acting like his was wrong. Where in his comment does it even say that? It’s actually very simple. He left out don’t be lazy and think you’re entitled to the benefits of someone else’s labor though We can quibble over ways to measure it, but I'd say the net effect of US based oligarchs is a bigger harm to the entire world. They don't keep to one country with their bullshit, so measuring them against the place they rest their head or officially claim residency is mostly irrelevant. The specific ones that the US govt props up more directly are worse IMO. do you wake up in the morning and have less because someone else has more? do you check your fridge or bank account, and go shit ive lost money must be because elon musk made more! no? almost like because that doesnt make any sense. I get you've just drank the liberal koolaid but cmon man this is like elementary school level first order thinking, sure it can be more complicated but we arent analyzing it in that context. The company I work for has a competitor that seems to work for fun. Unfortunately he is married to a very wealthy woman and undercuts everyone. Same result and yeah isn’t great. Rich kids spend their fucking-around money on looking like important business people because it's what they've seen family members do and subconsciously it becomes a way of justifying their existence… Often only the parents and in some cases grandparents are the ones who have an ounce of actual business sense And it's a lot easier to risk all you have when your family is rich, even if they don't kick in much. It's easy to put your entire life's worth on the line if you know mommy and daddy has a mansion to go live in that they don't use themselves, of you lose all your money. Not only wealthy...but also connected... False https://fee.org/articles/what-9-of-the-10-richest-people-in-the-world-have-in-common/ Give lots to charity. [Elon Musk? Please.](https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-sells-the-family-emeralds-in-new-york-2018-2) [deleted] Hmm where do you live? Sorry to rain on your voter revolution parade, but the rich own the politicians Yea.... sorry not gonna solve the problem. I think that's pretty apparent. If you want change your gonna have to get your hands dirty. They wont just say ok we agree. I'm done being a sociopath. Local and state elections are very very important. More like minded intelligent people like you need to be running for everything from school board to mayor to city councils. Campaign finance is the kingpin issue… that is for sure. This IS the single most important thing which if changed properly would allow the most/fastest change in all other areas. It's not even possible on a local level. Yea there was like 30 years in America of actual prosperity and that is it. What boomers still cling to. America was never great. Hence it cannot be great again. Customers are paying the same amount to buy widgets. With less money going to employees, more money is going to the owners of the business, the people who made the capital investment. That seems plain enough on the face of it. > Real wealth are the means of survival: land, clean water, food That's one kind of wealth for sure. That can be extended to include access to entertainment and other such non-existential stuffs. More generally though, I'd say personal wealth is your potential for trade. The more things you control that other people would trade for the greater your wealth. So while you can't eat, say, Bitcoin, if you control a bunch of it and other people would freely trade you something they control for it, then you have some wealth. In that sense money usually is wealth. To the GP's point, what people will trade for at any given moment shifts over time. For example, someone who has a lot of rubles is somewhat less wealthy today than last month, and someone who had control of some shares of Facebook in 2004 would be much more wealthy today with those shame shares. You can't look only at concrete resources like land and water because wealth is potential to trade, and at various times people will trade for other kinds of things. Uh what? I do work for a living. My degree pays for my bills through the STEM job it got me And they literally own less than half of everything else. Do you not feel like Trump is basically Putin with more government constraints and less direct influence on the dictates of violence? I truly feel like if Trump could’ve, he would’ve. The military parades he was imagining, the attempt to purchase Greenland, he was all in on this stuff. Of course he’s effusive of Putin, he’s basically looking at himself in the mirror. It also has a lot to do with Dick Cheney and others with their financial interests in arms manufacture and private mercenary companies. Not to mention dubya wanting to finish him off for his daddy. can you give us the coles notes? Thank you! Thank you! That's the power … there’s a joke here. Somewhere Thanks once again for a thorough reply! I didn't realize how complex what I was asking for was, so thank you for trying to explain the intro. I do understand statistics and I'm fine with math concepts, but I'm shit at coding so this does sound a little above my pay grade. Regardless, I'll poke around for the book and keep reading whatever else I come across. Thanks again. >The rich are siphoning off money from the rest of us, it's the only way investment can grow faster than GDP. The money has to come from some place! I sort of agree with your sentiment, but ""siphoning"" isn't the right word. It's a matter of leverage, where capitalists disproportionately win in negotiations. ""Siphoning"" implies that capitalists are stealing and owe workers for all of their gains, but those workers wouldn't be productive without capitalists investing in the tools, supply chains, and logistics that get them their pay. It goes both ways. We need proper collective bargaining in industries where there are asymmetries, for sure. But that's a humanitarian argument rather than a scientific one. The concept of ""fair share"" doesn't exist in economics outside of what the market determines. >Well, you think wrong. GDP includes Tesla's markup. It only includes Tesla's mark up if you consider world GDP rather than the U.S.'s. GDP is clearly defined as the sum of consumption and investment *within a country's borders*: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/basics/gdp.htm >The question is where did the $60k come from? GDP increased without any additional work, where did it come from, where did it go? The answer is Tesla's negotiating power in the market. You may not like it, and it may need to change, but that's the answer. There is no ""unanimous"" definition on what a fair wage is, which is why we need some form of collective bargaining to get an answer. >That's not an assumption. Without data it sure is, even if correct (which we both seem to believe it is). >There is fundamentally a difference between Bill gates and his children. My exact point. How do you distinguish between them if your only metric is inequality? Taxing wealth and taxing increase in wealth are VERY different things and we shouldn't conflate the statistics. [deleted] You're right that Marx's Capital has more of a polemic character than Piketty's Capital. After all it is a ""Critique of Political Economy"". But it does have interspersed within it a quantitative approach to economic analysis as well as historical data to support historical materialism, so it's not correct to say it has zero data. For example [Chapter 25 of Vol. 1](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S5) on the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation has a section with various tables to support the thesis. [Chapter 27](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch27.htm) on Primitive Accumulation contains numerous historical references to support the thesis. One also has to recognize that Das Kapital was published in 1867, and the availability of statistical data was nothing like it is today. As such, most of the data used in Das Kapital is centered around England, where the industrial revolution was in full effect and statistical data was more readily available. Marxist economists today can most certainly apply real-world data. But anyway I'm not here to debate, but I'm definitely trying to evangelize Marx's writing which remains applicable to Capitalist society today, and fills in the blind spots of today's orthodox economics -- most importantly the exploitative social relations that drive capital accumulation. This also further explains Piketty's thesis. So given the political character of this analysis, it would make sense that Marxian economics are disregarded and misrepresented in our current global capitalist society. As a result, most people who criticize Marx have never read Marx! On top of the degree in statistics?! Wow you’re a person of many talents Big brain 🧠 *I used the stones to destroy the stones*. ~Thanos It's funny because this is totally an acceptable American logic [Link](https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4) for anyone interested. Highly recommend Why? Putin's demands were completely illegitimate, so you cannot blame NATO and the EU for not fulfilling them. Putin made three requests though. Ukraine and any other state not joining NATO was just one. The other two were that NATO should retreat all the soldiers stationed in eastern Europe and should go back to only having the cold war era members. Also these requests wouldn't have meant peace. Putin wants NATO to go away so he can reconquer all former socialist countries that rebelled and got independence in 1991. The only way war could have been averted was to include Ukraine in NATO in 2014, after the first war. Putin won't attack a NATO country, or an EU country, but sadly Ukraine was neither > They have only won the genetic and geological lottery to be born with the IQ and privilege to go to law school. Nonsense. There are plenty of brilliant people who just do nothing. Sure, luck absolutely plays a monstrous factor, but to pretend that the individual has no agency in their life is silly. > Would your ideal world have inequality? Yeah, it would. Less than we have in the US, but so long as we aren't in a post-scarcity world, absolutely. If we're talking absolute ideals with future-tech, and no scarcity of resources and we're all living in a post-history utopia then no, of course not. I guess when I asked about your ideal society, I should have said, ""Given our current level of technology, resources, and production, how do _you_ think we should slice the pie?"" If there was absolutely no inequality there would be no reason to study extra-hard, to try and be the best at something, to have a demanding job (I agree with you that burger flipping is more demanding than we pay). Busting your ass comes at a cost. If you're doing physical labor it's wearing out your body. If you're working tirelessly it can be taxing and drain your mental health. Why would I work long days trying to cure cancer if I could just sit by the pool and sip pina coladas all day and have the same as the guy who dedicated his life to saving peoples' lives? Incentives drive everything and they always will until we are in a post-scarcity world. We don't have infinite everything and so we need to have a system to allocate the limited resources we do have to the People, and bonus points if that allocation system encourages folks to be productive so that we might one day live in that post-history utopia. Do I think we can make the system we have better? Sure. I think the amount of wealth currently being extracted from labor in the US is ridiculous, but do I think the person doing nothing to benefit society should be rewarded equally with the person trying to cure cancer? No, absolutely not. Which is why ""wealth"" is a horrible metric to use when comparing money, it's meaningless for anyone other than the ultra rich. A doctor can make 500K per year, own a million dollar home, multiple cars, boats, etc, and still have a $0 net worth if he's upside down on those loans (likely) or has student loans (also likely). He's living the life everyone thinks of as rich, yet has the same net worth as a teenager. Most people just don't hoard money to make their net worth massive, why would they? I say use income instead, and for the ultra rich (where wealth matters) count 10% of their wealth as income. People like Bezos still look absurdly wealthy with 14billion dollar incomes, but you don't end up with the weird wealth ratios that come because you're basically dividing by zero I have a decent net worth and I attribute it to my willingness to live in squalor. I’ve never earned insane amounts of money, but i save like crazy because I see people that finance luxury things as mentally ill. The amount of people I see remodeling homes that are perfectly functional, to me, is criminal. It was, but I was being kinda sarcastic. The type of gemstone isn't really relevant to the point that he isn't ""self made."" Thank goodness Elon wasn’t born black as well, eh? Imagine if he was exactly who he was, but was born into the wrong side of an apartheid state. Occasionally I think about the Einsteins and the hawkings that the Americans left to fallow in the plantations. His parents invested/gave him ~$150k Not immediately no. Check the post history. That's gargling. I mean sure, by this strawman definition of self made no one is self made. That's not what that means though We have to buy cars to get to work. It’s not buying it from Elon that’s the scam, the scam here would be that there is no way to get to work reliably for most people without taking out a loan from a multinational bank - at interest rates that insure that the ownership class will always have their wealth grow at a faster percentage than yours. We all have to get to work, why haven’t we filled that need publicly? Missing the forest through the trees I think is an apt metaphor. The issue a lot of people take is that the term self-made itself is a bit of a fallacy, it implies anyone could have achieved the same results given the proper attitude or effort. But the fact is everyone needs support from people with the right resources in the right places. Granted not all, but a large part of that does depend on the situation you're born into and it's important to recognize that some people just have more opportunity than others to ""make themselves"". The majority of people cannot become rich no matter the effort simply because they will never have the support to do so. No, my example is the hypothetical scenario that he knew someone in the business. Same way Katy perry is famous. Same way many actors get famous. Same way a CEO gets their job. Much of them got their break for having connected family, not because they are better at what they do than the rest. With the way the actual capitalist system works there will never be equality of opportunities and there for equality of outcomes, so yeah there will never be “self made” billionaires or people that “earned” their spot, you can fool yourself with the “work hard” mentality and increase your ego but eventually we will break from this system and move to a more equal world Lol compelling Surprised you haven't been called Russian bot/shill/apologist for saying this. That word lost its power and meaning 2 days after it became popular. Now anything I see someone use it, I'm relieved as I know I can easily disregard anything they say without wondering if I'm missing some intelligent point. Thank you... I don't get why so many people are struggling to understand the point of making this comparison. You've put this really well This ""nuanced discussion"" was started by a Russian propaganda account. >EDIT: Anybody saying that it’s Russia apology to compare the US to Russia as a way to say that the US is also doing poorly at addressing wealth inequality and corruption is a fucking idiot. Implied in that statement is literally the fact that Russia is the worst when it comes to these two problems. That is not implied. [deleted] #science What they are saying can be reproduced and verified. Are doctors always right, no. But if several million people worldwide with the same specific advanced degrees in a specific field are all saying the same thing at the same time the likelihood of them being wrong and a few hundred politicians saying the opposite thing being right is laughable. If you read the context, we are talking about the term ""people"" in a general sense. As in most people, in the macro sense. I'd bet 75% of the posts on this god forsaken website have ulterior motives All I said was we shouldn't accept someone's opinion as true and correct simply because they've been in an administration. That's the appeal to authority fallacy. But your ""you're stupid"" rebuttal sure is convincing. Not everything is a competition. You can think two things at once. ""Russia's bad and we have some similar problems."" You're being defensive for no reason. I said they are allowing russia to kill people, please explain how they are not I live in the United States and what I stated are pure facts taught in American universities. The fact that you do not live here and have not studied American wealth gap either formally or informally means that you do not know what you are talking about. Also I did not call the U.S a third world country. The U.S is a very developed country with a robust economy. However, the U.S. wealth gap is a real problem and I won't say it is the worst because the worst one is in China. What I am saying that just because there is wrong elsewhere it does not mean the U.S. is immune from criticism. The fact that I clearly said how the 10 percent hold 70 percent of the American wealth while most people are sharing the last piece of the pie and how you disregarded it as trivial means that you need to work on your critical analysis skill. I saw the world and speak more languages than the average person, so I do not know what you are talking about. Yikes. Thanks for that ELI5. The bottom 50% having as much wealth as all of Russia would check out if wealth was uniform (since we have around 2x the population of Russia) but that’s obviously not the case. However, COL in Russia is about 65% cheaper than in the US. Obviously it gets complicated but definitely an interesting perspective Edit: by Gini coefficient, wealth inequality is actually higher in the US than in Russia (41.4 vs 37.5) although similar. Both of these are outliers among developed countries. Overall it still seems messy to compare. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country At Least our poor people has free access to medical services Lol did you miss what I wrote? Hence the imperial center. Altho, what difference is no access to running water and access to lead contaminated water (like in Flint) to a third-world country? We may have the infrastructure. But if it's not maintained or is deliberately allowed to degrade, the conditions are comparable. *Also,* not all third-world countries are comparable. Poverty in Guatemala will still look closer to America than say the Congo. The fact that Americans tell themselves that is why we don’t improve things. Cause anyone who tries to use those services can tell you how underfunded and overworked they are. I’d wager that most of the people here don’t read any economic texts. [deleted] I work for one of those govt assistance programs. No, the US does not have a good safety net, and if you think it does you're either delusional or purposefully obtuse. Almost as if it needs to be a public utlity or something [deleted] The barriers to starting a small business need to be lowered for one, the insurance industry and healthcare needs to be done away with or built from scratch if anything, barriers to employment such as for felons/legal issues, etc. Much of the money stockpiled in individuals bank accounts should instead go to making our society better as a whole. Yes, the weathy need to be taxed appropriately so the burden is lifted from the working class. Financial pressure is also a soft form of regulation in itself, as with anything. Fines/fees need to be eliminated or reduced, among many other things like proper pricing and other predatory business practices (planned obsolescence, invasive advertising, social manipulation, etc). I was mainly speaking in the context of an average American, not regulation on corporations. There are different things that need to be dialed up and down. Some things do need more regulation. The devil is also in the details, like I said vague words such as regulation mean nothing without specific context, which could go either way. Frankly, that is just too broad of a question given the complexity of America. If the entire country can't figure it out how do expect me to? I'm not trying to sell you on anything, I'm just noting where the one we have is wrong, and there is A LOT wrong. Wait a minute, you're suggesting that the Ku Klux Klan Act is the reason the US was the world leader in science and innovation, culture, freedom and choice? Lmao, wtf are you even going on about? You saw the word ""regulation"" and ""1871"" and just regurgitated some irrelevant nonsense that you thought might bolster your vague anti-capitalist sentiment? Lolololol You do realize that laws and regulations are not the same thing, right? Okay, I don't care about your vendetta with the bible belt. Like it said that has nothing to do with what I meant anyways. the thing, at least in my town, is that we try and help and have tons of different options for these people to pursue but it requires them to accept the help I'm truly sorry you have a huge portion of addicts in your family. My comment is stating that where there is addiction, there is poverty, and that's true all of the world over. There isn't a government program that cures it. It's unfortunately all up to the addict and how they work the steps. > Nice whataboutism. You're literally responding to a thread that is a comparison between the US and the 3rd world. It's not whataboutism to show that that comparison is full of shit. >like flies on shit I really hope that means it's a shitpost and you really aren't that dumb/naive. [deleted] Do you believe some Americans are living miserable lives and are miserable? I think one thing these housing comparisons are ignoring is the weather. In tropical countries like mine, you just need something to keep the rain away and a good blanket and you're mostly good on housing. Try that in US or most European countries and you will find yourself a solid block of ice if it's winter. I believe that makes housing a poor comparison for poverty level. That also happens in some places in the “first world”. Although not to the same extent. Why wouldn't you want to live there? Would you begin to feel miserable if you did? I agree about Missouri, but to nitpick, Clarksdale is in Mississippi. Excellent! It just seemed like you were invalidating his observations from behind a keyboard. It is quite shocking for Europeans to come to the US and see living conditions some places like the South East. I'm not sure if it requires visiting the pristine infrastructure of Europe's well heeled countries to understand the contrast. It does, by far. I think you can compare some of Russia to poor Haiti neighborhoods. No roads. No cars, a motorcycle here and there. May not have gas/electric. I'd rather say 0.1%, but yes, I definitely stand by the statement that they are not *that* different. They are cut from the same garbage scum cloth. Let's not act like America hasn't gone to war because of American neo conservative think tanks and a 2004 Iraq war that billions were profited off of. These people do not give a shit about human lives. And they are not that different whether you want to believe it or not. We're not on the ""good guys"" side. No, we do not. US military spending has not exceeded 4% of GDP since 2013, and has not exceeded 5% of GDP since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Military spending as a percentage of GDP is about as apples to apples a comparison as you can get across countries. If you start comparing it to government spending as a whole, you end up with a worthless analysis because government spending as a percentage of GDP ranges dramatically depending upon the macroeconomic nature of the country (i.e. French government spending accounts for nearly 60% of the country's GDP; in Australia, government spending is only around 25% of the country's GDP). So its actually not as abnormal as you think. I didn't know this until a couple days ago, but NATO has a clause that requires 2% of GDP be spent on the military. While it isn't really enforced, I do think it would be a pretty bad precedent for us to not reach a standard we wanted. 3% isn't that bad in comparison to that imo, although I would still like to see us drop it to say 2.5% And how many came from millionaire parents whose wealth allowed their children infinite opportunities to fail without consequences? I’d wager 90% never had to actually struggle a day in their lives. Not a single billionaire is self made. It's all on the backs of working class people, and the society that was built by the hundreds of millions that came before them with significantly higher tax rates. Where are you getting that information? Or move to Sweden Lmao, OK warren buffett Lol whataboutism has just become a catchall term for things people don't want to discuss, it's pathetic It's literally the topic of this post, the term doesn't even make sense contextually, and it isn't even a real thing when it's used contextually Well it makes him an economics expert so he probably understands the effects oligarchies more than you understand most things. I like salt lmao They were imprisoned specifically to remove a minority population from society. That’s politically motivated in my mind Oh, excuse me, let me go make a point with the narrowest possible brush I can find and then call it a mural.. . Art just happened here. Call it whatever you want. The same ends for the same type of people. Check my ""submissions"" page for a protest account and footage of me getting tear gassed for laying down. We were also tear gassed that night for walking and standing. edit: There's also footage from the same time of a local bar owner being shot with rubber bullets for handing out water in front of their bar. [deleted] [deleted] That's absolutely a lie. Ok but the 'them' you're talking about are members of actual terrorist organizations LOL I haven’t said anything of the sort. At least we all see that you are incapable of having a civil discussion. you also are wrong about more in 1 day VS all of the protests >10K+ as of june 4, 2020 at floyd protests https://apnews.com/article/american-protests-us-news-arrests-minnesota-burglary-bb2404f9b13c8b53b94c73f818f6a0b7 >6.5K in Russia in the day https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220302-russian-anti-war-movement-takes-shape-on-the-streets-%E2%80%93-and-on-screens But yes, both suck, and by a bit of a margin russia sucks more, I'll concur with that That's true, max prison sentence in gulags was only 10 years. It's absurd to compare US prison system to that. And in America it's not the same? Just out of curiosity how long have you made that wage, and when did you buy your house? And how much? I have have struggled all my life and was crippled with a heavy addiction that ruined me financially. I got sober 2 years ago and I got into a good field just recently. I start a new job in 2 weeks making 26.00 / hr at 32 years old. It's going to be a while before I have enough saved up for a house especially with rhe lucrative market but I'm trying to be optimistic. Damn you really tried to gloss right over that whole “5x cheaper cost of shelter” thing by talking about how a gallon of milk is ALMOST 3 dollars. I have never seen a gallon of milk even sold anywhere in Europe. Biggest I’ve seen is 3 litre Weird how you chose milk as your example when bread, which is right below it, is literally 10x times cheaper -- and rent is more than 5x cheaper. $3 milk vs. $500+ rent. Milk is relatively ""cheap"" in the US compared to other countries because it's the #2 milk producing country in the world and produces more than 3x more milk than Russia. Meanwhile beef is still almost 4x times cheaper in your comparison. So you thought you would continue the approach? You can just google it. Its called Montezuma's revenge and does not affect people who have the proper resistance to it IE the locals. Plenty of people choose to drink bottled water and filtered water in the US too. Imagine trying to tell a hispanic about mexico lmfaooo. (Hispanic because im white as white bread but have a lot of latino family and grew up within the culture. People just like to gatekeep me so i just caveat it.) Drink tap all day every day because my whole 5M pop state (Nuevo Leon) has potable tap water. Guess your anecdote is not fact. Proof: http://datos.nl.gob.mx/n-l-poblacion-en-viviendas-con-acceso-a-servicios-de-agua-potable-por-municipio/ Nope thats a modern definition with attempt to re regulate the common term away from the slur. It is in fact still a slur and still offensive. Btw that info is from an opinion piece released in im pretty sure 2004 in an attempt to properly define the subcategory created via the slur. these all say ""if you are traveling""funny how uneducated the people are in this thread arguing with this guy. NounMontezuma’s revenge (uncountable)(humorous, euphemistic) Diarrhea experienced by tourists after drinking water or eating food in Mexico as a result of a bacteria strain to which native Mexicans are immune. \[1962\[1\]\]Hypernym: traveler’s https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Montezuma%27s\_revenge It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.thetravel.com/water-safe-for-locals-not-for-tourists/](https://www.thetravel.com/water-safe-for-locals-not-for-tourists/)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) They were saying stuff about how all the poor in america have clean tap water. Which is a lie. In fact a shocking % of americans struggle to meet basic needs at all. You cant quantify 3rd world. Its a slur for a poor country. 3rd world means a country that didnt participate in ww2 and 1. Plenty of those supposed 3rd world places have clean water and a solid standard of living. The usa 100% is the victim of a style of oligarchy. You can only get mega rich through exploitation, privilege, and circumstance (which is borne through the first two). Spare me the biollionaire apology btw. No they dont work harder, yes they exploit people. All while others die because they have to choose from baby formula or insulin. Thats not a problem in plenty of other supposed third world countries. The quality of life for russia is extremely similar to ours at the bottom and the top. You are clearly uneducated on the realities of the flint water crisis and also ignored like half my comment lol Lol yeah most of my family is like that. I feel bad for the ppl there honestly. The murder rate lately is insane. Dude there’s literally communities in this country with no running water. Poorly built roads, no hospitals or adequate schools and are food deserts. Those are common features of 3rd world nations. Places in Philly are like that. What’s your point? [deleted] **[Disposable household and per capita income](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income)** >Household income is a measure of the combined incomes of all people sharing a particular household or place of residence. It includes every form of income, e. g. , salaries and wages, retirement income, near cash government transfers like food stamps, and investment gains. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Desktop version of /u/limukala's link: --- ^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete) If you check the data about wealth distribution you'll see how inequality is much higher in the US than Russia. Median income it's irrelevant if the 1% holds thousands of billions while there's millions of people living in poverty in a country that claims to be the land of the free. What I am saying is that given the wealth produced in the biggest economy in the world, is not acceptable to see a terrible and growing poverty because of the capitalist ideology. Lmao let me just look up how many protestors the government kills from their great police accountability reporting, you can find news articles on cops killing protestors if you don't believe it happens. The organizers of the Ferguson protests were found dead and the cops ruled them all as suicides, you think the government is just going to post ""credible"" statistics on their own crimes? A quick Google will show you proof so do you really need to do this Ben Shapiro bit on Reddit? Not every protestor, just enough of the leadership of the protests gets beaten and jailed to decapitate the movement. >Majority of protesters go undeterred, and more often police are even deployed to ensure protester safety. Maybe at protests that don't threaten the political and economic structure. Cops were very friendly during the big anti-Trump protests after he got elected and after his inauguration, for example. At least they take you to prison in Russia. If you're here they'll just let a teenager gun you down or a car run you over. /s So, obviously it's worse in Russia, where it's unclear what happens to disappeared citizens. They do mass arrests, yes, and many people are poisoned mysteriously. It's pretty bad, because it's a dictatorship. That being said, I don't know why we can't even have a conversation about how it compares to the US, because the situation is similar at times and it is rapidly deteriorating. We have enormous wealth gaps, and we have oligarchs. We have entire political parties who don't value democracy and that will praise Putin at the drop of a hat. I think we should be terrified that Russia and the US are even comparable. Most protests are peaceful, for now, but that's because they are ineffective at challenging power structures. The ones that are effective see old men beaten in the street, eyeballs missing from rubber bullets, cars that run into people and sometimes, if we're lucky, actual fucking neo-nazis. We also have a long history of gunning down protests that are effective. At the turn of the century union strikers died at the hands of authorities quite often. They killed upwards of 50 people in the Ludlow Massacre and there were hundreds killed in the Battle of Blair Mountain. Here's a whole [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes) that shows the lengths gone to keep protests small and ineffective in the US. We may not be obvious, but we've been effective at suppressing protests in this country. No one said any of that lmao Ok so there was a study done that showed 3% of them were violent. I hope you understand that you were intentionally misinformed by the media to create a biased narrative against police reform. Here is a link to the study because I know someone will want the source. https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelmingly-peaceful-our-research-finds Ah you’re a stupid racist. I have seen homes without plumbing. I have no reason to lie. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/01/22/959204833/why-it-can-be-harder-to-fight-hookworms-in-alabama-than-in-argentina https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/574181-report-nearly-half-a-million-us-households-mostly-in-cities?amp https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/plumbing-poverty-getting-worse-in-the-u-s-with-over-one-million-lacking-adequate-bathrooms/article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23898-z https://www.watereducation.org/aquafornia-news/almost-half-million-us-households-lack-indoor-plumbing-conditions-are-inhumane https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-lowndes-county-alabama-water-waste-treatment-poverty Not bs. You called me bud which insinuates a male, a dude. That is the only reason I mentioned I’m a female. I don’t support Russian crimes against humanity. I’m simply saying that the United States is not perfect. Every country has pluses and minuses. Russia is actually responsible for a lot of the division in this country. Disinformation campaigns are their specialty. You can remember more than one thing at time. You're acting like it's pick and choose it isn't. These are objective facts state them all. Hitler did great job pulling Germany out of the great depressing thag is true. Hitler was piece of shit that is true. That's... Not what I'm saying. I was commenting on his early years and the fact that he ""kicked some ass getting into power"". I didn't say anything about what you should remember >Hitler did a great job pulling Germany out of the Great Depression But he didn't the economic recovery was largely started by the Weimar republic by the time Hitler came to power Germany was already recovering. Germany had soaring national debt due to all of the policies the Nazis themselves created in order to end unemployment but this was not in any way sustainable and caused the national debt of Germany to soar. The Germans plan for fixing their debt? Conquering their neighbours. The entire German economy hinged on their invasions it's not really comparable at all. The conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation was an unequivocal rejection of the conspiracy theory that has engulfed Donald Trump’s presidency (1). Mueller’s report found no evidence that the Trump campaign for the 2016 US presidential election conspired with the Russian government’s alleged effort to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign through the release of stolen Democratic Party emails. None of the figures, Russian or not, whose interactions with Trump associates were characterised as potential contacts with the Kremlin turned out to be anything of the sort. The conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation was an unequivocal rejection of the conspiracy theory that has engulfed Donald Trump’s presidency (1). Mueller’s report found no evidence that the Trump campaign for the 2016 US presidential election conspired with the Russian government’s alleged effort to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign through the release of stolen Democratic Party emails. None of the figures, Russian or not, whose interactions with Trump associates were characterised as potential contacts with the Kremlin turned out to be anything of the sort What elaborate guise? Lmao are all US presidents not murderers as well? Thousands of civilians in the Middle East lost their lives because of the orders of Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden You are much more informed than me about this, but I stand by my original claims because they were specifically refuting the guy who responded to my comment when he said “look up Trump and Russian Banks” The claims of some secret server being used between the Trump campaign and the accused Russian bank were proven to be false I guess that time the US power grid got hacked was just a fever dream, weird. >Whenever you find yourself in the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. Good point. Let me think for a moment... .... ....nah, I'm in the majority because I live in a fact-based reality. > No evidence of Russian hacking, only Hillary loving cat ladies believe that. https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download > Russians refused to play ball as far as what? Letting America do whatever they want in their backyard? How would we feel about a Chinese-Mexican alliance which put Chinese missiles on our border. Good for Mexico! They're a sovereign democracy, they can do what they want. Just like Ukraine. > America and Ukraine have broken every agreement wrt this situation over the last 30 years. Plus Zelensky has been complicit in war crimes in the Donbas region which our evil lying mass media has failed to cover for some reason Source on these outrageous accusations? >No evidence of Russian hacking, only Hillary loving cat ladies believe that. These hillary loving cat ladies were pretty thorough in their data gathering. https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/russian-interference-in-2016-u-s-elections Dems are terrible repubs are worse. This isn’t some lesser evil bullshit. Just responding to your “I’m so intelligent” attitude then you resort to name calling. Good try at deflection. Oh right, **97%** of voters were in favor of joining the country which had already invaded and occupied them illegally. This according to a referendum held by the occupying force. Sounds kosher to me. Because it’s not true. https://youtu.be/hv8qYZPANi0 this guy has and is literally killing people and few of my relatives had been killed because of his orders. And I can't do anything about it which is frustrating and depressive. The only thing I can do is spread awareness and fight against misinformation from Russian state media. Lately he has been on rampage and has sent many under aged and untrained people in his region that putin gave him to Ukraine frontlines. Depends on what constitutes good reason Now I know you've never read a book I can understanding having ""conservative"" values on some specific opinion based issues but yeah conservative as a blanket of average ideals contains too many objectively detrimental beliefs for anyone to garner any sympathy for being one of the 'good' conservatives. The unfortunate reality though is that everyone is fucked up with labels they give themselves and adhere to that label's ideals. The crisis of wealth inequality and the left's frustration with the right's resistance to progressivism is only going to continue no matter how much you explain the backwards-ness of their beliefs as long as you demonize their label. People on the left need to focus on trying to catch conservatives out of the context of party labels and discuss pure logistics of political issues, but unfortunately with social media political parties are usually the established context already and completely poison the well. Sorry about the random rant, you just had me thinking about the US political dumpster fire. No idea how at scale we could turn it all against the real target of the rich and their power corruption. Actually it wasn't since I've given only US number in order to show how truly screwed up those statistics are, especially since numbers given were correct. It'd be misleading if I'd chosen statistics favouring Russia. If my statement was misleading then so was yours for heavily downplaying wealth inequelity in the West. Anyone that is rich is evil in their world so I don't think you are going to have a rational conversation with them. Probably r/economy given the popularity of this thread. Just required to work more for the same purchasing power, and same for the employees, not required to do more work for the same salary. Also, as consumers, we are getting less for our same dollar, increased waiting times, etc. Corporations are using this as an excuse for poor customer service. We all lose on this. Corporations increase their profits. So, technically, shouldn’t salaries go up in proportion to the exchange of labor? Because it doesn’t. Obviously, I’m speaking in general to the labor market. Estate taxes in America vary between 10% and 40% so at the very worst, assuming you really suck at lawyering, that billion would turn into 600 million the first year, and be tax free forever more after that since there is no wealth tax. Afterwards, you could live off the interest indefinitely and spend 15 million dollars every year forever. Well then it's a good thing we don't have a 99.9% inheritance or estate tax, huh? That would be a tax of 99.9 percent… we are not talking anywheres near that amount of course they would! and I'd agree - it's totally immoral to hoard all that wealth. only giving away $100k a day if you inherited a billion dollars is shitty. but it's something fun you could on top of other philanthropic things The issue you have is that you will have oppression. We already have it, but not making it required would cause more of it. Because some people will not do things or do things because of the law. The ethical thing to do doesn’t dictate what they do, just whether it’s legal or not. I understand that you don’t want your money wasted. Your homeschooling tell you Capitalism is good? I’m not liberal in any way. Keep licking boots. Make those oligarchs proud It is exactly what i am asking you... >One of the scenarios is stealing my income, the other isn't. They're *both* doing that. Or, at least, both stealing the value you produce. If you produce $40 worth of goods per hour, your boss simply cannot pay you $40/hr, otherwise there would be no margin from which the boss is able to take their own profit and to re-invest into the business. You must *always* be paid less than what you produce, that's the nature of undemocratic wage labour. These megacorp CEOs don't get rich by magic, they do it because they're skimming the excess of what their hard-working underlings produce. Workers must, for the economy to function, earn less than they produce - and by consequence, business owners (of successful businesses, naturally) earn *more* than they produce - because that's where the excess production from the workers is going. > One scenario is forcing me to make someone else rich, the other isn't. They're *both* forcing you to do that. *How do you think people get rich?* CEOs of corporations are rich entirely because of the work being done by the people below them, because without those people they would have no product to sell. Again, see above. You get to choose *who* to work for, but not *whether* to work for somebody. If you want to start a business, you need to work for someone to get startup capital. Same if you want to be self employed. Same if you want to start a co-op. At some point, you *must* work for somebody else, otherwise you'll starve and die. What is that if not coercive? The rich are systemically entitled to your labour, which serves to make someone else rich. >I am interested in seeing that the majority of the company's profit is actually going into his bank account. Stop being so facetious. News flash; wealth in the form of increased stock value is still wealth. Of course Bezos or any other CEO isn't raklng in the majority of their liquid profit, but the point is what I explained at the top - the nature of the business structure is that your labour is effectively taxed by your employer. Bezos makes $1.6mil+ each year, including 'benefits' like his stock value. That's obviously not because he's performing $1.6 mil of labour; that income is the excess value of his workers' production. It's the difference between what they produce and what he pays them. This absurd 'gotcha game' stuff that ""a-ha, Bezos only takes a $100,000 salary from Amazon!"" is meaningless. We both know that having all the solid assets he does is still a significant amount of wealth, it's not 'fake wealth' just because it's not liquid. By this logic, my boss should be fine giving me a 50% stake in the company because I'm *technically* not earning any more salary than I was before. >There is no correlation between profit and labor, I'll be happy to explain that to you in very simple terms if you need me to. What an absurd statement. Yes, I'd *very* much enjoy if you could explain to me how Amazon's profit materialises out of thin air, and would continue to do so if they had no workers. >If you don't want Jeff Bezos to be rich, don't buy stuff from his company. If you don't want other people to buy stuff from his company because he has more money than you, I don't know what to say to that. It's a lot more than ""not wanting people to have more money than me"" - it's not that I want more money, because I don't want to be a billionaire parasite. I wouldn't feel any better about Bezos if I was *richer* than he is. The point is, I don't want a system to exist that permits *anybody* to get that rich. I don't want a system that permits any individual or group of individuals to hold undue power over others; whether through the state or through capital or through any other means. I couldn't give less of a shit. Society isn't a casino, taking a risk isn't so merotous as to deserve having the power of untold exploitatoon handed to you. https://expatriant.com/the-cost-of-living-in-moscow-as-told-by-expats/ I don’t even have to try that hard. You’re a fucking moron telling me to get educated and trying to use Nigeria as a comparison for rent. You can expect a one bedroom apartment in Moscow to be 800 usd per month. A two bedroom can be between 1400 and 1900. That’s not that far off of cities here in the US. And to make that point clearer; if they’re able to spend over 12,000 USD a year, they’re far above what the average Russian makes just to live in one of the few parts of Russia that is even remotely comparable to developed nations. Feel ya. It’s just the more I hear about Russia the more I realize how similar America is. Obviously there are some key differences, but not as many as people say they are. And that was the first similarity I noticed. Propaganda. After that I noticed the disparity between the reaction when Russia or the West invade a sovereign nation for dubious and ultimately false reasons. This morning I was listening to how they talked about Ukrainian Casualties versus how they talked about Iraqi casualties. Now after doing the math on the inequality gap I’m really starting to see through the veil. Well yeah and they pretty much know that. A lot of the blame lies at the feet of our democratic systems, in the US for example (which essentially sets the standard for a lot Western of policy as a whole) the Senate is structured in a way that there is a distinct advantage to lying in the ""center"" and ""playing both sides"" depending on how the issue at hand suits your personal interests. See how recently Senator Manchin was able to kill Bidens Build Back Better Plan because of his plainly obvious interests in the US Coal industry. The so called ""center"" is not actually the political center of country. It is a carefully crafted position wherein most ordinary people are able to live their lives in relative comfort, the high class never giving up more than necessary. This center is created through creating infighting and running interference within the working class on ultimately inconsequential social issues like race, religion, etc. The primary objective is to create a society that is divided on issues like those rather than class and monetary policy. This concerted effort is also why typically individuals on the fringes of their respective parties are largely unable to make a difference. Those on the fringe are usually discredited due to holding different beliefs on issues like class and monetary policy, issues that both party's are mostly united on. I'm not really the most eloquent person but I hope I made some sense lol. If your interested in reading more I'd recommend reading some theory, it was really refreshing for me to analysis on issues that actually seemed important to me. Even if you don't necessarily agree with it it's a revelation to see how much important discourse is absent from our public discourse around politics. [deleted] Umm, ok? How does that relate past the surface level ""media"" topic Lol AOC is one of the tallest controlled ops of all time, how has she seriously challenged American oligarchy in any way? Wouldn't having more voter turnout make it harder to sway an election in a given direction? With such low voter turnout it should be easier for you to get a smaller number of people to vote for your guy. How would higher voter turnout help to get rid of American oligarchy? Sorry, I thought this was r/economy, not r/LateStageCapitalism. Maybe you should run for Congress -- all you have to do is win a primary in a safe district, which you can do with exactly that kind of pandering. And if you bought Apple *the year after the iPod was invented*, you're up 500x on that investment. She's in a position that she doesn't have to buy only index funds. [deleted] You know she has a husband who made a lot of money by doing startup investing in tech right? That’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about the new faces to each party. Biden/Pelosi/etc. are just as bad as McConnel and his ilk, but they are going to retire/die in the next 10 years. But the people being newly elected are a different story and that’s to whom I was referring What did he say last night that was nonsense? Something specific. Give me a quote. You are aware that stuttering is more than just sounding like porky pig right? His [stutter](https://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/stuttering/) is really bad. The only time he's more coherent is when he gets angry, which emotional responses can either increase or decrease a stutter. I watched his whole speech. His stutter was bad. He got clearer when he talked about his son, then it went to shit again. If you're watching his speech just to hear him mumble, instead of hearing what he was actually saying, then you're watching for the wrong reasons, and again your argument is invalidated because you chose to watch because you just wanted to rip on his disability. None of what you said has been factual. It's just been blaming individuals for systemic issues. Why not acknowledge systemic issues need systemic changes or is that too much progress for the coward? [deleted] [deleted] Tankies are butthurt. They thought you would like to know. They didn’t even make a single car before he became CEO. Yeah you just bootlick them automatically which is even worse. Oh bull shit. ah yes, the “if you don’t like it so much, you should leave!” argument. grand argumentative skills. Again, the term oligarchy has nothing to do with a makeup of the economy. You are just trying to deflect, setting arbitrary limits on when the term oligarchy can't apply. First you tried it with ""it doesn't apply if the GDP of the country is above a completely arbitrary number that I just made up"", then you tried it with ""it doesn't apply if oil & gas make up above an arbitrary number of 9% of the country's GDP"". That doesn't matter here. We aren't talking about this. >Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. Oh, gotcha. So you're not saying anything worth listening to. My mistake for assuming you had something relevant to say. Yes. Differences in the economy, with a point about size. Please let me know how I tied that to “oligarchy”? Oh wait. I didn’t. Town of people, no government. It keeps getting robbed. The rich guy in the town pays for a security force. Robbers come back but security stops them. You say, “the benefited the rich guy the most because he has the most to protect”. The rich literally pay all shared expenses in our society. When you say government benefits them more, I understand what you mean. You mean a benefit to everyone benefits those with the most more. But when you dig deeper, what you really mean is you want them to give you more. This is a free country. If you’re being exploited by a rich person, stop associating with them. I have a large vocabulary because I actually read books instead of watching 24/7 cable news. I'm not doing unpaid labor for your lazy propagandized ass, I'd be here all night You're right I have better things to do with my night than argue with people who can't read I've taken a few college level economics classes but still couldn't tell you about Russian's day to day lives. Or the exact figures of how much wealth their top 1% owns compared to the US top 1%. Or how much of that wealth was earned through innovation vs how much was given by inheritance. I thought that was obvious. Did you miss where I said you weren’t eligible for discourse based on your first response? Take care. If you don't have the same opinion you deffend Russia... And? I’m amazed you’re pointing the finger at the BoE to deflect from the ridiculous wealth held by Americans. > This type of idiocy does a disservice to actual, legitimate, fact-based discussions on wealth inequality and optimal ways to combat it. I think it's useful, if biased. Am I an idiot? We're talking economics, not mathematics. In a free market economy, what does ""optimization"" even mean? How can you or anyone determine the 'optimum' distribution of wealth? Have you never heard of the [Knowledge Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_knowledge_problem)? Economists have a variety of specializations while sharing a common knowledge base in the same way medical experts do, so yes, this is an apt comparison. I mean, I don’t particularly care what you’re comfortable with or what you’re amused by. I have one respected, well known economist saying one thing, and then some random person going “Nuh uhhhhhhh” “Unsurprising the low value…..” clearly those English Gen Ed’s didn’t take hold. [deleted] [deleted] The US help d create the current Ukraine government. That sounds like meddling to me Lmao so you don't understand the difference between publisher and retailer, explains your bullshit claims. What does book publishers have to do with Amazon competitors like Sears and Barnes and Noble? You think the latter didn't also target smaller publishers for favorable pricing? they don’t tho Right?! I knew I wasn't the only one who thought Trump needs to fix his hair If you think who the president is actually matters in your day to day life I'm not sure what to say. 90% of everything that happens to you is on a state to city level. The last 10% is congress with the president having very little to do. The president doesn't mean shit. Not middle class buddy, but thanks for reminding me of another big difference between them. You see, Trump was a racist who was against single payer health care, whereas Biden, while still a bit racist, fully supports healthcare for all. Yes, we can agree on that, but we should also agree that it's important to hold these political organizations accountable so they bend to the will of the voters so we don't end up like Russia. Unfortunately we're already seeing this with voter's right being restricted and other such hoops to jump through. I did vote 3rd party, which was annoying because Dems were so close to having my vote. They just had to do something to earn it, and I know your pearls will be clutched, but ""Not Trump"" doesn't work for me. I contributed both monetarily and with my time to Bernie's campaign, first time doing either of those things, but ended up voting Green, again. yeah i agree with that as well but in your original comment you said the people are the ones who choose the leader and that made me want to say something. russia is definitely not a democracy and the us at least has a choice between senators and which party’s candidate to support, much better than nothing You’re avoiding answering because you know you’re wrong. That’s what I’m getting at. None of your fucking business, and I'm not a child like you're trying to imply Yeah, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that King was killed after the US government was involved in a large-scale program to discredit and undermine civil rights leaders, up to and including outright attempts on their lives. Especially since, as I said, the FBI literally sent [a letter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter) to King trying to blackmail him into killing himself. ""King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do."" Again, this isn't some secret. We know the FBI sent this letter, it's part of COINTELPRO. Literally Google them for a few minutes and look for the connections Y'all acting like I'm some super lefty. Healthcare would be tight. I know Pelosi isn't great, I dont really know anything about the squad. I'm just talking about taxes basically like first responders, trash pickup, roads and highways, education If government tax *only* go to UBI, then sure - but you do need military, and you do want to supply more support for those who need it, and you do want to incentivize people to go to university, and I can go on. When we live in a society that assumes that the above are the responsibility of the government, taxes will always give incentive for people to misuse those taxes. It's not just corruption that's the problem, I doubt most politicians are knowingly corrupt. I am sure most of them believe those taxes should go where they go and are happily spending those tax dollars on what they believe is right. I am sure the president of Boeing and Lockheed Martin believes that military spending are important for preserving the freedom of this country, and I am sure the politicians that feed the military industrial complex believe that those spendings are important to our security. The US government spends more than any other country on Healthcare per capita, and yet Healthcare is extremely expensive here. There are plenty of reasons for that, most of them come down to welfare programs that politicians and voters believed were valid use of our tax dollars. Medicare, Medicaid and other government regulations, which individually might have made a lot of sense - together created a system where we have to pay a lot of money for healthcare. It's easy to blame these things on malice, and even though sometimes malice is definitely a part of it, most of the times misinformed politicians or lobbyists attempting to do the right thing, make things a lot worse. I agree, but I think a lot more good would have came out had people been allowed to have kept the money they have worked hard to earn. There is a lot of reasons behind it and I won't be able to explain it in depth in a Reddit comment, so I will resort to the worse possible way to inform people of your opinion which is to just put it out there. Basically, I don't want to live in a society that relies on government to help the poor, I believe that it creates a society that feels entitled but also unwilling to others. Taxes are a zero sum game, and as such, especially when people feel entitled, everyone wants a pie, and no one wants to contribute. I believe that politicians often don't understand the consequences of their actions and just appeal to what they think is right, while never being held accountable for those consequences - and more often than not they make things worse. In the end of the day, I am not against taxes, but I against them being used so carelessly. Politicians need to understand that this is not their money - and those that benefit from those taxes should be grateful, and stop taking it for granted. I am against calls to raising taxes before we cut spending where we can (and probably should). I am against spending more money and increasing the national debt without having a clear idea of how it will be paid for. > As a teacher of economics for over forty years and a co-author of a best-selling 1980s economics 101 textbook, I would have given Reich’s paper a resounding F, if he had submitted it for my elementary economics class. Loved that you bitched about an appeal to authority while your article does that exact thing lmao Not to mention the final insult because you’re not taking the loss well, calling me boring lol take the L and move on, man I'm not sure why that's relevant. The average worker should be able to live well on a 40hour min wage, atleast that's what FDR intended when he created the legislation XDddd you funny , give me 100 billions and I will not influence politics I promise / s I don't care what the numbers your reading about are. I can ask anyone my age if they feel like they can afford to live and they can't. Everyone I know has to have multiple roommates, can't buy land or houses, skip meals. If anyone's head is in the sand it's yours when people are out here offering 15/hr for masters degrees when the minimum wage to survive is supposed to be $26. There's no reason to be hostile at us. We all work 40-60 hours a week. Most of us with 4 year degrees. It's just not how it's supposed to be right now. And we just want it to be better for everyone. Source? And down the street are Americans literally living under rocks out in the rain because they don't have homes, but sure let's listen to morons like you when you tell them that they should shut the fuck up and be grateful. You're a child. I fully understand poverty in some other countries is far worse than here that's not the point. True I haven’t noticed that, It’s definitely boosted. I guess reddit is niche compared to Facebook and Twitter, they don’t receive the same political pressure to crack down upon Russian bots so they let it go. Reddit harbors so many tankies that will gladly reward every pro Russian/Chinese post. I hope reddit gets hit with karma like Facebook and It’s infested right wing populist base. > Actual competition means people being able to start their own competition. Which isn't really possible in many industries. When was the last time a new car maker, energy company, etc actually could start let alone expand. Shit some local ISPs even tried to get city and states to pass ordinances banning google from laying their fiber optic cables to prevent them from entering the market. While competition is possible the system is set up to close people out if not in first. Technically being possible and actively being fostered/encouraged are two drastically different things. Pseudo-capitalisms is the former true capitalism is the latter. What a sad hateful little bigot Yup no one in the history of the world has been offended by crass bigotry without it directly targeting them personally Ok so? Am I wrong? Are we not allowed to use single posts as jumping off posts into larger conversations? ""You don't work hard to become a dragon sitting on a mountain of gold."" This phrase right here. That has nothing to do with work culture. Fuck off trumper yee yee and all that lol Ah yes, because the billionaires certainly don’t feel entitled to the benefits of the labour from the working class right? Based on all of the reports of the Russian oligarchs having assets in other countries being seized or being pulled out beforehand, it certainly sounds like not keeping their bullshit in one place isn’t exclusive to Americans. You’re being anti-US for the sake of being anti-US. Two places can be shitty, and while I think we’re closer to Russias current level of inequality than ever, life is still better for the average person here (for now, and likely for the future as the sanctions cripple their economy further). State economics isn’t comparable to your personal budget. On a national level inequality absolutely affects your quality of life. I’m not going to give you a lesson on why inequality impacts the quality of people’s lives. So consumers are just getting low cost goods/services subsidized by this wealthy couple? Is that really a bad thing? For who? The consumer? That's so true. I am fairly bright from a poor area and remember consciously thinking in my 20s ""should I start my own business""? I came to the rational conclusion that the chances of immediate, first time success with no experience was too slim and I (and my parents) had no fallback money for accommodation/food in the event of the first failure. Not to mention the 2 years it would take to get the paltry seed money whilst paying rent. I do feel slightly envious of the small independent ""hobby"" shops ( the one's that you can be in on a Saturday afternoon and they sell £20 in the half an hour that you are in there, but they have a range rover which they drive) that you see that can't possibly be making any money. Too bad Paul Harvey's not around to provide ""the rest of the story."" For tax write-offs and loopholes, and any economic system that relies on the whimsical altruism of a handful of people who hoard wealth needs a reckoning. The way and amount of wealth being redistirubted in our society should not be up the Tuesday whimsy of capital hoarders. Don’t forget that /s on the end of your comment….. no, I mean they all came from wealth “We were very wealthy,” says Errol. “We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe.” With one person holding the money in place, another other would slam the door. “And then there'd still be all these notes sticking out and we'd sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” It’s giving Scrooge McDuck Exactly. They should at least be self aware and understand they had advantages and weren’t ever in situations other people were and show some empathy. Instead I meet assholes who are convinced they earned all of their success and those without it just aren’t as smart/skilled as they are. That shit is infuriating. Only if we keep letting them, but replaceing the sell-outs starts at small state government level where there just ain't enough alternatives to the same conservatives that treat their government positions as life time appointments since so one actually steps up to challenge them. To make real lasting change you have to work with all available methods, and yes, that includes working within the system where possible. Everyone who’s serious about this stuff knows that by now. What do you propose? Lay down and die? Bloody revolution that triggers 100 years of warlordism? The political process is the only civil option we have. If salaries are reduced and consumers spend less on products and services, ceteris paribus, household consumption decreases thus GDP decreases. If the business owners use every single penny that they saved on salaries reinvesting in capital (private investment), then there's no difference in GDP. GDP does not measure wealth. sounds like a really good paying gig.. What? Dude the stock market is like... basically straight up owning wealth. The top 10% own 70% of the wealth in the US, and wealth disparity is worse in many countries. You cannot say the rich do not own the vast majority of all wealth in the world... its straight up not true. EDIT; if also like to point out that the more wealth you have, the faster you gain more wealth. If you are spending 80-90% of your income on necessities, the remaining 10-20% has to be split between saving for the future/disasters, and enough entertainment to keep yourself from going insane. If you are a millionaire and only say, 40% of your income is spent on necessities(a huge house isnt exactly a necessity, but we will just use a very conservative #) you can maybe throw 10% out for adequate entertainment, the rest is invested/saved. They can also afford to be more aggressive with investing because 1 loss wont crumple their portfolio. >I truly feel like if Trump could’ve, he would’ve. Absolutely, if you look at the way he tried to steal the election and prepared the narrative of democrats trying to steal it way beforehand...that was textbook coup material right there but he didn't pull it off and i'm honestly not quite sure why, must have been some people in key positions that didn't follow through/let that bullshit happen. I think he took everything he did from the dictators handbook, he absolutely would have if he could have. He just wasn't as good at it as other authoritarians. That is all true. Capital (wealth) grows faster than income, so the rich get richer faster than others. Just saying that if your spedometer is off by 5 mph, you will inevitably drive faster than everyone else, it's just built into the systems you are using. But when you are caught driving 80 in a 20, it's worth noting that there's more to the story. Exactly by power I meant knowledge, influence & authority. It doesn’t always have to be one person either it can be multiple people understanding their role & helping each other out. Do you know where it is? No you can still use the book and code with it. I took an Econometrics class last year and had no coding experience and was able to build models in R. If you do use R I’d recommend downloading R studio. When you do code it’s not usually more than 3 to 4 lines depending on what your are doing. Also if you read the book highly recommend it, remember in Guass Markov we trust. I believe the concept of Pareto Efficiency can be used to assess fairness. If someone can gain without others losing, it is more efficient. But someone gaining at the expense of others is not efficient. In this case, investors are gaining at the expense of others, which is not efficient. Workers would be productive if they owned the means of production. They don't need external owners who have no stake but financial in the business. Those ""owners"" are just leaches. >and investment within a country's borders That includes domestic market related markups. If I import a bobble for $2 and sell it for $3, that's +$1 GDP. No value added. >The answer is Tesla's negotiating power in the market. You may not like it, and it may need to change, but that's the answer That's not the answer, that's the answer to a different question. You are answering Tesla's advantage so they can capture the $1, not where it comes from. Who is paying Tesla $1 instead of paying direct from the producer (and all the way down to labor). It comes back to: >If returns on capital outpace GDP growth, where is that money coming from? It can only come FROM the GDP growth, stripping money out of the productive economy and putting it in the casino banking system, where the house always wins. Tesla is stripping income from the productive machinists in China and the engineers in the US, putting it into their own pockets, creating elites, and it's still GDP growth. [deleted] A million views on one youtube video does not a business make Every successful youtube channel i run across has a crew exploitation in a capitalist economy is a feature. [deleted] acceptable to which Americans Yeah 👆 this is the one I was talking about , thanks for finding it Denying Ukraine entry to NATO was not illegitimate And NATO should never have expanded eastward either No, the line was definitely crossed when they were pushing into Ukraine, there is definitely an apt comparison to be made with that saying of “the feather that broke the camel’s back”. Look for the actual reason and not from beginning to end. Nato was def into an encroachment tactic. Besides the agreement was always to keep russias bordering neighbors out of nato.. as all parties initially agreed. Scarcity is manufactured. There is plenty of resources right now, its just being hoarded by capitalists. ""Hunger is not caused by a lack of food, but a lack of democracy"". If all you needed to do was try, then yes everyone should be rewarded equally. Everyone is already trying their best, not everyone can afford to become a doctor, thanks to capitalist oligarchy. Cuba has more doctors per person than we do. The incentive of self actualization is better than fake money points. This primitive monkey mentality you have is illogical. Get some perspective. The only reason money is an incentive is you'll die cold and hungry if you don't have any in a capitalist society. Good luck. It's a false narrative when one isn't needed. There's enough actual stuff that can be pointed at, no reason to make more of something that it actually is, but then, I guess failed emerald mine doesn't have the same ring as blood diamond mine. Don't be mistaken, genius is killed by our system everyday, regardless of race, ethnicity, or heritage. It just has a much better chance of surviving if it's draped in the privileges of society that are surrounded by, and generally determined by, race, ethnicity, and heritage. [A bit under $250k](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-parents-to-invest-in-amazon--turning-them-into.html). [deleted] But that is his point, self made is a fallacy and honestly propaganda to make it seem like anyone could be rich. Sure, pulling off an Amazon is still very unlikely, but the vast majority of people don't have parents who can just invest over 100 thousand dollars in whatever business idea they have. [deleted] It just means their fortune or success wasn’t inherited. Like Seinfeld or whoever else, he wasn’t born into the family of someone high up at nbc or whatever. Obviously you need people to give you an opportunity and an audience for your product Oh no the musk simps are angry lol It's hilarious you're saying that in a submission started by a blatant Russian propaganda account. Ignorance is bliss I guess. The fucking post *literally* has an “already reported and approved” flair, it isn’t a bot. Frankly, even if it were a bot, the point isn’t incorrect — the US is 100% an oligarchy, just to a lesser extent than Russia. Somebody else already cited a number showing a relatively small number of people control a large portion of the wealth in our country. I’m done arguing this inarguable fact, the numbers are there and if you want to ignore them that’s your prerogative. You’re right, it’s not implied. It was explicitly stated. I was just trying to give you fucking idiots the benefit of the doubt. Clearly that was a mistake. If you don’t see how comparing the US to Russia for the sake of stating the US is *also* fucked doesn’t by definition state that Russia is fucked I can’t help you. Your reading comprehension skills rival that of a preschooler or a really bright bulldog. Get the fuck out of my mentions, you goddamn waste of time. No it really isn't though. The necessity of having the nuanced discussion and acknowledging the grave harm done by American oligarchy far outweighs the risk to Ukraine's defense any post on reddit could possibly have especially considering that support for Ukraine both moral and material has only increased since the invasion began while Russia is more and more intensely opposed by the global community. The risk of Russian disinformation is nowhere near so high that we shouldn't have a discussion on the similarities and differences between American and Russian oligarchy and in any case that topic of discussion doesn't do Russia any favors at all to begin with. “Talk about rampant wealth inequality in the US so people might not have to continue paying off student/medical debt for the rest of their lives? Idk bro, sounds like a Russian misinformation campaign to me.” Do you even hear yourself? I’m “qualifying my comment” as you so stupidly put it because there are a bunch of morons like yourself completely failing to realize that comparing the US to Russia to state that both are extremely corrupt is literally fucking saying in that statement that Russia is corrupt. The only person sowing discord right now is yourself, the rest of us agree you’re being a fucking idiot. The US has a serious problem with wealth inequality and it’s leaving our most vulnerable citizens in lifelong debt. Russia has created worse problems for its citizens by having an even more blatantly corrupt oligarchy supported by a dictator that doesn’t need to hide his corruption like US politicians do. Both of these statements can be true at the same time and it’s not harming Ukrainians to acknowledge the US has plenty of its own problems. I don’t even know why I’m wasting my time with you, it’s so very clear you’re one of those kids who argued with the history teacher in high school. You can think whatever you want sounds fishy, it’s not my job to convince you, but it’s also not my job to sit here, pet your head, and tell you your opinion is valid. It isn’t, and you’re an idiot. Goodbye. So because people are stupid we shouldn't ever discuss any other topics other than what the average idiot has deemed as the most currently relevant? Like 90% of the posts on this website are porn, so I doubt theres too much ulterior motive there lol Your utter lack of familiarity with such a well known public figure as Robert Reich makes you look like an idiot in this sub in particular. The burden of proof is on you, if you have evidence that they are allowing Russia to kill people please share it. Again, you're talking about something not relevant at all to this conversation and trying desperately to make it about that. I'm not wrong because I'm not talking about what you're talking about because the conversation was never about that. You're wrong about winter tires being necessary in Iowa in May!!!! See, now I'm playing that game, introducing something completely unrelated to the discussion and accusing you of not knowing anything about. Snow tires are just as relevant to this conversation as the wealth gap. Now, I could also counter that your information is wrong and that the top 10% of Americans own less than 70% of the wealth, but again it would be as relevant as you rebutting that snow tires are absolutely necessary in Iowa in May. [https://www.statista.com/chart/19635/wealth-distribution-percentiles-in-the-us/](https://www.statista.com/chart/19635/wealth-distribution-percentiles-in-the-us/) Of course, you've already won because I thought you were a serious person who might have just been confused, but you are not. You're just desperate to talk about your pet issue and pretend to be morally superior to others who aren't even talking about it. We have Medicaid and Medicare in America. We have socialized healthcare for those who are poor on paper. It’s actually better insurance than what you buy here in America. American poor get medicaid, its top notch insurance. My roommate has it and he's just low income. Food stamps also give you a fair bit of money for food I’ve actually been to some 3rd world hospitals. They were pushed to a breaking point pre covid. I can only imagine how cocos hit them. They were stacking infectious patients with different diseases next to each other. I saw doctors go on strike because the government insurance everyone was using didn’t actually end up in them being paid. Their resources were running out because nobody was funding the hospital correctly. Doctors went on strike. That does not happen or else people die. Entire rooms filled with babies with respiratory distress. Immunocompromised HIV patients one room over from dangerously infectious tuberculosis patients. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Oh sorry I forgot that when you said all that what you really meant was that you were going to take the best possible versions of poverty across the world from third world countries and only use that, ignoring all the other ones that show a marked difference. I guess if you just ignore everything that is counter to your beliefs then yeah I agree Our poor have services. That alone gives them more than poverty in many third world countries. 1. who do you think pays if you declare bankruptcy in medical debt? 2. Medicaid exists, its a big program, $671.2 billion in 2020, or 16 percent of total NHE. https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/ This gives the breakdown of public (government) versus private per capita expenditures for healthcare by country for 2019. Note that the US spends considerably more than other countries, not less. Also, I travel often and have visited all but 2 of the 50 states. You right: my 70% statistic is a bit dated. It was 70% when the debate on the ACA was occurring 10+ years ago and it held for years afterward. As of 2019 its now 83% of healthcare spending in the US is done by government. I'm neither. We can disagree; you're delusional if you think the US doesn't have a good safety net and likely unrealistic on what the rest of the world has. It can always be better. As in electricity that also varies by state, region, and costs to maintain. Hate to break it to you but internet access is about as close as you can be without being declared a public entity. Edit: meant to say utility but on phone and I have fat fingers. We already receive funding to build this but usually that funding from the government doesn’t cover the actual costs. Hell company I work for just ran fiber in an area that is remote and even with government funding we paid enough out of pocket to do it that it will essentially never be profitable for us. Maintenance costs are a pain in the ass. So not only is it expensive to maintain, you gotta pay those techs through the nose. Then even with subsidies, it usually still costs you out of pocket to build the infrastructure. America has the lowest barriers for starting a small business of most of the western world. Okay, apparently we are talking about different things. Let's go ahead and start with what you understand regulations to be. Whatsat. Tell me more. > vendetta with the bible belt. What on Earth are you smoking? You badly need a realty check. You seem to assume anyone who doesn't agree with you must have something wrong with them (fanatical and now vendetta). Maybe the problem is just you? If your mentality is to call someone by those without any substantiation then it's clear the problem is you. Are you 12 or something? [deleted] Refreshing you understand and I agree. Altho I feel America's war on drugs is not directed so much at helping, but more at profiting, and to profit a cycle must cycle. Russia is not a third world country fool...and I'm tired of all you non-Americans trying to tell us Americans how we are allowed to feel about our lives, and country. [deleted] My country is tropical, but it gets hit by 20 typhoons per year, and we don't have much land compared to the USA so when it makes landfall it goes through our country. It has been getting worse lately and I suspect it's because of climate change. Rain isn't something to underestimate either, and so is El Niño (dry season) Eh, I’ve seen parts of Ghent and Lisbon that look far worse off than Clarksdale, MS. Hell, there are parts of Paris that are far closer to living in dire poverty than Clarksdale. 500 guys have 99.8% of the entire wealth of Russia. 3,000,000 guys have 27% of the entire wealth of the U.S. Theyre fucking different man. I too thought we spent more than that but you’re right, hasn’t been above 4% since 2013 - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2020&locations=US&start=1960&view=chart Are you ignoring the funding for military reesearxh/buying of military equipment/black budget cia? All the defense contractors? All that considered part of the military industry complex > If you start comparing it to government spending as a whole, you end up with a worthless analysis because *government spending as a percentage of GDP* ranges dramatically depending upon the macroeconomic nature of the country If only there were a way to quantify that, you know, like the simple statistics that you immediately laid out. It’s entirely relevant to point out how much of all federal spending is military in addition to what percentage of the GDP is consumed by government spending. Hmm. Well I guess I only dislike the metric because I don't understand it's usefulness. I'll do my best to read up on it and try to understand Self made = no gifts, inheiritens or rich parents All ready link sources You need to stop letting the media brainwash you Read the milionaire next door most mililnairs are regular people who save and invest instead of going in debt for a new car All tax is theft Not completly self made but nobody is self made unless they live alone in the woods alone Its your own choices that determine where you end up The working class would not be a thing without capitalisne Google feudlisme and genocide [link one](https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/articles/7-myths-about-millionaires) [link two](https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2871-how-most-millionaires-got-rich.html) [link 3](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-richest-people-are-self-made-says-new-report.html) [link 4](https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/how-many-millionaires-actually-inherited-their-wealth) There are more these are just some Not socialist it is cspitalist Ok sad communist, lmao Uh ya it is. It would be like saying ""China maybe invading Taiwan, but what about Palestine?"" There is a time and a place for everything, and if you can't see how certain discourse at certain times favors authoritarians then you are being willfully ignorant. E.g. Russia using the annexation of texas as support for annexation of Crimea. And a lot of them can't vote , even when released. Hey that's not fair. They were also imprisoned to create a slave labor force, since the 13th Amendment doesn't recognise the rights of incarcerated citizens. And remove their voting rights. Still not what ""political prisoner"" means. A political prisoner is someone that is improsoned for their political views or involvement in politics. I give you nft for it It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/from-the-administration-that-brought-you-kids-in-cages-its-tear-gassed-moms-1032760/](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/from-the-administration-that-brought-you-kids-in-cages-its-tear-gassed-moms-1032760/)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Portland is a fuckfest of destruction but alright lmao. So they blocked the police from getting where they were trying to go and thought it wouldn’t be an issue? I guess toppling walls around a federal building just aren’t gonna be mentioned? [deleted] Anyone can be a terrorist if the govt thinks you are a threat to their power. A quick perusal of your publicly available comment history says it for you. Ok. I will accept that you are correct. Oh ok I can ignore you now. (Ever heard of us prisoners working in -60 temps?) Most of Russia employment is 2-3 times less than unemployment benefits in the US. It’s poverty, and you can witness it yourself by driving 2 hours away from Moscow to any Central Russian town. Yes, obviously cost of living is different but this doesn’t cancel out the fact that people in Russia are much much poorer than those in U.S. or Western Europe. Right. We're starting from a relative disparity of 5x among the poor in each country. Remember my first comment? Thus, when Russia's housing is 5x cheaper, that's exactly in line with what it needs to be to be ""equal"" relative to cost of living, because they have one fifth as much money to spend. > Conclusion: US Welfare recipients are given **five times more money** to live off of, than Russia's bottom 25% are paid at their jobs. A 3-bedroom house for $109. ""But milk is almost 3 dollars!"" I assume Numbeo is scaling their data to use the same units, same as they did with Ruble/Dollar. Obv, most of the world doesn't use Gallons, hehe. :) Right. We're starting from a relative disparity of 5x among the poor in each country. Remember my first comment? (quoted below) Thus, when Russia's housing is 5x cheaper, that's exactly in line with what it needs to be to be ""equal"" relative to cost of living, because they have one fifth as much money to spend. > Conclusion: US Welfare recipients are given **five times more money** to live off of, than Russia's bottom 25% are paid at their jobs. No; I wasn't antagonistic. I didn't tell you to shut up and listen, rather I was suggesting your comment wasn't useful. There is a difference between critiquing and antagonizing. And it's a line you crossed without even a critique. Did you live in Mexico? If not, being latino matters about as much as a white American's race matters when discussing living in Poland. You are definitely pegging the “full O’ shit” meter. [deleted] Eeducate me then And I ignored the rest of your comment because half of it is substanceless unless you explain what you're referring to by gaslighting and the other half is a link that isn't even about Flint [deleted] Median wealth scores are brutally misleading. Every 22 year old with $150k in student debt negates 10 other adults with $15k in assets. ?????? The average american lives a far better life than the average russian, and the oligarchs in russia literally run the fucking country because it is a dictatorship. Are you a tankie? Not against police reform 3% some of those were huge riots There were litarl thousends of protest 3% still alot Blm is a gov controling tool Police is a gov controling tool Both are bad No Not racist Blm is used to control black people Who got hurt by the protest not white people There are homes without plumbing in every country in the world, that doesn’t make them equivalent to the 3rd world. Likewise, they’re mansions in Zimbabwe and North Korea, does that make them rich? Anecdotal accounts are meaningless. I’ve already shared data on both claims showing US sanitation and hookworm disease rates are in line with the rest of the developed world and far above that of the 3rd. Your links only confirm that a very small % of the population are affected by these things, which are commonplace in actual 3rd world countries. Your equation of the two is misleading and isn’t borne out by evidence. But please keep pushing your obvious Russian propaganda. It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/574181-report-nearly-half-a-million-us-households-mostly-in-cities](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/574181-report-nearly-half-a-million-us-households-mostly-in-cities)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Yeah but we don't learn that Hitler did a great job pulling Germany out of the great depression because it pales in comparison. Yeah, Hitler kicked ass getting into power! Just like Putin, he staged a false flag against his own people, and then blamed it on an ethnic minority to justify destroying democracy and starting a war of aggression that would get scores of innocents killed. Not how I would personally define ""kicking ass"", but you do you, buddy. This is a complete lie. Read the report for yourself instead of regurgitating what you were told it says. Several went to prison for it. Starting with papadopoulos. The reports conclusion was that clearly the campaign colluded with russia. No question about that part whatsoever. Lol, so you didn't read the report. Where ever you found that summary painted the most rosy picture possible. -- Volume I of the report concludes that the investigation ""did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities"".[4][5][6] Investigators ultimately had an incomplete picture of what happened due in part to communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not saved, as well as testimony that was false, incomplete, or declined.[7][8][9] However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred ""in sweeping and systematic fashion""[10][11][12] but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts.[13][14][15] It also identifies links between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government,[16] about which several persons connected to the campaign made false statements and obstructed investigations.[4] Mueller later stated that his investigation's conclusion on Russian interference ""deserves the attention of every American"".[17] Volume II of the report addresses obstruction of justice. The investigation intentionally took an approach that could not result in a judgment that Trump committed a crime.[18][19][20] This decision was based on an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion that a sitting president is immune from criminal prosecution,[21][22][23] and Mueller's belief that it would be unfair to accuse the president of a crime even without charging him because he would have no opportunity to clear his name in court; furthermore it would undermine Trump's ability to govern and preempt impeachment.[19][22][24][21][25] As such, the investigation ""does not conclude that the President committed a crime""; however, ""it also does not exonerate him"",[26][27] with investigators not confident of Trump's innocence.[28][29][30][31] The report describes ten episodes where Trump may have obstructed justice while president and one before he was elected,[32][33] noting that he privately tried to ""control the investigation"".[34][35][36] The report further states that Congress can decide whether Trump obstructed justice and take action accordingly,[19][37][38] referencing impeachment.[39][40] [deleted] Nice commentary comrade. Oh, sorry for the misunderstanding! I thought you were claiming that all Trump-Russia connections were fabricated. Still waiting on that evidence homeboy I'm sorry but ""muh sovereign democracy"" is just naive. America would never tolerate such a situation just like they didn't tolerate Russian missiles in Cuba There are no truly independent small countries, they are all under the influence of small countries. To think Ukraine is free or less corrupt because they have elections or are under American influence is a joke. Yes there's an Oliver Stone documentary on the troubles in Donbas called Ukraine on Fire from 2016 There's also a lecture going around by John Mearsheimer about the US' role in this situation Yea I can't imagine the FBI it the CIA lying to the American people... You must have not lived through the buildup to the Iraq War Except that it absolutely is And shit like what you posted just encourages everyone to give up on the idea that there's any choice You're effectively telling people, don't fuckin bother voting because the Democrats suck just as bad. Sorry if that wasn't your intention. I'm just working with a few words you posted and telling you how they might be read. bOtH SiDeS. Check out Biden’s SC pick vs. the illiterate Looneytarians and religious kooks the right installs. Check out all Biden’s progressive judiciary appointments. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukraine You must be really young or just ignorant. I would suggest you stop getting your news and history from reddit. To be honest with you, your relatives could have died and I would have no idea if that is true. But what you are describing about Putin orchestrating the Chechin war has no proof. There are people with speculations, but as far as I know, there is no clear evidence that it was Putin's direct orders. You have your speculation along with others. This is the dumbest thread I've ever read I appreciate your comment, comrade >Actually it wasn't since I've given only US number in order to show how truly screwed up those statistics are, especially since numbers given were correct. It'd be misleading if I'd chosen statistics favouring Russia. Lmao you literally tried to pretend wealth inequality in the US is just as bad by using a non-monetary bullshit metric. >If my statement was misleading then so was yours for heavily downplaying wealth inequelity in the West. Hahahaha how?. Unlike you I compared like with like. I compared what percentage of total Russian wealth their top 3 billionaires own and what percentage of US wealth our top 3 billionaires own. How is that misleading? Well even if I did at least I was taught facts. Something you wouldn’t understand I guess. If you hate Capitalism so much, go to Cuba. You are demanding that I show you something I never said. You are not quite right in the head, are you? >They're both doing that. Or, at least, both stealing the value you produce I do not work for Amazon, so they cannot be stealing my productivity. >You must always be paid less than what you produce This is hilariously wrong. If I work as an accountant at Apple and Apple makes 10 billion dollars in profit, it's not because of my labor. If I do the exact same job at Motorola and they lose 50 million that year, it means there is no correlation between labor and profit. I did not steal from Motorola. I suggest reading the first chapter of any Economics textbook. 1000 Apple Engineers making an iPhone and 1000 Blackberry engineers making a Blackberry. The Apple sells well and generates 2 billion in profit. The Blackberries don't and make only 2 million. Are the Apple Engineers generating 1 thousand times more labor? >They're both forcing you to do that I DO NOT WORK FOR AMAZON. They DO NOT force me to work for them or give them a portion of my income. >At some point, you must work for somebody else, otherwise you'll starve and die. Tell that to my father, he lives on the farm we built. He's retired. >What an absurd statement. Yes, I'd very much enjoy if you could explain to me how Amazon's profit materialises out of thin air, and would continue to do so if they had no workers. Profit is largely due to external forces, which is why some phone manufacturers make billions, and others, like Nokia, go bankrupt. It's why marketing exists. They can have the exact same amount of labor doing the exact same things yet have very different financial outcomes. Let me know if you need me to dumb that down further. >This absurd 'gotcha game' stuff that ""a-ha, Bezos only takes a $100,000 salary from Amazon!"" is meaningless I am awaiting the financial report proving that the majority of profits from Amazon go to Jeff Bezos. Reply with it or don't reply. >Stop being so facetious. News flash; wealth in the form of increased stock value is still wealth. If your appraised house value goes up, it's not due to your labor so I guess you're stealing from... who is it you are taking from? It must be someone's labor because market value isn't external in your universe. >The point is, I don't want a system to exist that permits anybody to get that rich Why? If it's not your money why do you care? The money should go to taxation and then carted off to Israel instead, then? Who is entitled to that surplus wealth, why, and who decides how much? > don't want a system that permits any individual or group of individuals to hold undue power over others; Did Jeff Bezos make you write this post? What power does he exert over you? [deleted] Expats generally live in the premium areas when they travel abroad, just saying. I guess this is true if you ignore the RNC and Trump’s assault on the debate commission I'm not saying she has. I'm saying she started grassroots and got a pretty high position. If enough citizens went the same route and if they don't get their pockets filled with big business men than something can actually be done about it for the sake of the citizens of this country. Look at the difference in opinions of polls between American adults, eligible voters, registered voters, and likely voters. If each of those categories of people was demographically identical, your point would have more weight, but look at so many polls in the US. The average American adult is WAY more populist **and** further to the left than the average registered voter, and even moreso compared with the likely voter. The people who actually vote are usually even a touch more conservative than the people who are likely to vote, but likely voter polls are pretty close to how it actually shakes out. We do live in an economy. Which is exactly the damn problem! Hello?! And by ""steer government fund[s]"", you mean ""bills are passed by a majority of both Chambers of the Legislature and signed by the President"", yes? Are they all in on the corruption? Most of 534 other Parliamentarians are all like, let's screw my constituents, and enrich Nancy Pelosi personally? Bernie Sanders has been here for like 50 years and never even gotten the nomination. Even when he was close, they rigged it to stop him. The future is not bright unless we change the system Again, watch for yourself. [Joe Biden is not the man he used to be. Here's the worst ones.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFkSJDAazAw) I guess maybe you don't know about Joe Biden. He's been notorious for misspeaking forever. Back in the 80's he lost a bid for presidency because he messed up and quoted a stolen speech. Honestly it added to his likability because he came off as human, he was a good speaker. Until he reached senility. [Compare Biden 20 years ago to today.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QMz5SjZWvg) That charm is why he became popular in the first place. He's oozing with charisma. It's staggering how quick witted he was compared to now when he's talking about ""pounds of Ukrainian flesh"" or some bullshit. Don't get me wrong. I think Joe is a nice dude, and probably would have been a great president 30 years ago. The problem is he's approaching 80, and that's not an appropriate age for a leader in a year where technology is vital. Disprove one thing I said. I'll wait. The tweet states: ""The top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the entire middle-class combined. That sure sounds like an oligarchy to me."" $120M, single or married, is definitively in the top 1%. In fact, it's in the top 0.001% What exactly are you trying to defend? She is exactly the target of the discussion. It's not clear to me why cloning a bag would be worse than cloning a recipe, or more deserving of prohibition. Where those lawsuits happen, it's usually for trademark infringement -- a fake Gucci bag also has a fake Gucci logo on it. Or they use the Gucci font and colour scheme on their box. Amazon brands their cloned bag with Amazon Basics, so that's not an issue here. I'm not trying to normalize it, I'm saying it is normalized because it's not and has never been illegal. When someone introduces a new product, people see that it is successful and they copy it and compete with it. You can't protect obvious things. That's the free market in essence. It’s telling that you can’t understand thinking about things for oneself. Good luck with your tribalism. I hope they tell you good things to believe. Um. I didn't say leave. I said experience Russia. How the fuck can you misinterpret an 11 word sentence. I never said it can happen under that mathematical constraint. You just have an astonishing inability to read. Says the person who doesn't understand Reich has two arguments... And yet you can't fathom a scenario where wealth inequality occurs and is good. I would suggest looking at the Life Cycle Model, but something tells me that's a bridge too far. Haha writing one word is labor? Pretty hilarious that youI can’t name one society in the history of man and then hide behind free labor. How old are you? Shame on those courses then. It’s a standard in our Economic History, Public Choice, and Public Econ courses. See? The idea that you can do an unconditional comparison between Russia and the US (with the basic knowledge that the collapse of the USSR wasn’t that long ago) and the significant structural differences between the countries? The idea is idiocy. Didn’t say Reich was. Or you. Mathematical optimums are used in economics. Depends on the outcome measure, but it can be composite growth, social welfare, etc. And it’s based on empirical testing. You likely cannot find a value, but certainly a range of values where growth or social welfare is highest. The Knowledge Problem doesn’t apply; you have ex post data. You aren’t making centralized planning assumptions for forecasts. Many does not equal all. Fucking glorious. Using an “English gen Ed” dig when you can’t understand I never said all economists. Again, my colleague and I can only giggle at what you and all the other ding dongs peddle here. It’s amusing. But keep thinking you have insight. Anarchists are a joke and not even worth mentioning at any point politically and dem socs are basically commie light or edgy soc dems when it gets down to it so leftists basically equal commie. Don’t forget all of the most popular leftist subs on reddit are tankie dominated And yet if you poll how much people approve/disapprove of US billionaires and Russian oligarchs, I'd bet there's a massive difference. You can say ""we know they're similar"", but that's certainly not something all of the country knows, and even for the ones who do know it, they still don't feel the same way towards US billionaires as they do about Russian oligarchs Kinda like the ""any disease a rat could carry, a squirrel could carry as well. But you do not share the same animosity of squirrels as you do with rats"" comparison from Inglorious Basterds The US said they were in solidarity with the democratic protestors that helped to push out a Putin puppet. That’s literally the opposite of meddling. I did not say shit about Sears, or retailers. Amazon is also a publisher. Amazon under prices things so smaller competitors cannot compete with them. https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/27/amazon-antitrust-lawsuit-washington/?guccounter=1 >What does book publishers have to do with Amazon competitors like Sears? Probably nothing, but I never said anything about them having. Nice straw man. Yes it's very rare for electors to be faithless, and when it's happened it's always been a symbolic gesture that everyone knew would have no effect on the election. The electors are prominent members selected by the party, they're not about to make the other guy president Say that to someone on DACA please don't compare the restriction of voter rights to the (lack of) funding for political candidates. voting rights are one of the most fundamental rights a person has. And a political party working actively to strip away those rights for their own gain is not the same as not giving out the same amount of money to every candidate. You say ""not Trump"" doesn't work on you. Does that mean that you think Trump would have done a better job than Biden, an equal job as Biden or a worse job but you have other priorities with your vote than getting the better president? Answering what? If gallows are peaceful?? ONE party is pushing this lie. ONE side can not take it that they lost. If elections were truly rigged than why did they let trump take office in the first place? I'm seeing it as very unlikely you were politically aware during the 90s if you don't know how the oligarchs wealth was distributed and is currently maintained, and think Elon Musk and Zuckerburg are Russian Oligarchs, and that nationality is irrelevant to Russian oligarchs. We know who killed MLK , James earl Ray. He had nothing to do with the government or billionaires. You’re making the assertion, provide the source.. None of those things other than education and interstate highways should be a federal level issue. First responders, waste management, etc are local level issues and higher federal taxes would have no impact on those programs so your concerns based on that are sorely misplaced. Most people forget that states in the US are meant be closer to countries in the EU as far as policy and the federal government should have bare minimum control. I completely agree > will be *paid* for. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot* I appreciate the actual response. I'm generally on board with that line of thought. It would be strange to be in favor of reckless tax allocation, but I'm sure someone somewhere might be. I do think taxes are necessary, especially at the local level. Federal taxes would be great if they could be truly allocated in a way that actually helped people. I'm not 100% with you about helping poor people cuz I know from personal acquaintances that some people are really just trying to get by with working the hardest they can and ends still aren't meeting. There are several different ways to change this that don't involve ""handouts"", but I don't really see people working toward those alternatives either It’s a legit question, it definitely would matter how much ppl work on avg even if they are making min wage. I’m just wondering if the average person around or below the poverty line works full time, or part time, 20 hours, 30 hours, 40, 50? These are legit questions and I feel like o would have a better idea of their situation, and then maybe explore why they work how many hours they do, do they have one or more jobs, do they have no jobs? Transpo to and from work? These are all legit questions, work (income), saving, and even investing are important parts of growing economically and climbing the economic ladder. And it was until probably around 1980 when tax slashing for the upper class and union busting became normalized. Anything above 100,000 was taxed at 70%. Now it’s 24-37%. 1970 average college yearly tuition was 2,800. Now it’s 38,000. Minimum wage was 2.00, and now is 7.25. So tuition went up 13x while minimum wage went up 3x. Same situation with cars and it’s gotten worse with housing. Ah you and your friends “feel” like you can’t afford it. Cool. I have no sympathy for you. Nobody does. Probably why you are preaching to foreigners on Reddit about why you deserve more. Literally the top 10 answers on a quick Google search. > Which isn't really possible in many industries. When was the last time a new car maker, energy company, etc actually could start let alone expand. Last year. Lucid motors. > Shit some local ISPs even tried to get city and states to pass ordinances banning google from laying their fiber optic cables to prevent them from entering the market. Not just city and states. Its since 1994 it has been illegal for land-line phone companies to compete with each other in terms of access to a single location... so if you are a Verizon internet customer you cannot legally get AT&T. You are making my point. Regulations are put in place to favor incumbents, and prevent competition. When you hear ""regulation"" think, ""incumbent protection"". > While competition is possible the system is set up to close people out if not in first. Exactly, the gov exists to lock in incumbents and make them part of the ruling class and keep out newcomers. You are almost there. Heck in many states its literally illegal to start a hospital without getting a letter from your nearly competitors saying its ok. You do know that you also painted yourself as a communist now right? It’s like openly putting a target on you for everyone of Reddit who may also have beef with you. Congrats on trying to sound smart and in the process making yourself public enemy number 1 I wouldn't call posting misleading statistics ""jumping off posts"". That still does not explicitly say billions of dollars. They’re not either. You can either agree to work for them or not it impacts it in a hypothetical way, you arent going to give me alesson because you cant since it relies on future hypothetical states which you cant possible have full or even good info on. If you kill other actors, you can raise the price after . Think to a famous coffee chain who creates shops in front of a concurrent independant, use its money to sell at very low price, kill the independant, and after raise the price or completly leave the area. The result in a niche industry is lowered quality in this instance. To compete you have to cut corners that cannot be cut, or lose money. An industry with a only a few service providers is going to become an industry with potentially just one, and some unemployed workers. It's only good for the consumer in the short run. Once they kill their competition, they raise prices and lower quality, because, ""What are you going to do about it? Buy from someone else? Lol, who? We're the only ________ in town!"" https://theconversation.com/the-50-biggest-us-donors-gave-or-pledged-nearly-28-billion-in-2021-bill-gates-and-melinda-french-gates-account-for-15-billion-of-that-total-175778 Oh my bad! https://fee.org/articles/what-9-of-the-10-richest-people-in-the-world-have-in-common/ Really we just need to start chopping heads off again. If a politician knew they’d get their head chopped off for doing all the bullshit they do.. maybe they’d think twice after they just saw their coworker get cut up for doing shady shit. What does stock trading look like in GDP? It is. I’m not sure what your point here is. I’m saying we should tax the rich more and we should have stronger social programs. Will I have to pay more in taxes? Yes, but is it a worthy sacrifice for the greater good of the country? Also yes. Top 10% lol those are just normal people. You can just be a doctor and be in the 1%. The top 10% is basically just people over 40 who went to college. Well, there’s some pretty hefty safeguards in place though. Also, there’s way less incentive in the US for this type of thing. In Russia, you literally are entitled to wealth and riches when you get into government offices. In the US, if you spend decades and get a lot of media you’ll get a book deal and corporate consulting contracts. I imagine cumulative advantage plays a serious part in this. With large money comes the ability to survive large investment. With enough money you can almost guarantee returns by going through channels dedicated to increasing wealth. ""I know a guy who knows a guy"" is easier to pull off above a certain threshold of capital. And the taxation on capital is less, I believe. >In this case, investors are gaining at the expense of others, which is not efficient. That is not a good example of your argument, because pretty much every possible allocation of the profit classifies as ""one party gaining at the expense of others"" (since a distribution is *by definition* zero sum.) You haven't answered the fundamental question: what constitutes a ""fair"" distribution, and why? >Workers would be productive if they owned the means of production. Let's assume that there's a world where every worker equally owned the means of production. Some workers, such as surgeons, would be much more skilled/valuable, so that they would command higher prices. And why wouldn't they? So we admit that some workers would disproportionately accrue capital. At the same time, there would be various projects—say, a new shoe factory—that require capital. Workers don't want to take the risk of building something speculative *before* they get any wages; otherwise, no one would complain about getting paid in stock rather than cash. As a result, they need someone to front that risk. Enter the ""capitalist"" from the previous paragraphs. They have enough capital to weather the risk, and are happy to fund exciting early projects by bankrolling workers and taking on risk of non-profitability *for them*. But why the hell would those capitalists and early founders take on those risks without being rewarded by ownership? Boom, we're right back to capitalism. We are here because there is always a need for people to take on risk, which only happens when you have founders and investing capitalists that contract for ownership. You have investing capitalists because some people will be disproportionately better at ethically accumulating earnings in a meritocratic world. Could the whole system be made more humane, say by introducing social safety nets and more collective bargaining? Sure. But capitalism will always exist unless you ban surgeons or talented engineers from earning more, or ban people with extra money from investing, or ban founders from owning a majority of *their own* start ups at their very beginnings. >Tesla is stripping income from the productive machinists in China and the engineers in the US, putting it into their own pockets, creating elites, and it's still GDP growth. Alternatively, Tesla is investing in factory robots that replace human workers, so less payroll goes out to their employee base for the same levels of productivity. No one would sell factory equipment on the basis of your future earnings, so it makes sense that ROC outpaces productivity when buying equipment in this scenario. > There is a much larger difference in wealth inequality compared to income inequality. I read this and I can't help but ask so? I acknowledge the difference, you acknowledge the difference. But you don't seem to acknowledge the need for different data to identify the difference. That’s a hard degree. I hated probability and statistics in college. What’s Mald then? No I’m not mad. This is Reddit Yeah how dare countries want to join a defensive alliance so they don’t get invaded by Russia, which has proven itself to be willing to invade all of its neighbors. [deleted] Countries who felt threatened by the possibility that Russia might attack them wanted to be part of NATO. Not the other way around. Who are you to say that they shouldn't have joined NATO to feel more secure? The one that in the end pushed into Ukraine was Russia. The one that broke the agreement was Russia. The one that enterted in Ukraine with missiles and tanks was Russia, not NATO. Repeatedly. And don't tell me they had no choice, because they did. They **wanted** war. Why? Because the real reason behind it is to take possession of newely discovered Ukranian Gas and Oil reserves, which could have made Europe independent from Russia. This is the real reason behind the war. It's always oil. Also, are you comparing a possible democratic decision by the population with a foreign country invasion? It's not on the same plane. Not even the same planet. Who said anything about food? I'm talking about scarcity of anything. Scarcity of villas. Scarcity of Lamborghinis. Scarcity of yachts. Gem mines in apartheid South Africa rings pretty bad already, I don't see why someone would feel the need to embellish It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-parents-to-invest-in-amazon--turning-them-into.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-parents-to-invest-in-amazon--turning-them-into.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) If you're a fucking apologist for cuntery it is, yeh. And arguably nobody ever has done more with 100k than Bezos He turned it into a 2 trillion dollar company And it’s not exactly comparable, but it’d be like if your parents gave you $100 and you turned that into a $2 million dollar business. I think you’d deserve the vast majority of credit for that considering you 2000x’d the initial investment! Again, you're arguing against a meaning of the term you just made up. No one thinks people have never had any help of any form or deny that bezos had some more advantages than the average person. But that still doesn't mean that he didn't make the vast majority of his fortune, rather than having his entire wealth handed to him What tier? I went to law school and a lot of my classmates did not find material success, and the ones that did have absolutely miserable lives and failing marriages. Two of my friends were top flight red hots and got the best IP jobs imaginable and neither lasted more than two years, ones became a prosecutor and then a cop (“they’re making the same money and having more fun”) and the other had family money and just burned out. I dug the theory behind tax law but the practice was loathsome, loved criminal defense but was going broke, joined my friends e-commerce company as a VP and never looked back. I don’t regret it, it trained me to think, best education I ever had. But it’s still a gamble. A big financial gamble that only a certain amount of people can succeed in, and there’s no net to catch you if your bet comes up snake eyes, and the door of bankruptcy court will be barred to you. You’re having to risk lifetime impoverishment just to do what you’re good at - and that’s a scam. You should be getting paid to go to law school, not paying a 250,000 fine for applying yourself to a difficult and useful profession I looked through some of his posts and comments and while they're not exactly pro-US, I still don't see ""blatant Russian propaganda"" like you said. He does have any annoying habit of spamming one post in a thousand subs though. Also, what OP is or isn't doesn't take away from my comment, I wasn't replying to the OP. I didn't say it was a bot. I said it was a Russian propaganda account. It is. The fact the mods approve of it is irrelevant. >You’re right, it’s not implied. It was explicitly stated. No it isn't. > If you don’t see how comparing the US to Russia for the sake of stating the US is also fucked doesn’t by definition state that Russia is fucked I can’t help you. You're making up arguments. Work on your reading comprehension, and stop throwing tantrums like a child who needs a nap. [deleted] Haha, sure dude. Being familiar with someone doesn't mean I accept everything they say as gospel. It's too bad critical thinking is so eroded in the US. It's possible to agree with some of what a person says and not all of what a person says. Nope! I guess russia isn't doing anything wrong! Thanks for educating me. I'm not interested in a retarded argument with a troll Sorry that was my bad, I did in fact write it was 70 percent in another comment but made a mistake in my last comment. I’m glad you looked up the stats. Just work some more on your critical analysis because this debate was not to win but to get educated and know what you need to focus on. I am morally superior to you and anybody else is too the moment you thought that 10 percent of the Americans holding 70 percent of the wealth is okay. You’re too focused on winning the debate and not processing the issue I’m talking about. Hm nice. Thanks. Reddit comments make it seem like it's hopeless if you're poor and has medical needs and in US. What the fuck? Wouldn't using the worst examples from the *extremely* broad category of ""third world countries"" be a *literal* example of cherry picking? As you would be mischaracterizing what that phrase actually means in practice? Ukraine and Guatemala have relatively the same poverty rates, and one is considered a third world country while the other is now considered part of ""the West."" Other places have services. And many of the places that have worse ones that we do are imposed through IMF and World Bank restrictions, not because of any real reason. [deleted] Sorry, mate - a ""no, you"" in this case is asinine, in the country where the leading cause of bankruptcy is medical debt no less. This is not what a first world country with a reasonably working safety net looks like. We can disagree, but just because you hold a different opinion doesn't mean it's equally valid. At a certain point, concepts like ""objective reality"" come into play. [deleted] Since we’re obviously talking about economics, regulations are restrictions on economic behavior. its hard to get addicts/mentally ill people help because most of the time, they refuse help >the majority of the Reddit community is American Americans make up the largest plurality of users on the site. It’s also owned by Americans and hosted in America. When you point out that this is why you see people talk about America a lot here, the cope/seethe meltdowns are insane. It’s so fucking weird. [deleted] Ah yes, Paris, the only place west of Bratislava and north of Africa where I had the pleasure of using a squat toilet. Neither Belgium nor Portugal meet the well heeled qualification. But It think we're on the same wavelength. hey, your first statement is true, but where are you getting your second statement from? The US wealth inequality wiki ([link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States)) shows that the top 10% owns 70% of wealth as of Q3 2019 But what about most people? Can most people afford a house in US/RU, can most people expect justice if run over by an elite in US/RU? can most people expect their view get enacted as law? Can anyone expect to reach 1% the wealth of an elite in US/RU? Both are beyond a tipping point where only elite's concerns matter, even if the percentages are different. Sure, American elites are more tolerant, but when you look at Native American protests against pipelines, it's not far off from the treatment of Russian protesters. Over the pandemic the rich got several times richer in America and the poor got poorer. Sure those are our numbers now. But if we don’t do something about income inequality it is just a matter of time till things in America get as bad as Russia. The problem is that GDP is not the government budget. It’s everything the ENTIRE ECONOMY produces in a year, so it’s not really a helpful thing to compare one piece of the government budget to. It’s currently about 10% of *all* federal spending, but more than 50% of the discretionary budget (spending that isn’t automatic and required) https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison [deleted] Yes, I am including all defense spending. Research funding is about $100 billion annually, procurement is about $250 billion, and intelligence spending (not just CIA, but all agencies) ranges from $70 to $80 billion annually. I'm not sure what about this is so surprising to you, these figures aren't exactly controversial. I guess its not unfair to like the way of using it to me a sure, but rather I was just saying its used as a metric internationally for code so we need it, if that makes sense. >all tax is theft Hahaha man I love when idiots openly declare it themselves so you know their opinions don't matter >nobody is self made I'm glad that even after admitting you're a complete idiot, you still agreed with me and told me I'm right. No billionaires are self made >working class would not be a thing without capitalisne Imagine believing this lmfao No tax is theft. It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-richest-people-are-self-made-says-new-report.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-richest-people-are-self-made-says-new-report.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Hey buddy. 67.7% of millionaires being selfmade says nothing about billionaires. So where are you getting your selfmade billionaires figure from? It sure isn't any of those 4 links. Interesting. All those links loop back to the same report, so it’s really just one source, and they’re all super biased, but thanks for it. Then let’s make America more like Sweden. If your reaction to China invading Taiwan is different than the occupation of palastine it is completely relevant to the discussion That ain’t politics, that’s just good business sense! “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” ~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon America does have its political prisoners. We just have a different enforcement than the Russians. They stifle peer to peer communication because they don’t want popular uprisings. Here in America we only arrest the ones that can actually make a difference First of all, [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/t5baxw/putin_has_amassed_enormous_wealth_for_himself_and/hz4bfmk/) is something you should look into. Secondly, the FBI had a program where they would monitor, extort and sometimes kill left-wing community leaders. Is that close enough to ""political prisoner"" for you? Their political view was being left leaning minorities, they invented a reason to arrest them en masse. Not sure how those arent political prisoners. Right, Fred Hampton wasn't a political prisoner, he was assassinated by the state. Why are voting rights stripped from felons? Still not the point of the discussion. I think raising the argument that drug arrests are political in nature is completely valid in the context of the discussion, but then saying ""you don't think there's a difference between drug laws and political prisoners"" is basically a strawman. Their political view is that people should be free to use drugs. If they’re put in prison for acting on those beliefs and freely using drugs then they’re political prisoners. It’s a fucking crime against humanity You don’t think they were imprisoned for their political views? You know there is some dumbass out there that would pay 10k+ for a nft of some microscopic artwork that at normal resolution just looks like a dot lol. [deleted] Wrong again. It’s apparent that you are unable to have civil discourse though, so there’s that. I love how you just keep doubling down on being an ignoramus https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/12/13/21012730/cold-prison-incarcerated-winter https://theintercept.com/2016/08/24/deadly-heat-in-u-s-prisons-is-killing-inmates-and-spawning-lawsuits/ First of all 2 hours will hardly get you outside of Moscow oblast. Yes, the unemployment is not as good as USA, minimum wage, etc etc. USA is of course superior but people are still living paycheck to paycheck and even then still have debt that exceeds their capabilities. There is poverty in both countries. People suffer in Russia just as much as they suffer in USA. And as for the original tweet, no one can deny wealth inequality is the same in Russia as it is in USA, with such a small number of people hoarding such a great amount of wealth. Its almost like youre missing the point that theyre getting 5x less, so a 5x reduction in costs is equivalent. Two posts offering no value. You call it critique, but it delivers antagonism. Seems to me my point about the definition of third world country used in its contemporary context had constructive value. You just seem to have nothing better to do or say. Goodbye Lmfao ok You are stupid. Thats a choice. Feel free to do your own research next time https://borgenproject.org/alternative-to-third-world/ https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/01/08/954820328/memo-to-people-of-earth-third-world-is-an-offensive-term https://sites.duke.edu/dukeengagecapetown16/2016/06/23/five-things-wrong-with-the-term-third-world-countries/ Oh you must be a bot or something lmfao. Ok gotta love russian propaganda. They absolutely can be compared and his evidence to the contrary doesnt hold up Lol dude idk what game you’re playing. I clearly said they resemble 3rd world countries. That’s on you how you interpreted that statement. There’s nothing that’s untrue about what I wrote. And I’ve been to 3rd world and 2nd world nations. So I know what I’m talking about. Sounds like you don’t. Seems you are going off what the media told you a 3rd world country is. You might want to try actually visiting one, just visit one were your ancestors were kind to them. Nigeria and India have the world largest one person one vote democracies, no electoral college, actual freedom. No food deserts in these countries either, natural communities that are not sidetracked by race-defining policies means people get real food, and everyday life important communities. There is plenty of freedom of speech, nobody cares, just don't mention names, yeah don't. Within local communities, there is due process but frankly the central governments are vastly inefficient compared to western ones because they are purposefully made beauracratic, we wouldn't want to concentrate too much power anywhere. Anyway, not sure why I am bothering to explain this, but yeah travel more don't believe the media, if you have ever been to Hmart/a global farmers market you will know walmart is not freedom, its just standardized .... Wanted to add, poverty is also defined different, people will have a small house maybe no running water- have a community tap, land, clothes on their back and be defined as poor because they cannot afford education and three square meals, in the west you cannot say you are poor when you have a house, just a different world, i wish both sides of the aisle would realize and stop trying to copy or compare. There's really no way to get it across unless they've seen it or lived in it. The fact that your *average* American can go to a store as well-stocked and varied as Walmart is literally unimaginable if you grew up in a developing country, or the soviet union. Even our middle-of-nowhere rundown gas stations are fucking cornucopias of food and wealth compared to some of the places I've been. Homes aren't *all* rundown concrete megaplexes or sheet metal shanties. Local education actually has a *chance* to improve your life. There's a damn good reason so many people try to immigrate to America, even when they know they would be unwelcome. Edit: this is not to say we cannot or should not strive to do better. We *should* seek to sustainably raise the opportunities and standards of living for all within our country. Just saying that the floor is far lower than many could imagine [deleted] Yeah the world is black and white and US is best country in the world. Jfc no they weren't please read the study. Blm is a government control fucking what the hell. Absolute dumbass. What about the cops who hurt black people? Did it ever occur to you that maybe that is why BLM started? I’m not a Russian propagandist lol. It’s okay to state that there are problems in the United States without accusing others of being affiliated with propaganda. We have many problems here. We don’t have to be the worst in the world in order to admit we have a problem. Many countries have issues and we are no different. I was raised to believe everything my instructors taught me about the world from political ideology to history to religion to social norms and so on. I have realized that much of what I believed to be rock solid was just an illusion. We have propaganda here too and it’s very effective. So needlessly aggressive lol I took that excerpt straight from an article. Your vol 1 states clearly that Trump didnt work together with the Russians. He just took advantage of it, like any politician would have. Lmao if the DNC starting the rumors about Trump-Russia collaboration is an elaborate guise, then explain these events Einstein. [this](https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-2016-tweets-pushed-194158230.html) [and this](https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-2016-tweets-pushed-194158230.html) If you are incapable of admitting that the partnership between the Clinton campaign and Fusion GPS was suspicious, I don’t want to hear about “elaborate guises”. You don’t like Trump, but your hatred of him doesn’t justify making up claims of conspiracy with the Russians due to some statements and appearances. ""The joint report from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security claims that Russian hackers gained access to computers across the targeted industries and collected sensitive data including passwords, logins, and information about energy generation. While the report doesn’t specify any identifiable sabotage, the intrusion could set up future attacks that do more than just record observations."" You're saying you need more evidence than FBI and homeland security? Calm down igor, we know what you did. Oh, yeah, Winter on Fire is a phenomenal documentary! You should really go watch it immediately. I'll wait. Can you show me where they are all hillary loving cat ladies? Because that is your claim. I'm so nervous about her nomination. McConnell has shown no willingness to budge on his ""fuck Democrats"" political strategy **[2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukraine)** >From the end of February 2014, demonstrations by pro-Russian and anti-government groups took place in major cities across the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan movement and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. During the first stage of the unrest, known as the ""Russian Spring"" (Russian: Русская весна, romanized: Russkaya Vesna), the Ukrainian territory of Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation after a Russian military intervention, and an internationally criticized (based on UN resolution 68/262) Crimean referendum. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) You must be a Russian bot or troll. I get my news from multiple sources but only Kremlin sources say that Ukraine wants them to take over. My relatives die every year, many of whom I don't know personally fortunately and unfortunately, indirectly or directly by Putin's regime and especially the Ramzan Kadyrov's one. Yes I know, no one actually conducted a really credible investigation on those explosions, but there were a lot of really trustworthy rumours from independent news sources and as he was the head of KGB (pentagon, cia, fbi combined) he just silenced everyone and everything and it became virtually impossible to verify the explosions caused by him or chechens. But looking at his track record about claims, there is a really big chance that what he claimed and told to public about the explosions caused by Chechens wasn't true. Also why would especially chechens do these explosions, they weren't known as the extremists at the time, he, Putin, tarnished that image. Also chechens wouldn't gain anything from those explosions only hatred. Why wouldn't the bombers been Kazakh people, or Turkic, or Ingush, or Ossetian, Yakutian, Tatar, or any other ethnic group? I didn't understand the part where you say that Putin didn't orchestrate the Chechen war. The chechen war is a really real war, that was one the bloodiest to date. And it was caused directly, because of Putin. There isn't much media coverage about it from big established independent sources, but many real life events are told by individuals, and that can be. I wouldn't gain anything in fabricating this. I just want world to be a better place. For pretending like it wasn't worryingly comparable situation? If one of the most corrupt and the most unequel nations in the world is only showed up beacuse their unreasonably rich are slighlty richer percentage wise than our unreasonably rich, despite ours being actully richer, and you pretend like it's fine that's absolutely downplaying our problem. My statistic served to show the problem, yours to say lothey have it worse we're perfect. That's downplaying. Is it not true that the top 3 billionaires have a greater net worth then the bottom 160 millions Americans? Acting like you know anything about Cuba or the people who live there. Let’s keep this chat on topic I don't hate capitalism. I think it's a useful tool. However it is also dangerous and has massive flaws, mostly related to the fact that consumers are not omniscient and therefore needs to be heavily regulated. Your username is rather apt > I do not work for Amazon Okay, great, this is how the entire capitalist economy functions, so it doesn't matter. The point is *anyone* who employs you is doing this. >This is hilariously wrong. If I work as an accountant at Apple and Apple makes 10 billion dollars in profit, it's not because of my labor. It *literally* is. It's not because of your labour *alone,* obviously, but rather because of the collective labour of all the employees there. If *nobody worked at Apple, Apple wouldn't make money.* It's patently ridiculous to say ""there's no link between labour and profit"" just because you can do the same job at two different companies while those two companies make different amounts of profit. Obviously the company's entire profit isn't dependent on *your labour alone,* but if the company had *no labour,* the company would have *no profit.* And yes, a company can still *lose* money, but the fact stands, the company would never, *ever* gain money if they had not a single person working there. It's funny how you say ""read the first page of any economics textbook"" because your understanding of economics is clearly exactly that - textbook. You're operating on absurd hypotheticals within a vacuum without any regard for the actual material reality of the economy. Your ""no link between profit and labour"" argument makes perfect sense on an abstracted theoretical level (such as, what you might find in a textbook) but it blatantly falls apart under any logical scrutiny. I could not make a company and put in no work and hire no employees and have that company miraculously start turning a profit. Profit is dependent on production or on providing a service, something that cannot be done without input of labour. The relationship is not 1:1, i.e., the same amount of labour in one company can produce more profit than it will in another company, but the fact still remains, once more for the people in the back, profit is *impossible* without labour. >Tell that to my father, he lives on the farm we built. He's retired. How did you get the startup capital for that? Somebody had to work for somebody. Even if you inherited the necessary funds to build that farm, somebody in the past had to work to create that inheritance. That's my entire point - being self-reliant requires startup capital, that you either have to inherit or work for. In any event, somebody somewhere had to work for somebody else, it's not optional. The rich are entitled to the labour of the lower classes. I say ""the lower classes"" because people with massive generational wealth that gets inherited naturally don't have this issue. >They can have the exact same amount of labor doing the exact same things yet have very different financial outcomes. And yet, no labour = no financial outcome at all. It's that simple. Again, maybe if you took your nose out of a textbook and stopped acting like the real world was a ""John has 24 apples"" problem that you can solve with a calculator, you'd realise the material absurdity of what you're saying. Nobody is denying that market forces impact profit, but in case I haven't said it enough times in this comment, *without labour, you would have no product or service to offer to the market.* >I am awaiting the financial report proving that the majority of profits from Amazon go to Jeff Bezos. Complete bad-faith argument. Reply in good faith or don't reply. >If your appraised house value goes up Here you go again, conflating a house and a business. If you can't see the difference I don't knwo what to tell you. >It must be someone's labor because market value isn't external in your universe. Never once have I said that market forces don't impact prices in a market economy. The point I've been making the entire time is that profit is conditional on labour, which is a fact. >Why? If it's not your money why do you care? Because I'm not a soulless ghoul and I'm capable of caring about things that don't personally affect me. It's called ""empathy"" and ""ethics,"" maybe pick up a textbook about one of those things when you're done sticking the pages of your economics textbook together. >Did Jeff Bezos make you write this post? What power does he exert over you? It's not about Jeff Bezos as an individual, it's about the class of ultra-wealthy to whom he belongs, who have the power to influence governments through lobbying, and who rule autocratically over the lives of their employees. And, needless to say, those people have considerable power over me. Right now, my country's universal healthcare system is under threat because our ultra-rich government ministers are stripping its funding so that they can sell off pieces of it to their also ultra-rich friends in the medical business. Amazon employees piss in bottles and have to jog around the warehouse because their quotas are so strict. Not to mention the inherent exploitation in the fact that workers under a capitalist economy can never be paid the full value of their labour. Can you elaborate? Is the problem that a Congresswoman's salary is $174,000? Is the problem that an 81-year old who has been working for over 55 years has been able to save a lot of money? Is the problem that the stock market exists? Nobody rigged anything against Bernie. He was never close. He got stomped. Twice. Get over it. Literally anyone looks bad if you take thousands of hours of them talking and edit it down to a couple minutes of the times they misspoke. It's so gross that conservatives have to stoop to this kind of deceptive editing to try to make a president look bad. Exactly like all the thousands of posts that Hillary was ""having seizures"" because she sneezed and conservative propagandists cut the video and changed the speed of playback. Get back to me when you have actual policy to criticize instead of this cheap ass deceptive bullshit. With age his speech impediment gets worse. It's the same with parkinson's. The older you get with it, the worse it gets. I agree on the age thing. You should be ineligible to hold office after 65, the oldest. There's no reason why the country should be run by people that have no fucking clue what the current world is like. They really need to add education requirements above high school or equivalent, to hold office, both state and federal. An associates degree should be the bare fucking minimum. Provide a factual backing for what you said. You're the one hiding behind an account that you made up to spew bullshit. Others have already given you links showing the lack of representation between the will of Congress and the will of the People. Edit: I'll wait. [deleted] Okay you continue with your billionaire suckling, I'm 100% they will give you a job. You may have meant something different, but what you said is clearly stated above. Not my fault you struggle with writing down your thoughts. Perhaps you could spend a little more time thinking before you comment. It’s the same sentiment. How much time in Russia have you spent? Annnnd there’s the ad hominem right on cue. Classic 🤡 The other argument was irrelevant so I didn't pay attention to it. Are you here to waste more of my time or do you have anything worth me listening to? I don't want to live in a world where people starve because heartless shitheads with spreadsheets say it's a good thing. To learn about weather inequality in Russian? Sounds more like a Russian history class, or economics of world powers course, but not a class on the federal reserve, definitely not in an econ 101 class. In my banking class which was centered on the federal reserve we looked at other central banks around the world. And I can tell that yes their central bank is structured differently and they allow for more inflation in their economy but we didn't look at a layout of the different classes to see how big the gap is between middle class and upper class. We didn't talk at all about minimum wage workers in any countries because it was a central bank class You need to read more Mises and Sowell. ………which is why is was absurd to say “many economists work on income inequality”, comparing one known quantity to a hypothetical individual. “I never said all economists” you didn’t really say anything. But I guess that much is to be expected from the least respected of the “hard sciences”. Oh lmao I just read your other replies. You make a ridiculous statement and then immediately backpedal whenever pressed on it. Laughable. Ya hes gaslighting you. Communists definitley = leftists. And they are so stupid that theyll defend other communists even if they havent heard there points. They helped prop the government up by funding them. They helped Ukraine fight the separatists. They wanted Ukraine in Nato. >I did not say shit about Sears, or retailers. Wrong. You did right here. > Amazon does under price some things so **smaller competitors** cannot compete and then rises the prices back up after competition is killed. Amazon's competitors were other retailers like Barnes and Noble and later Sears. Publishers were it's suppliers not competitors. >Amazon is also a publisher. Amazon was not a publisher at the time when they used those tactics. Amazon self publishing is a recent thing. >Amazon under prices things so smaller competitors cannot compete with them. Their competitors were giant retailers like Sears and Barnes and Noble. Those retailers were larger than Amazon not smaller. Amazon managed it by being more efficient than them. >Probably nothing, but I never said anything about them having. Nice straw man. So you literally don't know what Amazon does. Wow. This sub is truly the new /r/latestagecapitalism. You didn't know Amazon is a retailer? It's literally one of the largest retailers in the freaking world! Yup. Or the ACA. I'm seeing it as you accept the groupthink without ever trying to critically examine anything that undermines your worldviews because it might destroy your ossified views The King family as well as many prominent civil rights activists of the tome disagree with you. Ray himself has tried multiple times to retract his guilty plea. You really think it's a coincidence that, at the same time black leaders like Fred Hampton were assassinated during COINTELPRO raids, MLK just *happened* to be killed in an unrelated racist incident by a man with no motive, after the FBI had tried to blackmail him into suicide? Common knowledge doesn’t need a source. Educate yourself. Right, I wasn't necessarily advocating for federal taxes, just taxes in general I'm genuinely shocked that there still so many people this deep in denial about the brokenness of the systems in America. Whatever though. If the boot tastes that good i can't stop yall. [deleted] For all of your claims? > You are making my point. Regulations are put in place to favor incumbents, and prevent competition Which circles back to my original point. A capitalist society does not allow this, an oligarchy leaning politically system does. >Congrats on trying to sound smart and in the process making yourself public enemy number 1 You seem well adjusted ;) But the choices are: work for a capitalist who exploits my labour, start my own business and become a capitalist who exploits labour, or don’t work and starve. Again, you seem to be so against the government or “poor people” taking the value of your labour, but you seem entirely okay with a billionaire taking the value of your labour. The equation is simple. You work, and earn your company money. Your company takes that money, and gives you back a smaller portion. A lot of people seem to think there is no other way, or that these capitalists are entitled to it because they “own the business”. So because these capitalists already have an excess of wealth, they should be entitled to the wealth that the workers create? Why should those with an excess of wealth get to take wealth from people who don’t have an excess of wealth? This literally only leads to wealth accumulation and inequality. This is not a good thing for any nation ever. Eventually the competition disappears, and then you can raise prices however you want. Which is the real core of this inflation beyond the pandemic. Ages back I worked at a mom-pop video store... Blockbuster and Hollywood video would run stores at a loss for up to 5yrs to burn out all the mom-pop shops around. New releases were expensive and normally ran as a loss-leader for the first 90days from release, they were able to run up debt/sell stock to burn out the competition, then they'd order fewer of those new-releases once they had the market...ensuring profits in the future. Similarly - mom/pop ISP's back in the day would do dialup modem banks ...like 100 phone lines, and then have T1s/OC3 expensive fiber out to the internet. When ATT finally figured out they could do this, they raised the prices on those circuits to price them out and take their customers. I've never seen any of this behavior stopped. edited typo. That's essentially what Uber did to Taxis So what your saying is neoliberalism is a flawed theory. That's fine until someone denounces you. I wish it were that simple, but you'd just get shot by police and written off as a single crazy. Or they'd label your corps as one of those 'Antifa terrorists' and use that as an excuse to jail anyone even vaguely against conservative propaganda. It would give them an excuse to go full Red Scare but with modern technology. It doesn't, it's not accounted for. GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product, meaning it's a measure of production simply adding household consumption, public expenditure, private investment and net exports [C+G+I+(X-M)] together. Stock trading doesn't involve any direct production process, as it is obvious. Apple could go announce that it may be going under and issue a 1-to-100 split today triggering panic sellers, you may sell your shares and someone buy them from you, but nothing was produced there. If you go to a supermarket and get some bread, you're expending your money in something that was produced, likely a few days ago. The growth rate of capital (r) mentioned in this thread is based on Solow's model and uses the usual definition of capital, that is whatever is used by business to generate output. and when you take your hard earned education, and eventually start your own business, incorporate, then go public, with a market cap of $500 million, you won't mind paying a 90% federal tax rate? just wondering. Well now, they have insider stock information that they use freely, and there's legal corruption with super pacs and lobbying. I just don't think we're that far off. > I imagine cumulative advantage plays a serious part in this. With large money comes the ability to survive large investment Yep, there is a related idea using poker as an analogy. While playing the game skill and chance are involved. The more chips you start the game with the longer you can withstand the losses resulting from chance, increasing the probability that you win. And more directly to your point, you're also able to buy into higher-stakes games and engage in advanced strategies (trading stakes with other players for example) so simply having more makes it easier to get more. [deleted] [deleted] Lmao you're so naive if you think NATO is for defense, read To Kill a Nation by Parenti > Putin is a verifiable liar, as distant and immediately recent history has shown. So is NATO and Zelenskey and US Literally not how that works.. NATO went against the agreement to not add countries around Russia.. they did it still when Russia was weak, now Russias final straw was this and we see the result. Now stop acting like I am into this and stay quite with your delusional anger. This is the reality that all expert analysis points to. Quick search helps. Ps Iraq and all the other poor non euro counties never asked for this either but nato did to them what is happening to Ukraine. But y’all don’t care huh 🤔 [deleted] >I looked through some of his posts and comments and while they're not exactly pro-US, I still don't see ""blatant Russian propaganda"" That says a lot about you. >Also, what OP is or isn't doesn't take away from my comment Yes it does. Read another book, plant I think you've mixed yourself up somewhere Thanks for confirming Its not completely hopeless, but you will be fucked financially if you get hit with medical bills and don't have insurance. But the worst that will happen is you get kicked down to broke, where benefits will kick in No I’d be using the normal mean of poverty across third world countries, including ones like Yemen, the Congo, many countries in Africa, and the Middle East. Guatemala lmao you are cherrypicking Shitty services that are underfunded and overworked, right? > Medicaid only covers around 20% of the population, which is a bit of a farcry from 'America is a welfare state that pays for 70% of all medical bills'. Considering that Medicaid is only available to people who are living in poverty, wouldn’t you want the number of people being covered by it to be low? Like you just said 80% of America isn’t in absolute poverty like that’s a bad thing and we need more people to be poor enough to be on Medicaid. First, causes of bankruptcies aren't simple. Here are the statistics from studies: 66.5% of all bankruptcies are related to medical issues (for some studies they would count a person who has a $1000 payment as being due to medical issues ... overly broad) unaffordable mortgages or foreclosure (45%), spending or living beyond one's means (44.4%), providing help to friends or relatives (28.4%),  student loans (25.4%), and divorce or separation (24.4%). You can't characterize bankruptcy based on one sole factor generally. Note that it doesn't say caused by medical bills, but by medical issues. That it also relates to people not being able to work should be obvious. A dirty secret about ""medical related"" bankruptcies is that 35%+ have good health insurance. There are studies that put medical bills at about 30% of bankruptcies in the US. Here are some sources on the studies and complexities: https://www.thebalance.com/medical-bankruptcy-statistics-4154729 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/ Now on the whole topic of first world country safety nets, I'm going to guess that you'll be surprised to find out that one of the leading causes of bankruptcies in other countries is also medical issues (Canada as one example). This shouldn't be surprising to anyone as it affects people's means to earn a living and often means they cannot pay their bills generated on a higher income level than what disability or other programs pay. Finally, please note that going through personal bankruptcy in the US generally allows you to keep your primary residence, your car, your retirement plans while disposing of your debt. That's a pretty big safety net in and of itself compared to many countries and is not funded through government , but is enforced by statute. On the part of government, as your income drops low enough, you become eligible for free healthcare ""medicaid"" along with other programs. The difference between how the US handles circumstances is different from other countries, (you are expected to shoulder much of the burden through your insurance, savings, etc. first), but pretending there isn't a safety net is ludicrous. And citing medical issues in bankruptcy as a separator of countries safety net status only works when it doesn't present a similar challenge in other countries. It's cited as one of the top 5 causes in most western countries. Yea. We just ran fiber in a remote area. Even with government to help subsidize, we still ended up paying half to bring fiber to this area. We basically did it out of the kindness of our heart and will never see money from it. So partially it’s a need companies willing to eat these costs and partially need the government to give more to subsidize initial installation. > science, innovation, **culture, freedom and choice** At first you didn't limit the scope of this conversation to economics, now you suddenly did, and now I'm supposed to operate under your context of only economic regulations when you clearly just argued with a straight face that 1870 had basically peaked in terms of American culture, freedom, and choice. Regulations in the 1870s absolutely had a pretty negative effect on culture, freedom and choice. It is a disease. Asking for help may not even be imaginable for some [deleted] [deleted] My school had squat toilets back in the day lmao. As do many places here (Italy). I think it’s supposed to be cleaner? **[Wealth inequality in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States)** >Wealth inequality in the United States, also known as the wealth gap, is the unequal distribution of assets among residents of the United States. Wealth commonly includes the values of any homes, automobiles, personal valuables, businesses, savings, and investments, as well as any associated debts. As of Q3 2019, the top 10% of households in the United States held 70% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2%. Wealth commonly includes the values of any homes, automobiles, personal valuables, businesses, savings, and investments, as well as any associated debts. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) 10% would be 30,000,000 people owning a smaller share of us wealth than 500 russians. Nobody can ""expect"" to do that anywhere. There is no egalitarian utopia where anybody can just expect to be top 1% wealthy. By definition only 1% of people can be 1% wealthy. Most people can afford housing in the u.s. Most people cannot afford housing in Russia. The state provides free housing. Almost 80% of all housing units in the country are municipality owned. And the quality of your housing unit depends a lot on the extent to which you're a good russian citizen. That makes sense, thanks for the helpful info! Oh not denying that 4% is a shit load of money at all, the military is objectively extremely well funded. BUT considering the US spends close to 20% of its GDP on healthcare, just makes 4% feel more reasonable for some reason You do know it went from feudalisme to capitalisme Capitalisme made the industrial reveloutin possible If you like communism then go to one of your paradises YOU CAN NOT BE COMPLETLY SELF MADE UNLESS YOU LIVE ALONE IN THE WILD WITHOUT TOOLS OR CLOTHES Stop crying that all your socialist hell holes are shit Bilionairs and milionairs are more self made then the worker in the factory Tax is a neccesary evil but should be considered stealing if it dosent go to defence or justice [deleted] 70-85% of milionairs depends on source The one that says 67% is talking about worlds richest not milionairs More facts [link 1](https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/billionaires-self-made) [link 2](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/10/05/the-forbes-400-self-made-score-2021-from-silver-spooners-to-bootstrappers/?sh=20bb160b30c2) There are more source use google jeez Most milionairs live in house worth less then a milion And spend less the the avg person 45% tax rate slounds. great sweden isnt as great as the media whould make you belive. America could not even if it wanted replicate sweden So we can't ever have a discussion about anything specific, because everything is relevant and on the table? Helpful. Nazi's may have invaded poland, but whatabout australian penal colonies. Aum Shinrikyo may have released sarin gas into a crowded subway, but whatabout Japan's sex slaves in Manchuria? Are you sealioning, or can you really not see how obfuscating the issues directly infront of us with historical issues is problematic? Mengele may have bashed jewish baby genitals, but what about when the tribes of Israel engaged in forced circumcision against the Philistines? This deserves so many more upvotes I agree that those people would be considered political prisoners. They are just not the people we were originally talking about, and are a small minority of people arrested for drugs. This comment chain was originally about people arrested on bs drug charges for use as slave labor in prisons. I was talking about people jailed for bs drug charges, not people assassinated for being a leader in the black panthers, so I'm not really sure what that has to do with my comment. [deleted] > If they’re put in prison for acting on those beliefs and freely using drugs then they’re political prisoners. That is flat-out wrong. By analogy, the NAMBLA (north american man/boy love association) is filled with political dissenters arrested for engaging in politics after they have sex with boys. Political prisoners are those imprisoned merely for expressing a desire to change the law/ruling regime. Promoting legalization of unlawful things and being imprisoned for them is a separate thing entirely from engaging in those acts directly. That is why civil disobedience comes with expectations of arrest...because they are knowingly engaging in unlawful activity to foment change. E.g. a political prisoner would be if MLK were arrested merely for suggesting that laws should be changed concerned blacks in restaurants, as compared to engaging in an unlawful sit-in at a segregated restaurant. If I'm the recipient of that 10k+ I'm fine with that, aslong as its not in rubles that is. That’s a joke right? You’re gonna make me back up something so obvious? Why not just google that magical autonomous zone that was going on for a while lmao, but I’m sure that shit just doesn’t exist to you. This link was painfully easy to find https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2021/04/portland-church-park-historical-society-damaged-in-downtown-riot-the-destruction-is-pretty-gnarly.html?outputType=amp Gonna respond to what we were talking about? or just deflect Why you deleting shit now? I fixed the link so you wouldn’t cry lmao. It’s literally so easy to look up all the destruction in Portland but you’re just a moron so you’ll just keep deflecting anyway Of course there is poverty in both places, there is poverty everywhere. It’s a global issue. You can say people live paycheck to paycheck in ANY country. I wouldn’t say that they suffer the same at all though. USA has many more opportunities and overall better quality of life when compared to Russia. Moscow and SPb are the tips of the iceberg when it comes to Russia, they are the only places you see. And about the wealth inequality, if you think America is the same then I have to ask you to reevaluate. The top 500 richest people in Russia have more money combined than 99.8% of the population. The 1% in America is over 3 million people, who own 27% of the total wealth in America. This isn’t even comparable. Yes, equivalent. The guy above was trying to argue that they weren’t equivalent by cherry picking a single expense (milk) to claim their expenses were higher in relation to income. By the way, the milk example is even more silly if you’ve spent time in developing countries because they rarely buy/sell “regular” milk, they use UHT milk, condensed milk, etc. If dairy was so expensive in Russia it wouldn’t be such a staple of their diet. They just don’t consume nearly as much “regular” milk as Americans do. Wahhh you’re stupid. Oh grow up. [deleted] How about you reread what I wrote, sounds like your reading comprehension is limited. I’ve probably been to more countries then you’ve ever been to. Including 3rd world ones. So your lesson isn’t needed. Yes it is, when much of it is coming from young adults who still live middle or upper class lifestyles thanks to their parents, and who have many times that debt in lifetime earning potential. And anyway, to the original comparison, US is 26th, even accounting for the weird student loan fiasco, Russia is 91st, with a median wealth of $5,500 compared to the US's $79,000. Its called divide and conquere They’re are plenty of problems in the US, no one disputes that. There are hundreds of Reddit threads that criticize it every day, case in point. But you’re pushing a false narrative that the US is comparable to a third word country in an effort to diminish criticism of Russia, which is an objectively worse country in almost every quality of life metric. You’re literally trying to argue the US is as bad as Russia by citing problems that are worse in Russia, which I provided evidence for. You can be critical without being disingenuous. False information is propaganda. They a force to be reckoned with… buddy… Lacking evidence due to obstruction is not the same as exoneration. (see Vol 2) I have no dog in this fight, but you lost me trying to turn this into a debate about Hillary Clinton. Address the topic at hand, don’t start a new topic. Bad faith debating To be fair, and I'm not agreeing with anyone here about anything political, it's absolutely fine to be very sceptical of the FBI and DHS. Not saying they are wrong here but they aren't the most reliable sources. That's a different one From the Wikipedia page you sent: Public opinion in Ukraine A poll conducted by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) from 8–18 February 2014 assessed support for union with Russia throughout Ukraine. It found that, overall, 12% of those polled favoured union with Russia.[68] 68.0% of those from the four regions surveyed agreed that Ukraine should remain independent, with friendly relations maintained between Russia and Ukraine. Support for a union between Russia and Ukraine was found to be much higher in certain areas: 41.0% Crimea 33.2% Donetsk Oblast 24.1% Luhansk Oblast 24.0% Odessa Oblast 16.7% Zaporizhia Oblast 15.1% Kharkiv Oblast 13.8% Dnipropetrovsk Oblast So no majority in any region. And I’m sure the Ukrainians dislike the Russians much more now than in 2014. I don't know who did it or why they would do it, but eastern Europe was a volatile place after the fall of the Soviet Union. If you think 33% is only ""slightly richer"" than 3.2% then we're done. Is someone making $100k a year only ""slightly richer"" than someone making $10k? > , yours to say lothey have it worse we're perfect. That's downplaying. No, that's you making shit up for your strawman. I never ever even hinted at the idea that ""we're perfect"". Just stop. You're done, m8. Isn’t it dishonest to try to make these comparisons without looking at how the top 3 billionaires in Russia compare to the bottom 50% of Russians? >Let’s keep this chat on topic When was the topic ever 'who is a rich persons toadie'? You are the one that got all bent out of shape because I pointed out your source is a propaganda outlet. > Okay, great, this is how the entire capitalist economy functions, so it doesn't matter. The point is anyone who employs you is doing this. But Amazon doesn't take any money from me. So I don't care what Jeff Bezos makes. It's not my money. Bezos is not my employer, and you saying that both the government and Bezos are taking money from me is simply false, and now you've twisted Bezos into being some sort of aggregate of all shareholders of all businesses everywhere. It's silly. > It's called ""empathy"" and ""ethics,"" maybe pick up a textbook about one of those things when you're done sticking the pages of your economics textbook together. Sure, tell me how Jeff Bezos having money somehow violates the categorical imperative, or how your teleological stance on taking his earnings is somehow superior to a deontological approach. Just like economics and accounting, I took ethics for my Master's. Looking forward to your reply. >Right now, my country's universal healthcare system is under threat because our ultra-rich government ministers You don't live in a democracy? >The point I've been making the entire time is that profit is conditional on labour, which is a fact. I said they're not correlated. I never said anything about a conditional relationship. More labor doesnt mean more profit. What I said is true, and now you're trying to change the argument entirely, and failing at it. Apple relies on electricity to create its products. There's a conditional relationship there, but there's no correlation with profit, either. >Complete bad-faith argument. You said Jeff Bezos collects the lion's share of profit from Amazon, and now you say I'm making a bad faith argument for asking you to prove it. Hilarious. [deleted] Pretty sure the democratic party had a leak on dirt when bernie was winning primaries. I'll look for it. >Literally anyone looks bad if you take thousands of hours of them talking and edit it down to a couple minutes of the times they misspoke. I watched the whole speech, there was a bit about ""Ukrainian flesh"" that was pretty bad too. >It's so gross that conservatives have to stoop to this kind of deceptive editing to try to make a president look bad. Exactly like all the thousands of posts that Hillary was ""having seizures"" because she sneezed and conservative propagandists cut the video and changed the speed of playback. I actually voted for him and I'm NOT a conservative. Not everyone who disagrees with the Democratic party is a conservative lol >Get back to me when you have actual policy to criticize instead of this cheap ass deceptive bullshit. Do you want policy? My top is we were promised police reform, and it hasn't happened and the democratic party has failed. I want them to repeal citizens united as well and get rid of superPACs. I also hated the border comments yesterday. Our border is safe, don't let the racists think otherwise. Agree on all. Have a good day Congressional approval: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316448/congress-approval-drops-trump-steady.aspx Congressional reelection rates: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/reelection-rates Average age of Congress: https://fiscalnote.com/blog/how-old-is-the-117th-congress Tenure of Congress: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R41545.pdf Nancy Pelosi Net Worth: https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances/nancy-pelosi/net-worth?cid=N00007360&year=2018 Her husband's trade returns: https://fortune.com/2021/07/08/house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-husband-paul-big-tech-stocks/ Any other questions troll? Or do you just need remedial lessons in how to use a search engine? It's their search, they can make it return whatever results they want! That bag-maker is free to sell his product elsewhere! Amazon does not have a monopoly! Walmart -- [who also clone products](https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/great-value-sweet-salty-almond-chewy-nut-bars/6000187053997) -- sells [around 50% more stuff than Amazon!](https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2021/02/18/walmarts-online-sales-grow-79-in-its-just%E2%80%91ended-fiscal-year/) Even if you were to get a patent on your granola bar recipe, if I just change one ingredient slightly when I clone it, then I'm not infringing on your patent. Imagine being proud that you don’t think for yourself or that you assume the morality of someone based on their bank account. Spend a month is not permanent. You should leave is typically a permanent declarative statement. You don't just get to invent shit. Uh, no; one is permanent, one is an experience (a visit). Those are actually quite different. Another yappy little fucking dog. At this point, I'm here to waste your time. A theoretical and empirical model is a spreadsheet? Dear god, people are stupid. I teach economic systems in both intro to micro and macro, which touch on the US, Russia, China, the EU, and developing countries… I'll stick with relevant, real economists. Suited me quite well. Econ has never been a hard science. Again, when people cannot actually do something, they criticize. Again, bravo not understanding the words I used Words are tough. Since it is hard for you to read, feel free to keep responding. Someone with zero Econ knowledge isn’t worth my time on an Econ sub. Well sure Ukraine is a non NATO ally and gets military funding like many other countries. That’s normal diplomacy. To try to equate normal diplomacy with literal invasion is bat shit insane. And the US gives far more to Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and Jordan - giving money doesn’t equate to joining NATO. Unless your claim is Egypt is about to join NATO lol 🤦‍♂️ Fuck off troll, maybe go to Russia, they love trolls there. Well I have to give that one to you.... Believing Elon Musk is a Russian Oligarch is definitely not group think. [removed] Well I'll give you this. Believing Musk is a Russian Oligarch is definitely not group think. Well I'll give you this. Believing Musk is a Russian Oligarch is definitely not group think. Well it would be a bigger coincidence that the man who was staying where the shot came from, was seen leaving the room the shot came from, purchased the gun used, and had his fingerprints on the gun was not involved. Okay I googled it and found nothing, could you provide source So what gets taxed and by whome? State taxes? They’ll just move to a different state. Local tax? Just move. The problem isn’t you guys wanting to tax rich people, it’s that subs like antiwork don’t shut the fuck up about it and their leader is a part time dog walker. There is 0 actual substance and nobody will ever take this “movement” seriously. This is a satire sub far as anyone is concerned Brokenness of systems compared to what? What system is working better? There isn’t one. Stop with these horrific takes big girl. Seethe kid lol I’ve made two and the first is sourced. Quit being retarded. Not just oligarchy, a real democracy will also result in this, it just takes more expense on the part of the incumbents as there are more people to bribe and market their policies to. I remember a local company trying the ISP thing. They got as far as wrecking my street (for underground cable) to the point that it flooded every time it rained. Afterwards Comcast came in and the local company just gave up. All we got was an easy-flooding street that took years to get fixed, LOL. ??? I'm saying that capitalism untempered by laws protecting the rights of all eventually leads to an increase in wealth inequality and class disparity. ""Neoliberalism is a flawed theory"" is too broad and sweeping of a statement to be useful. Which ideas are flawed, and which parts hold true? What evidence do we have for and against those ideas? Where do those flaws/truths intersect with other issues and are there confounding factors? Those kinds of ideas/breakdowns are useful for discussion. ""Neoliberalism is a flawed theory"" is a useless soundbite. Wouldn't it still count as consumption though if I purchase a stock? It is money leaving my hands. Or are stocks specifically exempted from household consumption? It's not a good or a service but it is an expenditure. No. For the good of the country, I am willing to make the sacrifice. It’s interesting that you feel so different when it presumably won’t impact you. Seems ironic, fight for yourself at least until you get there, other than what, protecting the millions of the top .01%? How noble of you. I do. Go chat with someone who lived through a communist regime if you can find them and try and get if we’re very close in terms of structure. What you’re saying is true, especially with regards to special interests etc. certainly a certain amount of politics can be bought. But insider trading is suddenly on the chopping block and is likely to pass. What do you think would be the chances of something like that even being addressed in a communist regime, like Russia? Great; we're on the same page. When you replied to: >Wealth inequality is a red herring metric. A meaningful metric is percentage homelessness and quality of life. it really seemed like you were arguing wealth inequality was as (or more) meaningful as the suggested alternative metrics suggested. Oh shit I thought it was a masters in law and diplomacy 😂. I had to google it. I am bald though. You got me there Look at Russia actively trying to annex its neighbors. [deleted] Oh you sweet summer child. Everyone I know in IP absolutely hates it. Everyone I know who works for a big firm hates it, but the IP people hate it more than anyone. Looks like fun to me, their offices are full of gadgets, but the big firm lifestyle is total misery no matter what you’re doing. If I was going to work that hard for that long at anything I could get far richer than being a lawyer and have far higher quality of life. I know a fair number of doctors too, they are all pretty miserable too. I know you’re pretty stoked at the prospect of making money but I’m telling you there’s a reason doctors and lawyers get paid what they do - your life absolutely suck. Unless you are one of those relentless workaholic people who don’t enjoy having kids or any kind of home life you’re staring down the barrel of 30 years of misery for the *chance* at being (kind of) rich. Talk to me in twenty years when you’re totally burned out, you have no relationship with your kids, and your wife if fucking someone else because you never see each other. So much work and effort and in the end it doesn’t make you happy. Then there’s me, I got to retire at 40 because my grandmother sold her potato chip company in 1965. Most of my relatives are useless heirs who do nothing. Trust me it’s a scam, my family won the scam, but it’s still a scam. It says that I'm capable of ignoring the narrative, looking at things objectively and coming to my own conclusions. That's a good thing in my book. No, you said we have to believe everything this guy said because he was in a couple of administrations. I made a sarcastic comment that someone in an administration would never be wrong about anything, and then you started to attack me personally. At that point I lamented the lack of critical thinking and debate skills by most people here. I'll say again, just because someone was in an administration doesn't mean everything they say is correct. If that were true, we would have never needed another administration after Washington's because they would have gotten everything right. If it were true then the Iraq War was just because, after all, people in a presidential administration said it was just and as you have argued, someone in a presidential administration is always right. Outside of Africa, you literally are pointing to specifically war torn areas. Yemen is *not* representative of third world countries because it is *actively* being destroyed by imperialist powers. I think it's also interesting that you fail to include other nations in South America, or South East Asia like the Philippines. Moreover, Nigeria is a third world country and isn't even *remotely* like the Congo or Yemen. South Africa is a third world country too. I find it honestly disrespectful that you're essentially no true scotmanning such a broad term and discounting real poverty that isn't *literally* the result of active wars. No. Services that are restricted by the IMF and World bank. Like I said. [deleted] You think that an edict to fight against the KKK had a negative effect on culture, freedom and choice? Ok… right but we cant do much if they refuse help so they just end up spiraling even worse some of these places are nonprofits and have no cost to them [deleted] > The state provides free housing. Almost 80% of all housing units in the country are municipality owned. Thank you, that's a much better indication of difference than exactly how few people are out of touch wealthy. However, you still haven't made your case. The fact that housing is government owned doesn't mean worse. I'd rather have a government home than unable to afford housing. What? You can't read your own data >The one that says 67% is talking about worlds richest not milionairs This specifically states people with 30 mill or more. Guess what people with 30 mil to 999mil are called? >70-85% of milionairs depends on source The same source that also admits this figure includes the partially self made, which is why I said 67%, since this is the figure shown as completely selfmade. As you originally stated. About billionaires. Jeff Bezos’s parents gave him $250000 to start Amazon. And most millionaires aren’t even in that study - it’s only for people with over $30M. That’s definitely not lost millionaires. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I honestly don’t care that much, I was just curious as to what you were referencing. They have a higher standard of living and a better social safety net. We could certainly do more to replicate them than what we’re doing now. Im Swedish and my tax rate is 31%. Stop spewing lies. The rich get taxed 51% like it should be. It makes me sad how few people know this stuff Sorry, didn't mean to dog your comment. I think everyone gets the gist. Good response. I think thata most of the responses I have recieved are valid, just in a different context. I was just hoping to help people understand what the term ""political prisoner"" actually means. Using drugs causes literally no harm to anyone. If someone simply chooses to use drugs and is punished for it then they’re being punished for political reasons. There’s literally no reason to outlaw recreational drugs other than to give the bourgeoisie an excuse to attack leftists >E.g. a political prisoner would be if MLK were arrested merely for suggesting that laws should be changed concerned blacks in restaurants, as compared to engaging in an unlawful sit-in at a segregated restaurant. yeah they just shot him in the head instead > Why not just google that magical autonomous zone Ahh, you’re not actually from the area, since that wasn’t Portland, and you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. Actual Portlander here, that you think this article is evidence of a “fuckfest of destruction” is adorable. [deleted] Of course Moscow is not an indicator of all of Russia, I don't know why that statement is relevant. I'd ask you to re-evaluate how you look at wealth inequality, have a look at the GINI index or the world inequality database and see that the USA and Russia are not far from each other, as you can find the basis for the facts they have used. Rather than some article you read who decide to interpret facts their own way. According to the Gini Index USA has more inequality than Russia. Nobody is denying the level of inequality in Russia or the USA, but if you read the tweet, you will see they are talking about oligarchy in the USA. A small group of people with power to control the country. Now in the modern world, that power is achieved through money. In the USA and many other countries, we have seen laws being bent by the world's richest companies and nothing being done about it, people in power who do not hold any credentials for that power, people who can influence politics but they are not politicians. Top 1% owning X amount is not the only factor in inequality. > The guy above was trying to argue that they weren’t equivalent by cherry picking a single expense (milk) to claim their expenses were higher in relation to income. It's not cherry picking when Numbeo has all the relative ratios. Anything that isn't 5x cheaper in Russia is relatively more expensive for the poor there, because they have 5 times less money to spend on living expenses. It's all there to see. Also note the difference in median income for the two cities. 10x lower in Russia. Yikes. Can you imagine making 10 times less money for the same job you have today? Can you imagine making 10 times MORE money? That's the very real disparity we're talking about here. The difference between being poor in Russia or poor in the US is just unbelievably extreme. > If dairy was so expensive in Russia it wouldn’t be such a staple of their diet. They just don’t consume nearly as much “regular” milk as Americans do. Right, they simply can't afford it. Refrigerated trucks and distribution of liquids is an expense that is only for the wealthy in Russia. This is precisely why powdered milk is more common. Ot maybe you could just do your own research and stop being a met negative to society. Its a choice. From Wikipedia ""The term ""Third World"" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the ""First World"", while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam and their allies represented the ""Second World"". This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political and economic divisions. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term Third World has decreased in use. It is being replaced with terms such as developing countries, least developed countries or the Global South. The concept itself has become outdated as it no longer represents the current political or economic state of the world and historically poor countries have transited different income stages."" Stupid I think you have a distorted view on reality. This, is in fact life. And it did in fact work. Wasn't replying to you, was replying to u/garyzxcv check the thread dude You said those things. You assume a lot. The article talks about the similarities between the ruling class in Russia and the United States. We have oligarchs here. We have an illusion of democracy but the will of the people is pretty meaningless. Policy isn’t based on what is popular with voters. Politicians are puppets who perform at the will of the puppeteer which is the ruling class and the cash represent the strings used to control them. We came very close to having a dictatorship in this country and it’s best we never forget it. I think your judicial system still works on the basis of; innocent until proven otherwise. They couldnt show evidence he colluded. Hence there was no collusion according to the rules of your judicial system. Face it, still being buthurt about losing to an orange man doesnt give the democratic party any favours. How is it bad faith debating? Addressing the elements of her campaigns collaboration with Fusion GPS is crucial to understanding the background of the start of the whole collusion scandal. To be fair, (insert source here) can be discarded if they disagree with my position. Whoops, misread your comment. You should still go watch it anyways, it's phenomenal. Does a great job explaining how we ended up in the current situation, plus it's just damn good TV (if harrowing and heartwrenching at times). Why is some Kiev ""institute"" a legit source here, but an internationally observed referendum isn't? I agree it was definitely, I'd say power vacuum was the one main reason and corruption and a lack of structure And also privatization And I've never stated Russia is in any way shape or form better which was your first reply strawman attack on me. 3 richest Russians are 51 and below when it comes to the richest people in the world while top americans are all top 5. Want to hear fun statistic? Top 1 percent owns over 30% of all wealth in both Russia and US and top 10% owns about 65% percent in both according to wealth inequelity database. Very different numbers for you I'm sure. Russia is way more shitty but not as much as you portrayed it by cherry picking statistics and taking 6 people as representative of the whole. I'm done arguing with a moron. Checkout the database it's free. Haha, please tell me how I'm done. Medium rare, or maybe well? Well, if you look at the original post we are all commenting on, you’ll see that the topic is wealth distribution and oligarchy in America. With that as the central topic, Cuba is irrelevant while being a toady for the American rich isn’t >you are right wing and do not care about facts or reality Gee, i wonder why? By the way, congrats on going days now without once admitting that i am right and acknowledging Rob Reich is an ultra-rich hypocrite > you saying that both the government and Bezos are taking money from me is simply false It's very evident that my point is that both the government and the capitalist class are taking money from you, not Bezos as an individual. You're splitting hairs and you know it. >Sure, tell me how Jeff Bezos having money somehow violates the categorical imperative, or how your teleological stance on taking his earnings is somehow superior to a deontological approach. Your argument isn't superior because you can point to arguments of specific philosophers. The fundamental point here, which you've stated multiple times now, is that you're incapable of caring about anything which doesn't personally affect you - it's borderline sociopathic. If we're going to unproductively spout the jargon of specific philosophers at each other I'd love to start pointlessly spewing quotations of leftist theory at you, but I think we're both well aware that's going to lead nowhere. And another strawman argument - I've already established to you that my problem isn't ""Jeff Bezos having money,"" it's with the exploitative nature of wealth under capitalism. >You don't live in a democracy? Not a functioning one. And it's likely you don't either. >More labor doesnt mean more profit. Cool. That was never my point. >You said Jeff Bezos collects the lion's share of profit from Amazon I explained my point here perfectly clearly, you ignored it to sealion me, that's the bad faith part. The choice is ultimately illusory. You have a choice of who to work for, but not whether to work. If I told you that you were being deported to one of 4 dictatorships but you get to freely choose which, and then responded to any of your criticisms with ""well, you chose this dictatorship"" you'd quite rightly say ""yes but I was being deported, I didn't want to live in a dictatorship to begin with"" Capitalist labour is organised dictatorially. Workers have no say in their workplace, calls are made by an autocratic leader, and you either pick a leader to work for or you starve (or, at best, live a meagre existence on your country's welfare system if you have one) Even if you want to start your own business, you have to work for someone else to get startup capital. Same if you want to be self employed. Same if you wanted to start a co-op. The rich are entitled to your labour by default. Hardly. A few staffers said some bad things about him in emails because they were frustrated that he was dragging the primary on when he had clearly lost. They got shut down by their superiors and it ended there. No rigging occurred. He had already lost at that point. >My top is we were promised police reform, and it hasn't happened and the democratic party has failed. How have democrats failed? Just because you don't like police doesn't make democrats failures. Leftists who say Democrats are failures don't seem to understand how our government works. Dems have a tie in the Senate, which means nothing other than reconciliation can pass without 10 Republicans on board (in addition to the two independents and Manchin/Sinema). There just isn't a way to do police reform federally when 50 or even 52% of the Senate has the sole goal of sabotaging Biden's administration so they look bad. Biden is not an emperor. He cannot just speak things into law. It is frankly amazing what he has gotten done with such a slim House majority and a tie in the Senate. I'm not sure what you realistically think Democrats can do with 50 Senators to stop a problem that is centuries old and endemic to the system. What are your suggestions? What have Democrats failed to do, and why is it an issue you expect the federal government to fix and not local sheriffs and the police captains and unions who actually have control over the police? > Our border is safe, don't let the racists think otherwise. It's not racist to care who comes into the US. Our border is porous. ""Safe"" has no meaning here. I mean Mexican cartels essentially have zero problem smuggling people and/or drugs over the border. I mean I think drugs should just be quasi-legalized here and that would solve a lot of it. But just thinking that we can ignore the border is silly. It's not anything about immigrants, I think the US has always thrived off of immigration. It's just that if you don't care who is coming across the border, some bad people are going to come too. Claiming that caring about border security is ""racist"" just gives conservatives ammo to call us idiots. It's a real issue. Not that a stupid wall is going to make any difference, but it's not an issue we can just ignore. But thank you for providing actual topics. It's a refreshing change from the usual ""hurr durr Hillary is a devil worshipping pedo having seizures and Biden is a devil worshipping pedo with dementia"". Why you gotta assume my geographical location is daytime? /s You too! Imagine thinking making 10's of billions of dollars doesn't have some costs to society, you need to exploit some resources to earn that much and usually it's not moral sometimes illegal. Imagine your counterargument being ""yOu cANt tHiNK fOR yOURseLF!"". Nice dude I'm sure you will become a billionaire one day! who said anything about permanence? if multiple people’s interpretations of what you write isn’t what you intended, who’s fault is it? So none. Got it. Whoa, have you been fucking dogs?? Pathetic. Economics is not a real science, it's an excuse factory for oligarchs The fact that you don't think Mises is either a real or relevant economist speaks volumes, about both yourself and the study of economics as a field. You’re not even making sense. The US propped up the Ukraine government because it suited their best interests. You know, the same thing Russia does and gets criticised for (rightfully so). Who said giving money equates to joining NATO? That’s something you’ve made up in your smooth brain. I'm not gonna assert that you have certain unsavory predilections because you post in r libertarian, I'll just let everyone else draw their own conclusions. Nobody's saying he wasn't involved, rather that it wasn't a random solo operation and he was contracted to perform the killing. https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/11/11/243973620/when-lobbyists-literally-write-the-bill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250119407/themafiaspresident https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/how-the-rich-use-the-government-to-enrich-themselves.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike Seriously. Try harder. Yeah, I'm not anti work, I only look at that sub when it's on the front page, even then I tend to just scroll past it. I'm just saying that taxes are needed to run society for a lot of basic functions. I'm not really sure why that's an opinion that's under fire in this thread lol [deleted] So 1/2 is sourced by 'top 10 google search'? Kinda goes back to your first paragraph. In general capitilism will always create this inequality. It's been written about for more than a century Stocks are not accounted for, at all. There's no production related to stocks, so it doesn't get counted in the Gross Domestic **Product** of a country. > It's not a good or a service but it is expenditure That's completely irrelevant, what matters is consumption, not expenditure. You can't consume a stock, but you can consume goods and services. At this point you must be fucking with me, right? lol I fight for what I have earned. I protect nobodies interests but my own. pragmatic and cynical. there is no time for noblesse oblige. I step on no one. but you go. I will be interested in seeing how much you are willing to sacrifice for the common good once you actually have enough to sacrifice. cheers. That legislation won't get passed because nothing in the US gets past congress that wasn't pre-approved by our oligarchs. There's just too much money tied up in campaign finance to legislate against corruption at this point. There's a study that the general public has almost no influence on legislation, it's tied to the wealthy [independently](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B). I'm sure living under fascism is Russia is awful, which is why I would prefer that democracy in the US was prioritized. Democracy is not possible when only a small amount of wealthy individuals are calling the shots for a nation. It doesn't matter what the economic system is if the political system is rotten to the core. I'm sure migrant farm workers in the US who fled their country thanks to Western destabilization would have a lot in common with those who lived under a Stalinist regime. The US has more people in prison than any other country in the world. Ever. We don't need gulags, we have for profit private prisons where it's legal to make people work for no pay. [lol](https://i.redd.it/1dad0uqug2l81.jpg) Putin was pushed back and back and back. They landed up with missiles in Ukraine ffs, what next military bases of US in Ukraine? They knew they were poking the bear, on the other hand NATO were only going to use Ukraine for cheap labour, they said they wouldn't join them for TWENTY years. Ukrainians feel betrayed by US/NATO as well. Again Russia is at worst expansionist, even if it wills, it cannot be imperialistic like US and it's cronies NATO. Oh yeah outside of Africa. As if Africa isn’t massive and full of countries you are specifically ignoring. I can use countries like Peru too Indonesia South African poverty is worse than US poverty What about INDIA where there is literally a caste system. Nigeria? You mean the country where there are slums living in sewage water? Your own example sucks. So it’s worse there because there are no services. Got it. Thanks for supporting the argument that simply having services is better. > Medicaid is ultimately a program for providing healthcare to the population. You can’t get on Medicaid unless you’re in the absolute lowest income bracket, or a child. Like they will literally deny you and tell you it’s because you make too much money. Someone lied to you. You come storming into this conversation guns blazing and it's my pleasure to inform you of the basic history surrounding Jim Crow era America? Alright, where do we start... Prevention…. Early childhood education and nutrition… we CAN do so much to prevent abuse [deleted] There's a reason the Russian population is declining while millions of poor people from all over the world would rather be poor here than poor where they are now. There's a reason they aren't lining up to move to Russia. Seen Russian state housing blocks anywhere outside the biggest 5 cities? I'll take a u.s. homeless shelter or shack in the Mississippi delta over those. Every time. The median income in Russia is $5,500 The 4th percentile in the U.S. is $7,200. The notion that the economies of the U.S. and Russia are even remotely similar is farcical. Tax=theft Tought you agreed Read the other sources When it says 67% its talking about bilionairs aka worlds richest 400 forbes list Sorry not jeff bezoz thought he was self made But 68% are You should read the mililnonair next doors see who the milionaires are Mulitiple studies in that book under 10 mil There has been many studies No Lower gdp per capita Safety net is bad reduce productivety No They take half your salary and spend most of it on nothing That is all well and good, and I agree. I'm stating that people who use drugs and are arrested aren't political prisoners. If I advocate for lax drugs laws and am arrested, then I am a political prisoner. I if use heroin in a public restroom and am arrested, I am not a political prisoner. As long as my tax dollars don’t help resuscitate you when you OD, by all means :) That does nothing to change the nature of the argument. In that case, MLK was the victim of political assassination, vs police using lawful force given to them under the constitution. And you will likely say ""police force under the law is oppressive and wrong."" Yes, but JFK being shot is a political assassination, Breonna Taylor is a victim of state violence. See how we can draw useful distinctions? It doesn't imply one is more or less lawful than the other. Just like a war crime is not necessarily more severe than a regular crime. It occurs in a different context and we can use that context in a meaningful way. And I have no interest in debating a porn account that has yet to have a legitimate point or do anything besides deflect when presented with the sources they asked for lmaoooo Of course you would use the GINI index to support that claim. Sorry, but the GINI index uses years old data, and is massively skewed due to the fact that the USA has a lot more billionaires compared to any other country. I never claimed that the “top 1% owning x” is the only factor in inequality. I used that figure as a counter argument to your claim that “Wealth inequality is the same in Russia as it is in USA”. Which it in no way is. Moscow not being an indicator of all of Russia is relevant because Moscow and SPb are where most specialized jobs that bring decent income are based, and these places are where the best quality of life is seen. However, most of Russia is rural, and there isn’t a lot of opportunity in these areas, nor is the quality of life optimal. And yes, power has been achieved through money for centuries. This is nothing new. It literally is cherry picking. You can find things in any country that are more or less expensive relative to income. For instance, seafood is more or less expensive depending on how far you are from a fishable coast. That’s why you look at overall expenses across the board, which you admit are 5x to 10x lower. You mr. asshat have no concept of the value I have brought to society. You behave as if you’re the only one who has google. What you seem to lack is use of context, and reasonable societal manners. So from me to you fuck off. And you are blocked as an ignorant fuckwad should be. Too user Rawjude. You suck My bad Ok? None of that pertains to sanitation levels or hookworm prevalence in developed countries vs third world ones. You want to criticize US wealth inequality? Go right ahead. But don’t make absurd comparisons that have no factual basis. Lol, this was not a court proceeding or judicial system. This was an investigation by a Republican with the pre-assumption that they could not press charges or make criminal accusations of any sort. Not sure why the Democratic party is relevant. Neither I or the investigator are Democrats. The topic at hand was Trump and Putin’s relationship, and your counterargument was “Hillary bad”. You assume that if someone doesn’t like Trump they must support Hillary, which is laughable. Put it this way. If we’re debating “baseball is a fun sport” and your reply is “WELL WHAT ABOUT BASKETBALL?!?”…you’ve gone off the rails. The topic was baseball, not basketball. I can tell from spending 30 seconds reading your comments that you really enjoy spending hours debating people, I’m just trying to give you pointers so you can get better at it. This is actually a very good rule of thumb. Except that it's if the source disagrees with MY position, not yours. :) Because the referendum was clearly fraudulent and is contested by almost every nation that observed it. Meanwhile there are multiple polls that agree with the institutes data. >And I've never stated Russia is in any way shape or form better which was your first reply strawman attack on me. You have a serious reading comprehension problem. Quote me where I posted you stated Russia was better. At this point you're just stacking strawman upon strawman. > 3 richest Russians are 51 and below when it comes to the richest people in the world while top americans are all top 5. Because America is a much wealthier country. Another misleading statistic. > Want to hear fun statistic? Top 1 percent owns over 30% of all wealth in both Russia and US and top 10% owns about 65% percent in both according to wealth inequelity database. Very different numbers for you I'm sure. The top 1% is 3 million people. 500 people in Russia own about 40% of the country's wealth. This is a much bigger percentage than the top 500 people in the US own. > Russia is way more shitty but not as much as you portrayed it by cherry picking statistics and taking 6 people as representative of the whole. You responded to a post about the top 3, I used the same. Now you're trying to shift goalposts. >I'm done arguing with a moron. Checkout the database it's free. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Are you arguing some Kremlin talking point? the one where you try to make everything in America just as bad as in Russia to justify everything Russia does? It’s a mathermetical reality that Russia is much more unequal than USA. Not just in the economy, but in the law also. You probably know this. Russia has an economy smaller than the size of Texas (and shrinking). Look at the median (not average) Russian income and compare that to GDP/per capita. Do the same for the USA. The inequality is not even close. Russia is economic inequality and lack of rule of law on stereoids compared to US. I never said he wasn't. I pointed out you used a tainted source, you lost your mind. The rest has been sheer entertainment at your tantrum. > both the government and the capitalist class are taking money from you, The capitalist class, of which I am a part, is paying me money. The government is taking it away. I asked a legitimate ethical question, and it's telling that you tell me to read an ethics textbook (which I have, cover to cover, and wrote a paper on and a dissertation on the subject) while you haven't read one yourself. Now you avoid the argument. >I'd love to start pointlessly spewing quotations of leftist theory at you Let me guess, Marx, who didn't know shit about economics, as demonstrated by his endorsement of centrally planned economies. Same with Engels. Both proven wrong. One only has to look at the Trabant, or the 84-85 Soviet grain shortage for proof of that. Shit not only were they wrong, their ideas were made obsolete in 1971 (or the 80's, depending on where you count the start of computerization in free market economies; I start with the creation of the NASDAQ). You portrayed labor as correlating with profit, representing profit as tied to excess value of labor. You are wrong. I pointed it out. You changed the argument to labor as a ""condition"" of profit, which, like electricity, isn't correlated. You avoided the argument. You said Jeff Bezos accrues the lion's share of profit from Amazon. Again you are wrong. You won't admit it, you just avoid the argument. Not only have you never read a quarterly or year end report from Amazon, you probably don't know how. It is obvious to me that you don't even believe the things you are saying, as you don't seem keen on defending them. If you don't believe the things you say, why should I? [deleted] [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-sanders](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-sanders) So the DNC worked with Clinton to help her get the nom according to this >How have democrats failed? Just because you don't like police doesn't make democrats failures. Leftists who say Democrats are failures don't seem to understand how our government works. Dems have a tie in the Senate, which means nothing other than reconciliation can pass without 10 Republicans on board (in addition to the two independents and Manchin/Sinema). There just isn't a way to do police reform federally when 50 or even 52% of the Senate has the sole goal of sabotaging Biden's administration so they look bad. I diagree. Democrats are in power. Their failure to legislate and prove they're better than Republicans has been proven again and again. I'm never voting for a moderate dem again. Biden did promise unity. His failure to deliver on that promise isn't my problem >Claiming that caring about border security is ""racist"" just gives conservatives ammo to call us idiots. It's a real issue. Not that a stupid wall is going to make any difference, but it's not an issue we can just ignore. I'm going to ignore it. I don't care about the border. Drugs are getting here, the only solution is to decriminalize and legalize. I think people only care because they're brown. Mexicans are better Americans than any American I've met. they're hard workers. That's just tribal idiocism. Building a company worth billions (or any amount) is a net benefit to society. It's the creation of new wealth. You're just mad at rich people because you're angry at the world and your tribe has given you a scapegoat. Spoiler alert: Your problems have nothing to do with them. A guy taking barren land and building a farm, making food cheaper for everyone, providing work for those who want it, and building his own wealth, is a benefit to society. You're just a guy on the couch yelling about how the farmer now how more money than you. He made food cheaper for you; ie: he made you richer. Because multiple dipshits interpret Q dipshit the same doesn't lend it credence. Because ""you can leave"" is a common phrase associated with permanent ""get the fuck out"". I said spend a month. Those that can't sure have a lot to say. What’s funnier are the Austrians who think anyone takes their “economics” credibly. Hint: we don’t. Edit: funny that you didn’t defend 50% of your examples… The US didn’t “prop up” Ukraine. It’s a democratic ally that the US has a relationship with and sold weapons to. Russia literally invaded and you have the audacity to claim that the US supporting a democracy is similar. You literally said that giving weapons was equivalent to helping them join NATO. Did you just have a stroke? Who responded? Libertarian is just the opposite of authoritarian. Most people in the western world leans libertarian, and ""real communism"" is libertarian as well as opposed to authoritarian Stalinism. Ray was a failed pornographer on the lam after escaping prison after a conviction for robbing a grocery store. Why would the government contract him and why isn’t there any evidence? **[Revolving door (politics)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_\(politics\))** >In politics, a revolving door is a situation in which personnel moves between roles as legislators and regulators, on one hand, and members of the industries affected by the legislation and regulation, on the other, analogous to the movement of people in a physical revolving door. In some cases, the roles are performed in sequence, but in certain circumstances they may be performed at the same time. Political analysts claim that an unhealthy relationship can develop between the private sector and government, based on the granting of reciprocated privileges to the detriment of the nation, and can lead to regulatory capture. **[Pullman Strike](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike)** >The Pullman Strike was two interrelated strikes in 1894 that shaped national labor policy in the United States during a period of deep economic depression. First came a strike by the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman factory in Chicago in spring 1894. When it failed the ARU launched a national boycott against all trains that carried Pullman passenger cars. The nationwide railroad boycott that lasted from May 11 to July 20, 1894, was a turning point for US labor law. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Can you actually just point to an actual American CEO who obtained his fortune in a manner equivalent to a Russian Oligarch and operates in a similar fashion? That was the original assertion. What does a political “revolving door” and the Pullman Strike which occurred 130 years ago have to do with the existence of American billionaires today? The rest are opinion pieces from left leaning news organizations. IDK about the OP, but I was looking for more scholarly work on the scale of Piketty. >trying to brag on reddit >""useful to society"" and 500k home People who are actually important and successful aren't on reddit like you are. Cope harder dude lol Search for yourself dumbass I’m not your Google bot 😂😂 >In general capitilism will always create this inequality. Agreed. It's been well-documented, from horse and sparrow economics, to laissez-faire, and now free market. Unrestrained capitalism naturally leads to all of the wealth accumulating in a few. Some people refuse to learn from history - either that or they're hoping they're going to be one of the few. Sorry if I sounded lecture-y. I'm getting sick of buzzwords, especially since a LOT of people don't seem to know what their favorite buzzwords actually mean. I've seen Neoliberalism used in varied ways, often in a context that doesn't even make sense. I don’t think you understand the dangers of completely untethered capitalism. You and your future generations will become slaves not just in condition of work but at the whims to whoever may come to power. It’s a simple exercise, if every generation you have ones that win out and start with more than the last, they will be advantaged until the people at the very top will be oligarchs and be able to control the laws and have them bend as they want. It is unsustainable. But if you want to live in your short sighted world, then that’s fine. There’s big problems here, it’s gross. Long incarceration sentences prioritized over rehabilitation programs is so backwards it’s shocking to grasp we can’t make a change there. Wealth gap is an issue. Lots of issues. I’ve spent some time in China, I certainly wouldn’t trade for it. I’ve spent time in Portugal and Europe, I would trade for that (at the time at least). Do you just not count people living in prisons as people in America? People were literally dying of heat stroke in their cells and COVID was a death sentence. Yes, I agree with you that people who live in the imperial center will have better outcomes if they own even a modicum of property. We have that much waste to go around. But you can't tell me that the homeless in rural areas, or even in cities, aren't experiencing horrendous poverty comparable to the poor in third world countries. We *also* have people in poverty living in *actual* sewer tunnels. You can use the worst examples of ""third world countries,"" but there are a *shitload* of people in South Africa who *also* live perfectly comparable lives to anyone not in poverty in America. What you're essentially doing is simply pretending that America is better than it is, notwithstanding it may only pretend to do so by literally impoverishing other nations, *like India.* What's worse is you can only do that *by completely ignoring real people living in America.* No reading comprehension. Classic. [deleted] Where do we start? Let’s start with the question that I already asked and that you tried to dodge: Do you think that an edict to fight against the KKK had a negative effect on culture, freedom and choice? I thought we were talking about addiction. You're bordering on saying it's just a problem for the lower classes. No, they were saying that while the USA has problems, there are a lot more who experience worse. ""That's not to say folks in the US don't struggle, they do! But except for the very well-read or very well-travelled most first-worlders can't comprehend the level of depredation that still grips billions of humans"" ""Put another way, if OP simply wrote 'US inequality is a problem' I'd have upvoted it and moved on"" They acknowledged that America has problems, but it is not on the same scale and intensity as other countries'. The median income in the US is $31k. In Russia it’s $5k. You can acknowledge your own country is bad, but you can also acknowledge that other countries' have it worse without feeling insulted. That acknowledgement of the latter doesn't change anything, keep on working on your own country. This may be an app made by Americans, but this is also for international audiences, where ""foreigners"" can also voice their own opinions and share their experiences. > The median income in Russia is $5,500 And I asked about this same thing in this same post: that's just a description of the exchange rate. Their response is Russia median is ~$12K PPP. Given that, half of Russian are minimum 70% richer than a quarter of Americans... You really aren't making your point well. It can’t be theft when it’s the government’s currency. Start getting paid in food or something if you don’t like it. I refer you to the above No, thanks. I already know who at least some of them are, they’re in my family. Safety nets are great and are the most popular programs. Productively has rose steadily with more safety nets being implemented. We have plenty of money to spend on better social programs. People’s lives being better should come before productivity rates anyways. Standard of living and infrastructure is higher then in America. Ugh. Human of the year award to you But I'm assuming you're happy your tax dollars go to pay the cops' salaries who arrest the drug users and then throw them in prison (if they don't shoot them first) and then you're happy your tax dollars go to the criminal ""justice"" system which prosecutes the drug offender and holds them in a cage for years and of course you're happy that this money is also going to the private corporations which then profit off the prisoner's (slave) labour and then you're happy that your tax dollars go to the welfare that their family has to receive because they can no longer contribute financially because no one will hire a felon. Yeah sounds like criminalizing drugs sure saves a lot of tax money >...MLK was the victim of political assassination, vs police using lawful force given to them under the law. What are you referring to with ""lawful force given to them under law?"" What is Gitmo if not a political prison? I selected something on the high end and low end. Rent and Milk. And then I also linked data for every other item. I suppose one could say I cherry picked examples from each extreme? Although if I wanted to do that, I'd have pointed at Jeans, Dresses or Mortgage Interest rates, which are literally more expensive, even before adjusting for their depressed economy. > https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Russia&city1=Amarillo%2C+TX&city2=Bryansk&tracking=getDispatchComparison It's not cherry picking to literally link differences in cost of living for all standard goods and services. See the ""difference"" column percentages? I just pasted them into Excel, and the average difference is -65%, meaning that on average, these items are 65% cheaper in Russia. 80% would be five times less expensive, and 90% would be 10 times less expensive. Therefore, we can conclude, that cost of living in Russia, is approximately 3 times lower than living in the US, and they have five times less money to pay those costs. you literally called them full of shit and claimed your BS meter was going off. you sir are the asshat. they supposed to call you smart? you do a lot of asserting for a walking dunning-kruger. just take the L dude you started the shit talking so take it when dealt. A dunning-kruger happy to use slurs nonetheless. So worried about being called stupid you will tell strangers to go fuck themselves. trashhhhhhh No. Evidence. I appreciate the tip >heavily under represents how loopsided wealth distribution is in Russia Pretty clear wording to me especially given the tone of the reply. Altough quick correction for my last comment top 1% percent in Russia is richer 35 to 48 percent. Top 10% is virtualy the same and bottom 50% is 1.5 in US to 3% in Russia. The data I gave previously were concerning income not wealth. Tell me how did I underplay Russian wealth distribution? Because the more I look at the stats the clearer it becomes you're strawmaning your statistics. Yeah, I know and I've stated multiple times that Russia is the least equel country in the world, with non existent democracy despite it being official system, and one of the most corrupt to the boot. Doesn't mean that ""trickle down economics"" bullshit that we allow to go on, isn't becoming increasingly worrying since it's so easy to see patterns of tendencies unfavourable for the averge consument. And funny that you mentioned median since in other comment thread I actually used one from the Wealth Inequality Database and you'd be shocked when comparing the two. When it comes to income top 1% top 10% and bottom 50% are getting almost ecactly the same ammount in both Russia and US percentage wise. When it comes to actual wealth and not income top 1% has around 48% in Russia to 35% of US but by the time it goes to top 10% the numbers are increadibly close again with bottom 50% having 3 and 1.5 percent of total wealth respectively. Those are terribly scary numbers for me when the most powerful nation and face of the Western World and our democracy pulls such a close numbers when compared to authoritarian regime where oligarchs are basically allowed to claim what they want from goverment they pay off, at the cost of the people. Just because our situation isn't as bad, doesn't mean middle class shouldn't be worried that it's essentially shrinking with most members going down on socio-economic level, housing market bubble being more recent global example of that. Just saying someone is having a tantrum doesn't make it so, for instance... me just saying you are a bottomless pit of drool whose head is so far up your own ass you can inspect the scar tissue left after your lobotomy.. doesn't make it true... does it? > Did you seriously just compare working to a dictatorship? If I gave you a list of businesses and said ""look, pick one of these places, go there, and for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, you have to do whatever the person who owns it tells you to, or else I'm going to shoot you"" you'd quite rightly say ""that's ridiculous, this is extortion, police!"" et cetera. If I now say to you ""look, pick one of these places, go there, and for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, you have to do whatever the person who owns it tells you to so that you can make money, or else you won't be able to afford shelter or food and you'll die"" you say ""sweet! I just got a job!"" When's the last time you voted at your workplace? On your working hours, or your wages, or who your manager is, or anything else. You haven't, obviously - would you be happy to apply the same logic to your government? Why is spending 8 hours of your life being told what to do by someone you didn't elect fine, but the same thing in the remaining 16 hours would be a breach of your liberties? I'm not comparing working to a dictatorship, I'm saying that capitalist businesses are organised autocratically. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. By definition, a capitalist business is autocratic. Your boss tells you what to do, and your choice is to do it or go find another boss to serve. Is it *so absurd* to suggest that this system should be democratised? >Do you think people should just get money for free? I don't think people should *need* money to get the things that they need to live a happy life. Humans should be entitled to the basic things they need to live fulfilled lives; food, water, shelter, education, healthcare. >You have to offer something to society — to the economy. I love how you act like it's absurd for me to compare this to a dictatorship, and then you immediately come out with the absolute batshit statement that ""you have to have something to offer to 'the economy' or else you deserve to die."" Do you not understand how almost quasi-religious that statement is? People have to sacrifice their time, their bodies, before the nebulous concept of ""the market"" or else we kill them? >This is not exploitation, it’s literally just how the world works. It *is* how the world works. It's also exploitation. It's also not how the world has *always* worked, and it's not how the world always *needs* to work. The status quo is not inherently the best possible state, and there are better societies possible than that which we currently live in. That article is pretty much an ad to sell Brazile's book, which she needed to sell for income since she got fired from CNN the year before for warning Hillary that she would be asked about lead in the water at the debate in Flint. Who could have predicted that question would come up? I'm glad Hillary was warned. /s There's no evidence to support your claim at all. The deal they reached was pretty much all about preparing for a possible general election campaign if Hillary ended up winning. There's nothing to indicate that it was used to tilt the primary election in Hillary's favor. The full text of the actual agreement is in this article, and I don't think there's anything terribly bad about it other than the entire concept of joint funding committees being a huge campaign finance loophole. >Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC's obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates. > >https://www.npr.org/2017/11/03/561976645/clinton-campaign-had-additional-signed-agreement-with-dnc-in-2015 How is it a net benefit for society when billionaires use that same money to stifle competition, stifle unions, pour money into politicians and lobby groups against your interest and not put that money back into the economy? That just sounds like a lot of armchair psychology, you alright dude? Also the other example you gave is a millionaire, you are being intellectually dishonest when you are trying to insult me and say I said something about millionaires. Also most of these billion dollar companies in farming shit all over farmers and make their lives a living hell and prevent them from making any substantial amounts of money. Honestly you can't form a good argument and instantly reach for to ad hominem attacks when your flimsy argument is poked through. Those that can't do real math study economics So Piketty is a real economist but Mises isn't? You are what the Austrians would call a ""hack"" (to use a technical term). Where did I say that Exactly? Why would a failed pornographer on the run after robbing a grocery store decide to assassinate a civil rights figurehead? You basically just described the most easily manipulateable man on earth. Did you not learn American history? Almost all of the robber barons of the early 20th century conspired with government officials in order to use the law and public resources to personally profit. If you had bothered to click on the first link it states that multi billion dollar companies literally write United States law. I don’t know how much more obvious the facts could be. Who said anything about billionaires today? We’re talking about American oligarchs. That includes the the railroad owners that Cleveland sided with over the workers as well as modern companies using political favors to unfairly influence the law. Oligarchs just refer to a small group of private rulers that exploit public resources. Are you familiar with Hitchen's Razor? I get it brother/sister preach whatever knowledge you can. I'm over buzzwords too. Socialist is a great example. I was more referring to reagonomics and the policy of unchecked competition, regulation etc. Being liberal with policies but not profits. I have no children. Not my circus, not my monkey. democracy and capitalism are messy bedfellows, but I see too many people from un-entitled backgrounds but with common business sense scratch around, hustle and somehow make pretty good lives for themselves. a re- weighting of tax liabilties may be in order, but it will happen in small, messy, democratic, capitalistic steps. no grand, sweeping revolutionary hullabaloo. your boy Zuckerberg is an example of untethered capitalism. Now, the market is spanking him. a market economy i.e. capitalism has it's own checks and balances. every check Meta pays its employees is good. the invisible hand holds the tether. I give a rats patootie about Steve Schwartzmans' compensation. cheers Phillipino prisons are worse. South American prisons in general are worse. Let’s go back to Nigeria, an example you used, where you said sewage slums that are essentially their own city are comparable to US poverty No you just made two contradicting arguments There's a huge disconnect in that you don't seem to know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. I didn’t respond to the rest because it’s ridiculous. I have good healthcare that I pay for. I see what people on government healthcare in the US are subjected to vs what I get. The VA, Medicare and Medicaid are *all* poorly run disasters. I’m good on that. You want to make sure that everyone in the country gets *that* quality of care? That’s where you lost me. You’re more than welcome to reduce your income to the level that you get that shit if it’s so important to you, but don’t try to drag the rest of us down with you. I work hard to earn my paycheck/benefits. Part of those benefits are good insurance. I’m not willing to give up the things I work my ass off so that you can have some free garbage healthcare that I’ll also be forced to have. If you’d like the same quality of healthcare, you’re more than willing to apply to my company. We’re hiring and the starting pay with no experience is $20/hr. The work is hard, and you’ll be out in the rain/snow/etc… but you wouldn’t have to worry about your medical bills because you’d be making enough money to pay the copays and stuff. I doubt you’ll take me up on that though. People who want handouts rarely want to work this hard. > The act was the last of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks upon the suffrage rights of African Americans *Why* would this act need to exist in the peak time period of culture, and peace. *WHY* could I have *possibly* brought this up during this discussion, in which it is being alleged that this time period was peak American *freedom*? Is it because I think the Ku Klux Klan Act is an example of legislation that something you think I disagree with, is that what you inferred from what I wrote? You tell me, what do I think. 😂 Addiction is a disease. Some people turn to drugs possibly as a relief for their mental illness and then bam their bodies never stop trying to reach that high again. Also triggering harming effects if they do really need medication for a chemical imbalance. The US likes to hide the homeless like they are trash. It’s inhumane. Early childhood prevention can screen out learning disabilities or needs. We secure almost nothing for this sector. Teachers/social workers etc We have an opioid pandemic for two decades and big pharma paved the road for a lot of US deaths. Now we can’t keep fentanyl out of the hands of younger generations. Its a mess [deleted] 4th percentile not quartile. As in 96% of Americans are above that amount. Want to go to $12,000? That'd be 7th percentile. So 93% of Americans are richer than the median Russian. The goverment is controled by the people Okay then but if its in stock or houses they still want money from me so thats not true Gov= controling senile old men Good for you Enjoy capitalisme😀 No Not true America spends 500 bilion on its defence The last 2 presidents biden/trump are crazy or senile it would all go to waste Sweden wastes nearly all that money Immigrants stop helping the economy No reason to do anything No it is not You are all over the place without a core argument? What are you trying to demonstrate? I'm saying given the same outcome we can apply multiple different judgments based on the context. Bringing in past ""similar"" contexts isn't necessarily helpful. Motivation can be an important factor. Time can be an important factor. We are in WW2: Scenario 1: An untrained brit tries to take control of an AA gun to shoot down Luftwaffe but accidently unloads into an innocent apartment. Tragic, perhaps warranting a negligence charge. Scenario 2: A neo-nazi infiltrator take control of an AA gun and opens fire into an apartment. Hate criime + murder. Alternative scenario: 1. Poor man robs a jewish bakery to feed his family. 2. Wealthy man robs a jewish bakery to undermine jewish business in the area. Do you not see how we can draw distinctions between these? Or are they all the same to you? Scenario 3: 1. 30 years ago your great grandpa was murdered. Today you take vengeance by murdering the murderer. 2. Today your great grandpa is murdered. That same day, in a rage, you murder his murderer. Edit: typos That’s not how math works, bud. The $400 to $700 difference in rent is more than everything else on that list combined. Rent is also a necessity, unlike jeans and non-UHT milk. Lol.. Plenty of evidence of Obstruction, but conspiracy was not able to be proven. In any case, you've acknowledged that your original supposition was incorrect. >Didnt Russiagate waste billions of dollars to conclude there was no Russian backing for Trump? . > He took advantage of it, like any politician would have >Pretty clear wording to me especially given the tone of the reply. Yes but we've established you have massive problems with reading comprehension. At no point did I say the US was perfect, yet you claimed I did. At no point did I say you stated Russia was not worse, yet you claimed I did. >Altough quick correction for my last comment top 1% percent in Russia is richer 35 to 48 percent. Top 10% is virtualy the same and bottom 50% is 1.5 in US to 3% in Russia. The data I gave previously were concerning income not wealth. Tell me how did I underplay Russian wealth distribution? Because the more I look at the stats the clearer it becomes you're strawmaning your statistics. The top 100% of Russians own 100% of wealth, the top 100% of Americans also own 100% of wealth. Omfg they're the same!!!! You keep trying to change goalposts by making it wider. The original argument was the **top 3**. Not top 1%, not top 10%, the top 3 people. The top 3 people in Russia own a vastly larger percentage of their wealth than the top 3 people in America does. The end. I can point to your tantrum. [deleted] “not put that money back in the economy”. You might want to do some research on the topics you’re so passionate about. Everything you said is as best an easily debunked conspiracy. Where do billionaires keep their wealth outside of the economy? Cash under the mattress? Says the person on an Econ sub... Yes. Take your undergrad Austrian education and leave the real Econ discussion to those who understand it. Edit: Austrians considering me a hack would get me hired at most Econ institutions, so I’ll take it! > They helped prop the government up by funding them … > They wanted Ukraine in Nato. … Ray was a racist who thought he would be famous and popular. He believed Wallace was going to be elected president and would pardon him. You haven't answered the question. > Can you actually just point to an actual American CEO who obtained his fortune in a manner equivalent to a Russian Oligarch and operates in a similar fashion? The wealthiest guys today are dudes like Bezos and Zuckerberg who made their money by actually selling a marketable service. They weren't government officials who were handed fully functioning and profitable corporate entities by the state in exchange for political loyalty. You have a very limited view of the world. Zuck will still have immense wealth no matter the outcome of Meta, and he is all but one example. Untethered generational wealth is not sustainable. Children that come into hundreds of millions that accrue more money from just index funds than they will ever know what to do with. Vs the common man who will become relatively poorer and poorer with no voice as governments get deeper and deeper entrenched in bribery. You are once again thinking in single generational terms, perhaps for you that’s fine who has no desire to carry on their bloodline; but then it’s really all a moot point for you isn’t it since your not the one that any of these taxes would impact either so why are we even having this conversation. You have no horse in this race and will never have a horse in this race. Waste of time this was. Are they? Because US prisons literally hold more than all third world country prisons combined. One fourth of all incarcerated. What I really want to know is, why are you so invested in downplaying US poverty? For the people in the US *experiencing that poverty,* what difference does it make that they're surrounded by people who are doing better than them, bragging rights? I never disagreed that poverty is more widespread in third world countries. All I'm pointing out is *lived experiences* of *real people* living *within* the imperial center. Why are we playing a game of whose poverty is worse instead of looking at poverty *as poverty.* Moreover, poverty in the imperial center is even more morally reprehensible because, unlike somewhere like Nigeria, that is poor on the whole and lacks serious capital reserves to create the kind of infrastructure necessary to improve material living conditions broadly, places like the US *do* have the capital and simply refuse to use it. The same could be said for third world countries like South Africa, where poverty was manufactured for the benefit of apartheid. Trying to downplay poverty in the US only serves the purpose of maintaining the status quo and obfuscating the relationship of empire. [deleted] ""I agree that whataboutism is the issue here, but it’s OP who posted a thread looking at one of the most miserable societies on the planet and whined 'what about people struggling in the US.'"" Their beef was with the poster being insensitive. It is not about how ""Americans are whiny""... >4th percentile not quartile. You're right, I missread that. I don't have data to argue against, but I'm still missing the data to agree with your premise, I'd really like to have the data to form an opinion. I see this figure and I can't accept it's the whole story because housing that makes up 30-50+% of income is incomparable without a deep dive into support system. I wonder how take-home after house/health compares. Move somewhere that doesn’t have property taxes. Our last actual senile President was Ronald Reagan. I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m firmly anticapitalist, thanks! It is true. Social programs are good and we need larger and better ones. We should start with universal healthcare. >You are all over the place without a core argument? am I? Why are you asking a question? Remain in reality, don't resort to fiction to explain realities. Fred Hampton: absolutely murdered by the state. MLK: assassinated, legally, by the state-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Jowers_trial Gitmo: where ""terrorists"" disappear to never be brought before trial, charges, or jury. Leonard Peltier: AIM dissident locked away without proper trial. Alright, so let's try this another way. In Bryansk, the rent for a 1 bedroom on the edge of town is $81/mo. The average salary per month is $271. That means rent is **30% of income**. In Amarillo, the rent for a 1 bedroom on the edge of town is $539/mo. The average salary per month is $3058. That means rent is **17.6% of income**. Thus, rent is a higher percentage of a person's income in Russia, than in the US. Lmao, nice admit of defeat. You agreed with all I said, decided that having source sample bigger than 3 people means you won't be able to prove you cheery picked argument, only shot another ad hominem at me to feel better about taking the L. What a nice combo. Give me a source that 3 Russians own 33% of all Russian wealth since it was your whole argument, and that made me courious. My sources are at WID website. You really are boring me now... go ahead point away > What I’m saying is that we don’t live in a post-scarcity uptopia where everyone can just get what they need for free. We sort of do. The world produces enough food to feed 10 billion people. Most developed countries have more vacant houses than they have homeless people. The problem in much of the world is not scarcity of resources but distribution thereof. There's more than enough houses to house everybody, but because our societies prioritise the property rights of landlords over the human right to shelter, some people are allowed to own dozens of properties while others own none. There's more than enough food, but because we find it more important that a company be allowed to make money by selling food than people being allowed to actually have food, again, people starve. There were some very telling photos from during the pandemic where police were literally guarding the dumpsters of supermarkets to prevent people from taking perfectly good food that was being thrown out. What does that tell you about our society? It's not exactly ""post-scarcity,"" but we have more than enough to keep people alive and healthy. >and that’s precisely why people need to work by adding value to the economy. You’re doing this by selling your labor. Work does not inherently add value to society or 'the economy.' There's a lot of what Mark Graeber would call ""bullshit jobs"" out there - jobs that don't add anything of value to anybody. As automation becomes more and more prevalent in society, more and more 'bullshit jobs' crop up - because even though we rely less on human labour now than we ever have, we still demand that people work in order to prove that they deserve their human rights. I absolutely agree with you that people need to work and add value to society - but capitalist labour doesn't incentivise or reward that at all. The people who are rewarded most under capitalism are the people who work the least - the owners of megacorporations who rake in billions from their businesses and the stock market without needing to lift a finger. Conversely, the people who work the hardest are the people who are in the direst of situations. The capitalist meritocracy is a myth. >I get that you’re trying to make the argument that it’s not really a choice if you have to do it Good, then you've understood my point - which is that capitalist labour isn't a voluntary arrangement. That's the only point I'm making. The idea that capitalism is fair by default because we've all voluntarily agreed to participate in it is bunk, because your choices are participation or death. That's all I was saying. ""You agreed to work for that person"" doesn't nullify complaints against the economy or against your employer, because you have to agree to work for *somebody.* >I hear people say all the time that they’re human rights, but someone else’s work brought you your food and house and they should be compensated. I agree, and the way to ensure people are more fairly compensated for their labour is to remove the class of people who dictate your working life and skim the top of the value you produce. The owning class are parasitic middle-men who provide nothing of value to these systems of production while claiming the lion's share of their riches. These things *are* human rights, and we *are* entitled to them, and *also* the people who produce these things need to be better compensated - by being entitled to the full value of that which they produce. >Not having food or shelter provided to you? That’s just how nature is. I'm not sure about you, but I'm not wearing a loincloth and throwing spears at boars right now. This is an ""appeal to nature"" fallacy. It's fairly evident that humans don't live in a state of nature, and saying that our contemporary economies should model some abstract, primitive time is absurd. Not to mention, even if they did, we'd work *less.* Hunter-gatherer societies in rural Africa, for instance, work on average 12 hours a week per person in order to produce the things they need to survive, and their labour is *far* less efficient than ours given lack of access to machinery. By all rights, 12 hours a week in an industrialised society should be more than enough to provide us a *very* comfortable lifestyle. The difference? Those hunter-gatherers reap the full value of what they produce. If they had some guy come by and say ""hey, I own this land, you have to give me a portion of what you're hunting and gathering"" and then when they wanted to sleep they had some guy being like ""hey, I own *this* land, you have to pay me to put a tent here"" then they'd suddenly have to work a *lot* more to provide for themselves. As it turns out, the amount of value you need to produce to provide for yourself and your community is a lot lower when it's not being funneled into the pockets of the wealthy. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/17/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-san-francisco-homeless-interview https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/08/politics/what-matters-income-taxes/index.html https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/12/lobbying-10-ways-corprations-influence-government https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/monsanto-crop-system-damage-us-farms-documents You are the reason why economics is not taken more seriously. Again, just *one year* after King's death, Fred Hampton was killed during a police raid as part of COINTELPRO. They shot him to death in his bed. A few years before, Malcolm X had been assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam, the national secretary of which had been an FBI agent. This same secretary met, the night before X's assassination, with one of the men convicted for the shooting. I think it's frankly absurd to believe the idea that, during a time where the US government was known to be undermining civil rights leaders - again, including literally trying to get King to kill himself - King just happened to be killed in an entirely unmotivated, random racial killing. It’s a bullshit question. The definition of an oligarch is not in the way that they gained their fortune but in how a few wealthy individuals use their fortune to control a country. Sorry you feel that way. Personally, I think a massive inheritance tax on mega million bequests would be fine...the recipients frequently did nothing, built nothing, and created nothing to expand the economy and bring goods and services to market. My only point was free enterprise should be free. Good luck in all your endevours. Yes they are. They are criminally jnderfunded and in many cases the guards do no control what happens inside the prison, nor do they enter the prison. The gangs run the rules of the prison. I’m not downplaying US poverty. I’m calling your BS. You made a BS claim about how US poverty is just as bad as the conditions of poverty in the third world countries. That’s not true. I will call that out and now look at you. Every example shot down. Now you’re claiming I’m downplaying US poverty. Keep dancing buddy it’s real entertaining. > I mean, at least they provide coverage for people who would otherwise be unable to afford their medical costs. It’s called Medicaid and we’ve talked about this already. > I live in a country where healthcare is universal anyway, That would explain why you’re so misinformed. Thanks for advocating that I get shit on so that other people can reap the benefits of my labor. Appreciate that. Maybe mind your own business since you have no skin in this game and the consequences of the shit you’re advocating for will never reach you. No. Op posted that Russia has an inequality problem and an oligarchy problem, and said that the US is similar in issues. There was nothing said in the terms of, ""what about America. Or America is worse."" It compared Russia to America simply along the lines of controlling oligarchy which both countries deal with on a very big scale. Oligarchy, robber barons, or in general rich people amassing wealth causing poverty, and inequality gaps. People on reddit that aint American cope and seeth so hard when Americans try to say they are suffering as if America is the greatest country in the world. Well it isn't. Even the UK has better living conditions than America. Alot of first world countries do. They will still try to tax me on anything else Ok then😀 Hope you enjoy starving and dictatorship Google genocide and succesfull communisme No not good Universal healthcare is a terrible idea You do realise that reason american medicine is expensive is beacouse the gov restricts imports and production >Lmao, nice admit of defeat. You are truly delusional, just like how you dreamed up things I never posted. >You agreed with all I said, Not in the slightest. >decided that having source sample bigger than 3 people means you won't be able to prove you cheery picked argument, only shot another ad hominem at me to feel better about taking the L. The topic was the top 3 richest people in both countries, I stuck to the topic. That you decided to shift goalposts from 3 people to 30 million people is your problem, not mine. Oh and you clearly don't know what an ad hominem is. >What a nice combo. Give me a source that 3 Russians own 33% of all Russian wealth since it was your whole argument, and that made me courious. My sources are at WID website. I took the guy you were replying's word for it, turns out I shouldnt have. Russia's total wealth is about $3 trillion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_total\_wealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wealth) Putin is worth about $200 billion. [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/financier-bill-browder-says-vladimir-putin-is-worth-200-billion.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/financier-bill-browder-says-vladimir-putin-is-worth-200-billion.html) The other 2 are worth $58b total. So the top 3 people in Russia are worth 258/3000=8.6% of total Russian wealth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Russian\_billionaires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_billionaires) The total US wealth is $142 trillion. [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-household-net-worth-jumps-to-record-142-trillion-11632417142](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-household-net-worth-jumps-to-record-142-trillion-11632417142) Top 3 in the US are worth $459 billion. So the top 3 people in the US are worth 459/142,000=0.32% of total US wealth. 8.6%/0.32%= Russian top 3 are worth 27 times as much as the US top 3 proportionally, so the gap was even wider than I thought. Now GTFO. As you wish. https://old.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/t5baxw/putin_has_amassed_enormous_wealth_for_himself_and/hz4qi8v/ [deleted] I looked at the first one and it, in no way, supports your argument. Benioff is saying that founders who own tons of equity in their companies aren't donating more to their local community. That means 100% of the money in question is ""in the economy"" and a benefit to the economy. I won't bother with the other articles because it seems like you don't know what you're talking about. Could have fooled me with how often I’m asked for public engagement. It’s LUCRATIVE. Also, it really is cute to think that people think the Austrian school is respected. You guys had to make up your own shit journals to publish in your echo chamber… Fred Hampton was the only civil rights leader killed by law enforcement. He was the leader of a violent organization. Malcolm X was killed for revealing the truth about Elijah Muhammed's infidelities and love children. He was threatened directly and one of the killers wrote about who killed him and why. 55 years later no evidence has emerged tying the government to the murder. It makes as much sense to blame the NOI. I hate to tell you this, but the two are connected. How is a prison being run by a gang supposedly worse than being run by the State? Which is worse, a gang not providing a nurse to pregnant women, or the state not providing a nurse to pregnant women? You say all of these things, but like, did you not see ICE detention centers? Are you serious? I only ever specifically referred to *people* in poverty. Go back and read my original comment. Your ability to completely downplay US poverty is fucking absurd. I hope you're not a US citizen, because it comes off as a way to ignore something you *actually* can do something about, rather than trying to play a game of who's poorer to do nothing at all. Find somewhere that won’t. Don’t be an ass. People are allowed to have different views. Capitalism isn’t working, regardless of my own personal experience. Universal healthcare is a great idea. It’d lower our overall costs and nobody would pay giant sums of money for necessary surgeries and checkups. Insurance companies are leeches and shouldn’t be involved in healthcare. Wow, thats rich reply. Disregarding first part of the reply from the wonderland where questioning someone's reading ability isn't considered personal attack. Your article about Putin being worth 200 billion has no sources, expect a word from a businessman who was prosecuted in Russia. I have no problem woth believing estimations and so on, but to use them mixed with actual numbers to get the desired effect when we don't even have his bank account with even portion of said wealth is just arguing in bad faith. Now that changes data given a little especially since you've used the old networth of those people. According to Forbes billionare list they are worth 540 billion together do that changes your numbers a bit. 82 billion is 2.7% of 3 trillion. 540 billion gives 0.38 from 142 trillion. Thats less than eight time the difference which is less than 8 times the number. When compared to the least equel nation on earth. The numbers considerably even out the further down you go on the richest list of both countries. There way more than 3 oligarchs in Russia and way more than 3 billionares in US and the west in general. And we're talking about comparing ""land of the equel"" to authoritarian regime. Sorry but if you don't see the problem with that then I have no clue what to say. Damning evidence... you got me, the toys were certainly thrown out the pram on that one. Lets call it a day now dude, As fun as it has been to listen to the wind blowing through your ears as you attempt to ""Own"" me... i have better things to do with my life when you clearly don't. The fundamental point is this - the worker should be entitled to the full value of their labour. How do you do that? Democratise labour. Democratise the workplace. Instead of companies being governed as miniature autocracies where decisions are made by a dictator who appoints leadership from top-down, make decisions within the workplace democratically. The people who *actually* produce value, *actually* perform labour, should be the ones to decide - collectively - what is done with the product of their labour. This means everybody now has control over what they produce, and nobody has any control over what they don't produce. If you're not involved in production, you don't get a say in what's done with that production, plain and simple. Apply this throughout the rest of society, too - you can own *your* house, but you can't own *somebody else's* house and demand they pay you rent to live there, for instance. Kropotkin put it like this; “The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every one's part in the production of the world's wealth. [...] But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say, ""This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products,"" any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant, ""This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build."""" I'm happy to answer more specific questions about this alternative, if you have any. Lmao dude you are a joke you will not even attempt to argue in good faith and bring no point to bear. How about this how is not paying their fair share of taxes anything but stealing from the community they are a part of and exploit? Honestly I don't think you know what you are talking about and aren't even interests in arguing it because you know you are wrong. Don't break a wrist jerking yourself off, there, otherwise how else will you be able to type out dumb replies to randoms on the internet? For someone with such LUCRATIVE opportunities, you sure seem to love giving away your valuable time for free. Only superficially. Gaining a fortune due to questionable deals with politicians doesn’t make you be an oligarch. Oligarchs are private individuals who unofficially rule a country due to their influence. Their fortune is important only insofar as it gives them power. Multi billion dollar companies that literally write the law themselves absolutely qualify. [removed] Entire world would Was not being an ass just giving advice Did you not see the smiliy face Sorry if you feel offended did not mean to😀 No the gov is a big leech 50% of income for free health care then its not free The medical industry is important removing it and replecing it with gov would cost trilions that we dont have Hello. In order to promote inclusivity and reduce gender bias, please consider using gender-neutral language in the future. Instead of **businessman**, use **business person** or **person in business**. Thank you very much. ^(I am a bot. Downvote to remove this comment. For more information on gender-neutral language, please do a web search for *""Nonsexist Writing.""*) >Wow, thats rich reply. Disregarding first part of the reply from the wonderland where questioning someone's reading ability isn't considered personal attack. >Your article about Putin being worth 200 billion has no sources, expect a word from a businessman who was prosecuted in Russia. I have no problem woth believing estimations and so on, but to use them mixed with actual numbers to get the desired effect when we don't even have his bank account with even portion of said wealth is just arguing in bad faith. You know what's arguing in bad faith? Ignoring the richest man in Russia in a debate about Putin and Russian oligarchs. You know what's arguing in bad faith? Repeatedly using strawman arguments and fabricating words I never posted. >Now that changes data given a little especially since you've used the old networth of those people. According to Forbes billionare list they are worth 540 billion together do that changes your numbers a bit. 82 billion is 2.7% of 3 trillion. 540 billion gives 0.38 from 142 trillion. Thats less than eight time the difference which is less than 8 times the number. I know you're bad at reading comprehension, but have you considered using a calculator? Top 3 Russians excluding Putin: (29.1+27+26.2)/3,000= 2.74%. Top 3 Americans: (190.5+134.5+134)/142,000=0.32% 2.74/0.32=8.56 times What kind of fucked up rounding did you do to go from 0.32 to 0.38? Because you felt like it? >When compared to the least equel nation on earth. Prove your claim Russia is the least ""equel"" nation on earth. > And we're talking about comparing ""land of the equel"" to authoritarian regime. It's ""land of the free"" roflmao. Did you just make up another bullshit claim on the spot? > Sorry but if you don't see the problem with that then I have no clue what to say. Don't say anything if you're incapable of reading what other people actually posted instead of inserting words into their mouth. If you take anything from this- care about your sources. Think tanks- left or right- are propaganda mills. and they love to register as a .org That should be an immediate red flag. Not every org is a think tank, but if it is presenting you with ""news"" then it almost certainly is one. The top 50% pay 97% of all taxes. How is that not their fair share? Would 98% be ""fair""? 99%? And how is investing in companies ""not putting money in the economy"". It's *literally* putting their money in the literal economy. I'm not even arguing. I'm just trying to explain some facts. Multitasking can be a bitch for people, I guess. If every government where a small amount of people had outsized influence was an oligarchy, then every government in history would be an oligarchy and the term would be meaningless. An oligarchy is the close marriage between governments and private interests. In the US that marriage simply isn’t close enough for the term to make sense. Not yet anyhow In Russia it makes sense because those businesses literally came from the government, and because of the cartel-like manner in which they have tended to operate. I would even argue that the term no longer fully applies to Russia as Putin has centralized operations considerably. The 90’s were the heyday of true oligarchs. [removed] Then I guess you’re complaining about things that are universally agreed upon. That wasn’t advice, bud. A smiley face doesn’t help. Nobody said 50% of income, and the government wouldn’t replace the medical industry. That doesn’t even make sense. It would pay the medical industry to treat people. stfu Bruh I'm weak, reread Forbes billionare real time list. Musk is worth 239 B Bezos 178 B Gates 131 B which gives us 548 billion. You used most recent data for US being worth 142 trillion instead of 126 T that was in the list you used for Russia so I just used the chronologically closest data avaible to the number you wanted to use. That mean 548/142 000= 0.38% Please multiply that for me by eight and tell me, is the number greater than 8. And the outrage that I didn't use article with no links to any kind of proof for the numbers given or any research. My sides, thank you man you really improved my humor. Altough I will advise to heed your own advice and improve your reading comprehension since I've stated I will use their current net worth not the old one, since both are from Forbes but mine is more recent. You wont give up, will you! I would accept your premise if the statements they were making were wrong., that being, Rob Reich is a multi Millionaire... So please, for the love of god, show me where there is evidence disproving this, show me a source proving that Rob Riech is not one of the 1% himself and I will concede your point about sources. See the issue is, i googled his net worth and there was countless sources showing it... I chose one at random and you used that as an impetus to call me a right-wing nut... so where is your source on that claim hey? Is it from a .org domain website professor? > The top 50% Dude here you go again here I am talking about billionaires and here you come talking about the middle class? Like are you even trying? Like could it be any more obvious that either A. you are like 14 years old B. you are doing this on purpose and think I'm stupid enough to fall for it. 50% of the population is Billionaires? OKaY bUDDy! But you're not a people, so you don't have that problem. I think the term is a lot more meaningless when it currently describes no one. You’re absolutely right that the term describes a lot of pseudodemocracies. That doesn’t make it meaningless. You’re forgetting important points too. That small group of people have outsized influence…due to their wealth. Which they then use to gain even more wealth and influence, ad infinitim. At the end of the day if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it’s a duck. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Russian or American duck. You cherry picked and when I called you out for it you accused me of cherry picking, despite every example you used being evidence against your own arguments. It’s all quite obvious. You acted like homeless living in the Vegas tunnels were equivalent to entire families living together on a floating sewage city, their kids swimming in it for fun. These poor are hard workers that work every day and come back to sewage. These are not drug addicts who let meth and heroin ruin their lives. Their lives were ruined by no opportunity and no access to services. They are successful and still destined to live in slums. Imagine that, working hard just so you can have a place in the sewage slums. No drugs, no Vice, just success being nothing. Disgusting. Downplaying world poverty. Absolutely disgusting and disrespectful. You are the one using third world countries as a prop to lie. You downplay their plight to pretend that the US has it just as bad. Disgusting behavior. You should be ashamed. Embarrassed. Maybe I should take you to the Amazon to see the Peruvian poor. Wake you up. Not by people by the goverments sure Ok then sorry if you were offended Then it would cost trillions It would prob be 50% of income in the usa Starts with univ healthcare ends with free food Gov would be bankrupt in a day Why do you keep insisting I made any such claim? My point is that rich people are paying all of the taxes. They are financing *every* shared expense. So how are they not paying their fair share? Is your point that people making $500k/yr are unfairly paying too much? Do you even understand your own argument? Let's do that math. * 0.00024% of the US are billionaires * They pay around $200-250b in taxes annually, or about $300m per person. That means billionaires pay about 27,000 times higher taxes than the average person in the US. And then: * the top 1% pays 40% of all taxes * the top 10% pays 71% of all taxes * the top 50% pays 97% of all taxes So please explain to me how we should adjust that to make it ""fair"". It's a simple question. Who should pay what percentage? Break it down for me. > think I'm stupid enough to fall for it I don't think you're dumb, I think you're a tribalist. You have surrounded yourself with people saying ""rich = evil"" and now you just believe that but you can't actually defend it because it's an asinine belief. Money doesn't make you good or bad. No, most reasonable people understand that taxes are necessary. Like over 90%. Healthcare already costs trillions more than it needs to. We’d pay less with the government in charge of it. It would not be 50% of income in the United States. Plans have already shown that it’d be much lower than that. Free food is good too. The government would not be bankrupt in a day. You have an irrational hate of government. By proxy, you are claiming my source was unreliable... hence wrong... So you insist on playing word games, ok fine. Direct question: Was my claim incorrect... Is Rob Reich a multi-millionaire, part of the 1% he is referring to in his tweet? >My point is that rich people are paying all of the taxes. You literally aren't even engaging in the same discussion as me, I'm talking about billionaires you are talking about millionaires everything you write is trying to apologize for billionaires with stats of millionaires? THE TOP 1% has a salary of 800K! >https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/24/how-much-money-you-have-to-earn-to-be-in-the-top-1percent-in-every-us-state.html >I think you're a tribalist. Dude you can't even read what I write or do this on purpose. You keep repeating tribalism like it's the only word you know. It's just cringe at this point. Don't bother replying I don't expect anything from you at this point. I agree in some case they are necassary Income tax was not a thing until the early 1900 Only tax we need is sales No it would 20 trillion in debt Sure it would be alot cheaper of a state monopoly would take control /s 50% of income would go to stupid gov programs that 15% of america would use The reason healthcare is expensive is the gov controling imports and production Irrelevant to the conversation. You *insist* on trying to pin a claim I never made on me. Relevant: Was my claim correct that you posted a right wing propaganda site? Dumbshit still insisting I rescind the claim I never made, then blocks me. What a dumbfuck. How come you can't answer the simple question I asked? You said they're not paying their fair share. So fill out this template, To be ""FAIR"": * The top 0.00024% should pay ___% of taxes. * The top 1% should pay ___% of taxes. * The top 10% should pay ___% of taxes. * The top 50% should pay ___% of taxes. * The bottom 50% should pay ___% of taxes. You said the current amounts aren't fair. So tell me what fair would be? Or admit you have no idea what you're talking about. The only taxes we need are the ones that collect enough revenue to fund the programs that people want. Sales tax obviously isn’t enough at its current rate. It would be a lot cheaper with a state monopoly. The proof is in every government that has such a system where they pay less than us. Obviously more than 50% of America would use such programs or they wouldn’t be so popular. You are in the minority of people that don’t like programs that would make people’s lives better. That’s not the reason healthcare is expensive. It’s because of insurance companies and middlemen. The government would be able to stop the price gouging of middlemen instead of insurance companies paying whatever they want. you cant do it, got it. im done with you. Jeff bezoz paid like %1 of his income in taxes. >Meanwhile, between 2014 and 2018, ProPublica's analysis shows that Bezos, the richest man in the world, paid a true tax rate of 0.98%, Bloomberg paid 1.30%, and Musk paid 3.27% Lots of companies operate in America but use loopholes to not pay really significant taxes, >The wealthy borrow against their assets at stupid low interest rates, and those loans are not subject to income tax. Got a billion dollars in stock? Borrow as much as you need to pay for that yacht. >While it has already drawn some criticism, the Biden administration's infrastructure plan may be compelling enough to convince more corporate leaders to sign on in support of hiking business taxes. Even your government and Bezoz think corporations should be paying taxes and before you saying anything yes it's not the same as the individual but the person who owns stocks in a company and then borrow against their assets and don't get taxes that's fucked. https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-billion-taxes-trump/ Also there is literally a tax bracket but wealthy individuals/companies can avoid paying the 37%. >https://www.bankrate.com/taxes/tax-brackets/ Honestly it should be more like 50%, a good start would be closing all those loopholes. Of course wealthy individuals lobby government for them not to be closed, it's by design. Then no more stupid gov programs that dont work The gov can stop price gouging middle men by not being one Again gov is makeing drugs expensiv Free univ healthcare would cost way more in america the else where becouse of standar of living, and the amount of people Most people would not want a 10% tax increase to pay for somebodys else poor choches or accidentd /u/dominant_left_angle > it should be more like 50% Ah. They pay around 40% federal. If they're in a place like California, they pay 51.5%. So it sounds like they pay about the ""fair"" amount according to you, depending on where they live. Billionaires in California should get a 1.5% reduction I guess, for it to be ""fair"". > You couldn't address any of my points, Your point was that they don't pay tax on unrealized gains, like every other human on planet earth since the beginning of recorded history. You were changing the subject and making a point not worth addressing. It would take me way too long to explain why it works like that and why no serious person wants to change that. And it wasn't on topic. The topic is, are they paying their fair share by ""only"" paying 27,000 times more taxes, on average, than the average tax payer. You're now saying their ""fair share"" is 50% of their income, which doesn't really make sense, since it doesn't reference ""share"" at all, but it's what they're roughly already paying, so I guess you should be happy. We can decide based on what people want. Lots of people want the programs you think are stupid, and they should get what they want in a democracy. The government is not a middleman and wouldn’t be in such a system. The government is not making drugs expensive. It would not cost anymore in America relative to other countries. That makes no sense. Other countries with similar standards of living have universal healthcare systems with great outcomes, and the population would not make a difference due to our GDP being higher as a result to offset the cost of more people. Universal healthcare would benefit everybody as having health issues is a guarantee, not just something that happens as a result of accidents or bad choices (thinking people deserve to die because of bad choices is a shitty fucking attitude anyways, you should reflect on such a dumbass belief). >so you can’t answer the question? I figured. I did answer your question I said it should be 50% for billionaires and then linked to the tax bracket? Obviously you can't read and just parrot TrIbaLiSM, honestly you sound like someone in highschool that found a new concept and have to apply it to anything. You couldn't address any of my points, look you are being dismissive and writing two sentences while I provide well reasoned argument with sources. This isn't an argument this is a lecture with a child that can't read. Don't bother responding I have nothing to talk to you about, I won't engage with someone that can't write more then a couple sentences and doesn't read what the other wrote. Yeah lots of people agree with me too If not america would already have been socialist People dont deserve to die beacouse of bad choches but they should pay for it themself The reason drugs are expenisv in america is beacouse of restricted imports 10% extra tax would be way more expensiv then it would be with unrestricted imports The gov is a middle man that eats half the money they take and wastes the rest Lots of people, but nowhere near the majority. More social programs does not equal socialism. What you said makes no sense. No, they aren’t. Where is some data on restricted imports making everything more expensive? I don’t care if that would make things cheaper. We can remove those restrictions and implement universal healthcare at the same time if that’s the case. People shouldn’t have to pay for overly expensive insurance or pay for things out of pocket. Social pograms promote socalisme Free food kinda sounds like socalisme But yeah socail pograms are not socalisme Nowhere near the majorety agrees with you eithr The majority absolutely agrees with me. The approval rating of social programs is higher than anything else. Social programs promoting socialism makes no sense either. Helping people with programs has nothing to do with the means of production. Go do some reading. Social programs promote gov control this indirectly promotes socilisme go do some reading Tax breaks have higer approval readings idiot Go do some reading Not going to reply to you anymore since you only use dumbass insults More government control does not equal socialism, and people would rather have better social programs than tax breaks. You can go fuck yourself, moron. I’ve never seen somebody with worse grammar or understanding of the world. Probably the dumbest fuck I’ve seen in a while. Go back to kindergarten you stupid fucking libertarian shitstain." “Self Made”,81192,https://i.imgur.com/B2LBEfQ.jpg,"I just inherited $300,000. I wish I could turn it into millions. I don’t even care about billions. If anyone knows how let me know. So…I can confirm it is not easy to turn $300k into $200bln. Arnold Scharzenegger once said he hates the term ""self made"", for that is a lie. Everybody got help somewhere. It isn't good enough though, to become a billionaire you do have to work hard. You can either be pretty honest like Warren Buffet or a monster pos like Jeff Bezos. Sadly it is more likly for an evil man like Bezos to become a billionaire than the likes of Warren Buffet. Depressing that we get /r/pics quality posts in this sub. I gotta work harder to ensure my kids have more opportunites to succeed....got it I hate this meme cuz bezos worked at a hedge fund. Surely he had more than 300k himself. I could not care less about Musk and all that Twitter drama so I’m not defending him whatsoever but what the hell is with the Elon Musk spam on this sub about economics? This isn’t a political meme sub or a meme sub in general. Can anyone think of any rich/successful business owners/investors who started by winning the lottery? No? Hmmmm, me either. Wow... Really?? It takes several generations to build enough wealth to become the richest person in the world and continued investment of existing assets from your predecessors?? Who would've thought. Is this sub an anti capitalist sub now? There's ~20M millionaires in the USA. If turning 300k into 200B is so easy, then surely those 20M millionaires could easily make a billion right? Yeah so $300k is actually a really small amount of capital to create a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Low key, Bezos is actually a good businessman This is missing so much context Once you start getting into the billionaire range though, 300,000 is almost as far as $0. right, the mysterious emerald mine with no financials details.... so if musk's dad did own an emerald mine, why not just go SpaceX from the start, why bother with Zip2.. and X.. his startup story at palo alto wasn't exactly a secret.. when did r/politics take this place over? still my favorite is the i paid off my house and student loans by 30 articles. its always blah blah blah i worked a part time job at starbucks while at college and at 27 my parents gave me my 400k trust. its almost like the congressman talking about how the new 49mpg cafe law is to help the people struggling with paying high gas prices, they live on another planet as if some one who cant double their gas budget is going to buy a new car... The emerald mine story has been debunked Don’t forget Kylie Jenner Is the point of this sub just to hate rich people? This is the 3rd time I've seen this sub recommended to me and every time it's a post that shits on rich people. Like why can't people just be happy? Why do you have to hate on someone in order to be happy? Get on a practice stock trading account, fill it with whatever 1 million.. then try to turn it into warren buffets wealth. Just because someone is born on third base doesn't mean they didn't work very hard for where the ended up. These are extremely smart people here [deleted] I remember seeing a list of 30 millionaires under 30 and only 3 of them didn't have rich parents lol Self-made my dick Here comes the Elon musk attacks. Apart from coming from a good start look at the ingenuity and progress him, and Jeff bezos brought into existence. They employ hundreds of thousands of people, giving them the opportunity to take care if their family’s. They could’ve simply just chilled on cash and became addicted to drugs and fucking around… but they didn’t.. anyways, What have you done for humanity? Wait people think these folks are “self-made”? Hell not even Formula 1 drivers are self made with all the millions they need to lobby to get into the association Okay I don’t have $300k to turn it into $200 billion, but I have $5, can someone tell me how to turn it into $3.3 million? [deleted] Success is 75% who you know and 25% what you know. Yeah, Jeff Bezos also gave his parents an insane return on that investment. Turning $300k into a Trillion+ company is not an easy feat. They're all self-made because if I gave any of you fucks the same start-up money you would turn it into a art degree The pseudo-intellectuals on Reddit won't understand this but $300,000 is not that much money for seed capital, especially given Amazon's success. In fact, it's a testament to Bezos genius and drive that the company grew into what it is from such a modest amount. Seriously, almost anyone with decent credit can get roughly as much and the American government gives grants of greater value to African-American entrepreneurs. This website is just full of bitter, poor, worthless losers. The achievements of these people must be destroyed. Stupid woke left full of stupidity, shortsightedness and envy. Let’s be fair though 99% of you would shit the bed and end up in the red if someone gave you 1m. good for them. they took the good fortune they had and did something with it, rather than the vast majority who squander their opportunities because they didn't have the experience and/or discipline to handle them. [https://money.com/rich-families-lose-wealth/](https://money.com/rich-families-lose-wealth/) The Elon Musk thing isn't true. The mine was in Zambia. You want a homeless guy stranded in a beach makes it all the way to be a multi hundred billion are to say that's self made. Every single person, every one even you have been helped by other person... Bill gates actually went to Harvard with his effort and able to compress a computer from taking place of a whole house to your desk. This is a very stupid post Musk and bezos that's just not that much money bruh Musk dad owned SOME SHARES of an emerald mine but it must've been a shitty one because he couldn't give much money to Musk. About 200k is all he contributed. And they're not even on good terms anymore Bezos 300k is not a lot.... You are children that don't understand money bro. If you work for 30 years investing you're gonna have millions of dollars.. considering you have mom, dad, grandparents, uncles aunts, if your in an even MILDLY put together family, you're not going to have trouble sourcing 300k! That's the price of 1 decent house where I live! It's nothing.. the bar is so low... There are 45 million millionaires in the world. How many of them are as successful as bezos or musk?? Yes, they're playing a game with a slightly high cost of entry... but it's not like there aren't tens of millions of players! They're still the winners! Not commenting on old banker guy or chair jump guy bc i haven't looked into their origin stories like I have with the other two I mean turning $300,000 into becoming one of the richest man in the world is pretty impressive most self-made businessman take out business loans to get started why not take one from your family if it’s an option That doesn’t take away from hard work right? I know a lot of bozos that would still screw it up ""Boohoo!"" - cries the piece of shit who didnt contribute to society Wahhhhhhh I really hope this isn’t becoming a meme sub like every other place on Reddit. With that said, it’s weird how many people (including most of the top comments on this post) don’t realize how hard the people at this level of wealth are trying to fuck the system to preserve their power. It’s even weirder how many people cheer them on while they do it. These people don’t give a shit about you, but are absolutely harming society (look at the complete collapse of labor unions). Every single person here is closer to the homeless dude on the street than to any of these people, but they feel like they are one smart decision away from wealth. It’s sad. [deleted] At least bill gates actually did good shit with his money. Invest in GameStop lol Edit*** I want to be rich in less than 5years and not in 60 years.😂 You missed Kylie Jenner Sorry, this sub is for economists to fellate the wealthy, not for criticism of the economy. Just think of how much better the world would be if we had never had MS Windows. Okay. How did their parents/rich friends do it then? 300k into the second richest man in the world is pretty fucking good. An emerald mine into the worlds richest man. Pretty good too Jeff Bezos was at Princeton for math or physics or some shit, but every minimum wage Redditor thinks it would be them if they were in his shoes. May wanna toss in Kylie Jenner for good measure. Does anybody really refer to them as self made? Don’t forget ol Billy Gate’s daddy was one of the most powerful men in washington, his family has always been well connected. Need money to make money Classic pulled themselves up by their bootstraps situations Don’t discount the fact that Bill Gates had access to a computer regularly when few people did. While it did take a lot of work, it did give him an enormous leg up over his peers/competitors It's rarely what you know, but rather who you know that gets you places. I feel like this picture is the opitome of that little saying. Ah yes. The myth of the self-made. Everyone needs help at some point. Kardashians made millions from Kim's sextape Lucky I agree with the sentiment OP but I feel the post is misleading. I don’t think gates or buffet claim to be self made. They both have spoken at length about the luck and help they got along the way Bezso is legit impressive, many people could get a business loan (specially during the Covid lockdown) for $300,000 Very few could make it a successful company much less the biggest company on the planet Lol, jealous much… Lmao this sub shows how braindead the average redditor is 300k is start a restaurant money, not really a gateway to billions Why isn’t Hunter Biden up there? He’s done big things, right? Jeff Bezos mother was 17 years old when he was born, and his father was 18 years old. With their parent's money, they flew to Mexico to get married before Jeff was born. His father was a poor man who worked at a retail store, barely making more than a dollar an hour. Bill Gates mother knew the IBM ceo by way of both volunteering on the board at the UNITED WAY charity. In high school, Warren Buffet invested in a business owned by his father and bought a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant farmer. He bought the land when he was 14 years old with $1,200 of his savings. By the time he finished college, Buffett had accumulated $9,800 in savings (about $112,000 today). Musk was born into wealth but made his money founding PAYPAL in 1999 and selling his share of ownership to EBAY pocketing $180,000,000 in 2002 Don’t forget Zuckerberg, stole the idea from friends. Usually self-made million/billionaires wanna be left the hell alone. Since it’s every poor persons dream. Well, at least they had someone to support them. Most of us would decide differently. I think it's more of a focus thing, you don't need 300k to make a change. Didn’t even include “dad is the ‘Gates’ in national law firm K&L Gates.” If I got 300k there would be a lot of very happy escorts and breweries. 99.9999% of people can't turn 300k into 177 billion dollars. That's a 590,000x return on investment lol. Steve Jobs has left the comments section? Also… If $300,000 is the argument here… That’s laughable. That’s a house in Los Angeles. [edit: A house in the hood in Los Angeles] Of course.. their skills and abilities have nothing to do with their success I'm sure.. ​ there are plenty of people who had wealth and fortune but lost everything... spoiled brats and jackpot winners with no skills are good example.. ​ well, if your dad is the president i'm sure you can get a lot of things as well Good job making this post that just illustrates how financially illiterate and salty you are. What does apartheid state have to do with anything? You think that getting to 200bn is nothing if you start with 300k? ""My mom helped me make a deal at some point so my 100bn are invalid"" You are just trying to pain them in a bad light with stupid shit. The least you could have done was to find something related to them. It's your father's fault if you are poor, but it's your fault if you die poor and your kids are poor. You can also think the world is unfair and take the loser path. Very comforting If only my mom knew someone at ibm I could all of a sudden start writing computer software and become a billionaire. Damn I think it’s fine to acknowledge the amazing achievements of these men, there are many people with the same advantages that didn’t do anywhere near as well. The problem is when we start say that anyone can be successful as long as they work hard. That’s simply not true. 1. Elons dad don't own a emerald mine. 2. Its one thing to have enough money to buy a company but its another thing if you can succesfully run a company. It's pretty misleading. Bill Gates mother was never on the board of IBM, she was on the board of United Way which is how she knew the chairman of IBM. And Bill Gates developed the licensing model which was the seed to his fortune and Microsoft's success. Elon Musk's first company Zip2 was started with money from his brother, $2000 of his own savings and a $28,000 investment from his father. He exited the company at $307 million dollars, so he wasn't starting from a place of wealth and unlimited funding. The man did the grind. Sorry, are you saying Bill Gates is only successful because his mommy got him in the room with the big boys? The guy literally invented personal computing (when he was in college, btw) - you don’t think his success maybe has something to do with that? Also, let’s see what you can do with $300k. I’ll bet you a billion dollars you won’t turn it into a billion dollars. From $300.000 to Amazon is a long road tbh I like how people who can’t make it on their own always point to the most successful people on the planet and criticize them for how they got where they did. If the author of this meme had $300K could they turn it into $100 Billion with grit and good ideas. No, they would make more memes until the money ran out. And now name the hundreds of thousands who grew up under similar circumstances and opportunities. And did Jack shit with it. This is such an ignorant post. “300k of seed capital from his parents” could just have easily been “his parents got a second mortgage into to bootstrap their sons drive to build the company” Jeff Bezos was 30 when he founded Amazon. I don't live in the states, but raising 300k before reaching 30 seems supereasy. sTaRtEd In A gArAgE pretty sure buffet acknowledges how luck he was 300 000 is nothing if you are an idiot Oprah is a self made billionaire. Say what you want about her, but for a black woman of her age, raised in the south, poor, victim of incest, teen mother, it's fair to say that the odds were against her. Cunts. All of ‘em. The American dream of having a CEO dad This is so ridiculous and shows a total misunderstanding of what ""self-made"" and ""seed money"" mean. Let's just take Bill Gates for example... Bill Gates and Paul Allen were both self-taught programmers, from pre-teen years, and took advantage of free available computer resources in their school and community. Their first big software sale was an application that they designed from scratch, with no investment money, and sold for $20,000 in 1970 (equivalent to $150,000 today) when Gates was only 15 years old. Microsoft was founded in 1975 and immediately attracted corporate, personal, and educational clients. Microsoft had millions of dollars in annual sales before IBM had even heard of Bill Gates or Microsoft when they met him in 1980 (ten years after Gates first software sales and 5 years after Microsoft was founded), when IBM was looking for ideas for a new operating system for their new low-end personal computers. They met with Gates numerous times to see if he had ideas to fill the OS need (but didn't pay him a dime yet), so he bought an OS from a local company for $75,000 and reprogrammed it to work with IBM's new chipset. Microsoft then licensed the brand new MS-DOS to IBM for limited use on new computers, even though IBM offered him a hefty sum for the source code and full rights to the software. Gates literally turned down a massive amount of money from IBM so that he could license his product to them and other hardware manufacturers. IBM may have been his first huge client, but they certainly did not seed Microsoft or Gates himself. Trying to claim that IBM is responsible for Gates startup or long-term success is nothing more than a bald-faced lie. “economy” subreddit 🙃 Remember folks, odds are VERY HIGH the wealthy now contract troll farms abroad to improve their PR and/or quell the spreading of posts such as this one. God forbid everyone realize what is being done to them by the billions , 1%, and the like exploiting us all, and finally unite. I mean take a look at all the “New” comments… i didn't know oprah, bruno mars, harrison ford,obama,brian cranston and ellen degenres were born trillionaires, can't these worthless capitalist parasites just fuck off? People of Reddit are true libtard Marxist dummies that can’t do basic research. Musk’s father didn’t own an emerald mine. It take 2mins and a few brain cells to find that out on google Transforming 300k into hundreds of billions is pretty impressive acrually Bezos doesn't sound so rich here tbh. Definitely a huge leg up, but that $300k could've been everything his parents had. Could've just been gamblers, but that's within reach of solidly middle / upper middle class families. Choose your parents well. Be white. Be male. Be brilliant. Go to elite schools. Work hard. Get lucky. It's that easy. This is not true. Elon did not get his start from emerald mine money. You people are literally retarded. Take 1000 shlubs from reddit and give them the same opportunities and 999 of the ventures would still go tits up. Seed capital doesn't guarantee success. You gotta pull yourself up by your Louis Vuitton bootstraps I mean turning 300k into billions is still pretty selfmade.. Remember that Kylie Jenner is also a 'self made' billionaire Daddies special boys There are very few real self made millionaires,shit half the people that drive around in nice cars and live in fancy houses have hand me down money. The way you can tell someone really made their own millions is that they aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and get in the dish pit, figuratively speaking. [deleted] All the salt in this comment section makes me worry about my blood pressure Most of you would not be able to create amazon with 300k. I'm not sure what the point of the post is. Being mad at billionaires because you can't make a million is a losers mentality. Notice they’re also all white ✋🏿 that privilege be oozing Now do all the losers who had similar starting situations but ended up overdosing on cocaine. Or ended up wasting everyone’s time on Reddit with worthless hit pieces like this. Except Elon never saw a cent. Care for some cheese with your whine? Gates and Bezos completely made their companies from nothing. Buffett built his wealth from Berkshire and Musk basically bought into the start up Tesla. But all of them made the vast amount of wealth by themselves by working long hours and many decisions that made their companies what they are today, it would just be nice if they paid their fair share of taxes [deleted] Jeff bezos is self made. his mother raised him alone before meeting his step father who was a cuban immigrant. theres not a lot of money there he just genuinely worked hard and got stem degrees. This is just stupid. This is what stupid people post. Those that are upset that money breeds money. Should these people have failed at business? Would that make you happy and more fulfilled? Look, some, if not all, of these guys are jerks, but come on..... Also, why isn't Trump on here? Getting $300,000 in investments to start a company is, in fact, self made. Hate Bezos all you want, but if you ever want to be successful, you will need investors. Raising $300,000 from friends and family and becoming worth $177 Billion from that investment is amazing. His parents are now billionaires because they invested in a good idea. The idea of a self made man is a myth. None of those people have ever claimed to be self made. I don’t think anyone has even claimed anyone of those people were self made. ""I'm salty they know more influential people than me"" 😠 Elon musks family likely owned slaves in the not to distant past in South Africa Nobody is selfmade, everybody has different chances in life. Some may have better odds than others. Its about grasping your chance and doing something with it. This is severely oversimplified, Elon musk didn't have a mine, it was his father's, but he lived with his mother, so he is truly self made Doesn't take much capital to own an emerald mine, $300,00 is a mortgage on a home, the self made part is taking those investments and turning them into multi billion ventures. Like them or not there are many of them that have succeeded like Musk, Bezos, Buffet and Gates [removed] Sorry but Bezos’ parents invest was ALL the equity they had in their house in 1994. That’s not being rich, that’s putting everything on the line. [deleted] I don’t think some of you understand risk More posts like this plz I care less about how they started and more about the fact that make their money now from the exploitation of workers. It’s not a rags to riches story but you can’t deny it’s insane how Bezos went from 300k to billions upon billions. Not many can do that. Oprah was self made. A black, unmarried, unconnected woman from a broken home. And to be fair to both sides, there is not a Kar\*\*\*\*ian alive who could do what Oprah did, none of those pendejas are self made either. 3 of 4 are true. One is wildly inaccurate. Musk says his dad never owned a mine, this was not proven. Even if it was, Elon never liked his dad and came to Canada with nothing, and had to work his way through school And hundreds of millions of people make money or are employed through them. Suck it up. They still had great ideas and incredible drive. To ur point how many people get millions of dollars from lotteries and end up worst off then before they got all that money? Stop hating and worry about building ur own wealth. Bezos is by far the most self made of the lot. Plenty of folks get way more than $300,000 in start up capital and blow it. Lol. Such a shitpost. Yes some billionaires came from wealth but the vast majority of successful businessmen come from regular backgrounds. /r/conspiracy is that way. I could give every one of you losers 300k and you'd do nothing even close as important as starting any of these businesses. You'd buy funko pops, uber eats, and every game on Steam and still be just as miserable as you are now. It's funny how everyone thinks turning millions into billions is just so easy, yet I've never heard of a lottery winner that has been able to do that. Read their histories. They accomplished amazing things over and over and over. Plenty of "" rich"" kids do nothing Now someone do Donald Trump. I inherited only debt from my family so basically, if I break even and have zero dollars, I will have accomplished more than these guys? Born on third base and act like they hit a triple. No one became a billionaire without exploiting a bunch of people along the way. This is similar to the whole ""genius in a garage, start up"" deal. Yeah, no, but with a ton of financial help from uncle Sam. A TON. You can be anything you want… as long as your parents have money. LMFAO. No one who takes this as evidence they didn't make themselves would piss away the same amount and turn it into nothing before they turned it into a dollar more. Show me one person who turned a $10 allowance into a company worth $5m. (The equivalent of Bezo's loan to current value of Amazon). I am sure there are plenty of people who tried and failed because they didn't have a good network, but networking is not a negative. Loans are a normal part of business. Parents supporting their children is why being a parent is so important. Your success is built on until some idiot ruins it and your line starts over. No no no, in America, if you haven't made it it's YOUR fault for being LAZY. The modern day Robber Barons. It's infuriating that people actually idolize these dipshits... Elon’s dad never owned any emerald mine.. this is a myth. This is such a bad post. No one is 100% ""self made"" and who you know has always been a huge difference maker. Seed Capital is called an investment and 300k is nothing. Who cares if they are self-made? Nobody is truly self-made. What matters is they created a business that improved the living situations for millions, if not billions of people. Self made my ASS. PRIVILEGE AND NEPOTISM Saying Bezos isn't self made because he was given 300k is like saying you're not self made because your parents gave you a dollar and you turned it into 600k. It was that one dollar that made you and not the other 599k And the Trump-grade smears begin. God Speed Elon, the social elite & their army of wokies hate you, which means you’re doing something right. A whole lot of Hatoraide out there. Some truth, some not so true. 99% of the goons on Reddit/Twitter would flush these head-starts away within a month. Pretentious clowns who really only hate one out of these four anyway. lol, imagine spending your time bitching about other people's successes. It's truly sad to see how many people think that turning $300k of seed money into Amazon and blue origin is nothing. You could give the same advantages to 99.99 percent of people and they would not end up in the same place. The vast majority would end up broke. Suggesting that Warren Buffett is not self-made is just ignorant. His dad was not a ""powerful congressman"" and Warren rejected most of his dad's investment ideas. This is incredibly misleading as it applies to Warren Buffett. Edit: 300k in seed capital is next to nothing--even 20+ years ago. LOL Reddit u MaD? L2C Oh what would you know, it’s difficult to become a BILLIONAIRE. Anyone can make a million dollars, that is relatively doable for the average person. A billion is not. Keep crying about it ☺️ Lol total reddit moment. Anyone hating on any of these are just haters and jealous. You know how many people got help feom family and rich friends and failed hard. Those guys are billionaires for a reason. Out of those 4 there is only 1 African American we've transitioned from TDS to EDS. Sounds like OP’s is jealous of others having better parents. The Elon thing isn’t even factual. Let's be fair. 99.9999999% of you ain't going to make 200 billions dollars from 300k, Elon's father didn't own an emerald mine lol. Reddit loves to just make shit up. https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-father-myths Did Elons dad actually own an emerald company? He has denied that story multiple times in the past and to my knowledge there is no evidence that that is true So if I have this right, Errol Musk had an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa? Is Zambia in apartheid South Africa? Was he a white man living in apartheid South Africa perhaps? Is this sensationalized click bait by using Elon Musk and Apartheid South Africa maybe? Lol. Poor person mentality. To turn 300k into 177 billion isn't easy. Let's look st Jeff Bezos for example. Worth about: $177,000,000,000 Initial ""free money"": $300,000 300,000/177,000,000,000=1.69% So he turned a fraction of money into a shitload. That's like you turning $100 into $5917. (I think i did that math right?) Just do it, super easy. No one cares fag What exactly is your point? Odds are, you're using (or have used) a Windows computer, get deliveries from Amazon, and (will be) driving a Tesla (or any other EV inspired by Tesla). It's safe to say what they all accomplished is lightyears more beneficial to society. Getting seed money and recommendations is a good head start, but work ethic, talent, skill and hard work ultimately gets the job done. If you don't have to start from the absolute bottom, why would you? And if you can give your children the same advantages, why shouldn't you? Family is meant to provide such advantages to their prodigy and help their children do and accomplish more than the generation before. The reason why no normal person cares about Elon's dad having already been rich and influential, is because Tesla is literally revolutionary in how we will be moving forward in the electrical future. That support he had is WHY Tesla exist. It was more than money. It was a mindset he instilled in his son that includes work ethic. Be a man who gives YOUR children, future or otherwise, the upper hand in life. Set them up to achieve great success, and you'll do well in life [deleted] A moron made this They succeeded because they had vision and motivation that most do not possess. Yes, they found their breaks to get started but I don’t think that should discount the empires they have built or changes they have enabled. People see “self-made” as some kind of fantasy homeless-billionaire. No, if you can turn 200k loan into 50 billion. Yeah. That’s very impressive. Heck. That’s be like turning 1k into 250 mil. And none of us are doing that Boo fucking hoo life isn’t fair and a lot of it has to do with luck. Get over it. Now do all the people who inherit wealth and completely squander it Some people could have all of this, but still end up in debt Just because they had access to financing doesn't mean they didn't create the billions they have now. If 99.99% of the idiots who agree with this garbage were given identical support, they still wouldn't end up billionaires. Guess what, these people would likely end up billionaires anyway because their ideas are what created their wealth, not the funding they received. Sorry but this says nothing about the hours and hours of hard work each one of these men put into creating there product Elon Musk worked for is money you idiot And yet 99,99% of all people wouldn’t even make a million profit after getting 300 000. in fact statistics prove, that people will loose more, than they had to begin with. And what the hell is that phrasing „sat on the same board as the CEO of IBM“. You are either part of the board of directors or not. Or does the MemeOP mean, that she sat on the same skateboard, which would make more sense than this weird phrasing. plenty of people had 300k in the 90s and rich friends, but only one creating one of the biggest companies in the world Musk's dad had partial ownership in an Emerald Mine in ZAMBIA and didn't buy it until Musk was already living in America with his mother. They did have some wealth from Real Estate but at the time it was more of an upper-middle class upbringing. Well, people take hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a flat on credit. If you are so smart then why don't you take that loan but for a business investment since it's obviously so easy to start a very successful business only with a decent budget. Then be rich. Easy, right? Have any of them called themselves ""self-made"" Funny how some of you are mad about this I guess Many young people ( who basically working for these people ) got more than 300k in their 401k .. can’t they take out and do the magic ? You misspelled “Dad owned shares in a South African mine that went under and nearly cost them everything, relocating to America to build wealth from almost the ground up.” Fixed it for you. damn, it’s almost as if everyone on that list is immensely smarter than you and spent decades of their lives building 4 of the 10 MOST VALUABLE COMPANIES IN HISTORY…. any fool can become rich, better yet any fool can inherent money, these guys didn’t get handed trillion dollar companies… they brought them to where they are today, either from scratch or from a failing company. This shit is so stupid. These are all still self made. No one inherited the companies that they built. They built the companies from the ground up and it worked out for them. Shit like this is all over the internet. I'm beginning to realize that people are just very envious of these billionaires. My question is : So what? They got help, good for them Similarly to how I want to help my kids one day No sub is safe from the cesspool that is this site What is this proving? If any of us were in the same circumstance, we most certainly would not be as successful as the people on this list. Try turning $300k into billions of dollars… Elon is working 90/100 weeks, feel free to do the same. I've yet to see proof that Musk took his father's money, let alone had a good relationship with him So salty You can have 10 million and if you don't bust your ass you will be broke fast Tbf or maybe I’m speaking out of privilege but 300k into hundreds of billions is pretty impressive. Musk's family didn't own an emerald mine If you can turn 300k into legit trillions please let me know. So many clowns discredit everyone So what? Lmao what is this sub supposed to be Elon's dad owned a share of a mine which wasn't even in South Africa. He did not fund Elon at all, in fact Elon hates his dad. He was in massive student debt when first became rich thru his own company that he coded and built from nothing, Zip2. Such sour grape attitude. All above 4: worked very hard; started early at middle school or high school; talented with way above average intelligence. When you can 1.work 60-80 hours a week as they do, 2.focused on same field for 10-70 years, 3.highly educated but still cannot make it, then please start to blame unfair capitalism. By the way, Bezos senior was a broke immigrant from Cuba with $20 and a jacket made by his mother and sisters. He knew nobody and little English when arrived. I don’t see any of these people being handed 1 trillion $ companies… this is so dense. Hate the person but you can still respect the business they built; none of these starting points guarantees success! Elon musk was estranged from his dad. He left when he was like 20 for Canada with like 200 dollars in his pocket. He did not gain anything tangible from his dad other than that. All of these guys would have made it regardless of circumstances. Sure the connections and capital helped a lot … but there must be thousands of examples of people with far more power, entitlement and privilege who failed miserably. What a joke. Pretty sure the Elon one is fake, I don't even think he started on Paypal Be sure to mention how their billionaire ex-wives made their money.... What does this matter at all about anything And? reality is tho if 90% of yall were handed $300,000, you’d end up right back where you started If you follow the chain of success eventually you’ll find the person who worked their way up from the bottom. I’m 30 and I find it hard to accept the victimization culture. Especially when I started from the absolute dirt and have built myself a nice little mound. I didn’t use excuses, just hard work directed towards short term goals to accomplish long term goals. Sounds like you are pretty jealous Reddit moment OP has 98,000 karma on a 98 day old account. EXTREMELY suspicious Elon went to college on loans. He wasn’t rich. That’s the story people should be talking about. Anyone with a brain and work ethic could start the same way Elon did. Sounds like y'all are trying to justify your jealousy. Call the Wambulance. Loser. I get a kick out of people that are so jealous of wealthy families,What would they do with it? You don’t have to put people down to make you feel better. If the implication is that anybody could’ve had an equal level of success with the same amount of support at the outset of their business, then I could not disagree more. Tbf elon has a non existent relationship with his dad, said he was a terrible human being [deleted] These are 4 people.... do you know how many people LOSE fortunes? How many people dont even know how to budget living with mom and dad with nothing to pay for? They got investmemts yet they built something out of it. Instead of wasting it and losing it all like 90% of the people commenting would probably do. None of this makes a successful company. Still takes a shit ton of work to dream up and build a Microsoft, Tesla, Amazon, etc. How tf does help from family or startup capital diminish that achievement. Give a normal person that money and they'll fail miserably. I think the story about elon was actually disproven $300,000 into Billions? I'm going to venture to say that's not easy! There will always be a 1%, pick any political system or economic system and some will find away to reach elite status through their hard work or on the backs of others but they will find a way. Many of us have access to that kind of Capital but we can't turn it into billions, so good for them for providing something others want to buy. 100% inaccurate. If it was that easy then it would be easy. We know William and Elon were super smart in school and beyond. The most interesting deal was the IBM and Microsoft. Microsoft is a huge reason why we made big advancement in personal computers. I agree they got help but two of them at least came up with billion dollar ideas (gates and Buffett not included) Once again, OP drops a meme full of misinformation in the sub and then doesn't stick around to defend it. He's a /r/conspiracy troll that should be banned. We all know a few dozen wish that op and didn’t do shit with it. Let’s give credit where it’s due. I understand it’s a huge advantage, but they did become amazing entrepreneurs in their own right. Y’all remember the time that Warren’s bank Citigroup cornered the market on treasury bonds? Don’t associate with the name Mozer? Plenty of people inherit tons of money and lose it all Memes.. the textbook example of how utterly IGNORANT leftists are with reality. it takes a ridiculous amount of risk / financial literacy to do what they’ve done. 99% of the people in the comment section wouldn’t know what to do with $300,000. and even for the people saying , “put it in the S&P”, 99% wouldn’t be able to sit back patiently and allow it to grow. delayed gratification is godly, but many don’t have the will power to achieve it. I have respect for all of these gentleman. we could all learn a thing or two from them. Im a self made man. You’d got excuses We could take all initial investments of all 4 and give them to OP and they would still be poor. Still very impressive. None of you liberal cry babies crying for rich people's money could do what these guys did with the same help. What a bunch of haters . Now let’s see all the rich, trust fund kids who did absolutely nothing with their lives. Having wealthy families is definitely a leg up but you can’t deny their incredible talent, vision, and drive. Honestly as much as I dislike Bezos, $300k really isn’t that much compared to any of these other captions. Elon Musk father's emerald mine was in Zambia and had no connections to Apartheid Every billionnaire gets a leg up somehow nobody is truely self made If you can turn $300k into a trillion you're pretty much God. The musk thing has yet it be proven and sounds more like a rumor. Regardless he didnt get his wealth from his father funding his ventures. He simply became very very lucky and scored a few home runs. He also benefits heavily from jackasses throwing money at his companies due to over promising and under delivering. Bill gates literally created the home computer market with windows. Yes you had players like apple and IBM but windows allowed hardware manufacturers to focus on hardware while licensing out a cheap OS that played nicely with other computers built by other manufacturers. Warren buffer, the guy started working as a kid, he grew his wealth the old fashion way of compounding returns. Why does his father matter? Should he be fucked over because he came from a good home? Same with the rest. My father was the opposite, drugs, alcohol, abuse etc etc. So am I somehow more deserving of success because life started differently? Jeff Bezos of all of them deserves every penny he has made. Who gives a fuck what he does with his money, he earned every penny. Same with gates and bill. Fuck elon though, how he hasnt been charged with fraud is beyond me. Reddit hive mind is strong with this post This is so dumb. Of course these people didn’t do it all themselves. But they drove the vast majority of their own success. And all did better than their parents. All provided benefit to literally millions if not billions of people, and all have parents who should be applauded as well for being successful also. Bravo and well done!! This post is Very dumb. Just like OP Downplaying the success of others won't make you rich. Just sayin Op would have been a spoiled rich brat in any of these 4 scenarios and produced nothing Ok so why isnt everyone a billionaire? Probably millions and millions of people in the US and around the world have had the same opportunities. Everyone gets some sort of help on the way, minimum someone feeds you and gives you clothes but nobody goes into this world completely on their own. You can get 300k as a small business loan, is that really something to hate on someone for? Most of the legit reasons to hate these people are about their ruthless anti-competitive business practices, not the amount of money they started out with. What a complete ass hat graphic. Anyone who starts a new business needs funding. What's it matter where it came from? Such little haters forgetting those new companies could have crashed at anytime and lost all daddy's money instead of growing to change the world. Or did you forget that while you were ordering from Amazon on your laptop, tiny little hater. People are acting like he alone turned 300,000 into billions, but that’s not what happened. He didn’t ONLY have money. He had help, too. 300k ain’t that difficult to get to if u live in America. Millions of Americans have more than that, ain’t nobody gonna be bezos. Stop being mad. If I won 4 million in the the lotto I’d give my kids a million each and keep one for myself and my Wife. Thy could do whatever that want with it. You’re telling me that if I give me kids a boost in their own personal economy they’d be some kind of “Whatever, your parents were rich”. You wouldn’t do the same? This post is dumb. All are self made in that none of them inherited a billion dollars… they became billionaires from their own effort. The Buffett one is so cherry picked because of his father… Buffett was a serial entrepreneur at like age 10 selling newspapers and using that to slowly level up his income (he bought a farm at 14 with his savings). Yes his father was a congressman, but he used or raised his own money to fund his ventures… [removed] Bezos’s is half right. Prior to him starting Amazon, he worked at a hedge fund, and he saw a report that the internet was going to expand by something like 10,000%. So using this information, he decided to corner a section of the market, BEFORE it was even made. Bezos is rich cause of, essentially, insider trading. He used a secretive piece of information that he only had access to, cause his dad got him a job at the hedge fund. Not saying it’s easy to make $200B from $200K, but it’s more than just some seed money. [deleted] Why do we not give any credit? They’ve all worked harder than any of us likely ever will. Did any of them claimed otherwise?! Or is it what just people say it Such balony... Bill gates was a computer expert @ 12 years old, and a genius...Easily gaining entrance into Harvard, he was so productive in his spare time with Paul Allen that he walked out the door and drove to Arizona to meet him and to complete writing the operating system ""DOS"" for the IBM PC...IDM CEO was so short sighted and arrogant that he was out-negotiated for the licensing rights to the software; which he gave to Microsoft. Jeff and his 1st wife worked 10 years to save %100,000. Jeff used it all to start an idea that did not turn a profit for almost 10 years... HIS MONEY. Warren Buffet starting working at age 11... saved money and was fascinated with investing. He and his (now 92 yr old) partner, Charlie Munger bought a failing textile mill ""Berkshire Hathaway"" with their own money and turned it around. Elon Musk's parents FLED South Africa in 1985 as they could see the White People revenge writing on the wall... They did NOT take an emerald mine with them to Canada. Elon has 2 engineering degrees and wrote (and sold) his first video game at 12.... No one here could have made the business and jobs these people did with the investments they got. You would at best invest it right for just your family and at worse lost it all. As always, this post seethes with jealousy. With regards to Buffet and Musk: regardless of popular narratives on privilege, having successful parents doesn't mean a person was given everything. Maybe they were given stuff, maybe not. And neither of them has ever claimed to be self-made, so this resent-provoking post seems kinda silly. I know kids of upper class parents who were given everything they wanted and turned into helpless entitled brats (although this is becoming thestatus quo for many people far outside the upper class in this first world country). I also know kids of successful, upper class parents whose parents invested their money and lived a lifestyle of middle class people and gave the kids no special treatment... those kids typically developed great work ethic and earned their own way, from earning school scolarships through great academic performance to finding their own jobs through the education those scholarships got them. The only thing they got from their parents that many other lower to middle middle class kids may not have gotten was the instillation of humility and the importance of effort. So yeah, they had the benefits of the middle class, but they weren't these beneficiaries of pure privelege who had nothing to do with their own results in life. The way society wants to discredit successful people just for being successful is like jealous teenagers talking shit about their friends. Some may have been given stuff, others got to their destination by making good life choices. What a person is born into is a roll of the dice, so why focus on that when the things we can control are our own choices? Fostering resentment doesn't help anyone. Okay…but none of them started with ANYTHING close to a billion. Let alone several billion. I’m sure your parents had several thousand dollars…have you or anyone you know made a single million? Do you know how to turn $300,000 into $1,000,000,000? Did a woman post this? People keep saying Jeff turned 300K into 200B. NO, that motherfucker turned it into 1.5T! And all those fuckers moping, maybe y’all don’t have 300K. Do you have at least 3K ? How about 300 ? Can your ass turn that into 1.5B ?! So... you're mad that their parents were more successful than yours or you're mad that you can't turn hundreds into thousands while they turned hundreds of thousands into billions or what exactly? They're self-made, whether you choose to accept that reality or just be an envious fool is up to you but it remains reality. First of all, that ""emerald mine"" is a myth, and secondly, Musk ran away from home when he was a teenager anyway. I don't see the point in posting obvious falsehoods, u/UnionPacific1? [deleted] [deleted] NOOOOOOOOOO DONT SHARE FACTS ABOUT THE ELITEEE Elon also has a bigger dick than you, get rekt. Hasn't the Emerald mine thing been debunked? Not to say this image isn't saying something important, but there are better examples then Elon for this one. LOL Seed money is important but if you have no talent you will squander it. OP stop with the jealous rage Sad post made by sad OP who is angry at the upper 1%… let’s see you make the sacrifices, wait, half the sacrifices these men have… OP, you’re a joke, take the whale cock out of your mouth these are so misleading. Y’all bitches always complaining The thing is, for a good idea and a working MVP or even a POC, getting 300k seed funding isn’t that hard. Heck, getting 100k seed funding for good idea isn’t even that hard You sound super mad. Turning 300k into 200+ billions is like turning nothing into billions. [deleted] Go make yourself worth 250 billion then, it’s that easy! But they could’ve been Fuck ups and not make it no? I know people who have done similar. Not with millions on millions but yeah like well off family and what not. Bezos got investment to start his online bookstore. That is not unusual. It is be precursor for venture capital. Wow all I need is $300k and I can become a billionaire too?! Sure but if you gave 99.9% of people 300k to start a business they're not making anything close to 1/10th of what amazon is. They may not be entirely ""self made"" but there exceptional. I can guarantee none of the mentioned billionaires self proclaim themselves as “self-made” either. This meme is just bait Takes money to make money. While it’s true they had advantages. It’s still undeniable that these people worked hard to get where they are. Business is ruthless and you have to work hard no matter where you start. These people shouldn’t be idealized and shouldn’t be inspirations. But the hard truth is no one’s self made everyone had help. For every kid that used the opportunities to their advantage there’s a thousand that blew it all and are struggling. Shoot for the stars and even if you don't reach them, at least you will land on the moon. If you work super hard with a goal to become a billionaire someday, even if you don't become one at least you would have become a multi millionaire. That's not half bad. If you give up just because ""Self-made"" billionaire had a headstart you would go absolutely nowhere. Not to be some rando defending billionaires - but if I had any of those “starts” at any point in my life, I seriously doubt I would have been as successful as any of them… just cause they got some help of any degree doesn’t necessarily mean their success can’t be inspiring. A pattern as old As human time At the same time there's a ton of people who got starts like this and even more but still tanked whatever they were working on. Everyone has their own journey, but yeah self made is a dumb term. Almost everyone gets help whether it's at the start or during their journey. All it proves is you need capital but 3 of these guys developed a new product that made many rich. Perfect people The thing is: Wealth is generated through generations of passing that wealth on. There is no truely self made Millionaire, Billionaire. If your ancestors were rich and passed that down to you and you were smart with it, chances are, you would become successful. Its being born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Thats why I hate it when people say: Pull it up your own bootstraps, the problem is: That doesn't always work. Its a convenient and faulty excuse for themselves not to help other people, out who really need help. So I have to be low tier rich so my kids can be high tier rich....that is all I got from this post. Stop all the pocket watching and start setting up your legacy for success. Can someone link something where anyone is calling these guys self made though? I hear they’re not more than I hear them saying they are. Edit: nvm. Fucking mensjournal.com So really it boils down to luck and circumstance. Then you have people who stan for them by building up some legend on how they built their empire from a few rocks they found lying around. If they didn't making it then the people who simp for them would be simping over some other rich dudes. https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r Then None Of Them Are ( Self Made )!! Three white Americans vs one African American 😂 Well I guess that means you can at least become a ""millionaire"" with just a few grand then. So kids actually worked with what they were given, instead of being a pos and squandering the opportunity their parents worked hard to give them. Hope my kids read this post when they inherit their $20 and Seiko watch I leave them when I die. Dam parents for looking out for their kids and helping them on their own journey to be successful. Sounds like a lot of people harboring resentment for the fact their parents didn’t help them in this manner. Would you not accept your parents desire to help you become self sufficient and successful? Yea I doubt it. See? Hard work and a lot of - not what you know - it’s “who” you know and a shit pile of money, and…. You get the point. Cool. Do everything you can to give your children the sand head-start. Even people who have true rags-to-riches stories almost always had the help of a wealthy person. The Beatles generally were four lower to middle-class dudes with no connections slumming it in Hamburg but you still can't really call them self made because they would never have made it big if it weren't for Brian Epstein who had the money to invest in them needs kylie jenner with ""born rich, then sister got famous for an amateur porn video."" Innovators as their people call them Whenever these come up, I also think of ""temporal privilege"". I don't know about Buffet, but Musk, Bezos, and Gates absolutely could not have made their money the way they did if they were born 15 years earlier or 15 years later. Public investments created technologies that matured into consumer-accessible products right when they were old enough (and funded enough) to start businesses, but before the market had already been saturated (and they had families and established careers). I also think that Zuck lucked out by launching right when capacitive touch devices came out. Before that (MySpace) people had to be a ""computer person"" to get into social media. Afterward, everyone with a phone was a potential consumer. That’s not to discount their talent, hard work, or risk taking. But yeah, we all are building on shoulders of our predecessors. Ask yourself, if you received $1,000,000, could you turn it into a $300 billion dollar company? Shelf made, Elon built a shelf once. In wood shop. He got a c-. In a utopia situation, why wouldn’t you leave an inheritance? You forgot that they are smart and really hard working - or does that not play with your theme? The emerald mine wasn’t even in South Africa, nor majority owned by his father The Emerald mine was a complete bust and bankrupt his dad and his company for years. Get yo fact right So bezos gets a measly $300k seed money from private investors because it was too risky for any bank to touch, parlays that into a multi-trillion dollar company publicly traded corporation and he’s NOT self-made? Got it. I’m curious, did the investment dollars allocate themselves? So any business that has been started in the history of forever that’s received third party investment but is owned, operated and the brain child of one or two individuals just doesn’t qualify as being self made. Got it. Good to know. The meltdown of some of you in real time due to world events that have next to no impact on your life is fascinating to watch right now. Andrew Carnegie didn't start with much but later he gave much of his fortune away. Listen, we’re all victims and we all deserve everything we want. If we keep reminding the world that, we will feel better maybe So all I gotta do is get on a board or find a mine and my kids can make it huge. Wouldn't it be pretty easy to amass $300,000 with a small business loan? That seems like a stupid point. TIL if you didn't literally eat dirt everyday as a child, reddit doesn't think you deserve any credit for your own success. Powerful congressman? You fucking kidding? His did won, then lost, then won again. 3 terms totaling six years. A completely unremarkable career. But people eat this shit up. Where are all the other billionaires offspring from all the other “powerful” congressmen if it’s so goddamn easy? Let’s not get started on musk. Won a programming contest at 12. Hrs not without talent. Bro enough of all this jealousy bs. All four are brilliant individuals. If most people were given a million dollars, they would squander it or do absolutely nothing so grand This is annoying because the work they have put in gave them a payoff that far exceeds the effort that it took to make their company/business. It is frustrating, but at least each of them created something or added some sort of new service to the economy and to the world. On the other hand my actual biggest problem is with hedge fun managers, day traders, etc. People who literally made nothing, no new services, nothing. They just move money around and profit to the tune of millions or billions. Those people are leeches. So quit working at McDonald’s and go make a future for your children. Just because you won’t ever see that kind of success doesn’t mean you should fuck your descendants over by doing nothing with your life except complaining. Yep self-made = rich parents. It’s not unheard of but rather encouraged that you should seek help to get your endeavors off the ground floor from others but so many of these guys say they did it all on their own without any help and people who aren’t doing it on their own like “they did” are just lazy and good for nothing yet here they are getting help from rich parents. The fact of the matter is it is EXTREMELY hard to make it in the world especially if you’re alone and dirt poor and just have an idea. So many of the world’s millionaires and billionaires say they didn’t depend on anyone yet they did…such infuriating insufferable hypocrites. Uh oh someone jealous :( It's not that I disagree with the general premise of this meme, but it is factually incorrect. Elon Musk's Dad may have owned some shares in an emerald mine. If you believe the story, which as far as I can tell is entirely based on Musk's Dad saying that he got emeralds from some shares he owned in a mine, the mine wasn't in South Africa. It's unclear if Musk's Dad is telling the truth about owning shares in an emerald mine since he lies about nearly every thing else. I've yet to see any evidence or knowledgeable claims that the emeralds Musk's Dad had were invested in Musk's companies. At that point in Musk's life he was not on good terms with his dad and his dad was not sending Elon Musk money. (Elon Musk) First, Zambia is not a conflict gem country, having been a regional ringleader of anti-apartheid activity at the time. And second, the whole thing about his dad owning a share in an emerald mine has zero evidence of actually happening, the only piece being an un-corroborated interview. The first news outlet to even post about it was the onion lmao😂😂 I’ve honestly never seen anything about any of these four guys declaring they’re “self made” and let’s not act like they get to do nothing everyday. They work as hard as anybody else does except they’re not punching a clock from 9-5. I’d say Elon and Jeff are the most self made. Jeff secured investors and Elon never used his dads money for any of his companies. They are SELF-MADE. No favors were given, investors were acquired and business followed. That’s not to say they didn’t screw people over in the way but they did it themselves Bezos was wallstreet quant and ceobof wall street company even before starting amazon Fun fact: Jeff Bezos worked for a hedge fund called D.E. Shaw before he started Amazon. While working for D.E. Shaw, he helped them to develop High Frequency Trading algorithms to automate the buying and selling of stocks. He also was an early pioneer of the usage of ""dark pools"" to keep trades off the lit stock markets. Oh, and he had many friends in high finance before he started his new company too. Nothing to see there. No correlation at all. He definitely did not do \_anything\_ shady to dominate his competitors or gain unfair advantages in the market. Nope. Oh wow successful parents teach their kids to work hard and have a dream and since you failed High school they should pay your taxes? Is that right? Another fucking liberal loser on here. Surprised trump wasn’t in this pick. Politics aside, they call him “self made”. But if my memory serves correct, he got more from his dad than all of them combined. These “Billionaires“ have created many jobs. I would love to know how many jobs the OP created? [removed] There are an estimated 614 Billionaires in the United States alone. Those are just 4 of the most well known. While inheritances, family connections and “seed money” (or even college degrees) are beneficial they are not necessarily required. I'm surprised that not one soul even casually mentioned Trump. Aside from the horseshit argument this is trying to make ; I’d like to point out that Warren Buffet is an actual genius with savant like ability to analyze numbers. He’s nothing like the other three. They worked hard to stay on top. They did better than their mom and dad. They did not waste their chances. Ahhhh, the daily class warfare/robber baron garbage from the angry diet commie kids. Cute. Elon Musk is the greatest African American ever Considering those are still 6 figures it would still be technically accurate to say they made themselves billionaires. They didnt start from nothing, they certainly didnt start with billions. if you clowning on a millionaire then the joke is on you. Considering how many people turn large amounts of money into drug overdoses their feats are still impressive. First, get a million dollars Well I'm definitely on your side. But it seems like it's these people's parents we should be looking at in this graphic. Nun wrong w passing wealth to your children lmao Grant money for uncompetitive government bids This is fucking stupid. Born on third base, pretend they hit a triple. why are people on reddit so bitter 😂 Oh no. Is this sub being colonized by r/politics Marxists? y’all some haters Pretty new to this sub, is it more ""hating on rich people and Elon"" and less about actual economics? Now do Oprah You forgot Kylie fake ass Is this in order of worse? Bill Gates is like - mommy got me a job. Musk... yikes. Just pull yourself up by your diamond studded, gold encrusted designer boots. It’s not that hard to be born rich. Every time I see stuff like this I just see cringe. BuT mY LiFE sUcKs bECauSe of BillIoNaIrEs…. Just stop Fun Fact: Trump is not a billionaire but him his brothers pretty much took all his dads money which was in millions so that they can scam the government in not paying tax after they passed. His dad only had $1 million in his name when he died. Don't forget the exploration of labor and countless crimes I’m a self-made broke ass. Dad was broke, didn’t leave me shit, now im broke. And the cycle repeats. I only know about Musks' father. And he did not own an emerald mine. He did give Elon $20,000. But this post is mis leading in the extreme. as opposed to the Dems who all become millionaires making $100k in Congress... I disagree with the vast majority of the Reddit users here (queue downvotes). 99% of people here, including myself, would not have built what these guys did. Sure they received a head start, but what they achieved is compounded by their tenacity, intelligence and grit. Majority of us are actively benefiting from their businesses. From Amazon and AWS, to Elons electric power and bills personal computers. You don’t like them? Great, put your money where your mouth is or stop leveraging the services born from their companies. Too many Who thought you’d need money to make money. /s Honestly anybody who thinks it's worth their time to do anything is an idiot and I feel sorry for them. The game is rigged against you. The only place you even have a chance at a fair playing field is Reddit. Whatever they're doing out there, unless you come from money know it's not going to work out for you. You want to know why I am a socialist? Bullshit like ""free speech"" and ""opportunity"" are why. I don't give a shit if some maga chud is sad he can't be racist online. Bitch I want another stimulus check. I had covid three time, and those dickheads expect me to work? Fine, if you're white, normatively attractive, and have rich parents you can ""pull yourself up by your bootstraps"" and live a happy life. If you're ugly fat and Brown, then get fucked. Socialism is the future and this is why. Idk about anything else on this list but the apartheid emerald mine thing is literally untrue. Just Google it for yourself. Aww yeah, love that nepotism. Its why we're stagnating as a species. Look out dinosaurs, here we come! Most millionaires are self made. Generational wealth only lasts 1-2 generations and something like 70% of all millionaires didn’t have rich parents or come from rich families. There are millions kids of very rich people. And very few of them becomed billionairs. Warren Buffett said he hit the ovarian lottery. There’s definitely luck involved. Not to dismiss the nature of this post but I'm Pretty sure the emerald mine thing is not true at all. Yeah but did they’re parents give them a billion dollars? So they are self made billionaires, even if they didn’t give birth to themselves in a log cabin. Misinformation. Musk got nothing from his dad. He made his first income by selling a video game. Moved to Canada for college, went to the US to work at Netscape. He then created the Zip2 and was one of the initial founders of pay pal. After selling PayPal he went flat broke with SpaceX until they became the first company to ever enter low earth orbit. Just keep making excuses for other peoples success. Lol. The dude also works 16 hours a day and will sleep at his business. I could give you 500 million dollars and you would never come close to the success of Elon. Cracks me up the hate from jealousy that people spew . All things being equal their not one of you in this sub that even with the same help these guys got could have done what these men did with it . You would be broke and back in mom's basement being miserable and petty just like you're being now. We have someone running for county mayor where I’m at and he has these “Make Vocational Education Great Again” signs EVERYWHERE… meanwhile he has a traditional bachelors degree and owes everything he has to his daddy being loaded. It’s insulting that he is trying to act like some hard working, self made man. If some have the normal person $300,000, the chances they would become a trillionaire are pretty close to zero. Starting with money doesn’t mean ending with money Arnold could not speak English, dirt poor, became a top earning movie star, married a Kennedy and then fucked his ugly house maid, that’s the American dream right there pals. So? If your parents start off flat broke and are capable of getting themselves to $1 million, and you are able to take some of that capital and turn it into $200 billion, you are self made and thats a *success* not an injustice. You made yourself a fucking billionaire. He made that money 666,667x over. If your parents handed you their life savings right now could you return even 2x? 10x? Technically even if your parents are millionaires, the chances of becoming a billionaire is less than a normal chap becoming a millionaire with no seed money. A billion dollars is 1,000 millions. Just think about that for a second. Let’s not for get the small $1 million loan Trump got. Let's focus on how much of a multiple they turned that into, and use that as a measurement instead. So if you compare yourself to Bezos, you merely need to multiply you starting net worth by 590,000. What about Sam bankman fried or vitalyk buterin ? Not a fan of Bezos, but while $300,000 is a lot of money, to turn it into billions is impressive. I could probably get that if I also took out a loan or asked family and they gave it, but I would definitely not turn it into a billion dollar company Connections are the main ingredient Listen i don't really care about musk but the emerald mine was in Zambia not SouthAfrica. The emerald mine story has been debunked. What's left on your fingers after you jerk off is the only ""self made"" stuff in the world. Oh well, there's always Oprah. you know you can claim their all not ""self-made"" but that doesn't make it true. even with all these facts presented in this meme format, they're still self-made regardless of the facts presented in this meme format post. Brace for the Elon fanboys lol I think people who invest into Tesla today will make a boat load of money in the next 10 years, but who is willing to do the research and take the risk to invest? Those who remain poor will complain why others got rich. Yessss…. Goooood…. Feel the jealousy flow within you…. 300k is more then anyone in my family has ever had much less given to me, BUT in fairness it’s like a reverse mortgage on a middle class house. Most people who receive this kind of money from their parents open a pizza parlor. Musk is estranged from his father, and didn’t have access to any family wealth to fund his business ventures. What's the point? They still had the good idea and worked hard and succeeded. Yes many people contributed along the way. Yes they had seed money. And so we hate them? 1 IQ post Lol so many redditors are just salty, envious pieces of shit. Quit worrying about these guys and worry about your own life. Self made seems like they all got help from rich family members Did any of these guys actually call themselves safe-made? Also, nearly no one successful gets anywhere without help from someone else, who is usually at least slightly successful. Stop coping. U're just a loser trying to find excuses Why do u want to be a millionaire anyway. Just be a self made good person. Personally don’t care if someone is self made or not. I’m poor as beans. What matters is what they contribute to society. Elon's parents are divorced. He grew up with his mother, with zero help from his ""rich dad"". So yeah... he's self made. There are no self made billionaires because there are no self made people. Everyone had help. Everyone can help others. I agree with the sentiment that these guys had a lot of help ($$) getting started, but there’s also something about taking that money and building an empire with it. Think about the places you’ve worked, there’s money there in large quantities. Yes, those owners are rich, but almost none build empires like these guys. It takes something I know nothing about to achieve this type of success. Also, these guys should pay taxes. This isn't accurate, you can look up the rumors about Elon's dad owning an apartheid mine. It's nuts that so many people are so eager to hear misinformation if it fits what they want to believe. Wait, wait, wait. Bezos turns 300k into a trillion dollar company and it was given to him. You could give 99.9% of people 300k and they wouldn’t do a dam thing with it beside spend it. All these guys turned a small leg up into monstrous success stories. The world would be a vastly different place if these guys didn’t exist. So, for all of the people who are born rich and *don't* become Billionaires, does that just mean they're extra lazy or something? People will always bash successful people to feel better about their lack of talent and ambition. Anybody here have the next Amazon, Microsoft idea just laying around and looking for investment money. Let us know. Given all the same opportunities, the average liberal would just buy drugs, party, vacation, and end up a hollow-husk of a person who's daily mantra is ""Money doesn't buy happiness"" as they wake up in their own filth Reddit aint gonna like this....but I think Bezos counts. Raising 300k in seed funding for a legitimately good idea counts as being self made. If you had done 5 minutes of research you would have seen what you said and implied about Musk is False. Ok but how did their parents get to where they got?? Yeah let's hand $300,000 to the average person and have them turn it into billions of dollars! Oh no. People more successful than you. Loser mentality These people never worked a day in their lives for anything while the everyday worker puts in their best effort and is still struggling. Money makes money. ​ It's near impossible for a serf peasant to become a lord let alone a knight. But very easy for a lord to become a king. This image soon to not be allowed on Twitter due to its new enhanced Free Speech rules. Bezos actually comes from humble beginnings. He used to work the McDonalds morning shift before going to school. He just was a genius who had a highly successful post-grad career in consulting/finance, where he made lots of connections to fund his dreams A successful friends and family round does not mean he’s not self made lol Interesting. i wonder if elon musk got good villager trades maybe lotta iron notice how the more privilege and advantages u get the more richer you get. Less than 1 percent of billionaires are black ""The Billionaires won't save us"" Amazon is worth 4.7 million times that seed capital. Sure he had help but obviously the idea that HE had was a good one It all started with a ""small loan."" I don’t think any of these dudes claim to be self made So many people here trashing these guys even though they put in the hours needed to succeed, while some of yall bitching about an 8 hour shift at Food Lion. It takes money to make money, everyone knows this. But it also takes years of dedication, which most people don't have. Man you dip shits are hard at work trying to demonize Musk for this whole twitter thing lol. Bunch or losers The fuck! You mean parents help their children out in their education and careers?? Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the biggest philanthropists in the world, are the leading providers of access to contraception worldwide, and Buffett is the leading provider of abortion access for poor women in the U.S. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2019/9/17/20754970/billionaire-philanthropy-reproductive-health-care-politics Do Kylie Jenner lolol $300,000 to $1,000,000,000 is the same as $300 to $1,000,000. This meme is ignorant. That's 4 guys who had a nice advantage. A REALLY nice advantage. But there are also 52 million other millionaires in this world that haven't been able to do anything similar. That's 52 million people with over a million dollars in pocket that HAVEN'T revolutionized online sales, that didn't build a new segment in the car industry, that didn't revolutionize computing. Walmart didn't do it. IBM didn't do it. GM, Ford, Chrysler didn't do. Goldman Sachs didn't do it. And all those entities had 10,000 times the monetary advantage these 4 guys had. It's easy to say ""pffff it was easy for them."" But if it was that truly easy, we would have 52 million additional billionaires and new industries. Jeff Bezos basically started with a small business loan. Not sure how that ain’t self made. One thing posts like this ignore. These people work HARD and don’t have it easy regardless of all that money. Then why doesn’t every member of the royal family become the richest person in the world in one point of their life? Quite literally more powerful from birth than 99% of everybody else in the world. how many people with similar backgrounds waste everything they have? Not good examples of “self made” billionaires. Lmao imagine calling yourself self made when your mom birthed you. Real self made men will themselves into existence from nothing! So the American dream is a joke? Is this true It’s easy to be born with wealth, the hard part is working to gain more from it. Otherwise it’s easy to lose it Buffet’s description is pretty unfair. His father owned a small brokerage firm in Nebraska and was the son of a grocer. Once he started his political career, he was pretty much ostracized due to his radical ideas and disinterest in playing the politics game. Buffet grew up roughly middle-upper middle class. Not rags to riches, but not the son of an oligarch either. to be fair, anyone can come from very fortunate circumstances but they chose to use their privileged background wisely. not everyone would have the intelligence to do that so i still think they deserve respect for that title Why so many ultra rich defenders on here? Wealth is much easier to obtain when you come from it. Much easier to start a business when you know failure comes with a parachute. Also much easier to focus and dream while not worrying about your next meal. Just saying. Also billionaires tend to sociopathic behavior/ narcissist behavior. As for the philanthropy this is often done to avoid tax liability and funneled to charity that are ran by family and or friends of said entity. So that rational is alot of times misplaced. It’s not hard to get $300,000.00. Bezos should get credit for turning that stake into serious cash. My question here is Who say's they are 'self made'? Do they say it? Or does the media portray that? I don't think I've ever heard anyone of them say they are self made. They talk about their upbringing and challenges and opportunities and successes and failures. It's others that prop up this idea of the Self Made entrepreneur. Nobody is ""clean"" in this world. Them, you or I. As the old saying goes, it takes money to make money.... But what most Billionaires have in common is that they had support in some way or another. Most everyone else is too busy living one paycheck to the next to think about how than can get out of the very predicament they are in. If you want to suppress people from ever getting 'rich', work them to death. Alternatively, if you want to guarantee nobody will have initiative enough to become a go-getter, have everything provided for them just enough to live above the poverty line. Holy shit get off Arnold's dick! Maybe you dick for brains should look into who his father really was! Arnold Schwarzenegger's father was the German Nazi Gustav Schwarzenegger (1907-1972) nicknamed Terminator Not necessarily defending any of the examples, but you guys act like a parent should apologize for setting their kid up in life. That's what they're supposed to do. Jfc. Now do one for all the mediocre people who received even more help than these guys nonsence So this goes to show you that everyone needs help, yet this is misleading that musk’s father owned or owned half of a mine. “He didn’t own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt. I couldn’t even afford a 2nd PC at Zip2, so programmed at night & the website only worked during the day. Where is this bs coming from?” “They were not completely unfounded though because according to TheFamousPeople.com, Errol did own a few shares in an emerald mine in Zambia. Most of his money came from being an engineering consultant and a real-estate developer.” What everyone can agree was he was an abusive asshole. https://www.thesouthafrican.com/lifestyle/elon-musk-net-worth-errol-musk-emerald-mine-scandal-tesla-space-x/ Also Mary Gates played a big part early on in the success of her son Bill and Microsoft. Being on the board of United Way, she met the CEO of IBM, who was eventually introduced to Bill Gates. So not the most accurate and I’ve only checked 2 of the 4. How is it bad that their parents made good decisions? That’s why we as adults have to help our children. So they can be “self made” 🔥🙌🏽 Edit: I’m broke as a joke.. but shit online I can be self made too 🤣🤣🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️ Ah yes the mysterious emerald mine that no one can name and no one know anything about. It’s a stupid lie that keeps getting circulated. Have any of these men ever claimed to be self-made? Very few leaders would say something like this. I hate memes like this. They're pointless and don't actually mean anything. Of course they all had seed capital from somewhere. Hell, there isn't a child's lemonade stand out there that isn't funded by their parents. This is literally how you become wealthy. Make something that is decently good, convince someone with money that people will want it and pay for it if they help fund it. That's every single startup company ever. Be it a donut shop or Microsoft. Some fail, some work. And in fairness they all put in a significant amount of work, especially in the early days of their ventures. And most of them continued to do so throughout. I mean, Musk is estranged from his father and was homeless for a period, couch surfing, before he had his first successful venture. I don’t think daddy’s money was helping him. If you invent something good, investors will give you money. So aspire to be the parents with $300K seed money instead of aspiring together be a billionaire? Gotta start somewhere, while this post is just reaching for excuses. You forgot about Trump They left out the part that Gates Dad wanted to reduce the population thru ""vaccines"" and fatty Billy is following thru on his Dad's dreams of killing billions of people with ""vaccines"". Bezo's wants to become a James bond villain, and is a deep state propagandist. Buffet is an insane old man tax cheat. Musk at least has some positive dreams for the world which he is trying to improve not destroy. From thousands to billions is still very impressive Quit this crap man... this post spreads the wrong message. I guarantee you if you handed over 300K to an average person they'll be back to broke in a matter of 2-3 years. It takes skills, work ethic, commitment, dedication, etc... to turn that money into billions. There are people who have STARTED with millions and now are complete broke, what you say about them? Also... these people have contributed to our every day's life betterment in one way or another, why belittle them? yeah sure you may not be fond of Bezos or whatnot but you can't deny these people have significantly improved an average person's(especially American) life. Besides... if you've the means to support your children aren't you supposed to do it? this is why people are actively building generational wealth so their bloodline is set for success for generations to come. I also can't see myself turning my kid away when they need financial, moral or any other kind of support, that's why good parents do(now... I'm not talking about spoiling and raising brats here...) If you were given 300k could you turn it into a billion? Now go find all of the people who started like this AND didn’t do what they did. This post is fucking idiotic Elon Musk took only $28k to start his first company. His father is awful, but it’s interesting info. Right, because all you need is a few hundred thousand dollars and you can make billions in minutes. It's so easy to become a billionaire. Reminder that there is no moral way to become a billionaire except inheritance (and even then it came from somewhere immoral) Meanwhile I gambled on r/wallstreetbets and what do I have to show for it? A 500% return. Do any of these four claim to be 'self-made'? I know of one very famous unverified billionaire who constantly chirps about having done it all himself, but got hundreds of millions from his daddy... You’re kind of overlooking the hard work and great idea part of the equation but whatever 300k to what bezos is worth is still impressive The closest thing to self made I can think of are professional athletes that came from poverty. But even they had help.. The majority of millionaires are first generation millionaires. In fact it’s not even close. It’s some ridiculous number like 80% Let the player haters ball begin Exactly why I won't be having any kids. I would be setting them up for a life of misery and disappointment. If only my parents had the same empathy for me. In all fairness in addition to coming from rich and connected familes they also had good ideas and acted on them well. Gate's father was also rich and connected. Elon Musk’s father bought a half share in an emerald mine for 40,000 and then it only produced a small quantity of emeralds that the father would sell on his business trips because he was also an electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, and business consultant. It’s like people try hard to find reasons to hate the guy who is doing the most to benefit humanity. Bottom right Does anyone else feel that this sub is mostly a political one…I used to enjoy coming reading the posts here but now it’s just incendiary post after incendiary post. Damn if I can only become a billionaire with just 300k in cash... Plenty of people have relatives/friends/family who can get them 300k. How many of those people become billionaires? This is a weird criticism. Maybe they didn't come from dirt, not many successful people do, but they far exceeded their family and friend's expectations. Doesn't mean they don't deserve to be treated like human beings. I grew up in a small town, relatively poor. Ended up making my own restaurant. Moved to the big city, now I have 4 and making a half a million a year. Don’t give me this crap. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Taking advantage of an advantage does not mean you will be successful. It takes an incredible amount of work and sacrifice to turn a little into a lot. Instead of being cynical of their success, you should learn from it. Both for yourself, and for those who follow. I feel genuinely sad for people who don’t understand this. Even sadder for their children. So, let me ask, is the fact that these people weren’t born in a cardboard box a reason to discount everything they’ve ever done? Isn’t Elon estranged from his dad? I legit know very little only heard that from one of his other simps lol What about their grandparents? Well, that's four of them. How about the other 180 or so? Billionaires are superfluous to the economy and a waste of resources. There is not one of them who could not be replaced by a trained monkey. >Dad owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa The mine was in Zambia, which never even had apartheid. https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 It really goes to show you how well researched this is. No one is self made regardless of money. If you’re tall and handsome you didn’t do that. If you’re intelligent you were born with those abilities and the access to learn. People that are great athletes were born from great genetics. Everyone who is someone in any field did not get there by their own merit exclusively. Small loan of a million dollars. GHINA! What is this sub exactly??? Now do the Bloombergs, Bidens, Obamas, Pritzkers, DeVos, Dayton and McMahon. Still have to the intelligence and hard work. And yet the type of person who posts this drivel could be gifted a million tax free and would without without doubt be back in the crab bucket in under 5 years. YOU AINT SELF MADE UNLESS YOU ATE DIRT FOR 45 YEARS AND HAD HAVE HAD 9 TOURS TO VIET AFGHANISTAN AND NEVER HAD THE TELEPHONES GROWING UP 😡🤬😡🤬 Bezos was born to dirt poor teenage parents and raised by a borderline upper middle class engineer stepdad. They invested $250k, which was a significant portion of their wealth. The rest of Amazon’s funding came from friends who he made at a finance job he worked hard to get (4.2 gpa at Princeton). The musk mine story is mostly untrue - his dad owned a small stake in a mostly unprofitable mine in Zambia. It’s akin to saying your dad owns Bitcoin when he owns one Bitcoin. Musk moved to America with no money and built himself up from nothing. They all got there money from hmmm rothschild Luck I would love for the majority of the population to receive the same kickstart and see if they land in the similar positions. I have $50 in Door Dash credit that says no. My new get rich scheme. step 1, start with a rich dad. anyone got a spare rich dad I could borrow? Hmmm. Why isn’t Steve Jobs on that list? Oh! Because he started from NOTHING! Didn't the whole ""Dad made money of an emerald mine"" thing get debunked already? Could have sworn it was his pops who had stock / investment in a local emerald mine and truly didn't make money off of it. In terms of making money, it was Elon and his brother who traveled to the US, got educated and then took out big loans to start their company. Some people have advantages in life. These people capitalized on those advantages. Plenty of other people who have flags similar advantages never did. I don’t hate rich people because they are rich. If you want to criticize wealthy people for taking advantage of others in the labor market (low pay, conditions, etc) - that is fair. However let’s not trash people because they were given an advantage that they were smart enough to take advantage of. Pulled themselves up by their designer brand bootstraps. Wasn’t Musk’s emerald stuff debunked as fake news from r/latestagecapitalism and such? I'm seeing this a lot in the comments and it needs to be said. Wealth does not equal Intelligence nor Talent. We have got to move away from that line of thinking because it's just not true. All of these people had an incredible head start, and factually most people of extreme wealth were already born into wealth and that's the biggest advantage: it's easier to go out, take chances and make mistakes when you aren't worried about where your or your family's next meal will come from. Delete this sub The Muskies are going to rage hell haha Then you get the likes of Trump... who made a small fortune out of a large one he inherited. Yes, it's *easier* to get rich(er), if you're born rich.. but it isn't a sure thing. So whats your point? To be fair, the Jeff Bezos one is a bit inaccurate. As much of a delusional dirt-bag he can be, he's pretty much the only one on this list who wasn't born wealthy. He was raised by a single mother who had him at 17. In 1996, when I first logged onto the internet, within an hour or two, I had found a primitive version of a message board. There were message board threadline postings about Bill Gate$ being the Anti-Chri$t. With the dollar signs as listed. Whoever you were, 1996 internet poster, you were fucking spot on. Never forgot that. Gotta call BS on that one. It's as easy to turn a thousand dollars into a million as it is to turn a million into a billion so if it didn't take talent, work ethic, and tenacity, every joker that can save up 1k working at mcdonalds would be a millionaire. A relative lack of success is due to ones IQ and personality, not opportunity. Deal with it. Why do people dive into these threads to defend billionaires who would immediately throw them to the dogs if it meant they could make an extra buck? I genuinely do not understand it. Like, what is the point? You *like* the wealth distribution in America, you thousandinaires? Self-Made billionaires my ass The Elon one is way off base here. His relationship with his father was nonexistent most of his life. He made most his money from selling zip2. He then invested it in Tesla and made big moves from there. However before then, back in college he survived and paid tuition from hosting parties on weekends. [deleted] There's a lot of Bill Gates in the world So it is not just race!? Think Steve Jobs came from a hippie-mobile It takes money to make money. Complaining about others won't get you anywhere. As much as I despise a few of the people on here, this is a stupid argument. There are way more kids from affluent families that do nothing with their lives and join some IB to coke away. Interesting to compare this to some of the 19th-century tycoons, who literally did come from poverty. Rockefeller is a good example that's personally relevant to me. I was hiking through some of lesser-frequented parts of NY State's Southern Tier (basically the north-most part of the Appalachians discounting the parts on the other side of the Hudson and home to Cornell and Binghamton Universities and Corning Glassworks), and came across the remnants of *small,* dilapidated log-cabin/farmhouse. The only indication of its historical importance was a not-too-well-maintained sign saying that J. D. Rockefeller grew up here. Of course, there are other examples and counter-examples, but that odd Rockefeller experience is something I won't ever forget -- about the story of opportunity in the USA as well as the man (and my) personal story. Elon > 😭 Elon musk is a truly inspirational story of an African American immigrant becoming the richest man on the planet. “Arnold is the embodiment of the American dream! He should be unloading trucks in Transylvania!” Do they claim to be 100% self-made with no help? Imma try to see what me and the five crackheads in my neighborhood can scrap together…see you guys on the yacht Umm you all realize thst the ""board"" that Mary Gates shared was a local United Way?? Saying Elon Musks dad own an emerald mine is like saying my dad owned IBM. Both men owned partial shares. Specifically Errol Musk owned half a share in a Zambian emerald mine. Love or hate Jeff Bezoes but what the hell is wrong with getting seed money to start a business? People dont want to work for free and no one is just going to hand you office keys rent free. He has never been shy with crediting the people who helped him get started wtf is wrong with that? Warren Buffet was very open about the huge amount of money he begged and borrowed to get started. But how did their parents get rich? Also, how many children of rich parents don't become wildly more successful than their parents? How many end up wasting fortunes? I know this will attract the trolls...but you're not necessarily correct about Elon. Yes his parents owned an emerald mine, no that's not how he got his start. Him and his bro created Zip2 and sold it to Compaq for around $300 million in '99, Elon rolled that into x.com which merged into Paypal, sold that to eBay for a billion or something and rolled that into his next project and etc etc etc. So, unless his dad worked at Compaq as well and bought Zip2 I can't see how one can say his parents bankrolled his start. It isn't the first time I've seen that statement before, and I'm genuinely curious why. What am I missing? Oh my, is any one going to tell him? Its not that hard to get a 300k loan, just saying. Credit where it's due, bill gates has always been open about where his success came from What a reject post. Being wildly successful like that requires many things. Rich people can take more risks and they typically know people. I think many people get pressured to make short term gains just to keep the business afloat. The reality that /r/economy can’t stand to hear is that [70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation. And 90% lose it by the third generation](https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/generational-wealth%3A-why-do-70-of-families-lose-their-wealth-in-the-2nd-generation-2018-10?amp). Lots of people are born with equal or greater wealth than these people but none of them created the world’s most popular operating system, the largest online retailer in history, had investments which have outperformed the market for 60+ years, or created Zip2, PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. It takes extremely hard work and smarts to be a billionaire. Also, Elon received nothing from his father and had student loan debt in college. Him and his brother have kept their father financially afloat because he is now totally broke. These aren't even half the advantages they had Why is this sub so left leaning? Dude as an investors I see people lose money left and fucking right. Respect a man for turning 300k or even 1 mill to 1 bill you freaking lefty haters lmao Lotta fuckin boot lockers in here. Ah I see redditors are still spreading the emerald mine bullshit. You’d do well to read the following (I know most won’t as their minds are already made up) https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r It would be interesting to see an an ancestry tree of this. Like see what Bill Gates parents did to become rich, or did they receive a business in a handbag as well. You could give me $300 *million* and I wouldn’t be able to turn it into $200 billion in my lifetime. Dude founded and headed the company (up until recently) which can get you almost anything you’d ever want to your door at the same price as it is in a store within 1 day in some cases, 2 days in most. Of these four, Warren Buffet answered this situation when he was asked, if you were to start from scratch (or do it again from beginning, he said you cannot do it all by yourself or do it again because he was a “lucky” marble from the jar, his pedigree and demographics, being white to wealthy well connected parents, neighborhood, time frame, culture at that time etc. I mean £300,000 is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of middle class people inherit that kind of money. None of them are rich like Bezos. Lottery winners get many times that amount but consistently piss it up the wall. He's been incredibly lucky of course, but in the grand scheme of nepotism its a pretty trivial start. I mean how self made do you want? Jobs was adopted by Hungarian immigrants or some shit is he ok? Just tell me who to like pls Would you take the risk? All of these men took risks. That's the difference between many of the common man and the people who end up massively successful. They were willing to take risks. Some people fail, some people succeed, but you get nowhere without risk taking. Curious, do any of these guys claim to be self-made? Like, are there videos or articles with quotes showing they’ve said it? If they don’t claim it, and admit to getting a leg up, what’s the harm? The whole purpose of capitalism is to grow enough wealth so that you are taken care of and your kids get a leg up. Who cares. You clowns are so stupid. I give you all money - most of you will blow it, only a small percentage will ever make it into something great. Your heads are so far up your asses it’s hilarious. Where is your big idea? Where is your billion dollar move? Christ the jealousy and hatred on Reddit is terrible. Spoiled children abound. Silverspoons in all thier dickholes. how much did elons dad help him? Billionaires are bad reeee. I hate that I need their companies in order to make a living or use their products in my every day life reeee Hmmmm……definition of self made men. trump hates you Bill Gates doesn't claim to be self made and has spoken at length about how he is where he is largely due to things entirely out of his control. problem of infinite regression. And? $300,000 doesn't seem like much at all. Seed capital tends to run in the millions these days, and most start-ups fail. Let's not kid ourselves, each of these four guys is really fucking smart. jeff bezos probably doesn't belong here. 300k is peanuts compared to the other guys' head starts Nothing like pulling yourself up by the old boot straps, eh fellas? Everyone gets help along the way. I remember when Obama got so much grief for saying that, but it's true. The odds of winning the lottery are slim to none. No one can do it alone. That doesn't mean you can't be successful on your own. Just drop the peacock act and admit you had some help. While you're at it, help others out too. Bezos made $1M a year at D E Shaw. A job he got as a talented physics grad at princeton. He didnt really need 300k seed funding and his friends and family did very well out of it. I like how Forbes measures self-made as a spectrum from 1-10. Its really not a binary thing. The Elon Musk one is mostly made up. His father owned part of a share of an emerald mine in Zambia (no apartheid) that he won in a poker game. He also stood for desegregationist parties at council elections in South Africa. HOLY FUCKING SHIT when is this meme that Elon's dad owned an Emerald mine going to die. He literally was a broke ass college student most of his time in North America before PayPal. You guys need to stop being such sore losers. Just because they had help doesn't mean that they didn't work for it, and create value in the world. Maybe you guys should start your own Twitter, and call it Bitter Point is that ""bootstrap"" thinking was sold to everyday workers to hold over the heads of black people who were historically rumored to be lazy. Kind of hard for one to pull up by the bootstraps if the boots have been taken away. Howard Hughes inherited a tools company from his father, who had a patent to a device that was very useful for oil drilling. That was why he was able to afford to throw money at passion projects like aircraft and movie studios and buying so many Las Vegas casinos that the mob couldn't keep up. In other words, same as it always was. This phenomenon isn't unique to this era, but tycoons of the past used their wealth to take unusual risks and buy whole businesses at the drop of a hat, and today Musk sort of does that and everybody else just uses their money to make safe investments to get even richer. Perhaps the true lesson to learn about all this is that Intellectual Property is the most valuable sort of asset under our current arrangement (just ask Disney, who spends more buying movie and superhero copyrights than they do building theme parks or cruise ships), but it's dividends tend not to appear until so late in someone's lifetime that only their heirs are likely to see it. And the taxation on estates are so low now compared to Hughes's era. Everyone loves to mention the emerald mine lmao I’m not a fan of him at all but that argument is so weak Add Trump to this list. Got all the money from Daddy. The only proof of a mine was an article only available to read on the way back machine where Musk talks about his father owning a share of the mine. So no his dad never owned a mine. He did come to Canada and work on eBay which might be why he's so gungho about cryptocurrency. Because everyone else comes from orphanages? I think this best demonstrates you can 1,000,000x your starting point working your ass off in a psychotic focus on a goal the masses will see as valuable. Not this emerald mine shit again The point was that you can be born into a family with all the trappings and privileges and money and still be a walking talking train wreck. Bezos was a millionaire and worked on wall street before he started Amazon. “A small loan of $1,000,000 dollars from my farther” Musks companies get tons of government money too Now show us how every senator became a millionare 300k of seed capital is really not much. In my field we see companies with 1-2M of seed capital fail miserably every day. Most children of rich parents turn out to be useless brats. These men changed the World. But if you had these things to start would you be where they are? 🤔 Say what you want, there are a lot of kids born of Rich parents that didn't do what these people did. You can always find fault with success of others. Missing Trumpy’s small loan of $1M Microsoft was already well established in the microcomputer software industry when IBM chose them to provide the OS for the IBM PC. So going by this, Bezos is the closest to “self made”. Let’s be real, 300k isn’t THAT big for a small business loan. Jezzz at least Trump made it the old fashioned way, greed, nepotism, fraud and lies. Idk why this is a problem 💀 their parents worked hard, and even if they didn’t, their parents did. Eventually down the line somebody got that money or thing to get that money, it’s just what these people did with that money that made them what they are today. I don't like Jeff Bezos, but seed capital is necessary when starting a business and 300k isn't outrageous. Not going to sit here and pretend like we all wouldn't do the exact same thing if we decided to start a business. This kind of post is misleading nonsense. There are thousands with the similarif not better start. Only very few made to billions. I kind of get the hate, but not gonna lie, not many people know how get 300K and more seed money would know how to turn it into successful business, inb4 bootlicker comments Unfortunately as a kid not many tell us that they ""cheated"" and most of us dream of achieving such heights... it feels like a slap in the face but also, I feel more free cause at least I don't have to try and can just live my life and do whatever I want in ""set"" conditions. Well thats what I think. (now let me have some millions) I get the point that they had a good start but can we give credit that they didn't blow all the money away and made something out of it? Wasn't the Elon Musk story actually found out to be different? ... Where are the billions from all the millionaire's children? I'll take it further, when all there father's were rich. Blacks weren't able to vote or drink at a water fountain... I wonder why most blacks are in poverty today🤔 Don't forget ""wake up at 5am and salute the sun"" That’s not even the worst new about Elon Musk dad, he was engaged with his adopted daughter, who he first met when she was few years old. I don't think there is a single person who commented on this post that would be able to become any of these four individuals given their start. Insinuating that they're only rich because their parents supported them is absurd. Did they leverage their starting positions to do great things? Yes. But they only got from their starting point to where they are because of their intelligence, work ethic, ability to network and knowledge in their industry Isn't there ""something effect"" where we only see people who manage to make it to the top and neglect the vast majority that had the same ""baseline"" as these gentlemen but weren't able to become world richest man? What’s more impressive is the bullshit excuses you will make when you are handed 300$ and can’t even double it. Please resume your normally scheduled mocking. [51 Grants, Loans, and Programs for your small business](https://www.uschamber.com/co/run/business-financing/government-small-business-grant-programs) It's your choice; cry or try. For musk he is dad was primarily an engineer. The emerald mine was in Zambia not SA. He also did not have an easy childhood and was bullied as a kid to the point of being hospitalized People really exaggerate Elon's Dad's mine. I'm a self made millionaire thug living outta prison pistols in the air Musk fanboys/girls in these replies lmfao Hate all you want but they still improved the hand they were dealt many times over. At least some of them have a better track record than Biden’s son thats pog and all but id like to hear a hobo turning into a trillionaire and buying the moon Can do famous current politicians as well? We all know trump had a silver spoon. Curious about Bernie, Warren, Pelosi, Bushes (altho that’s another silver spoon), McConnell, etc. As if having some help or seed money makes you successful. Is this a rant or encouragement? Self made I have no idea who that old fart is in the lower left. This is up there with anyone who’s an actor in Hollywood. Dad was a producer, director etc Yeah because everyone who gets $300k goes on to make Amazon. Yeah because *nobody ever* got a loan from a bank or investors to start their businesses. Such jealousy and whining. Bezos is a douche for a dozen reasons but a paltry $300k starter loan isn't one of them. This post reeks of self pity and loathing of successful people. Life isn’t fair. It never was and never will be. Those 4 people have done extraordinary things. You can argue net negative if you want. But what you *can’t* say is that *you* would have done the same if you were in their shoes. You can’t say what they did was easy. Because it wasn’t. If I had to pick people to back financially, it certainly wouldn’t be someone who spent time on Reddit complaining about how unfair circumstances are. What you do today and the decisions you make now will influence how well your grand children do in life Lol Elon and his brother got a combined total of $28,000 from their father. Elon turned that into billions. Try again tho. Anyone surprised? And the end result of their hoarding is the difficulty we experience in trying to be moderately successful This long pork worship is fucking weird. Ok sure. I guess it’s super easy to make $300,000 into trillions. My mistake is this sub simping for r/antiwork now? lol ffs Now tell us about all the silver spoon a holes that inherited daddy’s company and ran it into the ground. C’mon, I’ve seen that movie a million times. Dad owned a mine...but none of that money went his way. So...what exactly is the argument here? You know what I love more than my Lamborghini? KNOWLEDGE He took a note from his dad getting them lithium mines for Tesla 😅 Inspiring. [deleted] Does Bill Gates ever address himself as ""self made""? I know he's proud of the tech but didn't think he was that big into the dick measuring. So the lesson is, try and be successful yourself so that you can also set your children up for success. Why is that a bad thing? Wow I didn’t know that about gates and buffet Okay so Elons dad owned a mine...how did that help Elon? Did his dad give him huge amounts of money? Nope, his mom left his dad at a young age and never received a dime from him. I was actually thinking today if Elon started from the bottom or not and now I have my answer. You know what els they have in common? They all need to be killed 🏴 Average into SPY, even if it is only 500 a month. Just keep on doing that and reinvest dividends. yeah let’s give all the people here 300k and watch them go get cocked up and fuck ladyboys OR buy a house and resume whatever inconsequential shit they were doing. To the reader: if you do not think what these people have achieved is extraordinary and deserves credit even wrt to the scale of their products and their reach then you have to start trying to do just one thing anything and see. Elon's dad didn't own an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa I wonder how many ppl out of 100 would even reach a milion if they were given 300k That's awesome. Work your butt off, and find success. The grant that success to your children. That's the American dream. Are you whining that you're not them? Is it jealousy or hatred? Emerald mine is deboonked. /r/im14andthisisdeep Gates is very open about not being ""self made."" Wait til y’all learn about startup funding. And whatever you do, do not watch Shark Tank. It’s not about sea creatures. Someone's mad. Are you crying? Lmao. Born to a family that gets a popular reality TV program. Starts out as a child but later enters adulthood starting a brand and cashing in on the name recognition. Becomes a multimillionaire and later a billionaire on the backs of the oldest siblings. Same type of thing. Self made my a$$ This demonstrates how truthful is the quote: ""Money makes more money"". Oprah is a self made billionaire it's actually because they woke up early, took cold showers and made coffee at home /s these bootlickers are so dumb Gentleman, when I first started this company, I had only two things in my possession: a dream … … and six million pounds. Fake news about Elon. Others are correct. MUSK wants so bad to use the Nword. Since he is a non-passing African American. Almost 10,000 people think they know what ""self made"" means as I type this, but they don't. Moral of the story; don’t be poor, your kids might be able to turn your meager success into a real fortune someday. There is and never will be such a thing as a decent, good-thinking, well-adjusted and genuinely generous billionaire. Shame on them all... and shame on us all too. Somebody, PLEASE prove me wrong. Be safe and think well. Who ever said they were ""self made""? BTW when I was 17 and doing construction work I was complaining to my dad about how much more the salesman made than me for the job and he said something that has served me well for 40 years "" Bill never worry about what other people make only worry about what you make "" so over the years I always did what I could to make more money. now I make $123,000 per year + benefits Looks like someone just triggered all the musk head givers. 🤦‍♂️ Lets not forget Bezos has family ties to DARPA i started life with 2 parents, that puts me at a huge advantage over tons of people. do i need to feel guilty now? Arnold Schwarzenegger put it best in his speech ""there's nothing like a self made man"" I thought Musk was indeed self made as he sold his software Zip2 for $300 million /r/economy? this? OP doesn't know that 99% of kids who do inherent $200,000+ don't do shit for society. How about Sam Walton? Oh yeah, never mind... The God of Walmart wasn't quite the selfmade man the company portrays him as. 🤪 NOOO HOW DARE YOU CRITIC MR. ELON MUSK HE IS SO QUIRKY AND FUNNY AND UNDERSTANDS ME YOU FUCKING MORON TAKE MY DISLIKE NOW (/s indeed, it's just how i feel this comment section) These FB posts are cringe. I bet if I gave you $300k, you'd lose it. Hate them if you want they didn't become billionaires because they had bad ideas. Fucking reddit warriors. Lame No make a poster of people that had all their advantages and did not make it big. Criticizing others for what one is not able to do? I thought we liked bill gates now? If anyone thinks these guys are dumb because they started with some money, go ahead and check out how many lottery winners and sports players are broke af within 5 years because they were idiots with their money. If you think the difference between you being a billionaire or not is $300,000, get your ass to the bank and get you a $300,000 business loan and whatever great idea you have will turn into billions will be able to easily pay off the loan. On a side note the taxes they pay are atrociously low, but to say that they just sorta ended up in the position they are because they started with some money is ridiculous. For every billionaire that gets rich with some of daddy’s money there are million millionaires kids who are completely fucking worthless. Examples : Dan Bilzerian, Chet Hanks. And don't forget the hundreds of millions of government dollars each one of these ""self-made"" billionaires companies have received over the years as well. Bootstraps! I'm not ""pro"" any of these guys, but what they've achieved in their spaces is so fundamentally transcendent of their families, they can appropriately be called "",self made"". To be fair that’s just sounds like a good mother, completely forget who that is tho so we’re gonna go with Steve Jobs, they’re all Steve Jobs to me “A Record Number Of Immigrants Have Become Billionaires In The U.S.“ ~Forbes, 2022 If you always think you can’t do it - you won’t do it. Plain and simple. If 30 self-made immigrants can be in the billionaire club - why can’t you? Now do all the people who had similar starts but didn’t end up being one of the four richest people in the world, or better yet, lost it all. There will be a lot more than 4 people Generational wealth provided them all the starting capital. Got it One day the reason will be Dad hodled the fuck out of his tenndies. To be fair, Bezos invented internet commerce I dont think anyone has the perception that these guys were on food vouchers when they randomly started their company. I’m sure they’re all feeling very guilty too. The number one required trait to become a billionaire? Be a shamless, pathological liar. The number one required trait to being a typical American? Be extremely gullible. In an alternate timeline I'm a Billionaire that was the child of a Bootstrap Billionaire STUPID QUESTION: WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CARE?!! $300k in 1993 is equivalent to $600k today lol. I think his family was still moderately well off. But hasn't the whole Elon Musk emerald mine thing been debunked? You could probably name 1000 kids who had incredibly wealthy parents who either ended up drop kicks, no bodies and or are still leeching off of their parents. Despite the fact these guys all had brilliant starts and wealth from their families, they still executed amazing wealth. This post is irrelevant. They ***are*** self made billionaires. To take millions or less and to turn it into billions is remarkable. That’s not to say the way they did it was wrong or right. Everyone knows Bezos backstory is Wall Street, Bill Gates too shorts companies to increase his wealth. And the many other factors that are morally wrong. They are still self made billionaires. Wether you like it or not Elon wasn't handed what he has he still had to work for it Their sons probebly wont do shit Yet, even if all us reading this post inherited that amount of money, we would still be here spending countless hours reading Reddit. Lol, Bezos turned a lousy 300K into billions. 99.999999999% of the population couldn't do that with millions. These always come off as bitter jealousy not some statement or something. Everyone who wants to know already does. Another sub goes on the block list. Nothing on this site is safe from the far left and far right. Didnt Suckerbergs parents also helped him out ? I don’t see self made… I don’t even see many “ successful” adults that didn’t get either money or land etc to help them start I’m not defending any billionaire, they all suck but how many of you could turn $300k to hundreds of billions. Probably none of you Total strawman argument, I think maybe only idiots assumed these men were ""self-made"" their histories are pretty well known as well as easily accessible. And? Jeff bezos raises money and gave away equity. That’s how almost all business raise capital… Elon’s mine was in Zambia, not RSA. He’s born in RSA. ""A small loan of a million dollars"" Having a head start doesn’t guarantee long-term success I have more than $300k in my 401k that can be used as business seed money. What’s the trick to turn that into 170 Billion? According to this post myself and millions of others should be Uber rich by mow So if you got $300,000 you think you could turn it into billions. By that logic most people could just sell their house and do that. Also unless they got billions in funding they are still self-made Didn’t Zuckerberg come from a rich family too? I know he’s a smart dude and all that but I heard his dad offered him a McDonald’s franchise OR pay for him to go to Harvard. Positive I couldn't have done what any of these men have done with any amount of starting $$$. They are self made. Don't forget that guy who got the ""small loan"" of a million dollars from his dad and then went on to bankrupt three casinos. A kid became a millionaire for sewing sleeves on a blanket. What they did and with however much luck it took doesn't change how bitter you have to be for their accomplishments. Bastards United.... People who are saying you to can do it they did it from nothing while their dads earning 200$ per year You have to have money to make money Oligarks on Russia, everybody loved then until recently .... Eduardo dos Santos and his daughter in Angola... Loved by all... Until one hacker told some things to the world about them... Oh... The hypocrisie... Small loan of a million dollars Good parents = good adults, who would have thought ?? None of these guys have worked an honest minute's worth of labor in their lives. Awesome. Now do the Indian self-made men, then the Mexican ones. Let me know if you notice anything. Self Raised. Very flawed way of thinking. There are sooooo many people who have/had similar beginnings, and only 4 turned into the people shown. Whether you like them or not, they are insanely hardworking and earned their money. Don’t be mad that they had a strong start if they use it to be insanely successful by their own doing Reddit trying to tear down an African American man The emerald mine was in Zambia and paid for by folks who benefited from SA apartheid. Wow not self made at all So Gates and Bezos got people to invest and started companies from scratch and turned them into trillion dollar+ companies, Buffet made great investments at Berkshire for decades, and Musk took an EV company with no prospects and made it into a trillion dollar company. I guess nobody is self made according to reddit. You earned a college scholarship then had a successful career? Too bad you had good parents and free college, nothing you did is self made! No no, gates and buffet are the good ones because they say they want to be taxed more! I'm trying to publicize a passive investment that allows you to accumulate cryptocurrency. Do not hesitate to contact me.https://futures-infinity.com/signup?sponsor=1038117 You can’t become as successful as them without exploiting the working class I hadn't checked on this subreddit in a while and then saw this image hit the front page. Is this really the type of low quality content that would get upvoted here? At the time of writing, the highest upvoted comment in this thread has 158 upvotes while the post itself has 10.5k upvotes. Looking through the top voted posts of all time in this sub, a lot of them are low effort left-wing/ anti capitalist posts made in the last month. It seems like there might be heavy botting/brigading going on or is this just what happens when a low activity sub gets a post towards the front of reddit? Either way, it is kind of amusing to see most of the comments disagreeing with the sentiment of the meme. Let's be fair here they didn't get rich from million dollar handouts they also stepped on and fucked over a lot of people to make it that far. I mean, yea, but it’s not like it’s easy. Most of us would piss $300K away in less than 5 years. Turning I to millions, let alone billions, is still a very hard feat. Cunts Wrong! I'll have you know Elon Musk made his start by saving up from his cashiers job, in a Tesco Express in Barnsely. How much is 300k roughly worth in today’s money? To extend on Gates only since I don't know about the others. He also went to like the only school in the state that had computers. Gave him a bit of a head start on that Windows thing he made. That’s a weak argument for Gates Tom Golisano is the son of a truck driver and started Paychex with his own $3k and a credit card. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Golisano Are these people on the record as claiming ""self made""? Social mobility is much harder and less common than we are lead to believe. More so extreme social mobility (outhouse to the penthouse sort of thing). The dream of 'work hard and sky's the limit' is labelled a dream for a reason. That's so true, damn. I thought Musk started it all by selling x.com but I guess there was more behind it many people giving lottery example. fyi you guys do realize the post aint about how rich their parents are/were. the post is about rich parents with rich connections. why do you think ivy leagues are called ivy leagues. do you think they have vastly unique teaching method than the institutions just below ivy?! no, not at all. its the connections. i bet there are more occasions in this world where relatively less qualified but with good recommendation person got the position than the other way around. Elons dad owned a share of a mine in Zambia. I have literally no idea who any of these people are lol Someone is suspiciously missing from this list. Huh? I thought Elon was just another Mike Meyers persona.....you never see the two together. That's actually incredibly impressive by Jeff, didn't realize he started with a small-caliber business loan. The average small business loan is over 600k: https://www.bankrate.com/loans/small-business-loan-amounts/ ""Musk said he started his first venture, Zip2, a software company, in 1995 with $15,000 dollars and a later round of $200,000 from investors, including his father. Zip2 sold for $300 million in 1999. "" This is also incredibly impressive. For most of us: How to make a million dollars. Step 1. Start with a billion dollars. Step 2. “Invest” money until you have a million dollars left. As much as I despise Bezos, he is actually quite self-made. But cheated his way up the ladder illegitimately, sure. And the other three can go fuck themselves, especially Musk elon musk's father nearly went bankrupt on the emerald mine that he owned PART of + let's see you turn 300k into $1 million, much less $200 billion Didn’t Bezos tell his investors that there was like a 70% chance that Amazon would fail? Basically: 1) come up an idea that has substance enough to convince investors. 2) be personable enough that investors actually want to work with you. Can achieve similar results. Hardest part is the idea/ the solution you have and fleshing it out enough for someone with cash to help fuel the start. Who called these men “self made”? Find me a quote where any of them described themselves as ""self made"". This post is manufacturing outrage. A lot of of people have half a million dollars. Almost none of them turn it into billions. Just because someone started with a major advantage doesn’t mean they aren’t self made. They didn’t just magically turn the money they started with into billions. They did it through innovation This is the reason why you’re still on Reddit It's interesting how reddit is constantly crying about their 6 digits student loan debt, but somehow a 300k loan is some otherworldly amount of money apparently. One of the most embarrassingly naive posts I have ever seen. I'm happy for them. Stop being jealous. How many of their products did you use to post this Elons heritage was stolen from African people. Sure must be proud of himself. *sigh* You make some good points that I agree with but building a company like Amazon isn’t just some coding in a garage. You’re either minimizing or not understanding what it takes to do that. I’m sure you work hard as a teacher but I’m pretty sure bezos (the dick) busted his ass way harder building amazon. But fully agree that the income inequality is a thing and feel for your situation. Jeff Bezos is worth $190 billion. If he started with $300k then that's like starting with $16 and making $10 million. If any of you here started with $16 and made $10 million you would be shouting from the rooftops how you're a self made millionaire. Would be nice if it were true about Musk. But it's not. https://vimbuzz.com/did-elon-musks-dad-give-money/ This post reeks jealousy. This isn't even accurate. Steve Jobs, adopted by a machinist and an accountant. Sold his VW bus, along with Wozniak selling a scientific calculator, to start Apple Computer. Success comes from connections, good timing, and also a lot of freaking hard work. Us grumpy entitled millennials always forget the last part. If any of your parents have their own Wikipedia page, then you’re not a self-made man I am going to be down voted for this but here is the truth. Money is like steroids, you have to put in the work to get the results. People have this notion that taking steroids automatically makes you ripped and muscular. Inheriting money doesn't automatically make you a billionaire. Sure, it may help but 99% of businesses that start up fail. There is almost no such thing anymore as a self made billionaire (or millionaire) anymore. Look at any of them and they all have familial/generational wealth. I mean cool info and all, but this shouldn’t make you feel better about where you are in life. Just saying EAT. THE. RICH. People act as if Jeff Bezos didn't work at one of the most established quant firms in finance, D.E. Shaw. The guy was smart and likely already a millionaire by then. I've never heard anyone refer to them as self made until OP did it in this title. Society’s obsession with rich and famous is pathetic. Live your life. this has got to be the dumbest post i have ever seen. All that cash and still they can’t get a decent fuckin haircut Nice oil and gas propaganda about the emerald mine. It's simply not true. I mean. Idk about you guys, but I wouldn't be able to turn millions into billions. I would probably turn millions into coke and hookers. I'm a degenerate. It´s always like this.. even if you can produce something incredible there are laws and regulations that will prohibit you from making it real or legal... fucked up version of capitalism.. I am a stock trader.. I average 16% of profit per month (annually). I have only a handful of clients even tho I have great results.. but the company is ""offshore"" and I´m the only one doing it because you can´t just hire someone to trade for you that´s nonsense.. anyone who can do it does it themselves.. all these companies which hire ""traders"" are fake and scam. So my point is I am very capable yet not successful enough as I could be with start up money to make it completely legal and not offshore - henc emore credibility... and also proper priduct promotion.. Yeah sure they can take risk because of their family background. But we have to admit, these people are talented to a certain extend. If i were in their shoes, i wouldn’t take the risk. But then again, i am from a poor family so who’s to say i could’ve been bill gates or jeff bezos if i were born in their family Non sequitur Don’t forget: It’s mathematically impossible to become a billionaire without exploiting a lot of workers. “Look at me! I was born on third base! Look at me!” Elon didn't take a penny from his dad, his mom is quite wealthy in her own right and she did provide him with capital sometimes. Otherwise correct. Elon's dad owned half an emerald mine, in Zambia, which was staunchly against apartheid policies. Sure he was successful off his families money, but you don't need to make up stuff to make Musk look bad, he's done plenty of shit himself And to become one of the richest people in the world is still very impressive! This is the dumbest comparison. Turning $300k into a trillion dollar enterprise is so absurdly difficult. Shit post, shit logic…. $300,000 seed money turned into what Amazon is today???? That’s like giving a kid a dollar to go get something from the store and he comes back with $167,000. Do one that shows all of the rich and famous people who’s kids did absolutely f*ck all with their massive head start. Trump and his ""small loan"" Steve and Woz are the only ones from mid class? And... they're all inept? Moving on. Oh look another jealous meme. Good grief. If that’s all it took, everyone would be successful. Ya, maybe his parents paid for his University (Musk), but he cofounded Paypal, that's where he got most of his money from. Elon Musk wants to be new Murdoch of 21st century. How many hungry mouths can $44,000,000,000 feed vs one man ego? Honestly, who cares?! ""I started off in Brooklyn, my father, he gave me a small loan of a million dollars"" There is no actual evidence of his dad owning an Emerald mine and he even denied it. But sure—misinformation bad!!!!1! So if I give u 300000 you can make something like amazon? Billionaire from 300,000 dollars is pretty amazing. Parents help their children all the time. I think it's unhealthy to covet a successful person's hand ups and hard work. Lol, the only 1 of these that bothers me is Buffett. “Powerful congressman who owns investment firm” hands the good (powerful) life to son… the rest just had a “little help” compared to their worth now.. they sure did something with what A LOT of ppl lose easily Where does Zuck fit in? How dare parents help their kids also millions to billions isn’t some easy af task. Damn I wish I had connections I see a lot of people in here saying how it's hard to turn $300,000 into billions... Which completely misses the point. The point isn't that it's difficult, it's that the option was available. 99% of people never even get the opportunity to take a large sum of money and turn it into a fortune. Money makes money There's about a 10000 more who only post pictures to Instagram that have equal access to money and connections though. So in that sense it still was them who did a thing. Musk went to the usa with pretty Much nothing, and its not like his father was filthy rich either ”just” wealthy. Say what you will about the other 3, but at least Bill Gates is trying to do something with what he built to help the world out. And if anyone says he isn't, well, at least his name being associated with all the philanthropical things his charities are doing gives the impression that he is. Or maybe the microchip in that vaccine I got just activated and made me type this. It’s not about where it started from, it’s about what they're doing with it now that counts Thank you Warren Buffet has an impressive biography and history. As a child he delivered newspapers to make a few bucks. When he saved up some money, he did something unusual...he bought a vending machine. I don't recall if it was candy bars or something else, but he did well, and as soon as he had enough profit, he bought a second and a third... His grandfather intended to leave him some money when he died, and he was so impressed that he decided to give Warren his inheritance right then. It ended up being $10,000, just after WWII, which was a time of great growth in the economy and the stock market. An online calculator says that $10K in 1948 is the same as $119K today. Young Warren studied the stock market and the history of investments. Now he is a multi-billionaire. I like how Trump isn’t on there. Not because he is self-made, but because he most likely isn’t a billionaire. He isn’t self-made by the way. I know some of his cultists believe that and might see this, so I’m letting them know. Family wealth is built up over generations and maintained due to consistent good choices, good parenting and a culture of self responsibility. If you’re not born wealthy and are looking for someone to blame, blame your ancestors. If you want things to change then start with yourself and stop wanting and expecting strangers to just give it to you. Lol $300,000 of seed capital is nothing, tens of thousand of people have access to this and accomplished much less. Stop trying to justify your lack of achievements by claiming others were more advantaged. That's why you have children. I was born poor but if i could save 300k and give to my future rich son i would be very grateful for the opportunity Hey /u/UnionPacific1, This is now the top post on reddit. It will be recorded at /r/topofreddit with all the other top posts. Bezos worked a very cushy, connected Wall Street job for D.E. Shaw. Not just loans from rich family and friends but already had plenty of capital from his high paying career. Turn that $300,000 into $250,000,000,000, after a divorce, and get back to me. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said ""There is no such thing as a self made man) Most Americans literally can't afford a deficit of $500 and there are actual idiots on here pretending that using using slave labor to turn $300000 into billions makes Bezos a ""self made"" genius - let's just ignore the ""more from rich friends"" that's also inconvenient if you're a bootlicker. The point is how many of these guys made the kind of money you make before they were successful. If you're self made you built something from the ground up. It is without a shadow of a doubt easier to turn money into more money, they want to give you the impression that they earned it all. They bought it with their parents help. Don't hate someone because they took advantage of thier situation and made something from it. Sure, they got handed a sizable amount of money and position, but they did something with it besides squandering on stupid shit. And, any one of you, who says they wouldn't have done the same in their shoes, is either delusional or a liar. Not true Taking 300k and turning it into like 180 billion dollars is insanely impressive. Not quite self made but fuck man I don’t even know the percentage increase that is. So the only thing that differentiates you and Jeff Bezos is $300k in seed money? He turned a $300k investment into hundreds of billions of dollars and revolutionized e-commerce and logistics. That money wasn’t destined to change the world it was what he did with it. Bezos wasn’t handed what he has he earned it. The guy changed the world. Say what you want about him as a person but it’s crazy to act like he isn’t self made. That’s just for one of the guys up there. Bezos is legit impressive Guys earned my vote now #bezos2024 And all you losers would just live off the free money instead of making world changing companies. STFU You forgot Zuckerberg. His parents were the first supercomputers used by a major university in American history. Fuck these leeches give the people the value of their labor. House the homeless feed the hungry heal the sick and educate the eager!!! Exactly what does Musk creating and selling zip2 then co-founding and selling PayPal have to do with his parents? All smart guys though, who didn't squander opportunity, stayed on the straight and narrow and didn't indulge in frivolous ventures e.g. Warren probably couldn't play a guitar, write a poem and do anything a modern man would do to get laid but he prints money and pours over statements. But yes, a leg up helps...a big, leg up helps extra bigly. 1 There are no self made billionaires, it's a myth that billionaires themselves created because the wealthy want to believe that they are solely responsible for their success. Whilst those that aspire to financial success want to believe that all it takes is hard work and dedication. It does still take hard work and dedication, but not in a vacuum. It takes a lot of help from many other people and it takes privilege. One of the greatest factors in financial success is the environment in which one grows up in, for example the education, investments and neighbourhood that one's parents can provide. These are some of the ways you can *actually* become a billionaire. Wealthy parents, large investment or inheritance from family, huge government tax breaks, exploitation of workers and not paying their worth, cheap foreign production, employing labour in poverty stricken countries and vastly under paying them. Hard work still matters, but none of this happens in a vacuum. Massive wealth is never solely attributable to the actions of a single person. Bill Gates' dad was also a lawyer for the Rockefellers. Hasn’t the Elon Musk one debunked already? This has to be the stupidest post I've seen in this sub in a long time. There are better examples *(using data) related to economic mobility in the US. This is the quality of content we accept? This has to be a shitpost. Only one of them had help from the government from the beginning Yeah,.. no. Bill Gates did have the 'luck' involved, but he had a lot of hours invested of his time into computer programming, he pioneered it, then just happened by to have chance aligned with his talent, same for Buffett, cant comment on Bezos or Musk though. The erratic idea that you should sit tight and someday you'll get lucky and someone'll serve you a pile of cash and it'll be all easy is just toxic Also bill gates senior was rich as fuck too And? Bezos got capital from his parents, the same way you’d get capital from any other investor or bank. Any old idiot can take out a loan or have rich parents willing to fork over 300,000 dollars but only a really smart and savvy businessman can turn 300,000 dollars into hundreds of billions. If we gave everyone in America 300k and then followed up with them in 10-20 years very few of them would be multi billionaires. Also, there are plenty of kids of rich parents that are just lousy no good get-abouts that Just coast through life on the success of their parents- again, few people actually take advantage of their position and become fabulously wealthy THATS the hard work for these people, not getting the start up money, it’s DOING something with the start up money. Like trump was endlessly shat on for his “small loan if a million dollars” comment- but let’s see the people shitting on him turn 1 million dollars into billions upon billions, honestly I know I probably couldn’t do it and I KNOW many of his detractors couldn’t. Memes like this are meant to knock these people down saying “see?? ANYONE could do this if their parents are rich!” When in reality you’ve gotta actually be- you know SMART to turn 300k into 300 billion or 1 million into 10 billion. Reddit tier anti meritocracy garbage. I don't believe any of these guys are out there saying they are self made. But, you do you. Be angry if you wanna. I thought former President shit for brains was the poster child for this. Idol worship in the negative direction is an interesting phenomena now. Expressing displeasure in someone when asked is one thing. Campaigning against them in such a way is another. Aside from the bitterness it conveys, it seems awfully unnatural and even artificial. You construct enemies just to get by. That's no way to live. Born on third, thinks they hit a triple… To be fair BillG has always been open about his previlige and never claimed he was self made. I didn’t even realize Elon Musk was a Republican until I joked about him. His fans get so angry if you even joke about him. Suddenly I was getting replies saying “what about Jeff Bezos?” and “Now do Nancy Pelosi”. I’ve already made fun of both of them in the past but neither spent $44 Billion on Twitter so they were completely irrelevant. When I make this list and someone meme's me, I don't want to hear any shit about the car I was given after I wrecked the car I bought, with the money from insurance settlement from a car accident I was in when I was 18. ""When I started Reynholm Industries, I had just two things in my possession: a dream.. and six million pounds."" Honest question, how did their parents make it? Need money to make money. Never been truer. Very few exceptions. It is one the greatest lies and myths ingrained upon the American psyche (and one that LOVES the ideals of capitalism, individual success, bootstraps, etc and all that other bull crap) that these billionaires got to where they are exactly based on pure merit and hard work. They do not deserve all their millions and billions. They are the new robber barons of the 21st century. Then there's Trump, claimed a $1million loan from his father was actually almost half a Billion, self made, lol Leftoids would get X10 of what they all got and would spend it mindlessly. They're braindead and don't understand how business work. This is pretty retarded. Sure they got help, but that doesn’t really make their accomplishments any smaller. There are tons of millionaires out there. By your reasoning, if they already have a few million dollars, they should be able to get to being the richest person in the world very easily. But obviously that’s not the case. The term self-made (under scrutiny) could never apply to any person ever. You have to keep that in mind to know what people mean when they say someone is self-made. Sure these people got some advantages in life, but they knew how to capitalise on that and had amazing ideas/innovations and worked hard to bring those innovations to reality. The money they’ve been able to generate now, absolutely dwarfs the monetary advantage they started off with I feel like a lot of people are saying “yeah well YOU try to turn hundreds of thousands into millions/billions” but … that misses the point entirely. The point isn’t that it doesn’t take work to turn $300,000 into 1 billion. Of course it does. The point is that these men working as hard as the average hard-working person and calling themselves “self made” makes it seem like working that hard warrants a billion dollars, therefore, if you aren’t a billionaire you are lazy. When the truth is that they work very hard AND got lucky AND had wealth to start. The average person MAYBE gets two of those factors. It’s like spending $300,000 on lottery tickets and then hitting the lotto and suggesting others do it too bc it worked for them, not recognizing all of the factors that got them the win and also the factors working against everyone else. Maybe a poor analogy, but you get the point. These people worked very hard under near perfect conditions and yet only recognize the part that justifies their wealth. Having $1 billion bc you worked hard makes it a lot easier to sleep at night than having $1 billion bc you were born into wealth and never hit significant obstacles in life. It isn’t an incorrect claim, but it’s a damaging lie of omission. Going from $300K to the richest man on the planet is still quite an achievement tbf Lucky smart sperm They still turned Cents into dollars based on their own decisions. How is that wrong? They still did the right things in life to turn that early head start into something massive. A lot of people are born into wealth and don’t achieve Musk or Gates’ success. To be honest Elon is estranged from his wealthy family. He wasn't incredibly wealthy when he arrived in the US. He pretty much arrived with just himself and some clothes off his back. The common perceptions of Elon and his family wealth are just straight up wrong. He doesn't have a relationship with his father at all. He also resorted to sleeping on his factories assembly floor to conserve capital. Elon's wealth has nothing to do with his family. Two of these are complete bullshit. If you wanna hate on someone grab a mirror Apartheid. Read that Elon fan boys. Fucking mine owner in apartheid South Africa. Damn. And just like that a lot of dreams are shattered but hope this can help people see that the bullshit self made story is just that bullshit Didn’t bezos start Amazon only for books from a garage? £80,000 in a partial share of a mine in Zambia counts as apartheid now huh? Ok. Cool. Well to be fair top right did actual work ""Oh no, my mommy and daddy weren't rich... boohoo it's going to be really hard to be a billionaire"" -everyone who could've easily been a self-made millionaire but made poor choices instead Jeff Bezos is given 0.01% of his wealth. OP: See! He’s not self made! Like all you fuckers wouldn’t want to be these guys. Stop hating on success just because you don’t have it. From what I know Elon never took any money from his father. He has estranged his father I believe. I see we’re using theories that were debunked years ago as a way to bash on Elon. Theyre all pretty close but i feel like bill gates story sounds a bit more relatable lol WTF is this lame post? All 4 of those business people are exceptional beyond belief in their ability to build value in an organization. Really long bootstraps. Add in the fact that these people had the least obstacles with upward mobility. Being white male and pretending to be a genius. Repeating enough lies enough times makes people believe, like your the cofounder of the company you only invested in Let's be real, most of yall would have lost everything trying to do what they did money or not lol Pretty sure “self made” still applies to these 4 people Bezos took $300k and turned an online book store operating from a garage into the largest company in history I’d say that it was the CEO of IBM that was lucky to be convinced by Bill Gates’ mom. His software was going to change the world no matter what Elon Musk completely revolutionised electric cars and is now sending people into space through reusable rockets. Not even NASA thought of making rockets reusable Hitting home runs from third base I’m on team Elon. I mean you guys probably know that's a lie, but whatever makes you feel better. And yet.. America is richer and more competitive because of them. Not shown, all the people who lost a lot more than was invested here. The need to diminish the work of others is a character flaw. They created something. They are self made. Even if they got help. You liberals are the saddest beings to ever grace the Earth Oh look there’s only 4 Still took a lot of talent and some luck to get to where they are plenty of Wealthy kids living trust fund check to trust fund check. Everyone who has done anything great has had the help they needed at some point in time. And for that 1% who did turn that advantage into something extraordinary 99% of the others failed. I hate all these assholes but have any of them ever claimed to be self made? 'what's your excuse?'- some idiot Eat the rich. From the book ""Outliers"" (great book btw), Gates _also_ had nearly unlimited mainframe computer access in highschool when most colleges didn't. isn't Amazon just a book seller company originally? Stolen money is the best money 1% are a different species. https://www.dailywire.com/news/professor-discovers-business-school-students-have-no-idea-how-much-american-workers-make-with-claims-as-high-as-800k Obvious agendapost OP huffing in some serious copium. Sorry your algorithms are no longer there to protect your stupid ideas. And then there's Joanne Kathleen Rowling who fell on a really good story. Leave your children in a better condition than you were left in. Oh fuck off with this bs Do they claim to be self made? I’m not questioning you, I’m just curious. I haven’t really paid much attention to any of these guys. When you put ""self-made"" in quotes, who is being quoted? of all of them Bezo deserves the self made… id like to see any of you turn 300,000 into what he did. There's 2 types of people: you can either blow all your money which I bet op and everyone like him are, or you can do something with it and turn it into millions or even billions if possible. We're all dealt a hand of cards. Yes, some are better than others but it's how you play the game. If you're gonna bitch and complain, then stay miserable. If it’s that easy why isn’t everyone doing it? Bezos looks like stonks here When resentful losers make memes The real fact is, the rich stay rich by living like they're poor. The poor stay poor because they live like they're rich. Save your money, invest in smart investments. Stop looking at someone else to blame for you not having money. I'm a three time felon that got out of prison, got a trade, worked my ass off and now make more then anyone in my family. I didn't sit and say its everyone's fault I went to prison and now I can't do anything in my life. Grow up and take responsibility for your actions. It's debatable how much financial help Musk got. But even if it's not self made, it's extraordinary even if you start with a few million, to turn it into a few billion. Seems to downplay that achievement. Its called a investment Self made….. fuckin tools Don’t forget Walmart I think there are very few, if any, people out that that are truly, genuinely self made. I don’t think there is anything wrong with getting help in life even if it leads you to becoming a billionaire. I do thinks it’s pretty disrespectful to the people who helped you grow to claim you are self made. The very fact that we have to be raised by another human being for a minimum of 18 years of our life proves that nobody is self made. Who actually gives a shit though lol Most of our elected politicians as well (many are millionaires). America! Yeah these people had really good opportunities early on and some started out with a huge chunk of money, but that's pennies compared to what they have now. These aren't people who took a ""small loan"" of $140m from their parents and 30x'd it, these are massively enormous gains in wealth that you don't just get by having money and going with the flow. It's not like they got a free ride to where they are, and plenty of people in better positions tried harder and ended up worse off. I think this speaks more to how difficult it is to make your way up without being born into privilege. Like these are the baseline starting points you need to MAYBE get rich (or at least top 10 in the world). Increasing your wealth by that much in one lifetime is like a combination of gambling and hard work, the more money you have the better chance you have at actually hitting it big, but you still need hard work and even then there is still a really good chance you run out of money first. Buffet's dad owned an investment firm and was a congressman, but that doesn't guarantee him the MASSIVE returns he saw. $300k is definitely a lot of money but that alone does NOT guarantee a trillion dollar company, that would be equivalent to selling a house and expecting to be worth hundreds of billions in 2 decades. Gates' mom may have talked the ceo into giving him a shot, but even if its good software, successfully licensing your software to IBM does not increase your chances of founding and running a company so massive it has to be broken up by the us government by a whole lot. And for Musk yes his dad owned an emerald mine, but that's awfully vague about how that helped him get a headstart isn't it? What that gave him was maybe an easier time immigrating to Canada buying the plane tickets and whatever bribes you think you have to make to get into Canada. Then he worked at a lumber-mill and farm at his cousin's for a year before getting his bachelor's degree in physics and taking on $100k in student loans doing so, then he founded (yes founded with his brother, not bought) zip2 after graduating, sold that then moved onto PayPal, then got bought out for being annoying, then SpaceX and Tesla (oh no, the notoriously grimy and lucrative business of trying to build the pipe-dream of reusable rockets and making those ugly cars that can't get anywhere and no one wants to buy!) where he made his current net worth. The most the emerald mine did was buying a plane ticket and looking prestigious enough to graced their son the opportunity to take on $100k in student loans, maybe his parents payed for his housing and food until he sold zip2. Edit: Updated grammar according to bot Another day, another envy post on the r/economy thread… You're a sociopath if you believe billionaires should exist. Period. I must confess my ignorance and ask ""Who is the bottom left?"" Maybe you should get better parents instead of blaming billionaires for having good parents But the only person claiming ""self made"" is the person who created this graphic. This boils down to ""look how stupid this argument is that I just made."" Give 99% of people the same situation and I can guarantee they won't come out the way they did. Hate how people downplay billionaires. Most r highly intelligent and motivated lol Not only did his parents give him $300k in 1995 (which is $600k in 2022), but he was 31 years old and literally at the beginning of the internet which when you look back was, of course, a time where there was so much opportunity for the next 20 years. Right place, right time, took the opportunity, and had a great idea.I think if you had $300k given to you in 1995, turning it into life-changing amounts of money is very more likely than in 2022 lol. One side loves expressing how self-made billionaires are, refusing to acknowledge any influence of luck. The other emphasizes the luck, ignoring the hard work, foresight, and intelligence that contributed to their success. But I'm happy the comments here seem to come from people with a more multifaceted view. Lol... if you have the will and the hunger.. it doesn't fucking matter. It's a mindset. Not circumstance. So only one of the four actually got money from their parents. The case with Gates is the same thing with all 4. On top of coming from filthy rich families which puts life on easy mode, those families also had deep investment connections. All 4 of these dipshits used those connections to gain investment capital to buy out their competitors. Their is this myth in Capitalism that ""The best and brightest will succeed"" which is a load of horse shit. The fucker with the biggest wallet who can buy out the ""Best and Brightest"" is the one who wins. These 4 are a product of nepotism. Of a system which makes it virtually impossible to fail if you have enough connections and capitol. Do not fall for the lie that these people are that much smarter than you. They aren't. ""The only difference between me and Bill Gates is that he had capital!"" -someone who's never taken a computer science class “Who made Adam Smith’s dinner” is a great book. Self-made is not a thing. Everyone who is successful in business gets to their position in life off the backs and money of others. Is there any evidence Musk got money from his dad? He claims he came to North America as a teenager with very little and went to school on loans. At least Bill Gates is helping people What a shit post. Even starting with a sum of money they realize it takes a lot of hard work, skill, and much more to build a few hundred thousand into billions right? If it were easy, everyone would be filthy rich if they ever inherit money. Even lottery winners that win 100s of millions end up broke. Musks dad did not own a mine. He is and was a penniless dirtbag who is making up stuff to coattail off his famous son. He and kimball haven’t talked to him in decades. Elon came to America with $2000. https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r Take Bezos off the list. 300k is nothing in seed capital. Trump belongs there with his $1 million loan from daddy and $400 million inheritance... Now make a list of all the losers who blew their inheritance. I got a few in my family. It’s all about coming out the right vagina. And a little drive to destroy people in your way. You too can become a billionaire. It's sad to see people riffin on the riches, when it's so many ways to reach wealth for oneself... it just seems like an excuse to say ""the system is rigged"" and then do nothing to improve your own situation. I'm trying to start a company and I need $3 million just to make a prototype. Bezos starting Amazon with only $300k is incredible People keep trying to use elon musks fathers emerald mine against him but that is not how he got started. Is this sub just a liberal circle jerk? Libs stay mad always lol It’s posts like these that will keep people broke their entire lives. This doesn't seem so ridiculous... Takes money to make money... Don't be jelly... Always the way its been... Look at corruption and favors in royal family... I see this as it’s my responsibility to make it so my kids can strike gold. I don’t have that chance maybe, but that doesn’t mean my future children shouldn’t have this chance. Don’t give up on your kids. how else do you start? Pretty ignorant view if you think just because someone gave them money that means success. Ok? How many people could turn $1,000 into $10m? That would be equivalent to $1m into $10b, which these examples have far exceeded. The victim mentality is so gross. I’m all for eating the rich, but Buffett’s dad was 1) an outcast and not at all “powerful” in Congress, and 2) just your average stock broker — not the owner of an “investment company.” the mine was in zambia btw Doesn’t mean they didn’t work hard to get where they are. Still very deserving, all of them. still made it far just because they had good investments and were lucky doesn't mean they didn't earn most of what they have. by this logic, anyone who has received scholarships or any loans aren't deserving of where they are Let’s not forget how one tape made a woman and her family billionaires and all he got was earbuds. Shahid Khan would like a word…. But seriously, I know several trust fund kids that didn’t do shit let alone change the world we live in and become plutocrats. Saying these guys are where they are just because mommy and daddy is a lame excuse people use because they weren’t able to be as monetarily successful. It’s basic bitch jealousy. Also, I am not rich or a boot licker or whatever the hell r/antiwork cries about all day, just a normal dude acknowledging facts. Yes everybody gets varying degrees of help but to dismiss these guys for getting handed everything is lazy and ignorant. First time I am seeing this sub: check. 3 months old account with 90k karma? Check. Is it by any chance DNC astroturf post? Most likely. To imply these people haven’t earned what they have is disingenuous. We could argue about slave labor or taking advantage of tax laws, but that’s not the argument here. Gates still had a product that was visionary and marketable. Bezos still had a vision for market innovation and made the right decisions all the way to the top. Buffet might’ve been placed in a position to captain a ship, but he still had the balls to become the greatest captain the seas have ever known. Elon has taken his bankroll and run it up using innovation, balls and brains. The same as these other dudes. What I’m hearing is be prepared if opportunity should ever come your way. Hate on who these dudes are if you want, or even the methods used, but don’t imply life was given to them. Sure, some people have help. That said what is this supposed to do besides be rage porn? Many millions with their same start in life wouldn’t have done the same. Myself included. Memes like this don’t really do anything but upset people who don’t see nuance. Is it fair? No, probably not. Is this meme accurate? Also no, probably not. Ehh skeptical on the warren buffet bit. That guys been a hustler since he was like 5. Rihanna. Yeah…this is dumb. “Self-made” nonsense aside. I’m sure these folks had a combination of things happen that helped, but they undoubtedly earned their success. Not that it’s relevant or important, but I think JB’s $300k went a lot further than the rest’s help. gEniUsEs Go take out a loan for $1000. Call me when you turn that 1K into tens of millions. Buncha losers if you ask me, give me 300k and a couple of investor buddies and I’ll return a cool billion in no time. That being said... I don't think just anyone can accomplish what they have with the same amount of boost. 300K isnt that much, thats how much it costs to start a restaurant in certain areas in NY let alone for someone who had a proof of concept. Why do people have to diminish accomplishments, the problem isn't how he got started It’s like my brother who claims he’s self made because he bought a few duplexes and a couple single family homes post crash with grandma money and by cashing out mutual funds are parents had invested in for us. There are a lot of ways to become a 1st generation millionaire, but they all boil down to being either a passive or an active investor. ""Buy and hold"" and ""take my money now and give me more later"" are the primary passive investment strategies; active investment strategies work (or, more often, fail) on shorter timelines, but if you have any aspirations of being a deca-millionaire or more, active investment is the way to go. I mean I hate all billionaires. But I work in startups. And 300k seed isn't very much at all. I mean both bezos and gates still kind of did the work themselves, 300k is a lot of money but pretty hard to turn into a multi million dollar business and gates needed to actually convince the IBM guy and create the company in the first place. I had no idea Elon made all of his money mining. Did any of them call themselves self made though? Its always people writing about them. And yet they are all actual self made billionaires. Their biographies are very open about their roots. Wouldnt expect less than bitter from reddit though Love to see the bootlickers here mad about the upvote brigade. Don’t worry, you’ll be rich soon!! Keep licking and you might get to the center! 🤑 what about Mark Zuckerberg? You're right. We should force everyone to be 100% self made. Every generation should destroy every road, building, book, piece of knowledge, every manufactured item in existence, and force the next generation to build it all on their own from scratch. Only then will absolute ass hat morons like you and I not be able to criticize them. Heads I win. Tails you lose. Sounds like a great risk proposition n'est pas? 🧂🧂🧂 elon came with 5k to NA. but post whatever fits your narrative. This is only 4 billionaires.. show the recent billionaires that got rich off of covid-19. Why do these posts always shy away from calling Musk a slave owner? Nobody successful is an island, and I don't think any of these people ever claimed to be self-made. It's a label others put on them. Why are you all so determined to undermine other people's successes? It's a pretty gross insecure childish personality trait, you would probably be better to drop. Pick yourself up by your $Boot$trap$ Doesn’t mean they don’t out work the nay sayers Lmaooo, you know liberals have lost their minds when they start simping for Bezos Fun facts: Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, NM. Bill Gates founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, NM. Jeffrey Epstein's pedo ranch was just north of Albuquerque, NM. free market bad communism good updoots to the left Is there no self made billionaires then ? Is that the message we are to deduce from this ? Anyone who gets that far had a leg up? How is this even a post? Everyone knows the rich get richer. Like Kim Kardashian said, just get up and work 🙄 Warrens father was a stock broker during the Great Depression. No one was touching stocks at the time and they could barely keep the doors open. Warren certainly didn’t inherit a successful business or anything. His dad wasn’t paid well as a congressmen either. He was an unrealistic zealot that refused to take bribes. Warren woke up at the crack of dawn every morning for his paper route and started buying pinball machines and stuff until he had a number of revenue streams. He read every book in the library about investing by the time he was 11 and his family was middle class at best. But the most extreme example of self made wealth is probably the founder of Nebraska Furniture mart. Literal rags to riches. Aaand there goes my immersion... It only gets worse when you dig deeper. Gate's great grandfather was the president of a bank and then director of a branch of the federal reserve. The same few families have been running this country for decades. Banks give out millions of dollars in commercial loans daily to their clients. Although they're wealthy rarely they turn in into billions. One can't become a billionaire from nothing but hard work and a great idea. You need to start as either a millionaire, or the child or spouse of a millionaire. And the rest you lie, cheat, and steal to get. And don't forget trampling all over the ""little guys"" (who do all the real work) along the way. That 300k is approx 525k in 2022 dollars accounting for inflation Musk's father owned stake in an emerald mine in a non apartheid country, Zambia. It was a free country the entire time he had stock in the company that owned the mine. Not a supporter of musk, but that's not factually correct. To be fair, 9/10 of new businesses fail regardless of starting capital. That being said, all these are examples of who you know not what you know. Turning $300K into Amazon is super impressive, tbh. People who are saying 300k is like nothing are missing the point. 300k is nothing when compared to the billions they made right but 300k made it possible for them to do try something like what they did. Most people that opportunity isn’t possible and the risks you would be taking have a lot more consequences to Them if they fail whereas a lot of these people would have been fine if their business ventures failed they have the benefit of security of having wealthy families and such So they used their connections to excels to the highest levels of wealth and cutting edge technology. Sounds insane. Bill Gates did not invent MS-DOS or Windows. He bought the source code from Tim Patterson for $75,000 USD: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS) 86-DOS isn't even an original product as it was a clone of Digital Research CP/M designed to run on Intel 8086 CPUs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M\_filesystem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M_filesystem) Bill Gates gets all the credit for innovating computer software, but he didn't really do much. He is more like a business man who sold other people's innovations and creativity making billions of dollars. Never defend a billionaire, and never buy their bullshit. [Here's Bill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNAwUxZ5nfw) sounding suspicious as hell when asked about Epstein. Well if you believe the commenters on r/antiwork they all have rich boomer parents who won't give them anything. They just have to wait for them to die, Gates is a scumbag. Musk did well, he did start PayPal when he was very young, made and released a computer game before that and zip2... Dudes always been proactive and innovative so I do respect him. Bezos is brute force cuntishness in business, Aws is pretty impressive and Amazon is pretty undeniable so I kinda respect him too but he doesn't have mass appeal. And his rockets are all penisy. I don't know much about Buffy. Gates is a cunt. Really?! What’s your point? I keep seeing the emerald mine thing pop up and I can't be bothered to correct people anyone on shit I don't care enough about This is so disingenuous. Just because they had a hand up getting started doesn’t mean they didn’t work countless hours day and night to build their companies. Most people are to lazy or too scared to go out and try to build something on their own. They just wanna bitch about how unfair life is. Talk to a 9 yr old kid with Leukemia about how unfair your life is In all seriousness. Turning 300k into billions and Mazon empire is actually incredibly impressive and something 99.999% never accomplish I have the inside scoop on Bezos. My wife went to high school with him in Miami in the 80s. He was adopted and very bright. He was in the same gifted program as my wife. When Amazon first popped back in the 90s I asked her what he was like in HS. She told me wanted to ‘make a bunch of money and go to space”. Which I thought was odd. Not now! How does anyone start a business? They borrow or inherit money. did any of them said he was ""self-made""? Elons dad owned a couple of shares of a diamond mine. He was abusive and the family ran away from them and moved to the US. Elon took loans to go to college. It is hilarious that Reddit is all over him because they are afraid Twitter will have fake news. Just look here for the fake news. Lol you guys are such losers. What Simps overlook This is so fucking disingenuous and resentful. Not a single person in this thread could do what they did resources are not. People are fucking dumb. Reject the dollar. Reject society. Reject careers. Reject the entire system and the society that built it. Oh wait, I have to work to eat and live. Fuck. $300,000 is really not that much money and is highly impressive compared to the others I love reddit but holy fuck the anti capitalist predominant side of it is cringe. I can guarantee that if I gave virtually anyone here $580k ($300k in 1994) they would have no earthly idea how to turn it into a multi billion dollar empire. People seem to think seed money is this magic leg up that guarantees success. Thinking seed capital is what made bezos successful is like thinking having a gun would make you a good cop. If you want seed capital, come up with a brilliant idea and stand in front of some angel investors with it, [just like bezos did](https://www.investopedia.com/investing/how-jeff-bezos-got-be-worlds-richest-man/) dozens of times. Bezo’s was much more “just a guy” than the other three. The amount of money he had in Amazon by the time his parents invested would probably have allowed him to secure financing from an institution otherwise. I would put him much more in the self made category than the others. Elon sold some shitty app map to Yahoo, then used it to make Paypal and sold his share of that to finance Tesla and SpaceX. Classic reddit dogwalkers jealousy Iisten to the behind the bastards on bill gates And yet another reminder that in this world it's not what you know, but who you know. ""Powerful Congressman"" is the most concerning thing here F these guys and the people who worship them. The don’t give an F about you or anyone. The billionaire bootlickers are out in force on this one. Never heard anyone call them self made billionaire. Only Trump has referred to himself as that. Also there are 614 billionaires living in US. Maybe check on them. Y I don't think anyone has called Buffet a self made millionaire but for sure he has 100x his original inheritance. Damn these people for having opportunities and making the best of them. Just like people who are born poor don't choose to be these people don't choose their parents I don't like bezos, but he is the only one on the list who can claim he is self made. 300k usd is not huge amount of money. Keep seething Excuse me is this subreddit based? Cause this post is quite based. No. This subreddit is full of bootlickers As if you can do what they did. Shut the fuck up This is the first time I've seen a profile I've tagged as AntiVax show up in a community that isn't that conspiracy shithole. Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 6 times. First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/spw0ws) on 2022-02-11 98.44% match. Last Seen [Here](https://redd.it/uckp6z) on 2022-04-26 100.0% match Feedback? Hate? Visit r/repostsleuthbot - *I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ [False Positive](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RepostSleuthBot&subject=False%20Positive&message={""post_id"": ""ucltn0"", ""meme_template"": null}) ]* [View Search On repostsleuth.com](https://www.repostsleuth.com?postId=ucltn0&sameSub=false&filterOnlyOlder=true&memeFilter=true&filterDeadMatches=false&targetImageMatch=86&targetImageMemeMatch=96) --- **Scope:** Reddit | **Meme Filter:** False | **Target:** 86% | **Check Title:** False | **Max Age:** Unlimited | **Searched Images:** 323,673,504 | **Search Time:** 2.71546s Why is there a removed award on this? And out of those Elon is the only one who has not bought and sold Democrats as their personal corporate puppets! Always found this arguement so strange. There are MANY people given more in their lives and do NOTHING with it. Starting with money doesn't guarantee you become a billionaire. Ya what is the presumption here? That because they had start up cash, that was the secret to their success? Why then aren't the world richest all from the richest families on the planet since they have 100x what these guys had. Also, Bezos money wasn't just gifted to him. He presumably had to earn the trust to get that money. I get how in vogue it is to cast billionaires as leeches who are robbing from the poor blind, but this narrative is patently ridiculous no matter how much it sings rhetorically. Shh…you’re saying the quiet part out loud. Where's Pablo Escobars Pic!! The funny thing is... they may have had a leg up. But you can't deny what these men have don't isn't impressive. Rich or not. I'm sure there are plenty of kids of rich parents that just get drunk, party, and are general assholes. These men are contributing to history in impressive ways. They are not self made people but Obama ""The monkey"" wasn't either. He became a president and killed millions of people, founded ISIS, caused the biggest immigration scandal in the history and damaged the earth permanent. Just a monkey did this. This is depressing, all I need is like 10k to sort my life out. I don't even care about millions Honestly I don't really care about the people in this post but I just want to say one thing. Why are we downplaying what they've achieved? It's the same way with steroid users in fitness. Yeah, they didn't get there without any help but they still put in a ton of work to achieve their success. Is there any credible source regarding Musk's dad owning an emerald mine? I did some quick searches around but couldn't find any corroboration. I mean the guy is so rich now he could purge such record from the internet if he really wants to, but would like to get some more info on it. ...and then the government heavily subsidized their industries or decides that they shouldn't have any competition because muh important industries you guys are all wrong. these guys became millionaires by taking our money (obviously selling), by making us work for them, and took high salaries See what can be done with top of the line education and diverse social connections? See what a little early support can do? I'm not saying that if we give every child born today a stable upbringing with good connections that we will increase our billionaire base, but I think these people offer a powerful lesson in support and investment. Plenty of potential gets wasted in unnecessarily traumatic childhoods. We harm ourselves by letting it continue. No one is ever self made, you didn't birth yourself, your land isn't you, and at least 90% of your everyday life involves things outside of you Why stop there? Go for their parents and their parents and their parents, because you know, parents working for their kids future is something unheard of. If you live in a major American city somewhere theres is large building that says K&L Gates on the side of it. It's a giant law firm and the Gates is William Gates Sr. aka Bill's father. where the Zuk? or he the real deal? lol BuT wE aLl hAve tHe sAmE 24 hOurs Forgot to add Elon got a $500million welfare check from the US gov't when he became the CEO of Tesla (no, he was never the founder). I’m sort but how does Elon Musk’s dad owning an remake mine have anything to do with electric cars or space X? I mean seriously even if the average joe was given billions of dollars they still wouldn’t know where to start. I couldn't turn 10 bucks into 300 Props $300,000 is less than my mortgage. Looks like I'm going to be richer than Bezos. Any day now. The only true failure on that list is Donal Trump he turned billions into millions. Good, stop trying to make it Americans. You never will xaxaxa) Sponges At least Bill Gates is doing something objectively good with his wealth. Buffet seems to be some neutral greed machine. The other two, I’d celebrate if they spontaneously combusted. I’ll give you 300.000 and very likely you wouldn’t do shit omg what a stupid argument I mean let’s face it though, there are people far more privileged than they were starting out and don’t even have 1% the financial success. $300,000 in a startup that turned into one of the largest companies on the world is actually remarkable. People have tried with much more and achieved much less. Stop it with this lie about Musk, you are seriously embarrassing yourself. I find it funny, yet pitiful, how so many of you bring up his early career and how he only did what he did because of his parents money. Oh and the fact he didn't invent Tesla, he just bought the company from the inventor. And? Is this supposed make everyone forget about the rest of his successful career? His starting money might have helped him get off his feet of course, but that money didn't make decisions for him. It didn't tell him what companies to purchase or to put reusable space ships in space. Since he purchased Twitter, that's all I've seen on reddit. I don't get why? Is it because he purchased Twitter? Are you really that angry he's pledged to remove the blatant censorship of specific people on Twitter? Typical reddit. LoOk iT'S AnOtHeR ElOn mUsK SiMp reeEEEEEE 300,000 is fucking nothing. I know some people who inherited more than a million bucks and burned it. Turning $300,000 of seed capital from friends and family into Amazon is pretty freaking impressive. This is the thing. Even in their worst days, they would still live a debt free comfortable life. Not sure where OP wants to go with this.... Are we implying that nobody should even try? Or maybe we are implying that they started their endeavour with the intent to become the reachest person on earth? To me, being son of a congressman or start a business with a 300k loan and end up with hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank account.... It is still impressive I will never understand Americans worshipping billionaires. Money is just a marker, that tells how much of your countries resources go to each person. America has 1000 billionaires. That just means millions and millions of Americans have that much less. It's no wonder Americans have the worst healthcare on the planet...and the most homeless...and work the most, with the least benefits. Uh oh. Seems like r/antiwork is leaking Rich people bad. Poor people good. Am I doing it right? This is dumb. I can smell envy Too late my American friends, too late. Is this why folks at r/economics snigger on y'all? I have never heard of anyone describing any of these people as self-made. This is just progressive cope to justify their resentment of rich people. [deleted] Ima let you finish, but Emerald money is obscure and dope So be rich ✔️ wait uncheck X https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musks-secret-taxpayer-money-la-times-says-2015-06-01 In general, I believe this. However, I'll give it to Bezos. I dare you to take $300K+ and turn it into a $1.4T company without any other significant political influence to start with. That kind of ""start-up"" funding is peanuts. Highly recommend the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He looked at how Gates in particular made it big and not only did he have his mom help him but he had many factors fall in place for him, like being born rich. Going to a school that happened to have a computer and one he could get access to regularly and many other circumstances that worked his way. So don’t feel bad if you aren’t some greedy person with too money than you would ever need and money that would make a life changing difference for millions. Yea cause every trust fund baby is making it big time I mean, what business or company is started with no help? This seems like negative propaganda to me. Turning 300k…hell even 500k into billions is as self made as you can get. What the fuck do people think self made is? r/wallstreetbets will show you the way And don’t forget about starting your business in a garage! A garage in a twenty bedroom mansion! If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times. How do you idiots still fall for the elon one? I mean. Turning a middle class house inheritance into FUCKING AMAZON is still pretty self made if you ask me. For all you can say about privilege and daddies money. Bezos sure shows that even an average existence can turn into billions with the right struck of luck at the right time (with a dash or two of evil) He's no Kendell Jenner. I'm going to set my kid up better then all these guys. If he doesn't become there richest man on Earth, my disappointment will be immense. Elon 2024 #Most of you can't turn 1 mil into 100 mil let alone 1 Bill. Stop it. “ It’s all about who you know “ It takes money to make money This is a joke. Both Musk and Bezos inherited such ineffectual amounts of money. The average person, even if they inherited a billion would have almost no idea how to turn it into a trillion. Bootstaps Woah did not expect this to be the sub it is I am now working for a friend’s start-up which raised 50m for our series B last month. They had way more than 300k thru friends + small time angel investors. 300k is not much. To turn that into Amazon today is still astounding Fucking scumbags. 'Nuff said. Buffet was the son of a STATE congressman lol. None of them started with a billion dollars? I'll go with the African American as the best one of em all lol Imagine all the unemployed people if it weren't for them.... We live in a caste society but are supposed to be happy cuz we have Twitter and tvs The Jeff one pisses me off. Do you know what % return is $300k to what Amazon is worth now? Give $300k to anyone - not many will be able to do what he has done. I absolutely hate defending Musk, but there is almost no evidence of his dad owning an emerald. He was wealthy, but not uber wealthy like the other situations shown. Musk also got his start almost entirely independent of his father considering he left home at like 17. There is a fair amount of evidence to back up his poverty during college, specifically his ex-wife who reinforces that fact despite be being very open and clear about hating his guts. Iirc, the most money he got from his dad came four odd years into his time in Canada and consisted of like $4,000. The guy has done a *lot* of shitty and disgusting things, go after him honestly for those and you might change hearts against him. Going after him for something verifiably false (or at the least, reasonably doubtable) is just going to deepen the trust of the dorks who worship him. Lot of envious losers on reddit for the last couple of years. Yet we still have people saying we shouldn’t increase their taxes….. Can I have some of that self made? This post is completely missing the point. There are plenty, plenty more people that started off with a lot more money and failed. Just having money isn't enough. These 4, and many others, should be given a lot of credit for what they've achieved. A lot of the comments are actually missing the point here. It's not that their beginnings helped them in making their billions. It's that their beginnings prevented them from succumbing to the economic struggles of life. They ARE self made…. It just that “selves” weren’t their own self. Keep going down the line. Why y’all gotta be haters? I know he's a pos from his behavior and the treatment of his workers but Im not going to pretend anyone can take 300k and turn it into billions. If it was that simple everyone with a 6 figure job would eventually become billionaires. TBH I would just like to be talked about for the great things I could of did for our people on this planet than the amount of money I had in my pocket. Steve Jobs was able to find Bill Hewlett of Hewlett Packard in the phone book and cold call him Going by this logic and using Jeff's ratio to earnings, I'd have 2 billion right now. Got to follow him for more advice. Also what about the ""self made"" bankruptcies? Nobody ever talks about them. These men saw and opportunity and rolled the cosmic dice and won. The top 3 richest men in u.s history all started from poor humble beginnings. The most important thing is that they started out and started doing. Many children of rich parents just spend. Fuck them all People will never dare think rich people are rich because of their hard work and knowledge because then they’d have to confront their failures. [Here are some of the jobs Musk did when he moved to Canada at age 17.](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/odd-jobs-elon-musk-had-when-he-was-younger.html) Inheritance is bad? I wish my kids would be as successful as these assholes. Not trying to defend them but TBH if most of us were put in their positions, we wouldn't be anywhere close to as successful Almost anyone with credit can get a loan for 300k from the sba. Just because you have family connections it does not mean your accomplishments are invalid. Most assholes can’t even get a 7% return annually. Has anyone ever said these folks were self made? Musk’s dad was an alcoholic ENGINEER. He didn’t own a fn emerald mine. HE ONLY OWNED HALF A SHARE in 1. Jeeez. I know this is gonna get downvoted, but that Elon backstory is false. I don’t love the guy, but I think it’s been debunked that his dad did not own an emerald mine Now show the number of people who inherited more money than all four of those had combined and blew it out their ass, because that happens all the time too. It depends on what are you define as ""self-made billionaire"". If it's ""people who got rich without anyone's help"", than they do not exist. What people usually mean by ""self-made"" is the ones, who made their first millions from their own company or profession. This is in contrast of ""received first million from other people"" (usually inheritance). Oh fuck man, get over it. Life isn't fair, and these guys had the same odd's as the rest of us of being born to wealthy/powerful parents. The difference is, these 4 turned a few hundred thousand or so into billions. That's about as difficult as getting $100 dollars for your birthday and somehow multiplying it several thousand times. I understand the sentiment but their parents started somewhere too. For example, Bill Gates mom, did she get a hand me down or she worked her ass off to get on that board so her son can have a giant’s shoulder to stand on? I think success can be viewed as hard work building over generations. There’s no shame in that. I don’t have to be a millionaire or billionaire. I’d be proud of myself if I’m a parent or grand parent of a millionaire or billionaire. I help my family and children on a right path. In the same breath I’m very thankful of my own parents giving me a chance at where I am today. Lol Elons dad lost the money from the emerald mine and they were broke. Elon and his brother made the money back with their own ventures and his parents now rely on him. Let’s see the list of people that had more than that and did nothing with it…or better yet, blew it on hookers and blow. It’s hundreds of thousands of people. Bezos worked for a hedge fund before he started Amazon. I'm sure he was doing pretty well for himself to begin with and invested a lot of his own money. Paul McCartney - dad played piano. Gates was pretty fucking brilliant regardless. I think he would’ve been very successful anyways but it’s hard to say how much. You never know though. A lot of brilliant people without connections end up having a somewhat more successful life than most and that’s about it. Is there any one who actually started with nothing and made it to a billion? If not who is the richest person that actually started from nothing (lotery winners don't count) Bezos has-been nothing short of a duck head but 300.000k from friends and family to amazon... fuck me that's a fairytale I think you misunderstand what “self made” means. In this context, everyone, anytime is helped by another. Someone should tweet this The goal in life for many is to not seek fortune... but to seek wisdom and live happy. Happy... Let's talk about happy for a moment... Happy is a shot in the dark when you're spending every waking minute trying to afford a little bit of it... Housing/Shelter... unaffordable for the lower class in todays market... lower class people are still people... food prices skyrocket over inflation and corporate and government corruption... All if these men together can pay every lower class citizens rent for over 1000 years while we are trying to make it work for just a month alone while homelessness dwindles in the air... sometimes I feel just showing up to my job everyday and living on the street would be more affordable not gonna lie... maybe a Van down by the river isn't such a bad option. This is a trend I've noticed in history. No one comes out of the depths of the pit. There are always connections, wealthy family or status from your name or parents. And this holds even for the lower classes. If you father was a blacksmith, congratulations, you'll be accepted by the blacksmith guild. You work on metallurgy making cannons? That's only becaue your family has been making bells for 3 generations. So much so in fact, that perhaps this is why surnames included your profession. After all the trade run in the family. Self jokes why does elon musk look so fucked up in this photo? it’s like his eyes are marbles stuck in some clay that’s been clumsily smushed into eyelids Considerable amount of luck too. Nonetheless, these guys are smart. Bill Gates even credits his private school to his success. He even was allowed to use the computers at UWash in exchange for some programming work which he then took advantage of by using the computers for more allotted time than he was allowed. Did I mention one of his high school friends' mom had a firm out of UWash? It takes a considerable amount of luck to get to their position, or any position for that matter. People that make it usually forget about the luck part and only attribute it to hard work so when other's don't make it, its seem as if they don't work hard. Um, good for them? They employ thousands and didn’t just live on mom and dads fat they made something out of it. A.k.a. ""That one tiny thing that also happened but contributed very little to their overall success"". Rich people bad Can Reddit please stop sharing Russian propaganda on the front page? Soapbox was a pro-dictator propaganda outlet that spoke favorably about Gaddafi, Maduro and China clamping down on Hong Kong. It had a furious hatred of liberal democracy and only died when its contributors were too ashamed to continue working with a pro-Kremlin site after the invasion of Ukraine; maybe we should stop reposting its old content here. Elon musk dad is not own an emerald mine. Just saying that’s a myth that I used to think was true. It’s not About time we call these fucks out. You people are literally insufferable. $300,000 to the second richest man in the world is self made. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove this, but you didn’t prove it. I don't like the guy at all, but after reading a bit of Bezo's upbringing, his story is quite impressive. Obviously not 'rags' to riches, but still very impressive and really speaks to his intellect. Believe his mom was a single mother of limited means, and his initial big break came from a man she started dating (and married? I'd have to check wikipedia) in his teens who had some connections and money. He got into all sorts of magnet programs and stuff. Smart guy. Gates, obviously incredibly smart, but came from significantly more well-off means. Buffett the same. Musk... smart guy, unfortunately reminds me of a very smart high schooler that never emotionally matured but kept getting richer. Donate baby batter Takes money to make money The advantage they had was not the money but their environment; the money accelerated it all. \- Smart people around them from an early age \- Enough financial & emotional security to take risk at an early \- Intelligent, motivated and disciplined There are way more people who inherit $300,000 or more who do not turn it into $bn's; a lot of inherited wealth is lost by the 3rd or 4th generation if it is not professionally managed (old money versus new money) For good examples look at ex NFL players - many were multi-millionaires as youngsters and broke now. Look at Greg Norman won millions playing golf, made billions investing it wisely None were ""self made"" - They all had the luxury of time/space to develop skills within a supportive network; but they still worked hard to convert their mission into reality. They had an advantage but millions of others have the same advantage and never realise it. Never heard that about Bill Gates before. Errol Musk never owned an emerald mine. The internet is such a fun, make believe sometimes! What about Steve Handjobs? How did he start out? This is pretty misleading. Elon Musk's father may have owned a mine, but he [only invested $20,000 in Elon's first company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2) (Zip2), which Musk went on to earn $22 million to fund his second venture ([x.com](https://x.com)/Paypal). $20K's not a lot, even back in '95. Then [Buffet's father](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Buffett) certainly wasn't a ""powerful congressman,"" because he only served 4 terms total (so would have been really junior) and was also a fringe libertarian and anti-military at a time when the cold war was in full swing and the country was going to war in Korea. As for Bill Gates' mother knowing the IBM CEO? I don't see that as much of an advantage in the tech world. If she didn't know him, who's to say Gates wouldn't approach him at a tech conference or trade show? Or go through IBM's normal new business development channels and them finding out about Microsoft that way? Or tapping his Harvard alumni network for contacts? Or gotten Apple or some other computer manufacturer interested in MS-DOS instead? And Bezos' $300K seed stage funding from angel investors isn't unusual at all in the U.S.. If his parents weren't willing to invest (or had no money), between SBA loans, regular business loans, home equity loans, personal loans, credit cards, his 401K, savings, startup incubators, state and local government grants (especially for tech startups every city wants to encourage), and seed stage venture capital investors, it really isn't hard for someone without rich parents to scrape together enough to start small and leverage up. It may have taken him a couple more years to get the same $300K, but it's doable. I did it with my company. The reason they made their billions isn't from what they started with, it was from their business acumen, in my opinion. I don't think you can accomplish what they accomplished just through luck or privilege, like OP implies. bill gates is the only respectable one imo Well, they took the money and did something with it to make it grow instead of being a trust fund baby doing drugs and alcohol all day. You are incorrect about Elon... You should double check your source... All I see is white, white, white, African-American. Of course they are!!! They won't lie to us!!! So the parents knew how to make money and they taught their kids how to make money. Im sure they wouldnt have invested in their kids ideas if they were trash ideas. They were taught how to provide products or services of value to the marketplace and regardless of where the investment came from their ideas were a success. #bootstraps Elon Musk is literally the son of an apartheid state. They made the best of their situation which is what anyone can do with capitalism. If your parents make minimum wage you can still find a much better career and if you have profitable ideas there will be a venture capitalist out there willing to fund you. Will you end up a billionaire? Probably not, but you're basically garunteed to be upper middle class if you put the work in. Also keep in mind survivorship bias. The overwhelming majority of people that have good inheritences or parents with connections do not end up rich. For each one of these 4 men with beneficial upbringings, there are 10,000 trust fund babies that never did a single thing with their life. I get the point of this “meme” but it’s still difficult to succeed even with Capital or “favors”. And they deserve our loyalty!!!!!! Emerald mine with child slaves* If it only took $300k to become one of the richest people ever then we’d have a lot more rich people. This post is trash. I feel like this is the case for a lot of people. If you can turn my 3 dollars into 1.65 million then go ahead this is pretty bullshit. ""Powerful congressman"" didn't win too many times. How about Steve Jobs? adopted son of a Syrian immigrant? What about all of the people who failed?? All bootstrappers I don’t get it. So it would have been better to not have Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla and Space X? The difference between what Bezos started eith and what he's worth now is approximately what he's worth now. If you're thinking that the all you need is $300K and an idea and you'll soon have billions, you're seriously delusional. Cause the jump from 300,000 to like 177,000,000,000 ain’t much is it? Musk made his money developing ZIP2. Not from his Dad. Someone jelly? Lol ""Dad owned an emerald mine"". Who gives a shit? He was literally sleeping in an office and showering at a YMCA during his early days. His money actually WAS self made. Its wayyyy more important what they are doing with their money. Buffet, Gates are giving it away, Bezos is cunt, and Musk is well Musk. So... Still self-made I did not know that. I love reddit A powerful congressman after serving for six years... 🤣🤣🤣 this is how you know this meme is bullshit 🙄 Last I checked they turned thousands into billions so I think the term self made is appropriate. If we want to go a little further back we can look at two self made billionaires in Rockefeller and Carnegy 🙃 Both were not well off and yet got rich af. Don't give me the socialist bullshit either about how they should not have been so rich. Both of the men donated billions of dollars by the end of their lives... Elon’s family is ridiculously wealthy I mean if you have smart or nets you’re much more likely to be smart, checks out. Elon’s family is ridiculously wealthy 99.9% of you would blow it if you had these great head starts. I see the same thing on Shark Tank graduated from an ivy league college, borrowed two hundred thousand dollars from family & friends and struggling to pursue their dreams. Elon Musk is the Roasted Kid meme. Why are there so many Elon musk dick suckers in here? You really like taking it from your master you fuckin pleb? Okay then you start a company impressive enough for the CEO for IBM to take a risk on with one recommendation and make his risk extremely worth it... or take 300k and turn it into billions. Gates was always very open about his fortunate upbringing. His dad was a rich lawyer as well. Um, Musk's dad disowned him. Ay it’s all about networking and talent this isnt even accurate [deleted] Very interesting. Not EXACTLY so self made as they want you to believe. Don't trust any billionaire that tells you they physically worked when they were young or some other shit just to appear normal. Sure, every teenager is broke at some point and they maybe even sold some lemonades by the side of the road. But that's all just fun, not survival of the fittest. These billionaires don't know the feeling of being expendable and without powerful friends. If they are broke they just play a role playing game of being broke. They could at any time ask someone for a small loan of million dollars and start all over. And what's also mega underestimated is knowledge. To have family that know how a business operates makes all the difference in life. If you grow up in a working family you maybe only get exposed to the idea that there is more than working for a company when it's already too late. When you have kids and what not. But… where did *they* come from/get it from? And are they passing on pertinent information… Musk's dad's mine is actually in Zambia, not South Africa. Elon musk didn't get his wealth from emerald mines. People are just retarded. If you can tell me exactly how much emerald money went into musk's education or the founding of any of his business you win. If you can't it's because you are basing your entire predicate on a misleading headline with no actual information or details, and likely not even true. If nepotism and connections are evil, people need to think again. It's how life works; for good or evil. All about taking risks and getting lucky Are you saying if i gave you a million dollars you could turn it into a billion easily? Doubtful. If i give you 100000 you could not turn it into a million. They are self made billionaires because they work harder then you....and me And which one of them gave most of their wealth away to charity? Just some fact, I know a son of the richest textile factory in our cou try. No 1 textile company in the country. As the son, of course he is lavished with money and lunxury to do any business he wanted and he did. Billions of dollars was managed by the son and now the parent company owed unpayable debt, the new businesses closing, and his main company who supposedly produce money for him is now unhealthy and may even apply for bankruptcy after the father died. It does not matter how much money they got to begin with. There are struggles needs to be done in the process and it is not very easy to juggle things in business. Then again, who would believe? Many thinks that having lots of money to begin will ensure success. Elon musk did not grow up “rich” He grew up middle class…. So did Im South Africa. He is not the same as the rest Plus he is doing for the planet and trying to make us an interplanetary species. Our family has a joke about billionaires. A billionaire says that the fortune started with just $1. Interviewer asks, what did you do with the $1? I sent a fax to my dad to wire me a million dollars to start my company. All jokes aside, seeing my MBA classmates I see the big advantage parents' financial well being has. Considering buffet stopped stock trading the second his dad left congress and wouldn't start again until he made new freinds in congress really tells you all you need to Wtf is this post doing on r/Economy? Is this a circlejerk sub? This post is dumb. Plenty of people have been borne into rich families or gotten cheap loans and yet the vast majority of them aren’t close to being billionaires. There’s a big difference between being borne into privilege and inheriting your wealth outright. Honestly Bezos’s 300k seed capital to what Amazon is today is damn impressive. This was during the dot com boom so investors were everywhere. Not many are still around. There are many rich kids out there doing jack shit with their inheritances. All of these billionaires did more with what they had then you (yes, you reading this) and anyone in these comments ever would have. These posts are ridiculous. Tons of successful people get a headstart , super normal So basically 'Outliers' How did Elon's dad helped him. Did he provide funding or influence like other cases? I hope OP comes into $300k some day, because then we’d obviously have Amazon 2.0 and he’ll be a billionaire Gates pops also was a prominent tech lawyer at the time, so even more connections Sounds to me like a bunch of spoiled whiners want the government to take from people who have a lot and to give to them. People think they will get all kinds of free stuff for doing nothing . once that becomes the norm it will be a slipper slope and will continue on down to the next set saying they have too much and it will keep going down the chain. Why should people who used their capital, hard work and or good ideas to be rich have their money taken to be given away? Then there's the multitudes who had more and did far less. Who even wants that much money? Stop jerking off billionaires, that’s the point of this post. Stop. You may not be a billionaire in your life but you can start a small company and grow it enough that your son could turn it in to millions and then your grandson, billions You may not like Jeff Bezos as a person, but his rise in net worth is just astounding. He does not come from extreme wealth or even upper class like the others listed here. He is actually an incredibly smart person, which is probably why he is such a prick. But it just takes a look at his [school achievements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life) to realize that. There’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of the cards you were dealt. There’s something wrong if you don’t. I see nothing wrong with this. It's not like any of you would donate the vast majority of your funds on death to charity. You give it to your next of kin, that's how it works. They still did more than some person who posts on Reddit complaining about how privileged they are. The emerald mine may not even be true. There's no evidence of it and Elon refutes the claim. I just want to be a chariot racer worth 15 billion dollars is it to much to ask Stop bitching because you're a poor whiny cunt with no work ethic or imagination. Easy to aim for the stars when you live on the moon his Dad owned a stake in a Mine in Zambia (no apartheid) and he hated his dad and inherited virtually nothing when he moved to North America, went to college on scholarship and convinced independent investors himself on his first project Ok just really think about it. Even if we had the fairest economy it would make sense that some of the people that start ahead would get farther ahead than anyone else. Yeah and most people who start out with $300,000 end up with a car they can’t afford to keep up, some cool vacation photos and credit card debt rather than Amazon. How’d you amass your fortune OP? I stole mine from orphans. Incredibly lucky by all accounts. Man this website is full of so much butthurt. Jefff Bezos had a loan to start his small book selling company, which he spent 2 decades building into the largest company in the world. So this post means we should…. Just like not respect that or him? “Ok he’s rich now, fuck him” is such a Reddit thing. And stay out of my inbox with all your dumb petty reasons why bezos is a jerk or whatever petty argument you’re going to pound into your Cheeto-dust covered keyboards Is it surprising that the most successful businessmen of our generation were born of other successful and brilliant mothers and fathers? I get it, they didn’t make it out of the mud. But come on, what do you expect? Self made is literally not a thing. It's not possible to move up social classes with today's systemic inequality. Anyone who is successful is successful because of their privilege and generational wealth. How about that one lady who made a bunch of wizard books? Jealousy is ugly. Rich parents can help you along the way but the kind of people that make these are never haves and never will be's because of this attitude. Self made is a myth. The emerald mine wasn’t in South Africa, and it certainly wasn’t apartheid, of course it’s a big if, because we’re not even sure it existed. Plus Elon didn’t get any help from his dad, and graduated from college with extreme debt. Yeah the game is intergenerational. Which blows. Fix life imo Who's the third guy? They had luck on their side sure but that doesn't mean they didn't take appropriate risks and toil away for their success. This isn't the same as being handed $50M and investing it in crypto. Emerald mine is fake news. This is pathetic This is anti work bullshit propaganda. r/wallstreetbets will make you Elon rich or hobo behind McDonald’s poor. yes they inherited money / had parents in high places but they're also super smart, and put a lot of effort into their craft. I mean being rich helps, but you don't end up a billionaire by just being rich and lucky. Haha redditors are always posting shit like this, looking for ways to cope with their own failures. ""Oh I could be like them if I just had the money"" News flash - tons of kids are born into families as rich if not far richer than what these 4 were born into. What do they achieve? Jack fuck. And what about other billionaires out there - Mark Cuban, Jan Koum, Oprah Winfrey, etc. are just a few off the top of my head? Wonder why nobody ever talks about these people. Guess it doesn't help the narrative :) Regardless of how they made their money. No one deserves a billion dollars, defending billionaires is ridiculous and you’re a fool to do so. Fuck these elite pieces of trash Isn't Buffett actually self-made? He did all his own research for companies to invest in, it's not like he got rich inheriting his father's wealth. Sure, it's an advantage to be born into a family where you are capable of realizing your own potential, but I wouldn't say it's fair to put his ""self-made"" in air quotes like the other 3. Honestly I feel like Buffet is the most deserving out of the four. Just my opinion though, but I can say that his investment advice has helped me out. Some of them did great stuff. If you have talent and no money. You’ll just be someone’s bitch. Bill Gates also stole basically stole the code for MS-DOS, I think in addition to seed money Jeff Bezos got another loan from his parents that kept Amazon from going bankrupt for closer to a million dollars and Elon Musk wasn't an original co-founder of Tesla he just invested a lot of money into the company. Dhirubai Ambani was born the son of a schoolteacher in a remote village in gujarat, India. The first Reliance office he bought was 350 sq. ft, and it had 1 telephone, 1 table and 3 chairs. Guy was worth 7.6 billion dollars when he died in 2002. His son, Mukesh is worth over a 100 billion dollars today. Also, all the advantages which the guys in the pic got, were also received by a whole lot of people who didn't become the world's richest people. The son of every rich, powerful businessman or politician does not get successful. Some of these guys are pieces of shit, like Bezos, but give credit where its due. Bill Gates also stole the idea for Windows from someone else. IMO Wealth is multi generational, it always has been and always will be. I’d be curious to see what their grandparents did too. If its wealth we’re after, we need to start building now and maybe our kids and grandkids will reap the benefits. They will be able to have more financial freedom, potentially more confidence, take riskier bets and hope some pay off. The best investment will be the next generation so we should plan to give them the life we wished for - financially and otherwise It’s not like any of you could do the things they did with your intelligence even with their resources tbf about bill gates... dude is literally a genius and if i remember correctly one of the most gifted kids in maths in the state of washington. he was a National Merit Finalist, he had 1590/1600 on his SAT and he got into Harvard. Waaaaa Did Warren Buffett ever claim he was self made? J.K. Rowling - “I wrote a fire ass book” This is depressing. Billionaire simps are cringe. anti-billionaire simps are cringe. Y'all will upvote whatever farcically constructed post validates your opinions without any regard for the legitimacy or substance of it. Bill Gates wrote the code for Microsoft himself. Warren Buffet is one of the greatest investors of all time. Fetishizing billionaires is dumb as hell, but blindly hating them is just as stupid. You have to work to make it in this world! Like the multi-millionaire who worked a part time job in high school while getting good grades, studied hard in college, got into a decent business MBA program, and then his father died and left him $10 million. Ive never heard any of these described as selfmade. Noone is self made. The fact they tool opportunities and capitalized on them is still impressive and deserves respect. Interesting What is the point of this post? Do some of you actually think that none of these people worked hard to get to where they're at today? None of these circumstances even come close to guaranteeing the level of success any of these individuals were able to achieve. You can be upset at wealth inequality but this post is just plain dumb. Whoops. Was searching for r/economy and stumbled upon r/4panelcringe Aren’t they like all Harvard or Stanford graduates? I can lend 300k for anyone who will create a trillion company. otherwise I will be paid double u/bake_in_da_south just cause their not self made, doesn’t make their inventions/innovative ideas lesser. this is a reach To be fair, I don't think I've ever heard/read W.E.B. crow about being self-made; in fact, he has often remarked that he won ""the ovarian lottery"". That’s why I actually like Steve Jobs. The guy was a massive asshole, but him and Wozniak actually started in a shitty garage, and got really lucky. Lol.. So many botter ""eat the rich"" POS in this thread. They are self made still. Turning that ""little"" into billions is a huge risk and a commendable achievement Remember when Mitt Romney got a small $1 million loan from his dad (who was the CEO of GM) and launched his business using clients he knew all his life through his fathers work connections? These are the people who tell you all you need to be successful is hard work and intelligence Jeff Bezos is a super villain and no one will ever convince me otherwise Most of the population would blow away $300,000 in the snap of a finger. These people are intelligent and used their inheritance to make successful companies or inventions that have made a difference in the world (both good and bad) Better than all the xanax addicted rich kids that I know. Know a guy who's wrecked 3 porsches and no he didnt pay for a single one. And no I'm not rich, just the DMV area where millionaires and poors all chill together. Listened to many 'how i built this'. True 'self made' rich people are really rare. yes you need to work hard, and have a good idea. But without access to some capital, only a handful of people make it. Be it parents, or family that has access for \~100-500k, and is willing to lose it all. If I’m being honest Warren Buffett’s dad being a congressman doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people don’t know how Berkshire runs, but it’s just a large investment firm. They own either partial or complete stakes in companies. He started it by advising his family, friends, and other associates on investment and then opening an investment firm himself to invest that money directly. If he had made a bad investment decision early on he could have potentially lost the retirement money of many of his relatives. So whats wrong with parents helping them is that what parents are suppose to do dont blame them for their sucess Just downvote this low effort shit and move on I get the point of this post but $300k in seed capital isn’t that much, especially compared to what Amazon has become. So everyone with rich parents and 300k starting fund can be billionaires. K got it. Potato coach ppl complaining and thinking they could growth 300k into billions and create services that changed the world. They did more than what others in their situation have done. Good for them. Bootstraps! Wow they all really did start with nothing I still haven’t seen any proof that Elon’s dad’s mine was successful or that he got any money from his dad or the mine. I’m not even a big Elon guy. I just think saying, “his dad had an emerald mine, so creating PayPal doesn’t make him self-made,” is disingenuous This post is such an utter crock of shit. Yes, they had help to start, but that doesn’t discount the tremendous things they’ve done. Fuck you OP Give OP any of these, and it would be gone in a year. You have to be smart and self made to keep your money and make more every one gets a break at some point Real estate syndications. Diversify into 3 or 4 high projected ones 25-30% wait 3 years and repeat after every equity return. So *thaaaaaaaaat’s* what a bootstrap is. Huh. Something something bootstraps A congressman and an owner of an investment company ....nothing shady about that Haters will make jealous memes. Pathetic. How to make quick gains Buy $GME … Profit! Why are you claiming they are self made? Did they themselves say they were self-made? If you read biographies of Gates and Musk, you would understand that they are amazingly driven people who, regardless of what they got to start, would've made it just as well. Perhaps a bit later, but still would. Those are great minds and people who going for what they want no matter what. And there you are. Give you a fortune, you'd just spend it. This is a stupid post. Plenty of *vastly* less talented people have squandered much *larger* inheritances, fortunes, and social capital on the way to building little of consequence. Yes, each of these people had the privilege of being able to take a risk, but nothing in their upbringing made their outcomes *likely*. Each of their *vast* and highly improbable accomplishments was much more the result of work, brains, and luck than an advantaged starting point. TLDR: They really were self-made. Who's the guy on the bottom left corner? Still took a shit load of smarts and luck. Wow I can't believe Elon Musk founded emerald mines. I think the point should be, these guys weren't worried about having a roof over their heads or food to eat. They mostly could afford to lose the investment money too, sure they worked hard, sure they're probably smarter than average too...but it doesn't mean they didn't have a huge leg up on most people. Lots of support is what they got, that's great, some people have no chance of that even on a very tiny level though. I know Trump was on the payroll of his father's company when he was like a toddler, making him a millionaire by the time he was 8. So your point is, if you start out rich or connected you get rich? Color me shocked. Boomers will say they made all that money just “working harder” with a summer job at McDonalds Ray Dalio, Mike Bloomberg,Steve Jobs are some good examples of self made billionaires $300k in seed capital for a startup is fucking bootstrapped as shit. That’s 6 employees, making $50k each, for a year, before taxes. After taxes that’s more like 4 employees making $50k each when payroll taxes are taken into account One of these is by far worse than the others… Thats Rich It’s still self made no matter how bad you want to twist it. Need proof? Look at all the millions of bozos with rich parents that don’t do important shit with their lives. Need further proof? Give a bunch of poor people money and watch their grandchildren still end up being poor. Notice that Trump isn't on the list? Because he's not a Billionaire. Even if you just got a small loan of a million dollars you’d never become president The point is not that these people are worthless, it's that the claim they are ""self made"" is worthless. We all are products of others generosity. Everything you've ever gotten was given. They are all certainly successful, but they did nothing on their own. My folks owned a '58 Studebaker. The Elon Musk one is false, completely fabricated lie. Seethe more about the Twitter purchase. Wow. Didn’t know this sub was socialist anti-merit place. These people all worked very hard and were absolute innovators. Yes( they are not perfect. But nobody is. This again. If you can turn 300k into millions let me know and I’ll invest 3 million in you I genuinely couldn't tell you the names of any of these men. Did Elon Musk start a company like Paypal? He grew up well off, but according to sources that money didn't go into (other than maybe with other angel investors) his startup. Meanwhile the Russians stole all their riches I guess bezos wins this, 300k isn't chump change but within the realm of us mortals Crazy how stupid people are. Elons dad never owned the company he owed shares. Bezos did get money but think of all the other people who got grants and still failed. Stupid ass post looks like it belongs on the onion lol Gonna be honest, all of these are still impressive. Especially Bezos. 300k isn’t that much to start a business tbh No one is truly self made just lucky or connected. Pretty sure they're all still self made and not ""self made"" Lots of excuses out there! My life has been a lie… Kylie Jenner ? Just read Outsiders by Malcom Gladwell. There is no self-made man. If only you inherited $300,000 in the same economic time period as they did. Nobody is self made. If it takes a tribe to raise a child why would you assume, an individual can ascend by themselves? No being is an island. This is some bitch-ass shit. What do you want... these guys to have been completely dirt-poor and start their companies with twigs and rocks? Building Amazon from $300k is fucking INCREDIBLE. Quit hating, pussies. They still worked for their companies though, they could have just rode the money but they picked companies that changed a lot of lives. So they're not self-made, yall still self-broke constantly caring lol If I want to start a business, I go to a bank for a loan. How's that any different? Does that not make me a self made millionaire? If I made $100 by using $20 of moms money, does that nullify my abilities? Notice most of these don't state how much money was borrowed, and when it does.... $300,000? Really? Every bank on the planet would be fighting over a loan on that lol. I hope there's not a peanut butter shortage with all this jelly. well that's 4 shit examples from a pool of 7 billion... $300,000 is nothing to investors these days tbh. Props to Bezos. But that being said - fuck Amazon’s Success breeds success. Don’t be mad because you’re a bum. Get on your grind and make happen regardless of your history… don’t cry about what others have. Theyve done more than you guys wouldve in their shoes at the time lmfao Well, that makes us all feel better about ourselves doesn’t it! Yeah, all legendary self made men. Good luck hurting their feelings. Oh but we must worship them as indispensable contributions to human development! These are the rightful overlords of our very existence. They deserve to wield us as tools of their brilliance! 🤮🤮🤮 Also three of these guys have high functioning autism. Our whole society is built upon tearing down the super wealthy to make those less wealthy to feel better about everything. There is really no point to it and diminishing others success doesn’t make anyone else successful. Regardless of what loans or financial support these four have received, we can all stand to look at the positives in things instead of tearing down others to build yourself up emotionally. The reality is that the world is not a fair place and you have to play the game with the hand you got. We can try to make it as fair as possible but it never will be perfectly fair. Lol I bet 99% of the people here couldn’t make billions off 300k. Taking the big risk is welcomed if you have really rich parents Capitalism is glorified feudalism nothings changed those barriers still exist there just better hidden Whaaat, these guys didn't make their fortunes skipping Starbucks and setting 20% aside each paycheck? :O Also, just because you have the means it doesn't mean you will do something that will make a difference. Most people will just sit on their money and live a cozy life. This is so dumb. Bill Gates was LITERALLY one of the smartest people in the world. So fucking stupid for trying to bring down people's accomplishments, so you can feel better about your worthless life. And Musks father didn't help him at all he came to the Americas with nothing. His father didn't even have a mine. Get fucked with this bullshit. I love how everyone just makes shit up r/coolguides So don’t blame them, blame your parents lol Oh it's that easy?! Shiii I would have done it sooner if I realised. I wish Elon would buy Reddit too 🫃🏻 Honestly I will say that if you’re like these people, it’s not terrible to admit you had help or to thank people who took a chance or a gamble or lent you money so you could bring your dream to reality. Hell, Gates’ mother convincing the CEO of IBM to take a gamble and look at her son’s idea paid off well and now Microsoft is one of he biggest PC tech companies the world has seen. Not even close but Jeremy Clarkson once said he got his first major journalism job because his grandfather delivered the editor’s baby during the war, and he got his spot on Top Gear after sitting next to the director at a party. He’s thanked the people he’s worked with over his journalism and television career countless times, never pretended to be self made anything. Every “self-made” entrepreneur should remember the people that gave them a chance I mean Bezos could have gotten a bank loan or remortgaged his house for the business so that point doesn’t really stand. Perhaps a safety net allowed him to take the risk easier but it was still a risk. Look, OP just figured out how the world works. So cute. Antiwork redditors frothing at the mouth over someone raising $300k (a tiny amount) to start a business and turning it into a global empire. Startups today can easily raise that much capital and most of them fail. I guarantee you could give $1m to the average antiwork part time dog walker and they would not, in fact, build a successful business. Lmao, I hate billionaires as much as everyone else but pretending that Bezos was ""privileged"" because his parents gave him 300 grand is ridiculous. I'd love to see just how many other people are capable of turning 300,000 into 200 billion. Buncha Jack Asses Sorta dumb. Still less than .0000001% anyone hating on them would be able to do what they did with even what they were brought up with. Oh that's why he's South African The only self made (billionaire?) is Scrooge McDuck and he’s not even real. It pays to be born rich. But I know homeless people with more integrity Ok now, don't give me hopes:/ Sounds like whomever posted this is a salty cunt...and least unlike politicians, they're using there own money to get rich and not your tax dollars...selling legislation to the highest bidder.. Amazon was started in 1994. Adjusted for inflation, $300,000 in 1994 is equal to $573,667 in 2022. With such luck wonder why the Kardashians are’t Billionaires… So much misconception. Mary gates was never on the board of IBM but United Way. She made the introduction to John Opel but by then Microsoft and IBM were in contract. Gates took an easier route to VC funding. Bezos could have easily got that tiny amount as a loan. Not everyone can turn that into a megacorp. This anti-work, anti-capital sentiment doesn't help anyone except satiating some need to call ""rich people bad"". Life is not perfect. Look at all these salty boot lickers in the comments lmao There is no such thing as a self made man. But they are self-made tho. They didn’t inherit the wealth they have today. They did put in a lot of work. The real difference is that their parents set them up to be succesful. Just about any parent could do that if they really wanted. Guarantee your kid a place to stay and food in case their ambitions fail, and while they are working on it, help them with their studies, encourage them to do sports. All that doesn’t require millionaire-level wealth. Wish my parents where this good. Good for them Well.. if you think like that, nothing on Earth is self made. Except pollution. Can we get a list of real self made people You could also do this with famous Hollywood actors Just a small loan of a million dollars My dads a millionaire how can i become the richest man in the world. If anyone knows please tell me Honestly, I don't care what anyone says. Bezos is impressive. $300,000 really is not a lot. To turn that into what he has is insanity. Still fuck him because anyone of their wealth is a scumbag. Even Bill Gates, however he's probably the 2nd least evil of all the billionaires. The least evil is McKenzie Bezos and you could even go as far to say is a good person. Well, I would say that out of all of these, Warren still stands out to me. I recall reading his biography but don’t recall him having a wealthy background. the envy and jealousy in society is crazy Keep drinking that haterade y’all instead of trying to create something first hand Such a biased, out of context post. I’m not even saying these things in support of any of these guys, BUT Bill Gates still revolutionized computer hardware and software. And Elon has been a genius almost his entire life and was involved in some big startups you probably never heard of when he was still in his early twenties. Who’s bottom left? All of whom *still* worked leagues harder than OP. Meh post OP. No now is completely self made, but a lot of people can get 300k loan and are not JB I mean turning 300,000 into 150,000,000,000 is crazy….can anyone here turn 3k into 150,000,00? Or even 1 million? How about turn 3k into 10k? These guys grew what they had by like 10000x Being rich, only helped. They had to use their intelligence to succeed. But hey, some people don't think that way. Kanye the one true billionaire Why are poor people always so salty? Alright I get that this is a post hating on people who didn't start from the bottom.. But I gotta defend Bill Gates. The man has made an enormous amount of money, but he also has redistributed his wealth in an effort to make the world a better place. The numbers were speculated but never fully confirmed but at one time Gates children would acquire 10 million dollars after his death. While that is a CRAZY amount of money for most people, it is a drop in the bucket when compared to the 126 BILLION Gates and his wife were estimated to be worth during their split. Honestly fuck all these guys but Steve. Elon was cool until he went crazy. Having that much money is immoral, I don't care how you got it. Meanwhile Redditors huddle around the campfire at r/antiwork I’m not sure what everyone is thinking here. That they too with 300k from friends and family would have turned it into Amazon ? That if your father owned a emerald mine .. you too would have realized PayPal.. and then sold that and started Tesla and then space x .. How diverse. Ah the old emerald mine meme, never change reddit ""Self made"" is a good incentive to keep you running that rat race and trying to beat the market though. OP made a meme. Degenerate grade post. Stay jealous Life in general is about taking advantage of the opportunities being afforded to you. If I make thousands you can be God damned sure I'm going to give my kid opportunity to make millions, but whether they do or not will be on them. Hence they will have made their own millions. No no... They are *self made* Behind a every successful self made billionaire there's a parent . So basically they all were children of smart people who taught them how to make money. They are all self-made. They didn't start from the bottom, that's for sure, but all the progress they made is their own. Also... it helped that they're all white men. Those are some nice bootstraps that those guys have Didn't Elon hate his father saying things like ""he's the most evil person possible"" and then moved to Canada with little to no support, with his father expecting Elon to move back within a few months? And if i remember right Elon didn't spend much time with his dad in his childhood. Sounds like if Elon got any help from his dad it wasn't much beyond growing up with a rich lifestyle and some angst. Maintaining wealth is harder then earning it. Risk risk risk There is a book Outliers where the author debunks the self made man myth, by going into detail on Bill Gates life to show other crucial factors and opportunities that played a part in his success e.g. having free access at that time to one of three warehouse computers available, being born in a specific year to be able to be at the right age where there was that tech hole in the market he could fill Funny how they all have that little bump in life to get them started. So?? Some people squander it Kanye Anecdotes are meaningless. Ask yourself, why hasn’t everyone who started out in the upper middle class family ended up super rich? Successful people come from all walks of life. And you need to be white. Put that whore from the Kardashians in here too, the one they claim is a self made billionaire, when she's actually not. Or is this another ""let's pretend it's only white dudes"" thing. Where’s trump Trickle Down Economics Everyone. It just works. 🙃 And instead of taking from this; 'Wow, i could put my children in a position to be one of the richest people in the world by having just 300k to invest in their idea.' You choose what though? 'Fuck these rich people because I'm not rich?' You forgot Kylie Jenner! What is the reasoning for having to call out apartheid Africa? Did the apartheid component contribute to his starting wealth somehow or do we just love talking about that so we sounds super knowledgeable and intelligent? I’ll take my answer off the air. Sounds like there family’s were pretty smart people…. $300k into trillions….yeah you stupid fucks,they are self made. Fucking dunces and low beta idiots in this sub Ok yeah but bill gates was an inventor, we practically owe modern technology to him. Sure he wasn’t alone in it but he was important, any jackass could’ve made Amazon What a stupid fucking post. Like anyone who has $300.000 can turn it into billions. Bezos gave back that money :) As for Musk, indeed, he's father had money, but he never had a good relation with him. When he came to America, he pretty much was poor. I know that people like to throw shit on other people just because some of them can made it and became really successful. Worry about yourself, people. The literal Fortunate Sons. These posts are generally so irksome. If all you need to become one of the richest people on the planet is a head start, go get a loan. Ffs Jeff Bezos aside, I still think it’s impressive that Amazon turned into the monster that it’s become. I remember when it was just an online second-hand book store. I don’t think even Bezos anticipated that it would become what it’s become This isn’t even accurate. Elon musks dad didn’t own an emerald mine and when he started his company he was poor as hell. This reeks of rich envy. Go out there and make yours instead of whining about others who have more. Ok Wish someone would self made me... I'm too mentally rich to live this physically poor! Hahaa Not Vegas. Do the stock options with insider knowledge, that’s what they all do He's still the richest man though, right? He obviously did something to keep/make more money. You left out the donald. Who says these are self made? Nobody, probably. It doesn’t matter how many upvotes this post has, it needs to be higher. Where are the references for this? I’m not saying you’re wrong but I’m not going to believe this kind of claim from a fucking meme My grandmother invested 60k into a startup company, some guy running his start up out of his garage. My grandpa made her sell the shares. Turns out it was called Microsoft. Funny story I’m no expert, so please school me as needed, but payment to the US government via taxes or any other method appears to be a poor financial investment. Notes from a recent Michael Saylor interview https://youtu.be/mC43pZkpTec Raising taxes is a bad idea because there is no mechanism in place to transparently pay for the things you're doing with taxes with taxpayer money. the government couldn't really pay for its policies and its wars with taxes, we didn't pay for World War One with tax, we didn't pay for World War Two with tax, we didn't pay for Vietnam with tax. The government never pays for all of its policies with taxes. The policies are paid by inflation. The government increases currency supply, by increasing the amount of dollars in the economy, but it doesn't increase the amount of manufacturing capacity in the set economy and it doesn't increase the amount of assets in the economy. It just increases the supply of dollars. So as you increase the currency supply, then the price of all those scarce desirable things will tend to go up rapidly, and the confidence of all of the institutions, the corporations and the individual actors and and trading partners will collapse. Inflation is the rate of increase in price of a set of consumer products defined by a government agency. So they have like traditional things that a regular consumer would be buying. The government selects like toilet paper, food, toaster, refrigerator, electronics, all that kind of stuff. And it's like a representative, a basket of goods that lead to a content existence on this earth for regular consumers. Then the government defines a synthetic metric. For example: you should have 1000 square foot apartment and you should have a used car and you should eat, You know, three hamburgers a week Now, 10 years go by and the apartment costs more. Then the government applies hedonic adjustments the market basket. They decide that it used to be 2000 square feet in 1972. But in the year 2022 you only need 700 square feet because we have many miniaturized televisions and we've got more efficient electric appliances. And because things have collapsed into the iphone, you just don't need as much space. So now I you know, it may be that the apartment costs 50% more. But after the hedonic adjustment, there is no inflation because I just downgraded the expectation of what a normal person should have. This very synthetic nature of the metric allows for manipulation by people in power. The fundamental idea that assets aren't products or services, assets can't be inflated is a problem. Jerome Powell said our target yearly inflation rate should be 2%. However, the money supply increases by about 7% every year. If I borrow a billion dollars and pay 3% interest and the money supply expands at 7-10% a year and I ended up making a 10% return on a billion dollar investment paying 3% interest. Is that fair? And who suffered so that I could do that because in an environment where you're just inflating the money supply and you're holding the assets constant, it stands to reason that the price of all the assets is going to appreciate somewhat proportional to the money supply. And the difference in asset appreciation is going to be a function of the scarce, desirable quality of the assets. And to what extent can I make more of them? And to what extent are they, are they truly limited and supply? Didn't Musk make money through Paypal? And each of them built mega companies and wealth through years of hard work. If you’re unhappy because someone else was successful then take a hard look in the mirror. 😂👏🏻 And then there's you. I don’t get how people keep complaining. It’s so simple. Just be a white male born into a successful or influential family that can provide you with money or power or both. Geesh, what’s so hard about that? People don’t say it enough, but it takes money to make money 💰 Woah! Only $200K to start a 1.5 Trillion company! Oh no. Zucc is the real king This is so fucking dumb. I can respect being able to build giant companies like this, but you gotta pay your fair share in taxes like everyone else does, it doesn’t matter. (No matter what I might think of them now) I don't care where they got their 'seed'. Like it or not these people dreamed, developed, built and worked at it (whatever the dream was) until it was successful. No one handed it to them and, they had no over inflated expectation of a free ride. Good for them. Post is FB tier garbage Not a Musk fanboy by any means, but in 2008 he was showering in gyms and sleeping in his GF’s parent’s basement. Never got a cent of his dad’s money I’m not defending them but at least they use the advantages that they have to create something new and better for themselves, and perhaps to some other people too. I don’t think I would’ve create a new job/company just because my dad has billions. The ones that I don’t like are the ones that are put into a high position like a CEO just because their daddy owns the company. Sure, maybe they have some experience to handle the company but it’s always feels like they’re only there as CEO because of their dad, not because of experience. ah yes, turning 300,000 into 200,000,000 isn’t self made. Musk is 50 year old, very old man. Probably too old to remember at this point. There are so many other self made billionaires like Jack Ma, Cristiano Ronaldo, JK Rowling etc. But jealous people only likes to downgrade/criticize other people. Because they are lazy to do anything in their life Don’t care lesson of the day: hate comes from below. pretty sure elon slept in his office becuase he couldnt afford an apartment while doing paypal. or something similar bezos gad a nice job he had before and jsut quit it to work on his project ""When I started Reynholm Industries I had nothing but a dream... and £6,000,000."" Damn dude. Rich kids become rich adults. That’s wild. So success is defined by what? Someone has to start with $0? Gates’ father was also an extremely famous lawyer. So what does Elon Musk's father have to do with his success? As far as I know they are not on good terms and never were. Stupid fucking post. And how stupid is it to think ""self made"" would mean you never got help from anyone even once. Don't forget Rupert Murdoch. His father was a newspaper proprietor That's just how they got their start money then... it's much easier to raise funding for your start up nowadays but its much harder to create a billion dollar company That's not how it went down with Bill Gates. IBM went to Digital Research first. And before that, Gates worked his ass off making BASIC available on micro-computers. i understand the point, but you have to give lots of credit to these guys for being able to leverage that capital and turn it into the wealth that they have today. not to mention some decent wages for hundreds of thousands of people I took a $1m loan and turned it into 6 figures. Emerald mine in Zambia, not South Africa. Makes little difference because it's still emeralds, but one is in East Africa and the other is 3 000 km further south. Being able to turn 300,000 into what Amazon became is still pretty impressive. It’s not that much money compared to what he has now. Phew. Now I feel a little bit less of a total failure. The all read Kim Kardasian’s book on how to earn money the hard way As these low degrees of separation keep getting revealed I become increasing fearful feudalistic times are near, perhaps a true neofeudalism Bill doesn't deserve to be on this list. He did the legwork, he made his tech startup the first tech startup to ever be funded by a major company. His charitable donations DWARF the other 3 combined. I'm no Billionaire fanboy, bit I think Bill doesn't deserve the hate he gets. some times it takes generations of families to up a more easier way of life. as a child of a successful family i would take the opportunity if presented to pursue higher success. everyone would, that's not a reason to blame these people. i wish my family set me up for more success insted of mediocre pursuits. now it's my decision to make sure I reach higher to pass a more successful life for the next generation of my family Others ran so we could fly? Got it Oh yes, win in lottery and get rich for the rest of your life. What about Steve Jobs! Work hard slaves. Work hard. If I give you $300,000 to start, you probably will have $30 at the end of this year. I don’t know that any of these claim to be self made but the post is a good point in that many very successful people had significant tracks greased for them. So the key thing is to make more money with your money. Now that I know the key to become a rich person, probably around 69 generations my offsprings would become a millionaire. My dad has a $500k house, which is larger than the value Elon’s dad had in that mine ($400k). If anyone knows how to turn that into making me the richest man in the world please let me know. I’m all ears. Jeff Bezos is still impressive. Honestly lots of people are born rich or well off, hardly any of them achieve what these people have Arnold Swartzenegger has said ""no one is a self made man"" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF7NqeZuO3E Why does Jeff Bezos look like the dark arts teacher from the Sorcerer's Stone? Money makes money. Thanks, now I can pat myself on the back for not achieving my dream. Just a thought. It's not about tearing these guys down (unless they cheat/don't pay decent wages/etc) - it's about making a society where **everyone** can start from a privileged position. Modern western nations shouldn't have major poverty issues. So? Which parent wouldn't wanna help their kids? They were still geniuses. Bill Gates knew programming languages since childhood and he started his business and ran it with his hard work and Elon Musk's father got divorced to her mother ffs guys. Even if you have a strong head start it's not easy to be one of the richest person ever. It is as I have often said that no person is ever truly self made. No matter what each of requires the services and skills of so many others... Even Adam Smith acknowledged this truth when talking about clothing the shepherd. So gates is disqualified because his mom knew a guy, bezos’s is disqualified because people loaned him less then 0.1% of his companies current value, and Buffet and Musk are disqualified because their parents had some money. Remember kids, if anybody at all helps you in any conceivable way at any point in your life all your achievements mean nothing. So Buffet’s father served as a congressman and prior to doing so worked at a small brokerage which later dissolved. Bezos didn’t get 300k in “seed capital” from his parents - it was a loan that he repaid with interest. The other “wealthy friends” were equity investors. Musk grew up upper middle class, and mining emeralds is not some magical, highly profitable venture. Bill Gates’ mothers’ friend who was convicted to “take a risk,” was an early equity investor - so yeah, it’s called networking. Being an early stage investor doesn’t mean you ‘give’ someone money. But the morons that populate this subreddit probably don’t understand that. Do any of these people call themselves “self made” or is that just to make the post work? So?? They're greater than what they are before. What is this trash content lol $300,000 was a lot of money back then By that logic anyone who receives a startup capital is not a self-made millionaire. Only those who made it without external financing are. Am i getting the point correctly? So each of them started out as not a billionaire and turned what they had into billions? So themselves they were part of becoming billionaires as opposed to people like the Koch's or Walton's who inherited it. ""Self-made billionaire"" doesn't mean you have to start out as a Cambodian goat farmer. It just means that you did the work that crossed you into the billionaire club no inherited it. Ever since the twitter buy Reddit has been salty as fuck anybody notice that? Do any of these guys even claim to be self made? I understand the point being made here but I think everyone needs to understand that nobody is “self made”. Sure, certain people did pull themselves up by their bootstraps and made their way to the top but they are clowns if they believe they did it on their own. Be humble. Seems that emerald mine BS never dies, was debunked a million times. But if it helps people to feel better about themselfs... And probably all of them had public money involved in their business. Lol, what an epitome of cherry-picked shit. So, you can create Amazon with 300k “seed” money? You know you can borrow much more for school loan or mortgage right? This is r/economy not TikTok…ffs ![gif](giphy|e0Qgu8zrZlBZu) Sold crack in a government project building. Nice. Blatant misinformation…. Musk’s dad don’t own a mine, he had a share in a small mine. And Musk didn’t get any help from his dad. It takes a village... Bill Gates and Elon Musk, are my heroes and inspiration. I do almost exactly the same work as them, and I never knew this about them. I speculated they perhaps had some help, but you only hear their about their creations and their sacrifices. This made me fill a bit better about my situation. I am still going to work to the bone, but now my smile is a bit bigger when I achieve something. Interesting… one noticeable orange ass hat missing from this list (according to his own net worth estimates) OP is a bot designed to stir up mass controversy and create division, check it’s other posts. Literally spamming all sorts. In entrepreneurship, there’s a lot more to it than who your daddy is and finding some investors to seed your business. All of these guys will outwork 99.9% of the population. Of course, luck and timing have alot to do with it too. But this post is still dumb, even if Elon is a prick of the highest order. 💯 shii i can turn 300k to 10k easy, am i doing it right Where tf is Branson? So they pulled themselves up By their boot straps. Also what are boot straps? Whoever made this is bitter as fuck and using it as an excuse for their own failures. Get over it. Hmm something adds up here… Add Kylie and kim Kardashian to the list. Jeffery Starr and Keanu Reeves the true self made one you too, if you work hard enough, you too can get a chance to have a job with these guys and have our innovations exploited, to further their wealth.. How can this get so many upvotes? It's arbitrary as fuck. By these definitions, nobody is really ""self-made"". Born in the US or Europe? Congratulations you have already won the lottery of life. Didn't have to beg on the streets for money as soon as you could walk? So your parents gave you a huge head start. And so on... Support from family is a very important factor for later success, but turning that little support into insane wealth is entirely the achievement of these people. One doesn't just become the richest person in the world only because of luck. To be fair if you gave everybody this same type of head start you’re not going to get the same results necessarily. So I’m not sure what the point of these posts are? I would argue there’s way more rich kids that amount to nothing than those that did more with their privilege No, it was confirmed that Elon’s father did *not* own an emerald mine. No, it was confirmed that Elon’s father did *not* own an emerald mine. How does this prove they are not self made? They turned hundreds of thousands into tens of billions… Mad? The American dream isn’t to become a billionare, it’s to make enough to live a good life (which I do believe anyone can do even if you did start from poverty). Unless you have some crazy disability or something, but a normal able bodied man or woman is capable of not being poor if they work hard enough in America Easy to be self made when your family has been rooted here forever and you have an actual stable platform and loose income to grow up with. Sure would be nice if everyone had that absolute bare minimum requirement for safety, security, and sanity, but I guess I'm just a dirty commie who spent his childhood taking handouts because we couldn't eat, fighting off the aggressive kids from broken homes, and cowering with my sisters as our abusive step-dad broke everything in the house. Does this make you feel better about yourself? I feel sorry for the OP. That kind of “victim mentality” will not get you After a 2 minute visit to Bezos Wikipedia page: Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January 12, 1964,[16] the son of Jacklyn (née Gise) and Theodore Jørgensen.[17] **At the time of Jeffrey’s birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student and his father was 19 years old.**[18] Theodore Jorgensen had ancestry from Denmark and was born in Chicago to a family of Baptists.[19] **After completing high school despite challenging conditions, Jacklyn attended night school while bringing Jeffrey along as a baby**.[20] After his parents divorced, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel ""Mike"" Bezos in April 1968.[21] Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted four-year-old Jeffrey, whose surname was then legally changed from Jorgensen to Bezos.[22] After Mike had received his degree from the University of New Mexico, the family moved to Houston, Texas, so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon.[23] Jeff Bezos attended a Montessori school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when he was two years old.[24] Jeff Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade.[25] Bezos' maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque.[26] Gise retired early to his family's ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where Bezos would spend many summers in his youth.[27] Bezos would later purchase this ranch and expand it from 25,000 acres (10,117 ha) to 300,000 acres (121,406 ha).[28][29] Bezos displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency, and once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room.[30][31] The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Bezos attended Miami Palmetto High School.[32][33] **While Bezos was in high school, he worked at McDonald’s as a short-order line cook during the breakfast shift.[34]** **Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida. He was high school valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar,[35][36] and a Silver Knight Award winner in 1982.[35] In his graduation speech, Bezos told the audience he dreamed of the day when mankind would colonize space.** A local newspaper quoted his intention ""to get all people off the earth and see it turned into a huge national park"".[37] **In 1986, he graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a 4.2 GPA and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree (B.S.E.) in electrical engineering and computer science**; he was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.[38][39] While at Princeton, Bezos was a member of the Quadrangle Club, one of Princeton's 11 eating clubs.[40] In addition, he was elected to Tau Beta Pi and was the president of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).[41][42] J So….yeah, apparently all you need is 300k and some rich friends and suddenly you become a billionaire! That story about Gates is completely contradicted by the early book about the origins of Apple and the IBM PC, but I can't remember the name of the book nor the author - curses! People here acting like these people didn’t work their ass off to get where they are, 99 percent of you wouldn’t be able to get even close to their wealth even if you got given their alleged “start up” money I have never once thought any billionaires were self made! Huh, but I guess when they declare it, some reason people believe it? A key thing people forget is the upbringing people of successful parents had. They were raised by success and raised to succeed and to make money. That is something most people don't have and I could be given $300k right now and not be able to do the same as Amazon. I was raised by a sole parent on welfare, she did the best she could, but she couldn't teach me how to work with money. First chance I got I racked up debt, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. It's only recently I got my shit sorted, but I havem't even begun to catch up on the financial education these people had. Show me someone raised by poor parents who made billions. It's not impossible, but it ain't likely. He's not a plucky entrepreneur who managed to turn $300k into billions. He was raised by rich people, was surrounded by rich people, he was prepared for it. The rest of us don't stand a chance. Musk family diamond company went bankrupt. Him and his brother went to Canada and got into 100k of debt to start a business. Lie more Insane how many people seem incapable of understanding the point here. No one is saying that there wasn’t work involved in amassing the net worth that these four have. We are saying that it would have been impossible without a huge initial leg up. I don’t think any of these guys called themselves self made lmao If you take it far enough no ones self made. Anyone in America had a way better chance than the vast majority of Africans. These people are still geniuses. So, Musk started from the ground up. Don't forget, it takes a stable genius to inherit 400 million and lose it all. To be fair, I don’t recall any of them claiming themselves as self made. But yeah, fuck them. Doesn’t take anything away. You need money to start a business and your not immune to going broke. They have more to risk. Saying their not Self Made is like saying a baker dosen‘t bake his bread because his ingridients get shipped to his bakery, everyone could have rich parents and get lucky but none of us did, they took a great situation and made it perfect. The biggest help they received was being born in USA ( except Musk who immigrated to Canada at age 17 ) Not much different than all of the celebrity actors in Hollywood who got jobs with parent's help whom were already working in Hollywood to begin with. You do know that 99% of you wouldn’t be able to do shit given the same amount of money. [deleted] Reddit so mad. Millions on skillless toddlers begin the wave of uselessness. USA doomed Not true about Elon I have 300k . I don't think I will ever be a billionaire. So, I'd be interested to know how their parents made their wealth. I, however, don't have the gumption to find that information on the ol' interweb. But eventually SOMEONE down the line had to be a ""self starter"" right?? Congrats for reaching r/all/top/ (of the day, top 25) with your post!   ***** *^I ^am ^a ^bot, ^probably ^quite ^annoying, ^I ^mean ^no ^harm ^though* *^Message ^me ^to ^add ^your ^account ^or ^subreddit ^to ^my ^blacklist* A small loan of a million dollars........ We live in a caste system... People sure do hate the rich and successful. It seems the only selfmade billionaire in this list is Jeff Bezos. It’s not easy to convert 300k in 200bn. The other three had something better than only money; connections and influence. Why this low quality shit posted here? And how many others have had a decent amount of backing and fell flat on their faces? And I wonder how many loser relatives these guys have who did nothing with their privilege. All work harder than the guy who posted this. musk self tortured because he could risk it all because rich parents to fall back on. gates was the same, buffet too. to be fair of any of them bezos is the most humble beginnings of all of them who started with something that needed a lot of work and some money that he didn’t use but invested. $300k is a lot but it’s also not that much to just fuck around with it. but you can see what happened to him, he has some sort of grandioso syndrome… he could be a good company paying well and caring but he chose wall street. Elon Musk repeatedly said that he got no money from his father. So given that he received no money how is it that he is not 'self made'? This perspective is wrong and missing the point. There are millions of people that born into privilege. Not every one of them becomes obscenely ultra rich. This is not about how they got their head start. This is about how they got there. And you can't be a multi billionaire without abusing masses. We should talk that about Bezos. Not the 300K he got from his parents. OK, so. Then, who ARE some people who are legit ""self-made?"" i.e. Someone who came from a lower-class background with no rich relatives, or stocks/bonds, etc! Holy shit the poster is stupid. If the emerald mine exists it was in Zambia which is not part of South Africa and didn't have apartheid. Additionally, even if the mine was in South Africa why is it relevant that this was during apartheid? Its not as if mines were taking advantage of slave labour. Mine workers were mostly white at the time. r/economy Jeff Bezos was born to a 17yo high school girl. His dad was 19 years old and, as far as I can tell, had no involvement in his life. Wow - such a privileged beginning. Being able to say he raised $300,000 from family and friends is irrelevant, as he could have done so from angel investors and private equity firms. ***It's what he did with that $300,000 that counts.*** And that's the story with all of them. You could even extrapolate that they were even *more* successful, as 70% of wealth is lost in the 2nd generation with 90% loss in the 3rd. >It is estimated that 70% of wealthy families will lose their wealth by the second generation and 90% will lose it by the third. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/generational-wealth%3A-why-do-70-of-families-lose-their-wealth-in-the-2nd-generation-2018-10 If previous wealth was directly correlated with billionaire status, we'd have millions of billionaires. But we don't. It helps, of course, but correlation does not imply causation. I inherited an estate worth a little north of $500,000 in 1987. I'm not a \*billionaire\* - not even a multi-millionaire. It is nice to get a little head start - but Bezos turned $200,000 less into one of the biggest fortunes of the world. I also know people who inherited far more than me that are busted ass broke now. It isn't what you get, it is what you do with it. This class warfare shit is broken. ""When I started Reynholm Industries, I had just two things in my possession: a dream and 6 million pounds. Today I have a business empire the like of which the world has never seen the like of which. I hope it doesn't sound arrogant when I say that I am the greatest man in the world!"" I've always wondered where to find the people who worshiped the vague idea of ""the economy"" as if it were a god and bowed to billionaires as the keepers of their financial deity. The answer: In this thread. So much sycophantic billionaire worship I couldn't even get through 4 of the ""top"" comments without getting the beginnings of a headache. Keep wanking those billionaires' egos, chaps. I'm sure one day, Musk-Senpai will *totally* notice you and *totally* welcome you into his circle of elites with a small 7-figure gift if you just stan hard enough. Lol. This is the most basic bs. The ignorance to think these statements predicate “success” on the level of these guys. You may not like them and the level of their wealth, but there is no doubt they are all extremely intelligent and work their asses off Yeah, the idea that these people are only billionaires because of their parents is delusional and fails to recognize hard work and talent Come on, Jeffrey, you can do it Pave the way, put your back into it Tell us why Show us how Look at where you came from Look at you now Flat out lies and misrepresented. Par for the course these days. ITT a lot of armchair economists who refuse to acknowledge you need to have money to make money. Who is Bill Gates’ dad again? This has 62k upvotes despite context and misinformation because ""rich man bad"" Regardless of their backgrounds, these guys still had to have insane work ethic and drive to get to where they are. I see many posts countering the claim that these billionaires are “self made”. But I’ve never seen anyone ever making the initial claim. This is some of the worst shit i have seen People act like some of these people just 'had it happen'. All of them are fucking insanely smart, it's stupid as fuck to say ""THEY DIDN'T EARN IT"" could you turn 300k into 200 billion? Or a single meeting with a CEO into the largest company on earth? No, of course you couldn't. It was a really good headstart they had but it takes a ton of talent, smarts, and a lot of hard fucking work to get *that* rich. If all it took was 300k to be a billionaire we'd have so many more in the US. I honestly doubt anyone in this comment section could turn 300k into billions. I can’t believe people are still repeating this stupid idea that Elon Musk got his money from an emerald mine. To start its complete false and there’s no evidence to support it. What is in fact clear is that he has created several successful companies that made him millions and then billions. Jeff Bezos sold 6% of Amazon for 300k to his parents and 1% per 50k to investors. The vast majority of people rejected him. Giving the company a 5mil valuation... $300k a few years before the foundation of Amazon was equivalent to more than $900k in today’s money. Can’t even imagine for kind of upbringing you’d have when your parents could just hand out $900k to support your latest project: The opportunities you’d have, the outlook you could afford to have on risk taking and pursuing your passions. My parents couldn’t even afford the risk of letting me learn to drive in their car. Trickle down economics So? They still did more than all those jealous criticizing their wealth constantly. Spend more time earning money, less time shitting on people who have money This gets posted about Elon all the time and it’s straight up false. He even went to a cheap public high school that by private school standards was and still is garbage. Damn, the one about Elon Musk I knew but the others I didnt know. Ty for making this peasant a little bit smarter :) Даня хароший мальчик!!🥵🥵,верни деньги на это карточку!!!!🥵🥵🥵 But connections are a legitimate asset to a person. Other rich people don't even bother starting a business or give up quickly. Moral of the story, do something with your life to give your kids the best chance in theirs. What you’re forgetting is these “self made billionaires” didn’t come from billionaires. They made their billions themSELVES. Yea, they had a start, and was it a billion dollar start? Not even close. Good try though. How did this garbage get so many upvotes? Bots? This post needs to be much higher and also let’s put more billionaires on … Should add Trump! That may put it into context. Still got to make it happen how is this an r/economy post? You should see their lives would be miserable if AWS disappeared from the internet. Jeff actually worked at a Hedgefund in his early days and quit because he found out he can abuse the dark pool hft system he invented to take market share from it's competitors Self learned Suck like yen miyyon dix Total propa, they’ve created value for us and we gassing them up like that cmonn mainstream Reddit I like to think about it in seconds. 300000 seconds is like 3 and a half days. 200 billion seconds is 6000 years. Right! about as home made as can soup Good meme, last but not least Bill Gates family is connected somehow to the Old money and they were rich generations ago So, they did not start with the billions, what is the point besides being idiot ? :) People who worship billionaires are just weird. I could bet that 99,99% of all people starting with the same amount of money wouldn't be billionaires today. The book “Outliers” highlights many cases like this. Where the public believes the PR bullshit pushed out by these companies but if you dig a little deeper you’ll find the real truth To be fair, my parents give me gift cards every now and then to help me buy groceries. Remember this post when I take over the world one day. Didn't Elon go to Canada with like ~$1000 to his name for uni? They are so self made that they dont need roads, hools, hospitals cars or educated staff. They dont need miners and excavators, energy engineers or police and security. You know why, because they made all of it from scratch themselves! ​ They may be well above the average in terms of brains, but strangely they need us actually far more than we need them. They have a choice, they can be the elitists hiding themselves from the wreck of society and the social implosion that may befall the rest of in the decades to come. When society has crashed and there are few if any of all the above skills and the infrastructure has degraded, the planet been poisoned, what then will their riches benefit them. The other option is not to give away their wealth but to actively invest in a better society, in better public education, increase the salary of teachers, decrease the workload and improve resources. Invest in meaningful social healthcare and large scale environmental protection schemes that will provide jobs and security. They could choose that way if they wanted to.. It’s nearly impossible to become a billionaire without a good amount of support in the beginning, is this actually that surprising? Only 3 of those are true and its not Elon The real facts are actually far worse for the ""self made"" bullshit. Gates father was literally the most important corporate lawyer in Seattle for example. Self made is propaganda to keep you grinding and obedient. They are absolutely hilarious if they think South Africa has Emerald mines Some facts here are misleading and also your assumption that having the money will mean you will become one of the successful people is down right insult to the people who work their ass off. Bezos is the exception, Musk is comes from money but he channels it well. Source about them proclaiming to be ""self-made billionaires""? Dunno about the others, but the one with Musk is not correct, both him and his brother started from 0. Not that I'm saying musk didn't come from wealth but hell. He wrote the code for a video game at the age of 10 and sold it for $500 to a company... sure he had successful parents but don't discredit how hard he's also worked. It's not like he started out with a small loan of 1 million dollars like a certain impeached president we had. Plenty of kids grow up wealthy and do fuck all.. he grew up wealthy and used it to build successful businesses and is trying to improve and make leaps for humanity... who else can say that in similar shoes Which one has the most punchable face? NFTs /s PLEASE DON'T Elon ran away from his parent to his uncle in Canada when he was 18. He started a company with 2 friends that blew up in 2000 and after he was voted out of the company they partnered with Paypal. Its pretty unfair when you just say that he was pRiViLeGeD due his dad being rich because he hated him. His succes was made due to his sheer effort that he had put into his company (in the beggining he worked 20 hours per day 7 days a week and had barelly any money so he slept in his office. Read his autobiography. And rich get richer! I’m unsure of the answer, but do these folks claim they are self made or is that just the mythos that has arisen around them without their intervention? Still doesn't deny that 80% of all US Millionaires are self made... To be fair I’ve never heard any of these men described as self made Im still pretty sure that these guys would have made money either way. If most people get $1mill they will either blow it all or try to retire, these guys dont think the same way. So inspiring... With $100k I could radically improve my businesses production, for $1m I could make it a national contender. Interesting how the harder people work the more ""luck"" they tend to have. Who's the bottom left guy? Whats the point of these kind of posts? There many billionaires who started with 1% of the wealth what average redditor who upvotes this shit has. I don't think I've ever heard anyone calling Musk 'self made'. He had rich parents and was a privileged kid right from the beginning which is why he could start such companies. Anyone who called him self made was his PR agent. Then why is svery millionair not a billionair? If its so easy Honestly with people like Bezos and Gates, their biggest advantage was the fact they got access to computers and technology early in a time when these things were barely consumer. Honestly, with people like Bezos and Gates, their biggest advantage was the fact they got access to computers and technology early in a time when these things were barely consumer. nd really made that their focus, plus with their connections they were able to leverage their ability with computers into larger companies to capture space in a burgeoning market. It's not like any of these guys just sat on their ass and had their fortune come to them. Shit I keep laughing when people telling others these billionaires are self made lol what a fucking joke I like how everyone avoid talking about zuck, he also own 75b$ but his parents were dentist and psychiatrist lol Why are so many calling 3 jews and an African American ""White people? None of these people are White, Whites are Anglo Saxon/Germanic/Scandinavian/Nordic/Celtic/and the crazy aussies Odd how so many people seem to conflate jews with ""Whites"" when it's convenient for them, but suddenly they are ""jews"" again when not. I'm guessing you don't really need to sweat what the markets or the economy is doing with following that advice with them. You gotta have money to make money. Some of you folks act like you've never heard that before. Regardless of their bullshit bootstrap stories, each person has undoubtedly changed the course of our civilization in positive ways overall. I understand they might not be self made in the true sense of the word but each has turned whatever investment/ seed money into billions, decent products which I think the world currently cannot do without. Despite their non labour friendly practices and capitalism favouring them, you can’t deny whatever they did was/ is worthy of respect. Sorry you guys aren’t gonna act like turning 300k into Amafuckingzon isn’t impressive. Where is Sam Walton? Where is Sam Walton? Yeah musk's dad invested like $20k in his first company for a 5% stake. The company turned out to be very successful. Nothing to do with Dad's money. Musk and his Dad do not get along at all Bezos was an investment banker prior to starting amazon. He understood how to raise seed capital and $300k seed capital is fuck all to start a company. He then turned that $300k into billions. Warren Buffett is literally called the Oracle from Omoha because his investment strategies are legendary. If he got a start from his dad it didn't mean shit as to how he made his billions And Gates...so his mum convinced IBM to invest. So fucking what? That's how you get shit done in business - connections mean everything. As the saying goes ""it's not what you know, it's who you know"" I'm definitely not saying it's ok for individuals to horde so much wealth (definitely in favour of a personal VAT for billionaires) but this view that these guys just waltzed into their billions because daddy handed it to them is nothing but salty tears from basement dwellwes thinking they're edgy communists Bill Gates stole the idea of mac too from what I remember. The only thing standing in between the average redditor and revolutionizing an industry is $300k. Don't forget Trump when he borrowed a small loan of a million dollars 🤣 plays Drake ""started from the bottom now where here"" Isn’t Oprah a true self made? I think she grew up dirt poor if I remember correctly. I'll lend you 30 dollars lets see if you can turn them into 20 million accurate The Bezos one is legitimately impressive as hell though Many children of rich people blow their parents money so there's that. I personally know a hand ful of people who have been given a large sum of money. None are billionaires. I don't get all the hate, shit makes zero sense. We got senators insider trading for decades and other companies like Nestle trying to make people buy rain water, but let's hate on these guys who, other than Buffett, have actually contributed to society. I swear most are bots. Some weird ass agenda by who knows who. Sorry but elons father might have owned an emerald mine, his start was through coding and making PayPal. Its easy to make anyones achievements look like someone else. I guarantee I could spin a narrative about any of you in the comments based on your upbringing and what you've achieved Literally just read an article about musk bc I heard this rumor. The emerald mine thing isn't true. His father was apparently an engineer and awful person in South africa [John D. Rockefeller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller) \- An actual self-made billionaire. Okay. What were their parents'/rich friends' methods back then? Well, just a normal guy here. A lot of bootlicking crap in this thread sadly And all four of these guys have had better results with their start up money than 99.9% of people would have had. Give a normal person a loan for 300k and theyll blow it (see almost every lottery winner ever for example) and be broke in a year. Yet bezos turned 300k into 211 billion while driving a shitty corolla we need to stop pretending that isn't an amazing feat. All but one didn't disclose the ""value"" of their inheritance. I dislike them, regardless We don’t have emerald mines in South Africa… mine was in Zambia The “best” comments here are simply disgusting. Such delusion and pro-capitalist sentiment. Ignorance is still plentiful these days I see $300k investment in a business is totally reasonable. You clearly overlook the work effort of Elon Musk Both Elon and buffet description are desert I’ve at best. Warren buffet father was a bank employee his grandfather owned a small market and Elon father had something like 20000 dollar saved in stock but was not the owner just a small investor. And they had business idea and will to follow thru it- thousand, maybe millions are born to rich families and these few made an impactful change And how many spoiled kids don’t do shit with their life? ok well first off, none of these are straight up inheriting the highest networths in the world like it makes it seem, turning 300k into like 200 billion isn't exactly something most people can do. Second off I don't know enough about the first three to actually comment on him but Elon Musk's father owning an emerald mine is a myth. By south african terms (at the time) he would've been upper class but by american terms his family was very middle class. They weren't struggling to put food on the table but it definitely wasn't top 1%. To add to that once he moved to America he got absolutely no help from his family. That emerald story is bullshit FYI Is there some kind of rulebook that says you have to start from a cardboard box to be considered self-made anything? I love how bill gates was inspirational They still rich I bet the OP can turn $300K into $300. So you guys are surprised it’s a rigged system?? This post is satire, right So is this what they mean by “bootstraps”? Except for the emerald mine thing, that's just a widely spread rumor that started from The Onion. This concept of 'self-made' is laughable. It was like they were ""born into it"" As much as I don't like Jeff Bezos, that's how a lot of companies get started. You ask family and friends for money to invest. This is just worded to sound like he was gifted it Did any of them actually claim they were self made billionaires though? Or did article writers proclaim them as such? As Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, there is no such thing as a self made man. Not unless you live in all alone without any contact with civilization. I feel like this is just the fuck billionaires sub now. In the hierarchy of evil are we really putting Warren Buffet up there with Bezos? So what's the problem? There are people who started with money but for every person who started with money there’s another who started with nothing… Just a reminder for those like me who stumble across this post that started with nothing and are working towards something. Don’t let people convince you that you can’t. … it will be harder but it is possible Got to love liberals. When pretty much all of social media was owned by their side of the spectrum it was crickets that you heard. Crickets! Even when their side was muting out the other on their own platform. Now that the other side is going to own, and not just let one side be heard, but both sides as well, liberals are losing their minds. If it isn't a liberal opinion then it shouldn't be heard. That is the mindset of liberals. Malcolm X said it best years ago when he described the liberal. So many wealth-worshippers in this thread. Gross. Grow some self esteem. Musk: loans, contracts, tax credits, and subsidies Ngl I'de take the 300k investment and throw it on drugs and hookers. You can call me a self made AIDS patient afterwards A lil’ boost Buffet was fileing taxes and running a successful pin ball machine buisness started from money he made doing newspaper deliveries at the same age most redditors still had a 7pm bedtime lol This kinda tells me to invest in your kids. 86 percent of millionaires are first generation millionaires. Mostly professionals, lawyers, and doctors actually - These people went from big to huge - but it doesn’t take away from the fact the Microsoft made the world a better place - Bill Gates literally moved the entire world forward. Don’t need to talk about Amazon. And of course, that’s just these Billionaires- there’s countless others whose stories are just as incredible- like Hashtings with Netflix, Zuckerberg with FB and the old school ones like Ford, Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie - So, if the best idea you’ve ever come up with is some sort of side hustle like opening up a hair saloon, or a restaurant or like me who went the college route go become a lawyer - if that’s the extend of your innovation - maybe instead of being envious and jealous and complaining of these people - maybe read about their story - maybe appreciate and be grateful for their benefits. And I guess that means none of their acomplishments count? Or that they now somehow didn't increase their own wealth thousand fold? Climbing up the income ladder and beeing yet another example of income mobility? Not to mention how moct of those are either false or misleading. Elons dad was an anti-apartheid polititian for example Why do you morons keep up the false narrative about Elon Musk and the fucking emerald mine bullshit? You all know it’s bullshit but keep spreading the lies. Why? To be fair, not all rich kids are being able to increase their wealth. the worst one is Kylie Jenner. idk what she was but something like prostitute/hooker/pornstar/model/influencer idk but she is like 99.999% plastic. Her simps ''donated'' a f ton of money to her to make her a billionaire. They can’t say they did it on their own, but they have done a lot with what they had. Steve Jobs just got high and made Apple Hey Maxi wat doe je? Invest in crypto and be lucky Here is the real challenge was finding available parking spots for their exotic sports cars. Students these days. *Slave made Like many comments said, it takes knowledge and real comprehension of the market targeted to make your money grows. That being said, you could either win 50M$ or make on your own 50M$, that doesn't mean you will succeed. I think the difference here is an mix of who you know and how you actually use that as an lever. If you win 50M$ in lottery, you probably (statistically) have no idea how to use that much money. But if you are the child of an wealthy family with an inconceivable amount of contacts and business opportunities, you have more ""chance"" to make an 300,000$ loans (or gift) into something bigger. Again, someone with good knowledge of his market could turn 300k into millions even billions, while someone else could turn 50M$ into nothing. It ain't the amount of money that really matters in this case, it's where it came from, and how this impacted the plausible outcomes of it. One would say he turn 300k into 200 billions, which is true. But how is this even possible without help? No billionaires in our age of time are self-made whatsoever. It's literally impossible for them to accomplish this. It’s still a lot of work so they definitely are self made lol Shit. What about Larry fink or what ever his name is that owns black rock. SHUT DOWN BLACK ROCK So many wannabe millionaires in here thinking these billionaires are going to see their comment defending them while they are wage slaves and potential biomatter fuel to these same ppl. Everything is rigged I’m such a victim 😭😭😭 Exactly The American Dream is a Myth Well if someone starts with 1000$ and becomes a millionaire they would be self-made, so I guess it's fair that starting with a million and becoming a billionaire is good too. This is mostly false. People thinking everybody can become a billionaire are delusional [deleted] And? They still have done more for this country than anyone in this thread. I’m happy they succeeded, we are doing space stuff again I think the saddest part about this is some people are going to think apartheid is a city in South Africa Love how this post down plays there greatness ! You could give half of the general population the same amount of start up and half wouldn’t do a damn thing with it . That’s like saying if I was 6”8 I would be in the nba ?! No you wouldn’t ! [deleted] I'd expect to see this crap on r/antiwork, not r/economy. Jesus Christ, the emerald mine... 🤦‍♂️ I would love a handout like that 300k is not that much to start a company, however The economy crowd is filled with coke-eyed capitalists. Because that's all you know. Working up to a few million, that's hard work. Billions, that's luck and exploitation. They did work hard, but so did a lot of people, who gets up this far is random ass chance. I would be so happy just to be back at zero. Being debt free… the new American dream. Reddit: This guy required the egg and sperm of his parents for life. Self-made my ass. Elon hated his dad and basically ran away to his mom in Canada. Not familiar with the entire story but I’m not sure if he benefited from his dads money. Wait what? people borrow money to start a business? Holy crap when did that start? Now do everyone that headlines or talks at 10x. Where's Pablo Escobar n El Chappo?? The “American Dream” is the chain by which you unknowingly are bound. Enduring wrong, caught up in dreams of a better future, seeing tv shows of the one in a million person getting a brand new house or winning the lottery… Thinking, hoping, praying it can be me one day, so better not change to much.. Otherwise I might loose the opportunity. If I just endure a bit more, if I just eat the suffering for a little time more… That's the thing. If you start already on third base, you'd have to be a total idiot to not become uber rich. You just have to buy any asset and over time it will rise in value. Us plebs that start with nothing have to work for a decade to even get any seed capital to start our own investments. There's a book called ""the unfair advantage"" that is worth reading. These people could've screwed things up and failed even with the ""extra help"". So Gates got lucky. He's still self made. All actual self made millionaires got lucky at some point, you can't hold that against them. Turning 300k into 150 billion is equivalent to turning 3$ into 300 million. Musks money is so dirty it baffles me how he has such a following Lmfao... I'm more than 10 years younger than bezoz when he started amazon and made 300k myself all through hard work cutting lawns... could easily raise another 300k in capital.. this doesn't prove anything. elon musk has had his scalp and bones so reconstructed by now, he’s practically only half human Love these pictures..!(besides being in this sub) Shows how hard it is to keep and do something qith some starter money. Most people winning loteries end up worse than before. Lol Imagine having such a poor understanding of basically everything that you feel the need to post or agree with something as idiotic as this Now do all the kids born into extreme wealth that squandered it all. Elon Musk's dad gave him money to start his first company, Zip2. You'd think there would be more billionaires if it's as easy as it is being implied here. It's what you do with the money. Lottery winners typically are broke within a few years. Lol everyone acting like they could do the same thing given similar opportunities.. so if someone was a roofer and was given a truck to start their own roofing business and 20 years down the road became a millionaire from their hard work creating a business they’d be discredited too? You also forgot to add that Amazon is partnered with BCG group to infiltrate competing companies and destroy them from the inside out. all while making those companies bankrupt by shorting their stock into the ground with the help of citadel Success is made by ambition, motivation and hard work. Clearly, I lack all of these components. Why is it relevant that his dad had a mine. From all I've heard the musks father didnt give him any money for his startups At least Bill Gates acknowledges his parents contributions to Microsoft’s success. They turned 300k into billions by themselves then 🤷‍♂️ apartheid South Africa was racist af. there's always money to be made in crisis. Right now is a good time to pay attention to the market Starting from my parents wallets, now I'm here This is blatantly false lmao stay salty you cucks Need lots of peanut butter for all this jelly lol Just an FYI to whoever made this. Errol Musk was not the bread winner of that family. It was his mother, Maye Musk, who was a top tier model for massive beauty brands. After 1985, Elon essentially had no contact with his father one he moved to Canada. Would it also be fair to say that market forces and the evolution of tech would have predestined the appearance of a Microsoft, Amazon, PayPal, etc even if these men weren't the ones who founded them? There were undoubtedly a lot of competing parties. I think the most radical moments in the history of computing where were small groups of people knew a job-assigned idea wasn't going to work, took big risks, and also pushed things as standards so they would spread. Example: Unix, Ethernet, etc. And still in give zero fucks! it is insider stuff. As long as I see something going back to humanity. billion hanging over one persons head is not so bad.. could be worse, like russian oligarch. I saw one had a pipe company for gas..and some how worth 150 billion. WTF. that power has laundering perfectly, many attributes. Some wait for countries dollar to drop to dive in like a cannibal. it is endless gangsta. Don't blame other people for your parents' failures Does anyone think these people are not “self-made” billionaires lol. Maybe it would be easier to put net worth of parents lol. These guys are absolutely “self-made” billionaires. I know people like to hate on Kanye West... but he was just a Chicago kid with a single parent and he began making beats around 12 years old, developing his skills until he was able to sell the beats to rappers. He now has a net worth of over $1 billion. Eat the rich. I will teach my kids everything I know then unleash them on the planet with a million each. I hope you do the same for your kids. Emerald mine claim is false, makes me doubt the rest too... What a stupid post 😂😂😂 Let's see anyone do what they did with the same money. All. Fortunes. Start. With. Crime. (and all major countries have used slaves...) Borrowing money and having financiers doesn’t make you any less self-made… Before Bezos started Amazon he worked as society cancer (Hedgefond) Ok, but making $200bln from 300 grand is not something everyone can do. Most of probably would lose it pretty quick if they got this amount of cash. Try building a multi Billion dollar business and makong yourself and others billionaires and multi multi millionaires even with all of the perks mentioned above. Truly humble beginnings. This indicates that Elon Musk got his money from his father, it simply isn't true. He founded Zip2 in 95 with his brother for $15,000, sold it in 1999 and became a millionaire. ​ https://moguldom.com/278102/fact-check-did-elon-musk-inherit-apartheid-money-from-his-south-african-father/ I got was debt, good times well i wish my parents were rich, this is a bad thing now? lol Out of all the four, Elon Musk is the most legit. Remember he had his start with PayPal and mining people don't believe in tech stuff. They believe in cash only. Yes, I deal with them on daily basis. Ok but how did the parents get their start? 🤔 Lol, this post is stupid. No one in this thread could do what they accomplished. 300k seed money into one of the largest and most well known companies ever? Jeff was already working as a VP in De shaw. So, he was successful enough before starting Amazon (without a 300k funding from his parents. Of course his education at Princeton would have cost his parents. ) Point I'm trying to state his he had been able to make it without his parents funding. The second thing is you need talent and vision to transform that amount to what it is today. This is the pre made pancake mix of self made Who’s accused these men of being self made? lol what surprise … I still consider bezos self made then. That’s just essentially a business loan Now that I know the secret i think i can be a billionaire Just need to be born in a rich family 🤑 Fuck em all I see this often, but has anyone taken it further? As in 2 or 3 generations further maybe more. It would be interesting to see who of our ancestors shoulders they rest on. How did their dads get the money and or power that set up their kids? and theirs dads? Edit: 1 of Musk's Great Grandfathers was a Mason; Great Great Grand Father was a Farm Laborer in England. We are all the result of someone in our past who took a risk and was successful directly setting up future generations and their success. There is no reason to hate these guys because they had luckier, smarter, or more driven ancestors than ourselves. That’s wild Anyone know the story on Mark Cuban? Every time someone screams “all billionaires are evil” or “billionaires should die” I always ask about Mark Cuban because I’m genuinely looking for dirt on the guy, but nobody ever has anything. So yeah. If anyone’s got the good on Mark Cuban, lmk. Elon musk's father has never owned an emerald mine lmfao, hate him if you want but at least use correct facts This is a stupid post that seems to belittle the hard work ,dedication and vision of some of the visionary founders of companies in 🇺🇸 They all struggled, worked hard and kept going to reach where they’re at while creating generational wealth and jobs for many folks who believed in them. What?!??! No, no, no!!! Elon Sucks stans **assured** us he took out a 100k loan for school and he's just like the rest of us with debt and he worked hard at ~~buying out the original Tesla company~~ building Tesla with his own two bare hands. He is a brave soul. A true African American immigrant. Brb. Pissed myself laughing. The thing about elons dad is a lie. In fact he made his mommy from pay pal. It's like people are retarded Wonder how bills mum ‘convinced’ them to take the risk... [https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/10/05/the-forbes-400-self-made-score-2021-from-silver-spooners-to-bootstrappers/?sh=5ed2ef530c2a](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/10/05/the-forbes-400-self-made-score-2021-from-silver-spooners-to-bootstrappers/?sh=5ed2ef530c2a) Fuck Elon Musk but that emerald mine thing is just an absolute lie lmao I don't think this necessarily takes away from their achievements. It's still relatively impressive they got where they are, whether you like them or hate their guts. There's enough rich people who don't do anything with their wealth and just live like high class monkeys. This does highlight the current fundamental flaw of capitalism right now (or one many at least) in that not everybody, and growingly hardly anybody, can actually partake in it. If I took a loan out of 50k and it didn't go well I'm pretty much screwed for a good portion of my life. (Unless I take out another 150k ehehehe) I'm not saying capitalism bad, but surely the wealth disparities has gotten out of hand. I guess this is r/worldpolitics now Fuck capitalism and the braindead bootlickers who defend this self-made crap. Shit is misleading as usual.. Musksndad was half owner of 1 emerald mine.. Basically, you’re a loser if your parents helped you do anything. If you had any help whatsoever. I’m talking you better be an only child, homeless, on the brink of death and addicted to drugs of you want any recognition in this world. If daddy even gave you $5 to get a candy bar, you’re not self made. Get out of here you’re all fake fakers, we only need true heroes here 👉 Free Airdrop to get 200,000 FDAO : https://t.me/futuredaosbot 👉 Link to buy PRESALE: https://futuredaos.io/ 🔥 Use the referral link at the website to get 20% BNB and 50% FDAO rewards with each referral 📝Contract https://bscscan.com/token/0x88ed0b5a34bad0c92d5c85fd08c243c7c1d6407c Follow the project's social networks to receive the latest announcements 🥰 📱Socials: 📨Telegram: https://t.me/FutureDaosOfficialChat 📨Telegram channel: https://t.me/FutureDaosAnnouncement 🐦Twitter : https://twitter.com/futuredaos_fdao 🌐Web: https://futuredaos.io/ The people kissingBezos ass in here is disgusting, he is by far the most crooked Billionaire on this list,right next to Gates. He made his money by using illegal monopoly loopholes, infiltrates his competitors board of directors and manipulates his competitors stock prices with the help of Market makers and Crooked hedgefunds. The guy is a fucking leech True but if I gave any of you 300,000 dollars a highly doubt you would become a billionaire, you know that takes a lot of work right lol? I love liberal Reddit constantly foaming at the mouth at another person success. Now do Diddy, Jay Z, Oprah, Spielberg, Lucas, Rihanna, Zuckerberg, Jordan, Kanye, Tyler Perry et al. Musks father Errol was neither the sole owner (only half owner) of the mine, neither was the Mine in South Africa but Zambia. Adding this Musk became enstranged to his father at around age 10 and left his place for Canada. So the part about Musk is really just intentionally misleading. You think any of them would've made it big without a lot of sweat ? Some might be real assholes here in some regard or in Bezos case every regard, but that still doesnt diminish that their companies shaped entire centuries to a certain extend. They’re still self-made billionaires. They’ve brought their fortune from thousands to billions. You can’t just give someone $300k and think they could’ve done what Jeff Bezos did, or anyone on this list for that matter. I mean 99% of people who gets money from their parents ends going bankrupt Now do Steve Jobs. “But - he was an asshole.” it took all of 30 seconds to find out the elon musk thing was a lie. his dad owned half a share of stock in an emerald mine. his dad made a total of $200k in life time earnings from the stock. lol Now list all other privilege kids who didn't amount to anything. Yeah, there's a whole bucket of them. You guys can seethe all you want, most people far more privileged than these guys end up doing much less. The amazon empire stating with 300k? that has enormous merit. 300k isn't a huge amount of money. My house cost more than that. That was just a good investment on his parents and friends behalf. This leaves out the tens of thousands of hours spent honing their skills, how valuable their ideas were, and how much better off the world is for them. I get it. You are a lazy POS who hates the rich and finds excuses to justify that, but no amount of tearing them down will bring meaning to your own life. I can't stand any of them but Bezos' story is impressive. So anyone that comes from money can turn it into billions? Yeah...ok. LMAO This is total bollocks. All of these guys had a vision they followed and were relentless in following it. All are smart. And all believed in themselves. Sure none of them carried great debt at a young age but all are exceptional. Please add selm made billionaire jenner! you can become a self made millionaire in the US, but not a billionaire without being born in the right place at the right time to the right parents. further rant: And no, not anyone can become president. same thing. Plus you have to be over 6’ tall with a penis. I'll never understand why Bezos gets tossed in with this group. Nobody in this thread could ever take something like 300k and turn it into a multi-million dollar company. Its the equivalent of someone taking 1000 dollars and turning it into over a hundred million in revenue Sure. Turn 300$ into 300$ million then! But these guys got to the top 0.0001% with their initial money. Imagine what you can do with 10k. Money loves money. As Warren Buffet said, “I won the lottery at birth.” He knows he’s not self made. Why do you think most of old age scientists were aristocrats? This subreddit is garbage lol You can give some people a million reasons for success and still they will end up unsucceful.. Fake news almost all of it. Especially Elon. Put it all on 0 in roulette As it turns out I know a Nigerian prince who is in kind of a pinch, he wants me to be the middle man so if you send me that $300k I can get it to him and next week hell pay you back any amount you ask for They all took advantage of momentum and had the skill not to squander it. To be fair if most people had 300k they would waste it in some way. I probably couldn't turn a few hundred grand into billions but I don't care to, could definitely turn it into 10 mil , enough where I could live a modest comfortable life while contributing nothing to society because FTW. Most people would be given the same opportunity as these individuals here and still mess it up....don't make what they all achieved here nothing but just am helping hand it also took a huge toll of their seperate individual strength and to some extent some level of innovative creativity to get there just don't take what they achieve as a just an easy handover please This is INCREDIBLY over-simplified. Especially in the case of Bill Gates. If you actually think someone with the position of CEO of IBM will just invest in anything just because ""a woman asked him to"" you have no clue how the world works. Sure, having good connections will always help you, but people in strong positions don't usually just waste time and money investing on whoever asks. You need to show them something good enough to make them feel like investing in you is a good idea. This really sounds like some butthurt millenial who is trying to make it seem like ""hey the only reason I'm not rich as fuck is because I'm not lucky and the world hates me"". Lots of people have had a good leg up. It's just that the four aforementioned people above knew how to use their inheritance wisely. I love how haters use this as a way to complain like lmao it's still impressive as fuck what they did. ​ No one is fucking self made, taking the term literally shows brain damage. ​ Billionaires are cunts but this kind of argument is always from petty sad individuals Elon has done more self made moves to Earn his fortune. Especially during his dot com era Everyone forgets Elon founded PayPal, but ok. Hahahaha these people hate capitalism because they are losers So? Oversimplification per usual on reddit. Anyone can win a lottery, but not everyone can turn it into a gold mine. This is complete crap. Giv me $300,000k pls https://moguldom.com/278102/fact-check-did-elon-musk-inherit-apartheid-money-from-his-south-african-father/amp/ This sub used to be so good until trolls and bots flooded it with unverified vitriol. What would you rather have them do? Sounds about white Cry more How about Zuck? Malcom Gladwell. This is annoying because the work they have put in gave them a payoff that far exceeds the effort that it took to make their company/business. It is frustrating, but at least each of them created something or added some sort of new service to the economy and to the world. This post reeks of moms basement I am curious did any of these 4 claim to be self made? Or did we slap that label on them and then get mad about the label we put on them? Honest question because I literally have no idea. Maybe we should see how their parents become rich? Whatever the implication intended by the OP, these 4 have **not** squandered their start. Yes, everyone decades ago started with $100,000s (worth millions back then in current day valuation) freely given to them by family members... or extremely close friends & people who already had a lot of wealth. 'But there's a reason over 30% of people downvoted this, because its stupid. Just because they didn't have to pull themselves up the bootstraps it doesn't mean they didn't build & innovate in businesses or intelligently grew their wealth. All of them are x10000 wealthier than anyone who helped them out earlier on in life decades ago. But what is this to really tell you? Technically, no human being is truly 100% self made... some people are a lot more self made than others & some are carried heavily by the money they already had but just do not realize their privilege or blessings so think they could've done it all if they were in lower middle class or middle middle class families growing up. Your point is? Many more kids from richer parents all over the world - Hollywood, music Industry etc - that do absolutely nothing with their lives, some simply sell themselves on social media, others nothing more than washed out drug addicts. Of course, the real elephant in the room is the jealousy of all the ""self-meh"" sons of ""self-meh"" fathers, right? Everyone likes to shit on bill gates, but do note the man wrote a fucking operating system. Most of us here can't even write basic shit without help from stack overflow or github libraries, and this man wrote an OPERATING SYSTEM. Who cares if he got help, making windows is impressive enough by itself. Yes, and Steve Jobs sold his car to start Apple. Regarding Bezos, you apparently have never heard of venture capitalism. Gotta have money to make money. Life is not fair. Period so, the problem is your father, the same who bring you to world and did not planned about that. And well, i only having a son if a can sustain him. Apartheid era emeralds mine medicine it was definitely ill gotten or stolen. What does Elon’s dad owning an emerald mine even mean? Seems like the least relevant out of the four You need a good idea, venture capital, and be able to sell it. They did it. This sub is really frcking weird lmao Wtf does this have to do with economics? Beautiful bootstraps No one gets rich on their own. It sure helps that they had resources but they still had to make ""good"" business decisions. They are still self made. Getting an opportunity is not the same as being successful. why are people on reddit so bitter 😂 Elon wanted nothing to do with his father which is why he moved to Canada at 17. He hasn't got a single dollars worth of help from him since them. Next time get your research from somewhere other then your mom's friends on Facebook. A lot has to go right for that kind of success. All the old scientists were nobles, poor people were to busy feeding themselves to concern themselves with things like electricity. Jealous much? Bro, you really think it's that easy to turn 300k in 200 billions? This sub is literally r/socialism No doubt, it is harder - much harder - to become very wealthy starting from nothing. And it explains why most of these guys are white. But it is also easy to just sit back and take it easy when you come from money. These guys made it happen. I am sure they all would have been successful anyway, maybe not as ""big time"" as they ended up, though. anybody I've ever known who talked about being self-made and all that has always been a flippin nepotism baby If I give you $300k now, will you be a billionaire? Competence matters. Now do mark The Matthew Effect Watching DROPOUT. Elizabeth thought she belonged in this group. Someone needs to read the biography of these guys. Their information is bullshit Nice!!!!!! You know morons know this doesn't tell the whole story right? Bills gates was flat broke when he started Microsoft. Buffet started investing at the age of 13on his own. And do you know how hard it is to start a business from nothing? Because I do and it's not easy. They did have an edge over the general population but still they did better away better than people with the same edge Where's Trump? Hahahahaha You do understand that you still have to convince any investors to give you the money right? Even your parents. Absolutely no one that understands business is going to give you money if they think you'll fail. And they certainly aren't going introduce you to business connections if you're going to make them look bad in the end. You still have to convince them your going to put in the work. When I started my business I had people help me out. It's the way it works. they need to be able to not lose the money first. the money gave them the courage to start something new Yep silver spooned trust babys. And to think the rest of their money was made off of working people. ""Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude - and destroy if possible - those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them."" ― Carlos Ruiz Zafón Errol musk owned a few shares of a company that ran a emerald mine but he didn’t own all of it or half as other websites were saying Actually Jeff bozos is self made anyone who has a great idea can convince investors to invest in your company! Out of all these people Buffett has the biggest advantage You forgot to mention that Trump started off with a million dollar loan from his pops too. Never seen a post like this in my entire life. All left leaning democrats. The Cabal Self made in a sense of self extraordinary talent, vision and work ethic. They were dealt a good hand of cards and they played them wisely. People who make posts like that implicitly say - if I would that sort of money, I’ll be there too. No, you would not. Nevertheless we must to recognize how much talent is wasted in a lack of the access to resources. But that does not mean, above mentioned people did not earn it, so in a sense they are self made. Exactly. Tired of people thinking they were just normal everyday people who ""made it"". Glad someone dispersed the lies of the boot licking liberals and libertarians. At least it’s public. My professional live is polluted by similar people pretending they are really safe made, when they are not. And they give very poor career advice to younger generations that don’t know the truth… Drive to Vegas, throw down on red. Real advice? Invest it in the S&P 500. Close the window to your brokerage account and don't log in again for 20 years. It's that easy. The hard part is not looking at it. Not cashing it out and spending it. Not selling it in fear during recessions every decade or so. Etc. Check out S&P calculators on historical returns and what 300K would be worth today if you invested it 20 years ago. Edit: Obviously do actually login every so often. I meant that more in theory of just leaving the account alone and not obsessively checking it every day and making dumb moves like selling in a down market. That’s the larger point people are missing. It’s nice to have start up capital, but growing it takes talent. Otherwise, lottery winners would just get super rich starting their own businesses. Edit: Jesus Christ. How do I turn off notifications? Way too many people who think they’re special just cause their poo automatically gets flushed away for them after they take a shit. People think it’s that easy lol. Like getting $300K is randomly gonna turn your into a multi-millionaire. Invest in blue chip dividend paying stock. Come back 25 years later. Late edit: diversified portfolio of dividend paying stock. ETFs can accomplish this too. Go to r/wallstreetbets buddy 300k was more valuable back then I'd say maybe start with a multiplex turn that in to monthly income and eventually equity for more multiplexes or even a small apartment building Doge coin obv. Everyone on reddit does, apparently you just go to rich people club and they hand you money. [deleted] Real advice? Talk to a number of brokers/money managers and do a proper portfolio allocation. It all depends on your age and financial profile. If you want to invest yourself, look into ETFs (I like commodities right now, gold, silver, copper, titanium) and fixed income. If you invest in solid preferred shares you can yield close to 10% a year with minimal risk. Inherited?? I can't imagine you were in that tough of a spot to begin with. I bet you'll be fine, even if you throw it all on Red What are you talking about? You already got the hardest part done by inheriting the money, now you should be a billionaire so Reddit can roast you. Invest in real estate and/or stock. With interest rates getting hiked, everyone is expecting a recession sooner than later with some expecting a crash. Both carry risks, but its better than letting banks use your cash while you sit on it. Not a financial expert. Buy a bunch of gold and wait 20 years. By that time the value of money will have dropped so much that your gold will be worth millions. You'll still have almost exactly the same buying power as you have today, though. I'm sure the guys over at r/wallstreetbets can help you Painfully easy, just put it all in an S&P 500 index fund and let it sit. Follow the 4% rule and there’s your retirement. Start a business S&P 500 has an average rate of return of roughly 10% over the past 30 years or so, if that were to continue and you put it all in and left it there, you'd hit $1 million in 13 years, 2 mil in 20, 3 mil in 25, so millions is definitely doable with some half-decent investing. r/dogecoin /s It's not just about the money, with rich parents and friends he would have connections and access to better credit and advice/information than your average person with the same amount of cash in hand. I wish I had inherited your $300k. I probably wouldn’t do anything smart with it, but I wish I had it [deleted] [deleted] Bezos started with $1MM+ in investment, so...I'm sorry. r/bogleheads Damn all ive inherited is shitty genetics *DOLLAR COST AVERAGE* into an S&P 500 index fund. You could dump it in all at once, but that leaves you open to a dramatic fall 5 minutes after you buy. Dollar Cost Averaging - the practice of buying some every now and then (every week/month, every time the index is down 1%, etc.) - helps to protect from those rogue waves. take some time to educate yourself with finance, dont tell anyone about your fortunate situation, dont make decisions based on emotion. --dont take financial advice from reddit Give it to me 😤👍 Why can’t you turn it into 200 billion? Jeff Bezos did. /s Just add two zero's at the end obviously Convert it into Bitcoin and send it to me. I'll let you know my address once you confirm it's in BTC /Jk Let me introduce you to 3-card monty. Will change your life If you give it to me, I can show you how to turn it into $3.00! That's a bargain at any price. According to this post it's simple. Anyone can become a billionaire it they have some money to start, so why aren't you doing it? invest into good stocks , dont change your spending just coz you now have 300k. First rule of getting a sudden windfall (inheritance, lottery, business sale) is don't talk about it. Friends and family you didn't even know you had are gonna come out of the woodwork and start asking you to share. Honestly build a storage unit facility. Go to a small city and buy a few acres then build it out in sections. Have a front desk with a apartment upstairs. Then hire an 18 year old single mother offering her a place to stay (do not have sex with her). Now you have a steady business that has high earning potential, 95% success rate and you don't have to do anything. Depending on the area you can net between $8k-75k/month I can turn that into millions, but itll cost you $200,000 Start a blueberry/black walnut farm in East Texas. It counts as agroforestry, so you don't pay property taxes. You wake money off of the blueberry while the trees are growing. And in 20 years you harvest it all for millions. Put your mom in the board of a big company and your dad in the congress where he can manipulate stockmarket and buy a mine in a third world country. I mean, that was over 20 years ago I got some solid investing advice. But it ain’t free. Buy a night club. Have you heard of wallstreetbets. You can yolo that to dailies or even weeklies to begin with. Disclaimer: this is not financial advice. I'm an autist With 300,000 you could talk to some investors. Start a business, *gamble*, or just throw it in an IRA By $300,000 worth of illegal *stuff* and resell it for way more 😈 ETF or EE Bonds from Treasury. Lock it up with a good intrest rate and dont break it for 5 years Start an online website selling books. Advertise it on social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram. Make it unique and different from the others. Apparently that is all there is to it. Have a successful parent and you will become a billionaire according to this. Capital is an essential ingredient but not the only ingredient open a bookstore in your garage Get a consult with a “fee only” financial advisor. Find one here. You pay them hourly. https://www.napfa.org/ Do not go to Edward Jones or a bank financial advisor. You want an advisor who is a fiduciary—meaning they have a legal obligation to give you honest financial advice. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiduciary.asp Some financial advisors are not fiduciaries, and they can legally put your money is worse investments that pay them a higher commission. Most likely, you will be advised to put some money into real estate and a mutual fund, depending on your financial situation. $300,000 is not a lot compared to the resources these men started out with. But if you have a business idea, consider taking the risk. If I had a shit ton of cash I would find one of those bots that have been made that automatically mirror the moves in the stock market that nancy pelosi and her husband make. Ive heard they beat even the best investment firms, must be financial genuises! Too bad im a poor and have to overdraft my bank to pay rent. Puts Step 1: pump that shit into your 401k w/ roth and after tax contributions that you roll into roth. Step 2: IRA & HSA max outs. Step 3: VTI and chill. $1 when you're 20 is worth 88 when you're 65. Put 100k in an index fund for 30 years, use the rest for a down payment on a house. Make double payments on a 30yr mortgage for 15 years, retire early and happy. The end. Send it to me and I will invest it for you for 10% of it. Hello. I'd like to offer you an opportunity to.... Whatever gets you to think, ""Woah, I'm not missing that boat"". I'll be here driving my rusty old Cadillac, see you soon. 31 black. r/Bogleheads r/wallstreetbets like a full retard! 🫣 Get rich friends Pick a coin, any coin Buy 50k of IOTA and wait 10 years. Invest the rest on a spread of stock portfolio and eat instant noodles for the coming 20 years. Send it to me and I’ll send you back a million in 4 days. 300k today VS 300k 30 years ago…,,,, still a big difference. SP 500 index fund will get you there! You ever try taking advantage of poor people? I hear that's a popular strategy. Because you have $300,000 as a young person doesn't mean that you keep it, or that you turn it into millions and billions, or that you will lose it all. Nor does it mean that truing it into millions and billions isn't incredibly difficult and that it doesn't take incredibly hard work. It does mean that you can invest into ideas or yourself with limited or no risk and that you get opportunities to invest that people who would have higher risk (ie, becoming homeless, losing their business, losing health coverage, starving, having loan sharks come and break your thumbs etc. etc.) As well as the normal perks of having the money, like a superior education and networking contacts via schools and well to do family, unless you have that opportunity to invest in yourself risk free it is simply impossible to acquire wealth at massive levels by any legal means and not be in real risk of becoming homeless or incarcerated. Google it 😜 Fund construction projects. Fund anything people need. Stay away from idealistic college students. Buy rentals. Buy inexpensive condos in low-wage communities with plenty of section 8 housing. Buy only one bedroom and try your best to only house elderly, single section 8 residents. Definitely do not rent to single women or single men as they will destroy your investment. Invest in REITs. Invest in water, humans can't live more than 5 days without water. Nestlé figured that out a long time ago -smart move Nestle. Basically put your money in places where you know there's a primal human need. Step one: buy a lot of fentanyl. Put it all in ETFs. Start a book store when someone creates a brand new form of communication that links people from across the world and allows for secure financial transactions. Get more money from rich friends. Get lucky. Start letting other people sell through your website. Start warehousing. Start fucking business owners by copying their product and selling them at lower prices because you're a monolith. Don't pay taxes because cities need jobs and they're so desperate for growth they'll let you use their infrastructure for free. It'll be harder for you though since Amazon will just buy you out. I worked for one of the initial investors of Amazon and College friend to Bezos. He was a generous and charitable individual who is now a billionaire because of the risk he took. He said the early days of Amazon were grueling, filled with risk and stress, and many thought their investments would yield little return. These 4 men may have leg up advantages but there are many others who didn't who are also wildly successful. There's also a lot of children of the ultra rich who don't amount to anything but a drain on the family trust. Dan Pena is a good example of a Los Angeles Latino who had very little growing up and a troubled youth. Now worth 450 million. definitely check r/Bogleheads Most people that win millions in the lottery are broke some years later. So you're in good company Bonds I was going to say. I know he didn’t alone, but even if I win the lottery (maxes out at 70 million in my country) I don’t think I could turn that into billions. I mean, I won’t know unless I try, but still. 300k to one of the largest companies is pretty insane (overlooking the toxic culture, abuse etc.) AWS is still the largest cloud provider despite competing with behemoths like Microsoft and Google that had a head start in the tech space. Give it to your Nigerian prince-cousin. Find the nearest televangelist and sow your seed. Take cold showers. Meditate. Get 6 friends to sign up to sell your product and get them to get friends to sell your product. Head on over to r/wallstreetbets 😂 In the words of Ben Kissel ‘BOOM flip it’ 1 word. [GameStop.](https://youtu.be/JdnBV-S-RXk) Dave Ramsey It’s easy! Look at bezos! That’s what he had and now he’s a Trillionair! people act like these things are the only reason these guys are rich lmfao. Clowns. Yea they had some good fortune and support, but it takes a hell of a lot more than that. ok i assume ur serious so you deserve a serious answer. 300k in todays money is not like 300k 20 or 30 years ago. its a difficult number. now quiet good enough and yet to much to just waste it. now understand most businesses are not made with your own money but rather you use it to develop your idea good enough to sell it to investors. this is if you have any kind of aspiration some sort of making your own company/product service. if your just wanna invest, anotehr option would be cheap as possibel real estate. only probblem, that ship is mostly sailed and only one property is high risk. also understand there is no such thing as passive income. every income has maintanance and regulkar risk checks. ​ so before wsomeone can really answer your question, most important is what you wanna do, what do you feel comfortable in and with. best plan wont help ya if you burn or chicken out ​ ideally you have a passion youre really good in. then you try to find a way to scale it and create a business outta it r/superstonk oh my guy your wish is my command, it *could* very well be many millions Sounds like you should open a Casino. Invest in SP500 and don't touch it for 20 years. $300,000 x 1.105^(20) = $2,209,870.45 Even a much more conservative 7% gives $1,160,905.34 yeah exactly, so many sour grapes in threads like these I don’t even understand why Bezos needed $300k, wasn’t he working as an ibanker before he started Amazon? According to this meme, that's all it takes! Congrats! [deleted] You know the easiest way to make a small fortune, don’t you? Start with a big one. Yeah, Jeff was more self made than most. I had invested 300,000 and got nothing nearly as big as Amazon out of it. And after thinking about it, many kids come from companies that are on the boards and so on, this is just an example of selection bias. It is just 4 people ignoring the thousands in their position that didn’t become billionaires or even millionaires. In fact, I think millionaire next door suggest that most kids (over 80%) blow their families wealth and die as non-millionaires. If that is true, this is just a noisy and very bias selection bias to push a narrative. This isn’t economic, but politics. Same here. My oldest inherited $200k from her mother’s life insurance when she turned 18. She gave me the middle finger and took off. Came back home two years later flat broke and pregnant. For everyone of these that got a head start and ‘made it’ there are thousands if not millions that had a similar opportunity and blew it. True, but have you ever tried turning $0 into $200bln? That's the Dark Souls of capitalism. Plus his father basically abandoned the family. His mom married an immigrant that came to America with something like $20. Yeah, he got help from his family, but he's definitely not from a wealthy family. Still doesn't have a relationship with his father. Adopted his stepdad's name. Should have focused on his background in hedge funds. Inflation makes that 300k a good bit more. But it was more than $300K. The $300K was just the amount from his parents. But the main point is that a lot of people never even have that chance but they act like all these guys are rags-to-riches. At best, they're really-rich-to-mega-rich. [deleted] Also it's relatively easy in the US to build a professional network of people that will help you with a pre seed and seed round, so anything below a million is relatively easy to get. So...I can confirm that some people will never see $300k in a lump sum in their entire lifetime. Fuck turning it into billions; if you can't turn $300k into a respectable passive income via investments or whatever, then fuck you. How are you so stupid that you completely miss the point?? But it's even harder to turn $0 into $300k, unless you're privileged, which is the point. It's even harder for a cobalt slave to turn $0 into anything. The point is that while it's hard to do that with $300k and well funded and connected friends and family, it's nearly impossible to do it without it. I wish I had a dark enough soul to turn 0 into 200billion. Came here to say this. I feel like OP is in the wrong sub… Gambling with the only $300k you’ve ever had to your name is a lot different than the safety net of knowing if you fail, your life style will mostly remain unchanged. It enables you to take bigger risks. VC money is easy to get. Personally, I will give anybody $300K who can get me 1% of what Bezo's has in a decade. Heck, I'll take 0.5% you just have to get me 1/200 of what Bezo's made. Can you do that, seems easy enough right? Elon started with even less than that. He and his brother received a combined total of $28,000 from their father. Easier than turning $300 into $200b. You still need the opportunity and execution to cross the finish line, but you don't even get the opportunity to start without cosmically lucky birth circumstances or opportunities. I hate this little info graphic that pops up for this reason. It’s just meant to stoke resentment. Bezos was already wealthy from a career he was amazing at before starting Amazon. If the $300k thing is even true, he was cutting friends and family in as early investors. He’s still an asshole, but this is not the reason why. And also…$300K? So you are saying he built all of Amazon with 1 years salary for 2 software engineers and no salary for himself? That was a drop in the bucket. Probably a lot more likely than starting off with zero though to be fair. A person still needs to work pretty hard to make that level of worth. But the primary issue is that those people that can get 300k (more often then not) are not playing on the same field as someone that grew up sleeping on the floor for a few years, grew up in an abusive family or experienced huge setbacks like unexpected family deaths. These problems tend to be clustered and distributed most unevenly based entirely on your random demographic. Often it's better to be lucky than good. That's not the point. The point is not that anyone can turn 300k into 200bln - the point is that the vast majority of the people in the world will never even have a chance to take a crack at trying. It is important to understand that's what he was given, but his parental safety net was so large it afforded him the ability to take risks. Also $300,000 then is about $600,000 today. Just saying lol. Reminds me of a post of how a guy turned his $200k inheritance into $9k. Yup. I had way more than that raised (~$700k) in my first and only startup and it failed. It is absolutely not a given that you can succeed with a $300k seed round, let alone turn that into a trillion dollar company or whatever Amazon is I can confirm that it's easier than turning any amount less than $300k into $200bln. I can further confirm that it's a whole HELL of a lot easier than turning, say, anything less than $100k into $200bln. Or even $1bln. IMHO, admittedly speaking as a non-billionaire, part of the point is surely not just the initial seed money these folks had, but all the attendant social and business ""networking"" and other types of priceless access they also enjoyed due to their respective luck of birth. It would be if you invested that 300k at the height of the dot com bubble It's several hundred thousand times easier than turning 3$ into 200bln. Sure is a lot easier than with nothing tho, right? yeah you have to be a sociopath and borderline evil in order to do it I’m sick of reading these low quality memes about rich people.. can we move the messaging to the retards in government that can’t figure out taxation and minimum wage? The first million is always the hardest, that's why I start on the second million To be completely fair and honest, Amazon solved a service problem. Right now it's at the cost of human capital but they did solve a problem and now people are used to the service level they provide. They had to create their own shipping solution. It wasn’t just the $300k though; Bezos was from Wall Street and used his connections to help fuck over his competition, both big and small. More so than money, connections to power are what’s important… but the two often go hand in hand. Bezos had a network or other wealthy people. [He worked on Wall Street in fintech for international trade and finance. He was a VP of a financial firm before he started Amazon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_career). Bezos started Amazon with a near 0% risk of failure, even if he failed he had many places to go. Much, much easier to take risks when the risk is minimal. The point isn't that it's easy to become a billionaire if you have a huge head start - the point is that you need a huge head start (among other things) if you even want a shot at it. At some point it’s just selection bias. Somebody has to get stupid wealthy because that’s the nature of the system but the relevant point is that person will already be rich to begin with. There's no amount of work you can do to justify owning 200 bn dollars To be fair, Amazon was founded in 1994. 300k went a lot further back then, plus it was back when the internet was still young and wasn’t saturated with millions of people trying to be dotcom millionaires. Want to sell peanut butter on the internet? You could, because there was no competition and it wasn’t regulated. It's a little easier when you exploit all of your employees to the point that they piss in bottles and work around dead coworkers ʚ♡⃛ɞ(ू•ᴗ•ू❁) Yeah, but they didn't turn 30k into 200 billion, a sum that would still be a stretch for many. The point is these people had opportunities the vast majority of us didn't, and that maybe we should focus on giving more people opportunity and not further elevating their status with false narratives. It's like turning $300 into $200 million. Ridiculous. It's sure as hell not easy, but starting off with several hundred thousand gives you the stability and safety net to make risky decisions that the vast majority of people don't have. Yeah you have to exploit just an unspeakable number of other people to put up this numbers. The difference between $300k and $200 billion is about $200 billion. Yea NOW But back 30 to 40 years ago it was not only worth more, but everything cost less, and more industries actually cared about THE NEW thing or innovation. Now if that innovation isn't how to stiff people and outsource or pay the least or make legal slavery... it don't matter. Then again looming at bozos... that's basically slavery It’s not but you need 300k first to try Only 300k at first. Then more from rich friends. Over time it would be. Invest in index funds and government bonds. Some people with $300k aren't looking to make $200B. Because these four people and about for or five others have all the money.. How is anyone going to make more than 6 figures when 8 people are making billions of dollars Y that's the only one that don't blend in the topic, but falls in the survivorship's bias tho. I mean bezos also always had a support system. For average people it's difficult because once the money is invested or whatever it's fickle, what happens if you gotta pay bills. When inherented money gets built up enough to take bills out of the equation, all money is investible income. But you need it. And you will not find it laying in the street (or working for someone) Actually the current value of that 1993 seed money of 300k is 600K. While not billions, you can invest that and turn it into millions in short turn buying staple stocks and clean dividend yields. It's a lot easier than starting with $3k Nope it isn't. You also need to know the right people and accept that you will work tens of thousands into the ground. Literally. Even harder to turn zero into a billion. Also, it's not 300k, it said ""more from rich friends"" so who knows what that means. No one said it was. Just that access to money is more limiting factor among people than ambition or ideas. Yeah, it’s like turning $100 into $66 million That $300k wasn’t every penny he had though, if you had that money to just play with then it’d be easier to boost it, most people would be using that money for a house because they can’t risk to lose it It's even harder to turn -£57 into 200bln It’s easier to turn 300k into something than to start from $0. No one is saying it’s easy, but to act like it doesn’t play a role is stupid. It's easier to turn 300k into into 200bln than it is to turn 10k into 200bln. Considering 10k in savings is hard enough for a large portion of the population I'm not sure your argument does much to help continue to prop up the false narrative that is the rags to riches illusion. It’s much easier to turn $300k into $200b than it is to turn $0 into $200b. It isn't easy. But it also isn't self made. And they do not deserve it. Try 300k into Amazon’s current market cap of 1.649 Trillion. 200 billion is only his portion. It’s super easy with worker exploitation. But it's only possible because you have time to do it. I can confirm it is impossible without the 300k. It's actually very easy. Just double it every day like the guy on Tiktok said. It's not easy, but it's *much* harder to turn $0 into $200bln. Also most of the benefits rich people get are of *access*, if you have wealthy families more doors and opportunities will be presented. It still takes genuine work to take advantage of them, but the rich have it infinitely easier than someone born poor and unconnected. Arnold is more self made than any of these 4, too. Warren buffet realized residents of trailer parks own the trailer but not the land the trailer is on, so he bought trailer parks and then raised rent because residents had to pay… he’s a pretty big POS too Arnold is life’s main character As a person who has spent his entire life in the Military and Oilfield. Please revise your definition of working hard. While Buffet may be careful about his image he is no saint. He has influenced entire markets at the expense of the American public. Funny how Buffet clammers about how billionaires don’t get taxed enough (for example saying he pays less than his secretary) but then does nothing further…. If you think Warren Buffet is not evil then his marketing team worked. I bet you also think he drives that old car that has been posted on Reddit. Luckily u/GOPJ1 mentioned some of his nastiness. These folks aren’t rags to riches, they aren’t self-made, the truth is they have good propaganda marketers. Nobody with more than 100 million dollars is honest. It's because an evil man doesn't have to worry about things like ethics, and if you ignore ethics it makes it easier to make money. You been to a warren buffet sex party. That man is wild with multiple wives and gfs. Fuck him What all five have in common is that they tried. A lot of people don't want to put in effort unless they're guaranteed success. Work hard and exploit a lot “everyone is self made, only the successful make note of it” What makes you think Buffet is a decent man? Getting help is one thing. You still have to have the drive and put in the effort. Here's the link for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/ta2zW-llIgo Yet you still order from Amazon 😂😂😂😂 Everybody gets help, but they were still the primary drivers of their success. Its not like someone sat down next to Buffett and simply told him which companies to invest in or buy. You earn your first million and steal your first billion. Arnold would be wrong. Yeah, Arnold came from the humble background of som of someone who applied to be a Nazi and SA officer. Elon though had the Daddy he doesn’t talk to that person nice owned an Emerald mine in S.A. Warren Buffet is not pretty honest. He literally makes tons of money from Ponzi schemes. There's always a tremendous amount of luck thrown in there as well. But given that everybody gets help in one way or another in their lives, being ""self made"" does not necessitate the disallowing of help from others That was such a good speech Why is Bezos evil but not Buffet? Agreed, imagine how many people were given more help and have nothing to show for it. Not defending Bezos or any of em for that matter but imagine sitting behind a keyboard and convincing yourself that you could do the same as them if only you had the same advantages. Say what you want about Buffett, but I’ll never forget working at See’s Candies one Christmas season and the “reward” for our store having the most sales (aka, probably the most busy) was 2 Hot-and-Ready Little Caesar’s pizzas. This was to be split among one shift, so not even every employee got the “reward.” All billionairs all survive off leeching off the work of others. Every single one could disappear tomorrow and it would not make any difference to the rest of the world. No company would collapse. No govement would fall. No one would starve. In fact it would likely make the world would likely be 1,000,000,000x better. Most all Billionaires are narcist. Elon no different, although I think his heart is in the right place...maybe.... Honest folks rarely, if ever, make it to the top while those that do, tend to not give a rats ass about anyone but themselves...That is why many caring managers will never pass that glass ceiling. As the old saying goes, ""good artists copy while great artist plagiarize."" Mark Z. anyone??? Well said 👏. Everyone needs help in life. No matter how rich or poor you are ""It takes work to become a millionaire, and luck to become a billionaire."" It's a great speech. Here's the full video but skip to 3:45 when he really gets into it. https://youtu.be/RJsvR_gSEjg Warren Buffet was the son of a congressman who got a head start from his family >Everybody got help somewhere. so everyone gets help somewhere, but only a few achieve a high level of success. the difference is what you personally do, or .. make. so self made is actually a fair term. (Or not, just throwing ideas out) :) > You can either be pretty honest like Warren Buffet What makes you think he is not an exploitative piece of shit too? [He is well known to be exactly that.](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/special-investigation-the-dirty-secret-behind-warren-buffetts-billions/) I don't think Warren buffet is ""honest"". He prays on people. His company buys up trailor parks on massive scale and continues to raise prices until they're nearly unforgettable for people. They buy up just the lots and shit. If you're a billionaire you're a sociopath. “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” - Warren Buffett ""Self made"" is only a lie if you go deep enough with semantics. No one is self made in the end because their parents gave them life, and probably paid for their college, and their teachers and professors taught them most of what they used to get to where they're at right now. Jeff Bezos, I consider ""self made"" because he also put in a lot of his own money and experience into starting the company. If his parents didn't invest in him, he would have got the money sooner or later. He worked for a decade plus making his own money. Elon Musk, I consider ""self made"" because he took the money he earned from his first business and exponentially grew it with other projects. Think of it this way, just because they got ""nudged"" in the right direction because of their parents it doesn't mean they're not self made, because there are thousands times more spoiled kids that just used up their parents money instead of growing it. Lol you don’t become a billionaire by being honest or good. > you do have to work hard and cut as many throats as you can I looked it up and there are some 2600 billionaires in the world right now, compared to the current population of 7.7 billion people billionaires make up 0.0000337662 of the population. You need to be so incredibly lucky and hard working even with a starting fortune of some hundreds of thousands or a few million to become a billionaire. The barrier is made bigger that by far most people could never get this starting fortune. Just having a million is impossible for [almost 99% of the world](https://www.google.no/search?q=how+many+millionaires+in+the+world&hl=no&sxsrf=APq-WBsbeAYJI_YtKarK69nka1XKDFvQ7Q%3A1651012245331&source=hp&ei=lXJoYo2vEI2Txc8P45-IkAQ&iflsig=AHkkrS4AAAAAYmiApYc5cXwwawoo33C9MWNv7WfDCE39&oq=how+many+millionaires&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMYADIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQ6CAgAEIAEELEDOgsIABCABBCxAxCDAToUCC4QgAQQsQMQgwEQxwEQowIQ1AI6EQguEIAEELEDEIMBEMcBEK8BOgsILhCxAxCDARDUAjoRCC4QgAQQsQMQgwEQxwEQ0QM6BQguEIAEOgsILhCABBDHARDRAzoOCC4QgAQQsQMQgwEQ1AI6CAgAELEDEIMBUABY7BtguyRoAXAAeACAAWqIAacKkgEEMjEuMZgBAKABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz) Berkshire bought my state's electrical utility and then cranked up rates and went to war with solar power for a period, so either Buffet's not an angel or his business isn't. I think it's more that he's very aware that people should be critical of billionaires, and knows that if he was in the shoes of most Americans he wouldn't like billionaires either. He's said he just does what he likes to do, and doesn't quite understand how society thinks it is this valuable. I think I've heard him say before that if humans were still in hunter-gatherer societies rather than post-industrial market captalism, he'd be some tiger's lunch. Bill Gates was a shrewed businessman he almost got Microsoft broken up. Then later turned to philanthropy which is nice. 🙂👍🥺 You don’t just have to work hard. You have to be a sociopath I mean obviously nobody can physically build entire corporations and empires with their bare hands but I think it’s pretty clear that the term “self made” implies to some level that one managed to leverage their skills and relationships with others to build something. I’d argue that the ability to work with and coordinate effectively with other people to create something still warrants the descriptor “self made,” in the sense that you still fundamentally got people to do things for you on your own accord through mutual cooperation. It’s like saying that if you build a doghouse, you didn’t so it yourself because you didn’t personally manufacture the nails or lumber, hammer, etc. You still acquired those things through trading your own services and wares. On a somewhat unrelated note though, let’s be honest, if you give 95% of people $300k (or even $5 mil) most of them would be left with less than they started after 5 years, let alone having built a multibillion dollar business. None of the people in the above pic started with nothing, but they certainly deserve credit for what they did with what they had. To become a billionaire you do have to have a lot people work hard for you. FTFY > pretty honest like Warren Buffet Did I just read that? I woke up in some alternative reality again, didnt I? Downvote me if you like, but Arnold is fucking hypocrite. [deleted] Agreed. People act like their success was handed to them. 99.999% of redditors would accomplish jack squat with the same connections and opportunities. The only way to become a billionaire is to exploit the working class. The labor from thousands of people is how they generate wealth.. Working hard is...honestly not really that necessary. Exploitation, Charisma, and Blind Luck are far more important. Warren Buffet is anything but honest. When you don't care about the suffering and pain of others you can accomplish a lot. Sociopaths make great CEOs and business leaders. And “self taught” What’s honest about passive income? Warren Buffet is the worst kind of billionaire. Bezos might be a total pos, but at least he spends his money and puts it back into circulation. Buffet sits on his wealth like that fucking dragon in LotR. Plus he lives in Omaha, and that place has a bit of a reputation. I would shoot warren buffet in the back of the head without a second thought What has Buffett done that makes him better than Bezos? Philanthropic works? If so that really is an effective form of PR, isn't it? not just help but people who become obscenely rich have exploited others to get there. Whether it's through labor or ideas. You don't become rich by being a nice guy. > You can either be pretty honest like Warren Buffet Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha It's actually really really easy to work hard when you know, no matter what, you're set for life. For instance a lot is made about how Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. He can take those giant risks because he will be fine. Infact he can drop out of Harvard, fail miserably with his company, work a couple of dead end jobs with no degrees, and as it turns out his very wealthy parents will likely one day die and leave him more than enough for a retirement more comfortable than 99% of the United States. If that's your 'default' level of wealth you'll end your life on no matter what it's really easy to make risks poor people wouldn't make. If a poor person makes giant risks it could literally ruin their life, bankrupt them, and mean they will have to retire in poverty. When the children of rich people take big risks, they either become millionaires or stay millionaires. What we are really saying when we say these people 'work hard' we are really saying ""they work harder than they need to since they don't need to work hard to become rich but they choose to work hard to become richer"". It's like like looking at a guy in a sailing yacht manning the sails and saying ""wow look at that guy, such a hard worker"" when he's really doing it for fun while you look at the person struggling to swim without a boat and saying ""if only they had the same work ethic"" I have a really hard time believing that Warren Buffett is any kind of honest. How naive are you that you think Buffett is one of the ""good guys"". Warren Buffet is also a PoS. I would love to see statistics to back that up. I suspect you're right but still I would love to see statistics on evil billionaires versus neutral billionaires versus good billionaires. So many different data points to consider.... Wtf “honest like Warren Buffet”?! You don’t have to work at all. That’s a lie poor people believe. What he said. Just fuck over the poors like I did. Easy. I was going to post this, but you missed what I find the most crucial part, and that's that he says success is where preperation and hard work meets opportunity. You can be given every opportunity and not capitalize on it. You can also work extremely hard and never catch a break. It's important to realize that yeah, a lot of successful people were given opportunities you or I may never get, but they also worked hard to make the most of those opportunities. It's naive to dismiss their hard work by the opportunities they were given, and I guarantee every single one of you would provide your children those opportunities if you were given the chance. Wow. That's some pretty intense billionaire worship you going going on there. You may want to visit your doctor. I imagine they'll recommend at least 6 to 8 weeks of being not a greedy asshole. 11K upvotes too lol this site is so shit [removed] Every time this sub makes it to the front page the top comments have like no upvotes and the OP posts in subs like r/GenZedong that harbor certain types of users. I sure wonder if any manipulation is going on here [deleted] Just recently joined this sub hoping for some interesting conversations and reading and this is the shit that’s upvoted. Depressing indeed. r/all are upvoting it but the comments are keeping it real I just love how salty the whole Twitter decibel is making reddit lmao. Keep it coming, the tears are tasty There are no mods in this sub basically, so yeah. Im coming from All and didn't even realize what sub I was in until you mentioned it. [deleted] Come to r/finance. It’s a little better Reddit is 50% bots pushing divisive propaganda. This is literally facebook tier rubbish, and not even accurate, reddit just loves to hate on the rich that much. Yeah, easiest downvote I’ve ever seen It's a leftist echo chamber. What do you expect. 55k upvotes on the post, 700 upvotes on the top rated comment. Yeah this post isn't being astroturfed at all. A quick glance at your profile shows you’ve made exactly zero posts to this subreddit. Do you really have a right to complain? Oh god I just realized this wasn't in r/pics. Good fucking lord. Is it a surprise though. Economists are not exactly known for being smarter than the general population. Maybe for you. Sucks to, uh, be you, I guess. Shit, I just assumed this was r/pics or r/worldnews Same with r/science with political posts. Update from eight months later: It's the third most liked post in the sub Thats pretty much what it is. Work hard for yourself, then if your kids are smart, tell them to work hard, then may be your great great grand kids will be wealthy. I know this is a bit of a meme, but we actually have very strong evidence from the literature on the economics of education that money helps, but time spent with children is much more important. The current prevailing theory is the radio-frequency theory of education. Assume that every teachers' ability to teach is a function of 2 main things: how well they understand what they're teaching and how well they can convey what they know. The first thing only really becomes a barrier to entry around of after high school, as most Americans at least tend to have completed that amount. More importantly, even if you haven't you still have a lifetime's worth of knowledge to impart to your child. What really matters is how well you can convey that information. That ability to convey information is where the radio-frequency aspect comes in. It doesn't matter how smart a French teacher is if they only speak french and the students only speak English. None of the message is going to get through. More locally, the more dissimilar a student is from a teacher, the less clearly the teacher's lecture ""broadcast"" is going to reach students. A couple of studies have show, for instance, that white teachers in the U.S. are very bad at teaching non-white students (though generally not the inverse). Most people attribute this a less clear signal from the teacher to those students. Parents are, almost universally, the adults best able to communicate to their own children. They are, after all, the ones who taught those kids to speak in the first place. Spending money on a child's education clearly has some effect, but time spent with a tutor isn't going to be as effective as time spent with one's parents in learning the same thing - so long as the parents generally understand that thing. The children of rich parents have an undisputed advantage. Holding all other things constant, their kids just have more opportunities. It is not, however, an unassailable advantage. Looking at income and health outcomes (not wealth or the returns thereon) there is nothing no amount of money Elon Musk can spend on his children that could make up for not spending time with them. I don't know how active a parent he is, but if you really want your children to turn out as well as possible, spend as much time with them as you can. The younger you do it the more effective it will be. If you're working an extra hour a day for the sole purpose of providing something extra for your child, in general, it would be more productive just to spend that time with your child. This, Jeff Bezos's parents weren't super rich. Just upper middle class. Reddit for once made me proud today Tug on your bootstraps bruh When I tell people I'm building so we can have generational wealth, they always assume that means trust fund kids. I want my kids to find, start and win/fail on their own. Now if they have something worth looking at, have gained real sales traction with consistent growth, then I want to be the first person they call for a loan. As we have clawed our way with our current company, we have had to borrow from our ""adult"" kids. We borrowed $4k, $6k, $10k, $10k, $6k, $3k. Each time with a payback date of 90 days of less and 20% interest rate. This has taught our kids to work a ton, save every cent through disciplined budgeting/frugal living, and then using your money to make money. We had help. My wife and I both worked full time for the first 3 years of the business. Got fired and had to donate plasma, got lucky with covid stimulus payments, and unemployment for a bit. That being said our bills were about $6300 a month years 1-3, dropped to $5800 since. I've paid $1558.60 + medical and private school for my 6 children from first marriage.....even with no income. Courts suck. We recently (close in few more days) decided to sell our home and move back k into a 5th wheel camper to lower our bills and put more into inventory. This let's us pay off all debts, buy camper, and put $100k into inventory. This is no small step with 7 kids still at home, 3f full time, 6f, 9f, 14f Thursdays-1st, 3rd, and 5th weekends. There are 3 adult kids out of the house and 3 of my other kids I have not seen since 2016 even though I have custody. I want fuck you money and more options for us and for generations to come. Building anything from ground up is VERY hard. We started with $150.00 I borrowed from my girlfriend when we started this in 2016/2017. We lived in a small camper until we got the home. We only got the home due to view of the court through my divorce. That's my idea yep Any black person older than 58 in the US was born into segregation. Tell me again how their parents just needed to ""work harder"" in order to ensure their kids could have any fraction of the opportunity Musk or Bezos had? Not to mention how hard their great grandparents worked...as slaves. Wealth at the Musk/Bezos level has very little to do with hard work, and every example required inherited wealth. Wealth which can often be traced directly to colonization/slavery/exploitation. Musk was literally born into apartheid South Africa, it's not hard. That is the take away. Everyone successful is standing on the shoulders of those who came before. Be the fucking ladder you whiny bitches. This should be the real takeaway here. So many folks today just don't want to accept responsibility and they'll use anything as their excuse. This guys gets it. Plant seeds for trees you won’t sit under It's not even working hard. If you save a little bit of money every month, you can retire wealthy pretty easy. $3 a day will give you $1million at retirement. No work even less, that will surely do the trick! Basically how most of humanity has viewed life and their duty to their descendants. Today people are far more individualistic and have problems with the idea of someone’s parents working to help their children succeed. That’s the American dream numb nuts… that’s why you hire immigrants and not from trailer parks… pay the immigrants more because they won’t steal cheat or lie, you’ll provide more for many vs few for less, and you can pay more without feeling like your money went to scratch offs Wait… r/economy… What does your net profit need to be to pay 3 men $30/hr each and still make $100,000 in a housing market ranging from a minimum of $400k, no work $650, and luxury $750k+ People understood this 1000 years ago, but there you are Working hard is part of it, but timing and luck plat a part also. “I’ll work harder within the rigged system to beat it” 🗿 Not even work harder. There are lots of families who work their asses off only to live paycheck to paycheck. If you want your kid to succeed, have life insurance on yourself, teach them how to properly risk assess, how to make friends, and make sure they have a little street smarts. Yep, just become a powerful congressman who owns emerald mines and your kids will be just fine. Honestly though, building wealth is important. For so many reasons I want my kids to reach enlightenment Bezos is crazy. He quit his job at DE Shaw (a top quant) and risked everything he had to open a bookshop. His cost cutting measures were pretty extreme too when it was a startup, guy is a fanatic. He's a smart guy who worked very hard. Any money he made earlier in his career would've been hard-earned. You guys bend over backwards to discount what Bezos achieved. It's pathetic. I agree we should tax the wealthy more, but anyone who thinks any of the people in this picture didn't earn their money is pretty stupid. Bill Gates and Paul Allen fucking *wrote an operating system.* Anyone here who has knowledge of what actually goes into doing that with the technology as it existed back then will know it's god damn impressive as can be. Bill was 18 at the time... Earning 300k from a hedge fund job is totally feasible as a self made start to life. He actually started amazon because he looked up the data on internet growth at his job. And $300k isn't ""become a billionaire"" money. It's more like the average ""open a restaurant"" money. I had $600k in capital when I started my business (half from an investor and half from a business loan), and that was just a single location local business. After 9 years I finally bought out my investor's shares and finished paying back the loan. If you can be given 300k, your family was already wealthy enough for you to never need to worry about money. In my local market, 300k will get you a 2000 sq ft home and you'd easily have enough money for a new car. Those are the two main expenditures for an American. Being given 300k would completely free you from the economy and let you do basically anything you want for living. Want to work a job that doesn't pay a living wage because capitalists like Bezos don't want to pay fair market rates for labor? Go for it. Without rent and car loans, you don't need much to live on. Want a better paying job? Get it, and you get to pocket your money instead of losing it all to rent and student loans. No indentured servitude for you, you can go invest in the stock market! Or just sit on the money, you're already doing better than 90% of the market. A 300k springboard means that Bezos took *no risk* in his investments either. Sure, he could have lost 300k, but if you can just throw that type of money around, it's significance is NOT the same as it is for an average American. Losing 300k for an average American would be a life-threatening experience that plunges them into homelessness. Bezos was nowhere near taking that level of risk. He was given over 1/10th of a lifetime's worth of money. Seriously. An American's whole life, on average, assuming they work for 50 years, is only worth $2M. Imagine getting a *10 year advance* on your pay from your job. That's what Bezos had. He may have converted it to a massive amount of money, but the initial starting point he had isn't available to most humans, and definitely made everything much, much easier. It's debatable if he even did anything special. This type of opportunity is so rare for average people that it's hard to say if it's actually hard to make a huge sum of money when you get a huge, unearned amount of family wealth...but if you look at how inherited wealth works in the US, it definitely seems to be a guarantee that you're going to make tons of money regardless of intellect, skill, or merit if you simply start with enough money. Not just a hedge fund. DE Shaw is one of THE hedge funds. Read somewhere that he learned how to short stocks or manipulate them causing Amazon to blow up. Allegedly Yep. And bill gates mom was on a board of a local chapter of united way. A fortuitous connection for sure, but hardly a silver spoon. There is a huge asterisk with every one of these. Bill Gates would've been fine without his mom, but like, why not ask your mum if she's on the same board as an IBM headman. Musk's father never had an emerald mine, he disputed it and it's never been claimed by a credible source which cites it's sources. Many people inherit 300k, they don't turn it into billions Having a sensor parent is nice, but you can also network your way to the top. As Arnold said: I'm not self-made, I had a lot of help. Obviously being of higher power come offings your set up better, but you do need to seize on those opportunities. Weirdly, today is also the first time I’m seeing this sub on my feed. I guess throw a few Elon’s anywhere and the algorithms eat it up. It is now, the mods have an agenda [deleted] Well he did repeatedly manipulate the market using twitter - which he now will own. Hard to see how he isn't relevant to economics. I wouldn’t be surprised if musk is paying for some of these headlines in a similar manner to the kardashians. I don't like the guy but it's also simply false. He didn't inherit a lot. I think his parents were divorced and his dad didn't support them much? I don't remember the details exactly but I remember looking up this information because I had heard various things, and it was definitely an oversimplification mixed with an untruth. I won't deny he has privilege in other ways. I just think the emerald mine meme is so overblown. Like, he's a white South African dude from a background of wealth...isn't that enough to prove privilege? It’s Reddit. Everything is political and in a particular direction. I believe Musk didnt get one cent either from his 'rich' parents, at least it did not significantly contribute to his first success Of which he used his money to cofound *paypal*... that made him rich enough to start tesla If anything, I honestly believe Musk is pretty much self made There is a big push to attack elon's character coming from somewhere, he is threatening alot of oil and media companies all at once. If you add up the amount of dollars of market cap his companies are aimed to take out it's in the trillions. and those people really don't like not having all their money. Angry leftists are angry. That’s literally it. There’s equal hate on Twitter about Redditors’ groupthink, and here, obviously, hates on other social media platform users for the same spiel as they are. The next thing you know, I recommend BBS/forums again, just because the user experiences there is much better at discussing nuanced issues online, and then some other Redditor/social media platform user will berate you for staying in cocooned spaces. It’s diabolical that we are essentially re-living Kino’s Journey (2003) Episode 1: The Land of Visible Pain right now. How is this image about politics? Reddit in general has the biggest hate boner for him, so much free PR they’re giving him holy It's pretty much taken all over Reddit, either he's the fucking devil who will bring Trump back to Twitter and indirectly(or directly when you think about it) further expand the chaos in USA politics or he's God's choosen one to free Twitter from censorship and cancel culture and that will save America from communism. This reeks of political agenda all over it, and whoever says it isn't is either lying or not paying attention. Investments subs and even meme places like WSB are 10x worse. He’s a pos. Especially how he treated his employees during COVID. It's almost as if people who gamble, aren't great with money... No, but closet I could think of would be someone like Shaq, who took his NBA earnings, and became a very very successful business person. Then again someone here will say he was blessed with being tall, or something else to take that away from him. Didn't the owner of FedEx literally take all of the companies cash at one point to Vegas, win a lot, and use that to continue operations when they were small and nearly died? If you count the genetic lottery then all of them. If you born in the USA you basically won the lottery. Imagine if you were born in N. Korea or other less fortunate countries. I think Jay-Z and Dre count right? How many of them had the connections these four started with? 🤔 Lonnie Johnson. Hit the jackpots when nerf screwed him in royalties Being born into riches and luxury is kinda....like winning the lottery lol Well there's many layers to this. 1. It ruins your relationship with people. All of your basis of social interaction was based on genuine connection, personality, and trust. Lottery winners see those relationships crumble as everyone now looks at you like a bag of money. Lottery winners are more likely to commit suicide. 2. If not your friends, a complete stranger willing to take what you have. Lottery winners are more likely to be victims of a crime. 3. Lottery winners are only known for their winning of the lottery. Nobody cares or wants to follow the story otherwise, so for all we know we could have hundreds of lottery winners who grew wealth. And probably the most important point: 4. You need to be a complete psychopath to be a billionaire. You have to have something wrong with your brain to shut off human empathy and completely ignore the poverty, suffering, and exploitation you use to build wealth. I think it's perfectly normal to simply want to live a fulfilling life with your winnings than corrupt your mind with vulture capital. Thats stupid. If you come from wealth than your family knows how to manage it. Winning the lottery is literally giving a poor person millions I don't know about winning the lottery but J.D. Rockefeller was born into a poor family Probably because most people don’t care about becoming mega wealthy, they just want to be secure. Anecdotally I do know two different people who have won over 50k and grew it substantially one by just parking it in low risk investments and the other by finally having a safety net to start their own company in their trade. Some native guy here in Canada won a lottery and started Aircribec, an airline. Si yeah, it happens. Because people that are smart enough to start a massively successful business aren’t buying lottery tickets lol My friend got $5m after his parents won the lottery. Now he owns like 40 Taco Bells. I think he is doing alright. Don't hear from him much anymore lol. Maybe he was more of an acquaintance than a friend. It is not about that. It is all about the ability to take a big risk and having good education plus connections. Surely, some random person can't turn 1 Million into much more. But give it to an educated person with rich parents and a few connections and the probability to turn it into much more becomes way bigger. The main aspect is that they *could* lose all the money and be fine. Every billionaire lost nearly all their money once. Because to earn big you gotta risk big someday. Most smart people don’t play the lotto.. hmm maybe we’re on to something I know of someone who did, he invested into real estate in the 80s, brought a bunch of properties in the neighborhood here including a gas stations, I think he won a million or so. He died a long ago but his daughter and son and their children all live off the passive income from those investments till this day, his son runs a successful safety inspection business for commercial vehicles like trucks and busses, his daughter never held a stable job in her whole life and lives the income from their properties. Back then in my country it was possible to make several real estate investments out of a single million because properties were dirt cheap, nowadays a million buys you two mid-range homes at best. chamath palihapitiya That’s because most people who win the lottery use it as an excuse to stop working. $300k is many generations of wealth?? Lol. That’s a house in Cincinnati. Also where’s Steve Jobs? His dad taught art or something. Oh.. forgot, he doesn’t count. None of these guys are from many generations of wealth. The plebs don't think. Nobody apparently, as 99% of reddit Hates Jeff and Elon. Woosh! It's the term ""self made"". Right, and Elon functionally started with nothing - less than 30k contributed by his dad *after* his start up was already successful enough to get funding But… what if I keep reminding people to “smash that like button” on my YouTube channel where I take videos of myself playing video games? Reddit has an amazing talent for taking a position I'm sympathetic to, running it into the ground, and then making me hate it. You're new to Reddit? Every sub on Reddit gets flooded by r/politics bots as soon as it brushes r/all the first time Then it’s only a matter of time before it turns into every single other sub based We need stronger rules and moderation if this is what is going to be posted here. No, just anti hypocrisy. Only anti the type of capitalism that allows people to reach obscene levels of power and wealth whilst leaving millions more in poverty. I wouldn't give a shit about billionaires if everyone was taken care of. I mean as people I consider musk and bezos to be detestable, as they're obscenely rich but their businesses are notoriously horrible places to work with shit pay. That's what I hate. Based if true feel how I become more reddish Are you posting this comment from a troll farm abroad funded by any of the above men referenced in this post? It sure seems like it and would not be the least bit surprising. I think people keep maliciously taking this out of context. This argument is NOT if you have $300k you get automatically rich. The argument is even if you work hard and you are talented without getting support from relatively rich parents & family it is very difficult to be successful. You need talent/hard work AND MONEY to be successful. It's just not the money, it's the connections of the people that have the money. But the post isn’t arguing that it’s easy. You’re responding to something that wasn’t said. These are all people who had advantages in life. That doesn’t mean they didn’t work hard, or didn’t do well. But there are endless people who don’t get the advantages they did. [deleted] I think most of those millionaires have their money tied up in their home/ primary residence and or retirement accounts. It's a bit different having to put your house that you worked your whole life for on the line/ take some risks or start a business at 65 than having 300k cash in your 20's that was given to you. Also 300k then is more than 300k now in relative terms Wait, that means about 6 out of 100 people are millionaires? That seems so high! I know at least 100 people, and none of them are millionaires. And I am a middle class white dude. Where do they all live? Is there some way of measuring this that makes it less impressive? Does owning a home factor in? Like, if someone has paid off half of a $500,000 home, is $250,000 added to their millionaire calculator? You’re right I thought this was a grey area issue but your one point of logic has convinced me it is black and white again, gosh I hate having the think! should also mention rampant sales tax evasion I wonder is 1 to 10 million still considered rich by the wealthy? Rich to average person but is it rich to people w/ 10 million+? I mean a person w / 2 million isn't even comparable to a person w/ 20 million much less the guy w/ 200 million. Edit: There's an estimated 1.5 million households w/ a net worth greater than 10 million in the US. If he could turn $300k into $200B, then he could have turned $3 into $200B just as easily. The difference between starting with $3 or $300k is negligible when compared to his current wealth. No, because not everyone can do it. There's only so much money to go around, if someone else had been more successful, these four examples would have been less successful, either due to competition or the people who money just having to make a hard decision on what industry to invest in. Ok, 300k AND his parents paying for his school at an Ivy league (Princeton). Better? Trillion should be easy The point is not all millionaires become billionaires but that all billionaires do not start from 0. Which is a rule you can apply to most individuals with very large sums wealth (20m + maybe) For every musk there are millions of people with a better start in life who amount to nothing. This trope of “daddy was rich “ is meant to act as a salve to their own failures. Billionaires tend to cluster in history. Late Roman Republic, Robber Baron era, a few in the 70s and a heap today for example. That would strongly suggest getting THAT rich has a large component of luck. Depends which sub you ask that question on I don’t think anyone’s saying these men haven’t done incredibly well. They’re all brilliant business men they’re just not self made. Their privileged circumstances wasn’t the only reason for their success but it wouldn’t have been possible without it. Bezos isn’t gonna read this. Has *literally anyone* ever once said, in like, all of human history, that ""its so easy to become a billionaire""? When people talk about things like ""self made"" or ""pull yourself up by your bootstraps"", never once has anyone said those things to refer to **fucking billionaires**, except the losers on reddit and twitter. You can absolutely go from **zero** to $100,000 or even $1,000,000 in net worth through hard work, a strong will, and enough knowledge, intelligent, skill, or competence. Of course luck does play a role, but luck also favors the prepared. Smart investments across multiple decades will get you to incredible heights. He's received billions. That was just the first investment from his parents. There’s a huuuge difference in 300.000 and nothing at all… Yep, people aren't understanding just how hard it is to turn 300k into 200b. It is literally like turning 3 dollars into 2 million dollars. Three dollars.... into... two MILLION dollars. Everyone in here has gotten $3 from someone, probably in a birthday card. I'd guess that few in here have turned that $3 into $2 million. That he didn't have to pay back, he had no risk. All he did was put a book store online. It was others who thought of Prime and everything else. If paying your employees slave wages with brutal expectations while sitting (formerly) on top of a trillion dollar valuation is a good businessman, then we both have a disagreement on the definition of the word *good* in this particular context. That was one loan, out of many many large loans Hes not, he infiltrates his competitors company and bankrupts them by manipulating their stock and board of directors. I know it sounds dumb, but hes been doing it for over a decade and theres plenty of proof, you wouldnt know unless you specifically look for it. It is also 20 years of gross income working at current minimum wage in the United States. When l he founded Amazon it was 34 year gross income at minimum wage. So while it may not be a lot of seed money to start a company, it is a lot of money to a majority of Americans let alone the world as a whole. The context being that the emerald mine story at least is just objectively false. His father was claimed by a single article to have owned half of an emerald mine in Zambia which does not and has never had apartheid. The article never claimed any connection to apartheid at all, dumbass westerners just have no idea that all of Southern Africa isnt just South Africa. Musk disputes this claim and neither side has any definitive evidence which favors Musk. Anyone who repeats this claim can pretty much just have anything else they say discounted because their knowledge comes from memes they saw on the internet once This is some r/antiwork shit, as if anyone here could turn 300,000k into even 10 million, or make a business where the ceo of a major corporation is willing to take a chance on. Well you can find almost anything in the world on Reddit but the one thing you will never find here is nuance Yeah like the fact they never dug a ditch. Washed a window. Took out the trash. Or spent the whole day cold and miserable just to make 50 bucks Most of which makes it even worse. Top schools. Massive wealthy connections. [deleted] It's not a comparison of billions to thousands. It's the comparison of hundreds to thousands. Arguably a bigger gap. Definitely a big gap when considering health and education outcomes in that range, while thousands to billions wouldn't change quite as much for that individual. Getting off the starting line is a problem, way too many people are living hand to mouth. That doesn't mean that the initial capital is the only factor, in fact, all of these probably inherited more than just money from their parents, they inherited a work ethic, sensible money management, and a drive for success. It's still not self-made. How many people do you know have $300,000 to throw at something? I don't know any. It's an incredibly rare opportunity that a relative few will have. Much easier to get to a billion with 300,000$ than with 0$ though. Yea these people just want to complain its basically taken over every sub reddit at this point, but to answer your other question, the Emerald mine that Musk's parents bought, ended up losing them money, and Musk ended up having to support them Financially once he started making it big. Posts in subs like r/Tesla and r/SpaceXMasterrace, claims the story is false yet cannot prove it. Shocking. >In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp [removed] [deleted] I actually love this emerald mine story because it lets me identify morons on reddit with ease in any musk related thread. Also people think of the emerald mine as this huge sprawling complex, when it was really just a hole in the ground that his dad bought for $40k. “Of you are just a musk fanboy” r/politics (or more importantly - a certain kind of political discourse) has been taking over Reddit since the Ellen Pao days... its not getting any better. I paid off $40k in just a few years. My secret - I was lucky enough that my interests happen to align with a major that paid well after graduating. This was pure luck in that it wasn't something that was really on my mind when deciding what to study when I went into college. Like most of my classmates, I was sold on the idea of 'just get a degree from a good school, follow your passions, and success will follow'. I really feel for my classmates whose interests were in the arts and humanities as they got shafted. [deleted] There is this English show about how people make houses for themselves without a morgage. Every time it's on the parents land, the rest of the family are builders or rich or rich and dead or its a tiny house for one ir two persons. In essence it's a statement how you can't get a roof over your head as a young person unless you are wealthy and or connected. There is some truth to it as his father did own shares roughly half of that particular mine. At the same time, Elon and his brother didnt have their education paid for them or anything. However, this is the internet so nuance goes out the door. Enjoy the jellies. Oh yeah? Nobody told Elon's father it was fake. I'll take his word for it over yours, though. >“So we went to this guy's prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” he said. >Standing with the cash in his hand, Errol was made another offer he couldn’t refuse: Would he like to buy half an emerald mine for half of his new riches? >“I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years.” https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 Musk still had a very privileged upbringing and investments from his father though “His father is Errol Musk, a White South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer who was once a half-owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.” Literally Musk’s Wikipedia. You can’t just cry “fake news” It comes up in nearly every post about this topic unfortunately, completing lacking context as usual. IMO his biggest asset was having a Canadian-born mother, which allowed him to immigrate to Canada more easily, and then onto silicon valley. I imagine it would be much more difficult to get there from South Africa without that path. Otherwise, he followed a pretty regular startup/entrepreneur path in the tech industry, which means getting a few people together with an idea, build the idea (or at least an MVP), successfully pitch it to get venture capital money, then follow through on the idea until a bigger company notices and buys you. This path to success in the tech industry is paved with many failures, but he was lucky (or tenacious) enough to be successful. From there, it's just a matter of wisely using that money in future ventures, and not blowing it. It hasn’t, unless you consider a bunch of moronic Musk fanboys saying it’s been debunked with no source as “debunked.” > In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp Whenever this picture is shared I always wonder why does it specifically say 'Apartheid South Africa' for Elon Musk like it's somehow the Musk families fault. But it doesn't say born in Jim Crow USA for Warren or Bill? By who? Fake lip kits for all! Welcome to Reddit, friend. Yeah, and it's honestly dumb. I'm not a Musk fanboy, but his dad didn't own an emerald mine. Yeah, most successful people come from successful parents, but how is that surprising? Does it really negate their achievements? BINGO If you go visit /r/antiwork it's because the money should belong to the ""exploited workers"" making ""slave wages"", or those that don't work at all, you know, because reasons. First time recommended to me, I thought I was in that sub people have a hate boner for Musk News Because they need to find some reason to explain why they themselves are not successful. It's less hate (except for the edgy reddit teenagers, but they will grow up someday), and more that it's morally wrong to stay a billionaire in a world with so many issues that could be fixed by spending money. No one needs a billion dollars. I have almost a million times less and already donates a part of my salary, I couldn't watch myself in a mirror if I accumulated so much. It's an easy symptom to point to a broken system. Widening gap between rich and poor is a Fall of Rome scenario brewing. How can any sane person honestly look at the [scale of their wealth](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3) and not hate ultra rich people, or at least feel disgusted on some level? It's unfathomable how much money they have, and how much pain and suffering could be prevented if their wealth was spent for the good of society instead of hoarded. Like, a single person literally just bought an entire social media platform with the potential to influence hundreds of millions, if not billions of people. Maybe cause this particular rich person is exploiting thousands of workers??? Every amazon employee could be paid 1million dollars per year and this guy would still earn billions...go work for amazon just a week and we will see if you still happy🖕 Holup. These are people born on third base who act like and get treated like they hit a triple. This isn't hating on the wealthy, it's hating on the pretentious. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. They absolutely deserve to be criticized constantly. They hold power over thousands of employees and the millions who use their products. It's essential to keep them in check just as a president does. Because these four guys combined have more money than most humans do combined. A regular in multiple r/tesla subs. Shocker. Another Elon fanboy with bad faith bullshit. The most senior active mod here is a socialist, so yes. So many bitter people on reddit. Sit at home and criticize/bitch about everything. There are 2 groups of people, the greedy and the non-greedy. This is all about a battle among the greedy; the rich greedy vs the poor greedy. While you, I, and members of the non greedy spectate and do not understand The problem is that the rich pretend that they didn’t have advantages that are out of reach for most everyone else that allowed them to be super successful, and then they implicitly suggest that if you are suffering in this world, it is your fault because you didn’t make the right decisions or just weren’t smart enough, and thus that economic inequality is justified, and that YOUR suffering is justified. To me, that is oppressive mental abuse. Because rich people are a cancer to society and more and more people are realizing it as each day passes. That's not the point. It's the 'self made' aspect. They knew people and that's more than half the battle, as well as having a shit load of money (comparatively). Not saying the bumbled their way into their wealth, but it wasn't like they really had to work very hard for very much to get there. Someone born on 1st base doesn’t even have a sliver of a chance to get warren buffets wealth... *thats* the point here not that they all got handed every cent they ever earned. They're not as smart as me. I would give all of my money away because I'm not a psychopath. I just haven't done it yet because I'm not a billionaire yet. Yep,they are extremely smart and talented.Most people wouldn't be able to accomplish what they did,I don't think the post is trying to debate that.All it's saying is that the advantages they had helped a lot and somebody just as talented as them but without the same resources would have been more likely to fail. Yeah you think I have 💎 👏 I'm probably a retarded ape 🦧 to be on /r/wallstreetbets And there's extremely smart people who don't make it at all Billionaire bad, except if they fit my specific political ideals and fit the origin story I wish for. If they didn’t begin on the streets of a slum they bad people hurrdurrr Edit: it’s fucking hilarious that the users of r/economy are a bunch of r/antiwork commies lmao Also don’t bother I don’t engage in arguments or discussion with communists or r/antiwork users. Don’t have time nor crayons. Edit: also PSA that r/politics is a subreddit filled with dumbasses Health care pls They seem to think that they would become just as wealthy if they were in the same circumstances. I wonder how long before they start talking about intelligence inequality. I recommend people read “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. Yea, this is just laughable. Man, I must be early to be able to read this comment. Annnnnd it's gone. I was lucky to have it in another tab. “You don’t like people having, and claiming that they themselves made insane and absurd amounts of money so you must be projecting” [deleted] Stop projecting, bro. Musk fanbois are pathetic [deleted] lmao, this. Theae guys have absolutey no idea what type of geniuses jeff, elon, and bill gates are. The people whining here wouldn’t have achieved shit even if they parents gave them $10bln Having any billionaires is a sign of a broken economic system. I extend the ""self-made"" fallacy even further. Elon didn't design all the tech or the facilities his stuff is made in nor did he contribute any physical labor to create anything. There are tons of peoples' effort and talent behind almost anything that's ""big"". Fuck this Randian concept of the masses being parasites of the rich. By no means am I against capitalism or even being wealthy, but billions is so far off especially when you have increasing gap for the working class. Here come the dipshit Elon fanboys. Your username lol Uh, duh? Of course everyone is envious of billionaires. Wow ground breaking post right here. This picture has been spread throughout social media. Reddit Envy my ass Wait until you see how any actors, musicians etc are all connected, have family in the industry or rich parents. Musk is as close to a self made billionaire as we're likely to ever see. After he moved to Canada at 17 he got zero money from his dad and worked all kinds of bullshit manual labor jobs, went to college in the US and graduated with a bunch of debt. He started Zip2 with his brother and Greg Kouri, and lived in the office and showered at the Y. That was the company that made him a millionaire when they sold it, and he's been significantly richer than anyone in his family ever since. Where the fuck is that Jenner cunt she should be up there too. “What have you done for humanity” Whilst talking about Bezoz is fucking funny. The man treats more than a million staff like absolute shit. [deleted] No they don't, this is just another fabricated argument inside redditors tiny brain. It's just a commonly used term, I use the term self-made, yet I know these people relied on probably thousands of people to get where they are now. Send it to me ill get back to ya You need to get off the economy subreddit if you're too stupid to realize that the more money you have, the more value you can amass with it holy shit lol. Jokes aside, money gets more effective once you have more of it. 300$k of that time's money can get you a pretty solid chance at making it bigger. Buy some deodorant and start hooking. Like, a lot. 20 men a day. Elon Musk still had many other privileges that allowed him to have advantages that others didn’t, like growing up rich and having more freedom than other kids to pursue interests, even having successful family serves as an inspiration that can make a significant difference. He may have started relatively broke when he did his first business, but he did have prior advantages before. Yeah, this post makes it seem as if massive companies fell into their laps and they did nothing. Elon Musk's mom also came from a wealthy family. And his early business successes came from family connections allowing for investments / sales. I generally reject ""Great Man"" history-- and apply that to these situations as well. Given the overall human population, even if we assume that these people are at the top 1% of the entire human population on some imaginary scale of intelligence or ""drive""... that still leaves a lot of people around the world who could have done the same thing if they had the same opportunities. ​ 7,900,000,000 x .01 = 79,000,000. But also like 80% luck... Tesla could have failed miserably for a number of reasons such as GM deciding to lobby to get EVs outlawed, or a better tech invented, or a million other things... Same applies to Gates, Bezos, and Buffet. This is bullshit. Coming from a guy who doesn't know much, obviously. More like 10% what you know and 15% how willing you are to fuck over other people to enrich yourself. More like 10% what you know and 15% how willing you are to fuck over other people to enrich yourself. And 90% luck. Pfft, give me 300k and I’ll show you It's definitely not easy, but at the same time, not many people get gifted 300k by their parents to potentially piss away on a failed business venture. If that kind of money was available to everyone, not just the rich, you'd see alot more successful poor and middle class companies and more social mobility. You might be surprised. I guarantee if poor and middle class people could so easily get 300k gifted to them to piss away on a business idea, you'd see alot of successful companies come from that. K I mean really. Even most fast food franchises will cost you more than 300k to get up and running. You know the saying "" a million seconds is 11 days , a billion seconds is 31 years "" In that era it was enough. [deleted] The downplaying of Gates as being the ruthless businessman he was and how many people he fucked over by saying his mom is the reason for his success actually paints him in a far better light than he otherwise deserves. I grew up in the upper-middle class and there is no way I could “scrape together” $300K from family. And as someone else mentioned, you’re not taking inflation into account. You are not describing the majority of American’s financial status. 300000k is 340000k more than my parents ever had. The average American family would have a hard time scraping together 50k on short notice and would never, EVER be willing to blow that much money on their dipshit nephew's weird startup idea. I would bet money that less than 20% of American households would be able to source 300k and less than 10% would give it to an unproven startup. Working for 30 years investing like a normal adult with a normal dayjob will absolutely not net you millions of dollars. Unless you're single, live with your parents, only eat Ramen noodles, and ALSO managed to buy GME at 3 and sell at 300. How many of those millionaires are also as responsible for as much DAMAGE as Bezos and Musk? They've made the majority of their fortune through exploitation and unethical behavoir. You grew up rich, good for you. But this is embarrassingly out of touch with how reality works for families that didn't have silver spoons pouring out of their asses. To be fair $300k in 1993 is equivalent to $600k today. Median American income today is 31k, before even adjusting for inflation a 300k investment is a decade of work while saving every penny (maybe you could argue 5 years for a 2 parent household). I'm gonna assume you are one of them suburban grindset bros who learnt finance from one of them get rich quick insta pages lol, but the working man doesn't know the value of his own money! Nah, bruh I have shitty ass NParents who blew away my grandfather's money who was a banker in the Philippines and even owned a branched here in Long Island. Wealth does not translate to good investment if you have dumb ass shit entitled piece of shit parents who tried to convinced me to take out loans on everything. I'm studying finance for my own small business that isn't even making over $100k yet I'm comfortable with whatever money and I careless about that shitty house they living in. I earned my wealth, I studied hard, took me until I was thirty, call me greedy I dont care. I worked my ass for this small business. If every single member of my family were to try to invest in me using their savings and assets back in 2010, I would have 10k and they would have no emergency funds left. 200k and 300k (especially in the times we're looking at) _is_ a lot, especially when you consider that in the case of these folks if they crashed and burned they would still have a reasonably well off family to go back to. That safety net is also huge. Yeah OP clearly didn't fact check this meme. So many smooth brains repeating the lie that Musk's parents owned a diamond mine. It's sad that people let lies like this live rent free in their head. TIL Half = ""some shares"" I'm not sure. I've started coming to the opinion that having 24/7 close bodily security, armored vehicles, and encrypted communications to avoid getting sued for tripping someone, held hostage or killed is beyond my definition of ""success."" Bird in a gilded cage. I'd rather be anonymous. Musk used to carry emeralds in his pocket to school. $300K on hand is more money than most people will ever have in their lives. If your business fails you still have to pay the loan. Yes, these dudes worked hard, but they also had a safety net. It’s not like if they failed, they’d be homeless or working at subway (made fresh). I think you (and a lot of others here) are missing the point. The fact that Bezos even had access to 300k so easily (and that's 300k back then, it would be the equivalent of what, a couple mil in today's money?) also means that be has had a lifetime of access to better healthcare, education, connections, support and so on, as well as a safety net to take massive risks - these may not always be quantifiable benefits but they are huge advantages over the average person which can never be replicated. If you gave 300k to an average person on the street they would not be able to do what Bezos did - not because he's a genius with a one inch dick, but because he's a man with a one inch dick who grew up in a privileged environment his entire life, which creates a growing foundation of benefits and advantages over time. People who grew up wealthy and become wealthier is not the same as someone growing up poor and becoming wealthy imo. Bezos has said a lot of it was luck. Amazon experienced a business miracle in not facing any kind of competition for 7 years. That's not normal. I fucking hate how Bezos treats his workers, but I respect that he said a big part of his success was sheer luck and he didn't try to spin it off as ""hard work and passion X10000"". The point is that most of us don't have $300,000 (1996 dollars no less!) in seed money to gamble on the ridiculous idea (at the time) of mailing heavy books across the country. Like literally every single person on Reddit who bitches about this stuff would fail miserably given the same opportunity Bezos didn’t work hard. Thousands upon thousands of underpaid employees - I mean “independent contractors” did all the work. Hard work isn't exceptional. It's a necessary requirement, but there's a hell of a lot more hardworking people than billionaires. For sure, but I think the point is that you *have* to come from wealth and success to become one of the wealthiest people on earth. ""This guy got a mortgage sized loan to launch the growth of his business, literally silver spoon"". Like there's alot of complaints to be made about these guys but if you think ""didn't start from literally nothing"" invalidates your work you're clearly operating more on spite than informed reason. I swear this type of thinking is a recipe for failure, even if it has some truth in it. Generally speaking, if it better to believe that you can make it, eben if the odds are realistically against your favor. Nobody even got anywhere by not trying. Ha. Some callous shit as the dream of going to college and owning a home are becoming out of reach for many middleclass Americans. Let's keep sucking rich guys' dicks. An r/conspiracy and r/superstonk regular sucking the figurative dick of billionaires? Shocking. 😂 every one responding seems to like the idea of sucking cock Pretty much. Come from nothing, go to school, get a good job, go to school some more, marry someone successful who did the same, become upper-middle class, have a few kids. Send those kids to good schools, invest in their future, then be proud when they become even richer and more successful than you were. To come from the very bottom, to come from nothing, then make it to the very top. That is rare, extremely rare. Such is the world we live in. The idea of the truly fair world, a true meritocracy with such a safety net that no one suffers or gets left behind is as noble as it is foolish. We tend to be products of our environment. Born into middle class? You're more likely to stay there than go up or down. Same for poverty and wealth. However, being born with money also means that you're one lucky investment away from instant success. Just like Trump. 6 bankruptcies. Because you can't make that kind of money (or in Joe's case achieve that much power) without sacrificing time for other things and most rich/powerful parents sacrifice time with their kids so they grow up emotionally and psychologically damaged and incapable of carrying on the parents' success. ""Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations"". Happens all the time. Basically the 1-2% have average kids and so over time without great care/planning and good execution the generational wealth is lost. >For every Elon's there's a thousand Hunter Biden""s or Donald Trump Jrs.. There are far more stories of the rich kid putting the family fortune up their nose. Fixed for you since both are fail sons Damn almost as if there’s….some sort of problem. Can’t quite put my finger on it… Yeah, but I think you're missing the point. It's not that Musk or Gates don't have incredible talent or work ethic; it's that there are lots of people who have both of those things, but never make it big because they're too busy trying to make ends meet and don't have daddy's money to fall back on. If the billionaires in this post started from a place of absolute poverty, it's likely they would never have made it at all. I feel like Hunter Biden is a weird example to use. I mean one, his father's money and influence was a lot less when Hunter was growing up. Not the point of the post. It's not saying that all rich kids will be super rich, but all super rich start out as wealthy. Elon didn't have a family fortune. Wasn’t Joe Biden like the poorest guy in congress for most of hunter biden’s childhood? He really only became wealthy after writing his book a few years back. And Joe’s net worth is 9 million. Or don jr Buying up over 1/4 million acres of US farmland? He now is the largest farmland owner in the US. You can almost surely be rich in 60 years without even trying that hard... just invest consistently. Trying to get rich in 5 years will likely mean you won't be rich in 60 years. Maybe, just maybe the economists understand how it works and you dont, it's their study field Well it would just be called something else. Imagine saying that if emails didnt get invented when they did then today we wouldnt have emails... Its absurd. And many people over exaggerates the emerald mine thing. 1) its 600k in today's money. 2) having parents who can afford to just drop hundreds of thousands of dollars is insanely rare The point is that these people have one thing in common. They all started in the top 1-5% already and never actually had money problems. He also had really rich parents We should team up and be the new Apple NO. Anyone with loads of money is evil and priveleged by definition. Wake up to modern thinking. Bezos got his seed money from friends and family but he was trying to sell books online in the era where Borders, B Dalton and Barnes & Noble were the default. Everyone assumed his business was going to fail as e-commerce wasn’t what it is now. Are you at all considering the upbringing? They grew up wealthy, so it's likely that their parents invested in good schooling for them starting at a young age. That gives a huge advantage by itself in terms of being ready to be in a position to have a company to get seed capital for. It definitely still took hard work, but so many factors had to line up perfectly for them to be in that position. You're right, a huge chunk of it is luck. A smaller but still significant portion is hard work and perseverance. The seed capital and connections is just a pre-requisite for either of the above to matter at all. No capital does guarantee poverty though Survivorship bias. Sure it doesn't, but I think you're missing the point. Make all of the guys who DID make it start from a place of total poverty, and none of them will make it. It's not the fact that these guys didn't have talent or work ethic; it's that there are lots of people who have both of those things, but never make it big because they're too busy trying to make ends meet and don't have daddy's money to fall back on. Brilliant. The point is most people don't have access to 300k to start a business . She’s not worth anywhere near a billion dollars. Bruce Jenner was indeed a self made millionaire. I wonder where he is now? There are quite a few legitimately self made millionaires. Most of them you would not know that they had that kind of money. Now, billionaires. That's a different story. Making a million dollars isnt as hard as it seems when you step away from employment and start your own business, might i add you have to give it atleast 7 years Objectively not true “Further, a second study by Fidelity Investments found that 88% of all millionaires are self-made, meaning they did not inherit their wealth.” [https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2871-how-most-millionaires-got-rich.html](https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2871-how-most-millionaires-got-rich.html) Almost 70% of people with a net worth of $30M+ are self made as well. > There are very few real self made millionaires Really, very few, not like half of home owners in a bunch of states and basically half of Canada for example? A million dollars??? That’s nothing. Ya it’s all handed down from people hiding it in their mattresses. LOL [deleted] Good. Amazon is an evil entity, and the world would be better off if it did not exist. Literally any path to an individual owning over a billion dollars must be an evil enterprise by the sheer exploitation that requires. You don't reach those levels of wealth by your own sweat alone, it's literally impossible There are a number of black American billionaires. Elon is the wealthiest African american Elon is from Africa and has Asperger syndrome... so privileged /s SpaceX rockets just run on privilege then. Such a stupid comment How’s this relevant to this post in any way Good God It wasn’t cocaine, it was Parmesan For sure, these guys are smart and industrious. I dont doubt that. But they would have never reached these amazing heights without wealthy and connected families. Without those advantages, I’m sure they still would have been successful, but certainly not nearly the level of success they’ve achieved. Dude no one is telling you to stop worshipping billionaires sheesh. This part [deleted] >Gates and Bezos completely made their companies from nothing. Thank you, I hate it when others are not given the credit they deserve just to prove a point. Gates didn't even invent windows. And would have been fooked without Paul Allen. Who is also was a huge douche canoe The emerald mine story is also fabricated, or at least, there's no evidence of it. [https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-father-myths](https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-father-myths) Should be a pretty easy thing to verify, so it's most likely bullshit. Agree they all create something, that maybe no one else could have. Just make them pay their taxes. The point is they had help to spring forward. It's different for an average person to become wealthy. Generational wealth was definitely a key factor in them starting out. And that’s where your wrong. It wasn’t nothing. Bezos had multiple failures before amazon. In fact his last job at a hedge fund said stay…. And Gate’s…. what in the fuck planet are you living on. Sold other peoples tech to his moms board? All by himself….. Trump also did it on his own. Musk paid $11B last year. How much did you pay? The top 1% pay almost 40% of the tax bill for the country. The bottom 50% pay 3%, and about 45% don't pay any taxes. I assume most of the people complaining that the rich aren't paying their fair share aren't paying anything at all. This is a blatant lie. >Gates and Bezos completely made their companies from nothing. Buffett built his wealth from Berkshire and Musk basically bought into the start up Tesla. What you're missing is that those guys starting out all had access to capital and business opportunities that most people just can't dream of. Without their family's wealth or connections, it's unlikely that any of them would have been able to get their first ventures off the ground. Nobody's saying they haven't worked hard and been smart and made good decisions with the opportunities they've been given, but the point is that most people are never provided those opportunities to begin with. The key to it all? Long hours hahahhaha smh You forgot, they didn’t get Starbucks and cigarettes. /s This is....completely ahistorical: [https://medium.com/bc-digest/the-xerox-thieves-steve-jobs-bill-gates-6e1b36fc1ec4](https://medium.com/bc-digest/the-xerox-thieves-steve-jobs-bill-gates-6e1b36fc1ec4) Here's the money quote: When Steve confronted Gates and accused him of theft, Gates made a rather famous statement: ""I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it"" Almost like having lots of money opens up options to make a whole bunch more money. Weird how that works. Edit: where's the lie? tell me what you made on your stock portfolio and then tell me how much you think a billionaire made on theirs and tell me with a straight face this isn't true. Ohhh so you are saying they all had starting capital and influence that is unavailable to the average person? I can't speak for Bezos but didn't Gates come from a hole in the wall shop? I'm sure he received significant financial help or got a great deal at some point early on, but I'm pretty sure he actually started from the bottom. Musk built paypal with his friend. you use it today. Thats Elon..........everything after that is Elon wildly betting on 00 and winning. (and he completely admits that) Working long hours in addition to exploitation of workers, massive government subsidies, and tax workarounds. Gates got rich by stealing software You're supposed to say ""hit a triple"" If they'd hit a home run it wouldn't matter where they started. Someone didn't read the whole biography. Bezos parents were paying for his studies at Princeton as an 18 year old. So...I'm gonna go out on a limb and say people who's parent can pay for them to go to an Ivy league aren't self made. [deleted] I’d probably say Bezos entire family is set. If I was worth $144 billion I would somewhat retire my entire Bloodline from both Grandparents and up. So all my direct uncles from mom/dad side, aunts, cousins, along with every future child born. Give them at least $10m+ and for those who are young will be able to get their money at age 25 in a trust so they hopefully figure out life before then. Most everyone who is successful had both genetic privileges and help from privileged people (friends, family, and/or mentors.) I refuse to believe you use Reddit but have never heard Bezos or Musk referred to as self made, their fans are ridiculous sycophants who hold them up as genius businessmen who started from nothing Yet the media sells it that way. If you're an American, yours probably owned slaves, too. Wtf is the point of spreading this bullshit. It's literally just made up. Provide a source, because you can't. I mean probably, but his father once ran for an political position under an anti apartheid party and Elon left the country by 20 with no money to his name (his father never helped) to avoid having to participate in mandatory military service under apartheid. If you go back far enough literally everyone's history connects to slavery. Pretty much every ethnic group was enslaved at one point. Even the slaves taken from Africa were sold to the Europeans by other rival African ethnicities. Slavery is a universal human tradition. There's no point in trying to pin the sins of ancestors onto their descendants. IIRC Musk’s dad had an amateur plane and sold it for £80k which he used to buy half of the stakes of an emerald mine. This was in the 80s. They hadn’t been rich for generations or decades before Elon started and sold his first company. ITT You are irreparably retarded. Are you telling me that someone who has over 300k in equity in their home isn't doing well financially, in the 90s? The average home value back then was just above 100k. So they had 3x the value of the average home just in equity. I agree that it doesn't mean that they had a wealthy upbringing, but definitely upper middle class at the very least. ""Risk"" lolol. Worst thing that can happen to a billionaire is bankruptcy or homelessness. And you would need to be an unbelievable fuck-up to not hedge a billion dollars. Meanwhile, most people are 1 uninsured hospital bill away from bankruptcy. Plus they need to labor for the privilege. Who's taking the risk? dont forget monopolies among many spheres of influence/life Agreed but not many people have the mindset to meticulously pick apart and exploit their employees to the level of Bezos. I think the point is that people who are poor or disadvantaged or grow up as such are frequently told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and have extremely successful people shoved in their face as examples...like if Buffet, Gates, Bezos and Musk can do it then they should be able to do it to if they work hard, but such thinking ignores the reality of the situation. A lot of people come in to the adult world with literally zero resources and little means to obtain resources and that inhibits their ability to even get on their feet. Musk had to fund some or all of his own education. He's a smart, hard working guy. He is a business savant according to his brother, and he should be given credit for all of these things. However he still had access to resources and privileges that others do not, and that surely helped make him as successful as he is today. Those who work hard and succeed deserve credit and acknowledgment for their hard work but so do those who work hard and never become successful. Instead though, society often likes to call unsuccessful people lazy and blame them for circumstances which are often beyond their control. >I could give every one of you losers 300k It's, uh, pretty clear that's not something you can afford to do. [deleted] How did you inherit debt? yes we c a n t have nice things because some of us still have empathy when everything seems to be better without it, or, any cares of any sorts... What did you do with your seed capitol of “nothing?” I’m not sure you’re familiar with Musks companies lol That analogy is complete garbage. How are you gonna compare 300k. 300k. To a dollar. You're a twat just thought you should know Pshhhh, only a few million percent return rate? Clearly he was just given the wealth. ? Musk literally is one of the elite Imagine spending your time bitching about people bitching about rich people. Keep simping Silence, [cuck](https://i.imgur.com/cbz93Go.jpg). Out of those 4 only one is wearing a sweater It's ok to hate on African Americans as long as they're the right ones Nah, it is. > In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp Nah, he did. >In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp The only proof it isn’t true is a bunch of Musk fanboys saying so. Meanwhile… >In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp Error Musk never even owned an emerald mine. Its made up. Ya, I don't think he belongs on the list. I think his parents were teenagers too. I'd imagine the seed money was most or everything they had. No he wasn't. He had a mother his father left them and hisbdteo father was loving and paid for him to get a great education. That sacke doesn't work, because it doesn't factor in anything but cash. Who How many others had the same ideas, but didn't have the same capital... What stats? And you better not say some lotto bullshit Ya. Its easy when you won't become homeless if you fail and you can try again. It exposes the dominant cultural myth of individualism. People may see this meme and research how the world really works. Every amazing feat of human ingenuity was made possible by multiple people working together collaboratively. The myth of individuality would have you believe that it was one man who succeeded where others have failed, but the reality is that one person was able to claim ownership of an asset and exploit the laborers required to increase the assets value. Because it's about more than that. It's the connections too. And being able to take chances because you have a comfortable fall back position. No, the implication is that they are not self made, as their ""started in a garage"" type narratives suggest. Doesn’t mean he didn’t benefit from the wealth and connections Idk man, I wish a had a free 300k to put into bitcoin. These clowns haven’t done anything though. Why do conservatives think owning a social media company benefits society in any way? the problem some got to try and try and try and try again while others only get one chance with the money they saved. Holocene extinction…. Yeah really good for the planet.. dingus. There put there, https://moneyinc.com/richest-native-american-tribes/#:~:text=The%20Shakopee%20Mdewakanton%20are%20the,member%20going%20through%20a%20divorce. Lmao, I think the billionaire dickriders are doing a better job of making themselves look silly Problem is rich ppl say regular ppl just need to work hard to become rich. When it is not that simple. Exactly. But it doesn’t count as success unless they lived on food stamps I guess. 🤷🏼‍♂️ That's a pretty stupid statement if you think about it. JK Rowling became a billionaire by exploiting the labor of orphan child wizards. I suppose the answer is probably the usual south Asian sweatshop situation, but I can't immediately think of anyone Rihanna exploited to get to $1.7B. Did you touch it? At least you’re honest about fantasizing about his cock Well, the math of it is to turn $300,000 into $200,000,000,000, you need to make 650,000x your money. Even if you say he got *another* $300,000 from his “other rich friends“, we’re still talking about over 333,000x. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call that at least a little bit of a neat trick. ;-) (Bezos is currently at $164B and Musk at $252B according to Bloomberg) Although 300k is closer to 0 than 200B, 300k is not actually anywhere close to zero. That's more money than the vast majority of people will have on hand in their entire lives. I guess once he buys out reddit no one else can criticize him. Just look up the pareto distribution. There should be some system to make it a little more fair. They probably also know that it's 'they're' :-) Nah. If you miss you most likely come crashing back down to earth to make a fiery crater. There are probably tens of thousands of ""entrepreneurs"" who conned their family members into mortging their house and investing all their money to fund their ""business"" idea. 99% of those ended up failing. Of the very few who pays back the initial loan and provided an actual return on the investment, Bezos is probably the only one to become a hundred billionaire. Plenty of rich people out there dropping 300k on their little snowflake's basket weaving degree and their kids never end up amounting to shit. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/09/08/self-made-score/?sh=17e713cd41e4 Yes, in fact there were many people of his era that started out non-rich and became wealthy because of being on the ground floor of the internet. What ultimately differentiated him was that he 1) expanded the scope of his initial business model 2) didn’t sell out to a legacy business 3) reinvested all his profits back into growing the business. Most dot com CEOs either couldn’t grow the business beyond their niche or sold out the first chance they got. Politicians in general. They're all corrupt and you're a fool to think otherwise. I agree, but the point is really that they had more help than they want to admit. I don't think Besos belongs on this list though. He and his family weren't rich and I think he's very self made. People get loans or money all the time to start businesses. What he did with it is amazing, regardless if you like the guy or not. I'm old enough to remember the years when Amazon was this long-running joke of a company that never made a profit. It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/17/20754970/billionaire-philanthropy-reproductive-health-care-politics](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/17/20754970/billionaire-philanthropy-reproductive-health-care-politics)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Nope. It’s true. [Read about it here.](https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html) “As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” I think the difference is that the terms would be much easier when it's your parents who give you the money. I highly doubt they charged him interest or required strict payback terms. That peace of mind does not come from money given by investors or debtors. This allows entrepreneurs to take bigger risks. From IBM. They rather than as always, come up with their own software, licensed Gates software he didn't even own. Once he bought it, \[became MsDos\] it still didn't work and IBM had to fix it. No argument here, I was there. Buffet even with all of the midwestern cornpone, is also nothing more than another greedy capitalist. With no other function but to take him from $89 billion to $90 billion, he throws around a few thousand to get the Nev. const. changed to allow him to raise elec. rates on the ruse that with different sources of the heat we use, there was competition. No there was not. Good thing less than 50% saw through yet another capitalist deception, that ever present lie. And all to do what ? Continue to monopolize elec. in Nev. and rape the rate payers. Here comes that 90th billion for Warren. Well he will try again I am sure as even at 90, $89 billion is...just not enough. That's why I call these people scum, because...they are. Lick those boots bitch boy You really fucking love sucking on boots? You really fucking love sucking on boots? You really fucking love sucking on boots? You really fucking love sucking on boots? Most of the time I saw Bill Gates' interviews he didnt deny his origins, Steve Jobs on the other hand did try to create a mythical lore (that Apple computers started from the very bottom on a garage as a passion project) to make the company more relatable, but Steve Wozniak (the cofounder) said that, although the garage exists, Apple Computers started as any other company and the garage was not related to how the company actually worked at its beginning. You really fucking love sucking on boots? Two messages above you disputes what you are saying though. Never get your answer from a meme picture on reddit. “Only $500 a month” Tell me you are out of touch without telling me…… >get cocked up :) Do you think that $300K existed in a vacuum, I’m thinking that he was quite set up prior to getting the money. That’s a huge difference. It’s not self made though. It’s off the backs of people that they undervalued, it’s having the seed money given to them, it’s having powerful friends of the family bankroll or support you. It’s taking over companies then fighting in court to get legal status as founder of something they didn’t found. Not self made at all. Made on the backs of others. That is a small loan for a business. I am saying even if your dad made a million a year, you wouldn't end up a billionaire. That is not how it works. **[Tom Golisano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Golisano)** >Blase Thomas Golisano (born November 14, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder of Paychex, which offers payroll and human resources services to businesses. Golisano also owns Greenlight Networks, a fibre internet provider based in Rochester, New York. He owned the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League and Buffalo Bandits of the National Lacrosse League from 2003 to 2011. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) The more money you have the easier it is to make more. The less. One you have the harder it is to make more. Bad meme. Money attracts money. It's easy to turn 1 million into 1.1 million. Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. I would also need somewhere to live with all my bills paid and a supportive spouse to help me do it. What time can you come pick me up? *Only one of them* *Had help from the government* *From the beginning* \- rizdalegend --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: ""haikusbot opt out"" | Delete my comment: ""haikusbot delete"") People got tear em down to make themselves feel better > his parents *paid* for his FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot* [Here are a couple jobs Musk did when he moved to Canada at 17 years old.](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/odd-jobs-elon-musk-had-when-he-was-younger.html) They take on investors. They use the resources they have to come up with a plan and then pitch it to investors. Even people who have money focus on investor money. Maybe not they themselves saying it, but for example there's a famous picture of Bezos sitting in a very modest startup office for Amazon in the '90s, which led to a belief that he started from the bottom But yeah, it would be very silly to think that Musk started from the bottom, I hope no one thinks that's the case There are probably millions of kids in America today that are more affluent than Musk was when he was growing up. Millions. I went to high school with dozens of kids from really rich families. None of them pulled off anything remotely close to what these four people have done. Many of them had 7 and 8 figure inheritances. I know of some who were gifted multiple homes that they now rent out (at absurd California rent prices). None of them went out to become a tech billionaire or make an EV company, or make a rocket company. Same people screaming and crying that he is going to promote disinformation and misinformation on twitter are the ones spreading disinformation about him. What a \*FUCKING\* surprise. I personally know a few venture capitalist and investors. All they do, pretty much all day long is hear people pitch their ideas to them. If someone, pretty much anyone, had a really good idea and a team of people who are the right fit, they would most likely fund it to some degree. Despite being very wealthy, these people will more or less meet anyone for coffee who has an idea. They are not stingy with their 15-20 minutes. They are looking for the next Bezos. Really Gates too because Microsoft was formed in 75 while the contract with Ibm was 1980 for MS-DOS. Microsoft Windows came later in the 80s and was not linked to ibm. Microsoft only became really big with release of Windows 95. [removed] Guys have literally change the world. Would been better point if they used people like Mark Zuckerberg guy who stole other peoples ideas and screwed over their friend. No one is complaining about that. Just the fake started from nothing narratives. The point is wherever they start they can take a huge risk. They won't be broke if they fail. Will you give the connections too? That's part of the point. Those people are not destitute now. And neither would some of these billionaires if they failed early. That's why they could take the risks. But not as impressive as grinding out from nothing. They perpetuate the ""started in a garage"" narrative. Peanuts now, not back then. It's not self made. They had powerful connections through family. And they could take risks that regular people could not. Losing the 300K is not a disaster for Bezos. Yes, the added ingredient is exploitation. Give everyone the same connections as well. The average person wouldn't try to make any more money if they had a billion. But it's not just about money, it's about connections and being able to take risks because you have a comfortable fall back position. Yeah Wow, corporate propaganda works. Evidence? How would you start a business for $100? For what? One man, among all these commenter, really understand the reality. It is not what you get at the start, but it is how you manage what you have. You are wise my pal. One of the richest man in my country did not pass elementary and started selling textile. My dad worked for him as his delivery. (Liem Soe Liong). He then created the largest bank in Indonesia (Bank Central Asia) Another one started by helping his mom cook peanuts and sell them from store to store. Now he is one of the peanut giant. (Kacang Dua Kelinci) My dad, he never pass junior high, we had to literally fist fight with debt collector almost every day (i was there). Does not even have enough money to give me school lunch money. He failed his business many times. Now he owned a hotel, a House in US, Two houses in Bali, and more. Does he give me money for my company. Not a thing. But he did sent me to college in US. So, moral of the story: do not give up? We know less about his parents affairs because they were not in America. Point is, his parents owned a whole ass emerald mine. Of course they would spend money on their child. It would be crazy to assume that his parents didnt help out at all. There are hundreds of other rich peoples kids who arent quite as rich as these guys. The point is that doing what they did isnt possible at all for normal people. The point is that if any of them started without the connections/money of their parents they would have had 0 chance. He is literally just trying to make money lol Elon also claims to be a founder of Tesla which he wasn’t. Elon didn’t invent PayPal. His company (x.com) merged with their rival Confinity Inc and the new company was named PayPal. He took money from his dad and mom during his college days. Nope he only claims to be an oracle No This is called ""homemade"" Hit a nerve? Odd because there’s no way you’re even a thousandaire, fool. [deleted] And then if he failed he would be stuck with a 300k loan and destitution. Instead he got free money which meant he could take bolder risks. I'm not going to say he isn't smart, but to act like he could have done it without all the privilege afforded to him is very ignorant. Have you considered creating the world's most valuable e-commerce store? Warren Buffett Yep [deleted] Yes, he created it and sold it. Hope this is sarcastic, it's an absurdly impressive feat Neither do the three other guys. Nice! *Why does Jeff Bezos look* *Like the dark arts teacher from* *The Sorcerer's Stone?* \- RobLawster --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: ""haikusbot opt out"" | Delete my comment: ""haikusbot delete"") It's about 582,000 in today dollars! “you are significantly closer to being homeless than you will ever be to being a billionaire, have some class solidarity and stop glorifying your oppressors” 🤡 Let's do some math. We'll pretend that the minimum wage is $10/h just to make it easy. We'll fudge the cost of things to make it easier too. Average cost of a studio apartment is $950/month not including utilities. $50/month for water. $50/month for electricity. $50/month for gas. $100/month for transportation. $300/month for food. That's $1500/month for the bare minimum. That means you need to work more than 150 hours per month to break even. That's 75 hours per week. But wait, these types of jobs won't schedule you more than 30 hours per week, to avoid needing to provide medical insurance. So, you would need to work 3 different jobs for a total of 75 hours each week, just to break even. That's ignoring taxes too. Does that seem reasonable to you? ""We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe"" -stinky musk Okay dawg sure Well their ideas and management are also valuable, just by having money doesnt mean you can multiply It as many times as this ones did. And of course they have an advantage over others who start from scratch but its a fair advantage, as you said their predecessors earned it. Someone along the line did, or everyone was able to leave some Sort of wealth to the next generation. You can also get people with money to invest in your company if Its a good idea and well managed. What these people complain about is how cant they also be the richest in the world without risking anything. Working as an employee, while miserable, Its very easy. Yes, that's where we are. --- ^(🤖 this comment was written by a bot. beep boop 🤖) ^(feel welcome to respond 'Bad bot'/'Good bot', it's useful feedback.) ^[github](https://github.com/Toldry/RedditAutoCrosspostBot) ^| ^[Rank](https://botranks.com?bot=same_subreddit_bot) So the only one you knew was fake. I’m betting you’re a big Bernie supporter lmao I would like to be one of those Exactly. And if you apply even a reasonable ratio you would be saying that my parents giving me $300 can be turned into $10,000,000 Hey bought PayPal. He didn’t build it. Do you know anything about him? Pretty much. The phrase “self made” suggests that someone started from nothing. We should look to “self made” people as an example of the fairness or modern American capitalism and a reminder that greatness and great wealth is within reach of anyone at all. Memes like these, while imperfect, tell the truth that most of the massively wealthy / successful people in our society began the race 100 yards ahead of everyone else and with resources and a safety net. I don’t think anyone is diminishing the accomplishments of these people. Rather, we are using them as a reminder that a “level playing field “doesn’t exist. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates get accused of being liberals though. Just people who don't blindly hate on people for the wrong reasons and appreciate the effort they have made. Not when it's handed to you. Who the fuck had ever gotten 300k that's working class? That's an entire nest egg for 50 years of work for most workers. While it might be true, an emerald mine is hardly a head start. It's more like starting the race already in the clubhouse for celebratory spring water and lemon bars. Bezoz is one of the most ligit man's out there. He was over 30 and a nobody when he started... people act like 300k is a gift from God but I started a lawn care business and can save up 300k to start up something bigger in only a couple of years and probably raise more then 300k from random individuals. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247461 3 outta 4 on this self made list. The Mavericks, the NBA team he owns, is being sued by a former employee about a [sex scandal.](https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/article259523439.html) Mark also doesn’t care that the Chinese are committing unspeakable acts against the Ughyers because he makes a lot of money from that market. He says it’s bad but says he’s ok doing business there. He also got away with [insider trading](https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2009/08/the-icubani-insider-trading-case) I'm convinced Elon haters are more obsessed than the stans lmao. Who actually cares? Fuck Zuck, what about my old buddy Tom? He did not write DOS. He licensed it from another company. Do you think you would benefit from some 300000$ seed money that you didnt earn, or better yet from powerful connections from mommy and daddy [deleted] [deleted] That will only double it VEGAS BABY Gotta hit the red 3 times though. Each time is a 2x payout. So first bet hits 600k, 2nd bet hits 1200k, Woo, millionaire. Well no... taxes will eat \~333k. Third time hit 2400k, owe 777k in taxes, for 1.6million in your pocket.This assumes the betting strategy known as ""yolo"" is used. Worked for the owner of fed ex when they almost went out of business. Black. Always bet on black. Dafuq wrong with you? ;) Directions unclear, Detroit Red Wings lost and I have $0.00 Dis is the wey Ah the fedex method. Solid advice. Red and Odd #’s You son of a bitch, I’m in. Yaaaass thissss Probably the dumbest and most irresponsible answer I’ve ever heard. Clearly the answer is to throw it down on black. *Wesley Snipes shakes his head in disgust* Black or bust my man Naw craps table snake eyes Annnnnnnnnnnnnd it’s gone 24 Always bet 24. No! Throw it on black! Might as well, they were doing just fine without 300k Black, always bet on black. Put $100 on red. If you lose, put $200 on red. If you lose put $400 on red. If you lose put $800 on red... and continue until it lands on red. It can't stay on black forever. Eventually it will hit red and you will win. Then restart again from the beginning and keep repeating the process. Stay patient and never get greedy. Just keep on collecting the small steady wins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awcx-gTQDLM “11 BLACK!!” It’s black. OH NOOOOOOOO, I’M RUINED! Wouldn’t that only get you $600k??? No no no. Always....bet on black!! No, westley snipes said to always bet on black. That won’t get you millions. Got to put it on a number. I thought passenger 57 always said to bet on black? I thought you always bet on black? [Always bet on black](https://i.gifer.com/3rKw.gif) Always bet on black Martingale strategy Wesley snipes disagrees. Always bet on black No, always bet on black Always bet on Black. Vegas, Definitely Vegas,, Uhm, ackshully, you'd win a little less than 300k This is bad advice, place it on black. No, you lunatic! *Always* bet on black! And then throw your winnings down on red again... 18 more times in a row to build what Bezos did for himself. Yep. you would have to start with $300K and win 19 times in a row. That one movie Scorched right? A gem hiding in the desert. At best they'd only have 600k. Best to bet on green Red??? You must be some kind of lunatic, you put it all on black baby. How to turn $300,000, into $600,000 Double down. That was FedEx. >Drive to Vegas, throw down on red. Wrong, Wesley Snipes says always bet on black. Just don't take tax advice from him. Don't forget to save file before gambling no black never fails Nah put 150K on red and 150K on black, guaranteed win 150,000 on red, 150,000 on black, either way you're gonna win That would be red, red again, and finally red Pfft. Everybody knows always bet on black. Bet it on 00 RED?!? What are you nuts? Black baby! Black for the win!!!!! The marble: “I’m gonna bounce right over into this comfy green 00.” He who makes a beast out of himself Play triple diamond >Drive to Vegas, throw down on *green*. FTFY ""ALWAYS BET ON BLACK!"" Fuck that. He only needs 3 spins in roulette to make the Forbes billionaire list. Less if you include taxes Wrong. You Wesley Snipes that shit! While you're walking out too u never wait at the table It's always that 50% just guess the right side EZ Ah, the Norm MacDonald way. Let me ask you something, do you own a doghouse? black Gambling is the second worst thing after heroin Nice try casino owners Double zero's, slim chance though or invest in Wall Street Casino. will get same results. double vision gang where you at? ""Always bet on BLACK"" Please don't be an idiot like this guy... Put it on black. Alternatively, learn how to count cards in blackjack But Wesley Snipes said to “Always bet on Black.” Is that why i’m so poor? Black mate. Always bet on black I'd advice against that as it's sure to be black. This guy's a billionaire for sho Half on red, half on black You would have to be allowed to gamble at a table that would allow a bet that large. Martingale betting system What about the kardashians? They made millions themselves right? Solid advice except for not logging in. Gotta do that periodically to prevent escheatment. To add to this comment, I would suggest buying VOO. It has consistently outperformed my individual stock account. Just to add to this, don't forget to enable DRIP (dividend reinvestment plan) so that any dividends paid out are automatically reinvested into the fund (if whatever you put the funds into pays a dividend) To add, I wanna say the average annual return for any 15 years in the S&P is ten percent. Not counting tax liability, your money should double in that fund about every seven years. So $300k doubled thrice gets us to a little more than $2MM. A conservative portfolio after would net more than the average annual income for the rest of their life. Just for example. This is part of the problem though, it's a money cheat code. If you've got enough money, you just get more automatically. If you don't have 300k to just toss into an index fund then you'll still be fucked in 20 years time Okay so seeing as $187,719.13 in 2002 money would be $300K today, according to [here](https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/), investing $187,719.13 in March 2002 and taking it out last month would leave you with $430,376.14 in today's money, having netted you a nice (inflation-adjusted) extra $130K I did this with Bitcoin. Bought a bunch from 2012 to 2014. The wallet has been sitting in a safe deposit box since late 2014. I vowed not to touch until I turn 50 which is this coming December. I know it’s 7-figures. But not exactly sure. [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] dis guy thinks recessions happen every decade or so. ​ welcome to covid times baby! Do you not pay taxes if you never take the money out? It really is leave it for 20 years? I guess you could invest a bit more principle ever two years if you wanted. I've got an Vangaurd IRA from a former employer; I check it about once every year or two. Past performance does not indicate future returns Log in so the state doesn't report it as abandoned property. I also read this part of Nudge How and where does one do this? My search results were confusing. So freaking true, I'm about 5 years in on my money, and its very hard not to look, but it is easy [removed] It doesn't always have to go up... Either this or starting sole company if you have the knowledge and already work in that job Like plumbing.. painter... Car detail shop etc Holding for 20 years I’m currently struggling with this one! I know this is the right advice but it’s tough This is more or less what I'm doing with my annuity. Hi cap stocks, basically follow the Dow and that's how I'm doing. I look, but couldn't realistically touch it if I wanted to in this case...ignoring the last couple years it has been a very good investment. Previous results aren’t guarantee for future results. With all the shit we may have ahead (climate change, resource exhaustion…) I even doubt which in 20 we’re even going to have a S&P 500. Said that I don’t want to discourage investing, I invest in stocks too but I doubt which we’re going to have it even half as good as boomers. Would that make me a self-made billionaire? There was an article I came across here that stated people who made the most on their stocks were the people who either forgot about the stocks they bought, forgot their login info or were dead lol. This advice sounds about right. With the luck the millennial generation has, the market will crash hard at the end of those 20yrs. My russel 3000 vanguard fund is up 88% over 5 years That's a pretty bad strategy for investing a single large sum. If you happen to catch a macro top, you could be waiting a decade before you break even. Throwing your money into the S&P works well when you're investing regular amounts at regular intervals over time. With 300k to invest, it’s probably worthwhile to work with a Wealth Management professional. This is great advice. Still a 20 year wait though. Any brokerage account recommendations? This is how the people in the picture are different then you. Willing to take a risk and bet on themselves. Most people are too scared or simply don't have the talent. How long can we keep doubling our consumption? Meh, I’d put a third in. Use the rest to start a business in the thing you know most about or use it to invest in a franchise or invest in a person who has a proven record of growth. I know a guy who flipped houses for three years with a $25k start, he went on to buy 10 rentals, he leveraged those to buy a metal recycling company (a thing he knew a lot about) ran it for three years and just sold it for $15 million. Two rentals pay his mortgage, two pay for maintenance on everything, the rest pay his taxes and profit. Then. He has the $15 million spread around in doffeeent investment vehicles—to include a kid he is mentoring to do the same thing. He’s “retired” at 32. Just go all in on SPY 0dte calls and guess right about 20 times in a row. Guaranteed to work So the real advice is to give it to the four guys above? Microsoft, Berkshire, Tesla, and Amazon represent about 10-20% of the S&P 500. The other 494ish companies represent the other 70-80% >Not cashing it out and spending it Yeah the problem is that most want to be millionaires so they can spend the money In 2042, wife gets ill and needs to pay for medical bill. Great I invested years ago, time to check! *logs in* -238,829 USD Fuck. I wouldn't recommend putting it all in right now though. They should definitely put it in over time [deleted] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eikbQPldhPY That's basically all anyone should be allowed to do. The counter-intuitive fact is that recessions are actually the best time to buy if you're planning on holding for the long-term, because that's the cheapest time to buy. Just wait like at least a year and a half. Things are about to be really, really bad Instructions unclear. I'll just call my financial adviser everyday at 4:59 pm. Yup, People forget that Buffet made 90% of his money after 65. Compound interest baby. I wish people would follow this advice. I often see people winning lawsuits against their previous employer and what do they do? They burn it away. They even think where they're going to spend the money on before they even get it. Sure, you’ll mostly average 10% and have over 1.2 million 30 years later. But the meme is about how you are given 300k you’ll easily turn it into billions much faster. Agreed, also; break the buy period out across a few months. i.e., $30k/month for 10 months. You never know what will happen tomorrow, so this takes advantage of a method called 'dollar cost averaging.' I did this. Had a good amount saved up, put it in stocks and haven't touched in 7+ years. I split it into two stocks. 70% to S&P and 30% to total international (vanguard broad index) Per the resounding advice online at bogleheads. No bonds (although recommended) Was this a mistake, or timing? As the international index has done next to nothing compared to the S&P :( :( still haven't touched it. Yes. Let me put all my money away for 30 years then pull it out when I'm about to die Sometimes I wish I was dreaming Make sure to get index funds with low fee ratio. I like how the top advices in these kind of threads are always ""Invest it in a safe broad market index fund"" that has absolutely no productivity while at the same time demonizing these billionaires for ""hoarding"" billions of dollars (even though a huge chunk of that is just the valuation of their business) when they are the ones that took this hypothetical $300k and gamble it on a business producing goods and service for society. Cognitive dissonance? Projection? This is probably your best bet. I will add though not all 20 year periods are created equal and we just finished the longest bull run of all time up to 2020 pandemic. which then instantly went even crazier after a short correction in March. best 20 year is 18% and worst is 6.4% which isn't bad TBH. https://www.thebalance.com/rolling-index-returns-4061795 Fidelity has said that their top top performing types of clients 1. are deceased and 2. lost their account info I mean I check my investments on the daily but even throughout the up and downs, I've never sold a single share. It's fine to check as long as you have the mindset that it doesn't matter if you lose $15,000 in a day because just a week later you could be up $15,000 and in 10 years you're virtually guaranteed to be up a massive amount. Yeap. The hardest part of investing is doing nothing. It cracks me up that had Donald Trump just done this instead of building his bullshit gaudy properties with his $100 million inheritence he would be worth double or even triple than what he is now 😅 Replace S&P 500 with Bitcoin and 20 years with 10 and you're good to go! So $2mil in 20 years from now, that's cool. Now tell me how much property around you cost 20 years ago compared to now. Just messing with you. s&p is down 12% YTD. My GF and I started investing in 3/2020 and 7/2021. Worst entries ever That's what I said. Buy $300,000 worth of SPY, don't touch it. 1994-2022 you'd have $2,600,000. >It's that easy. $300k invested for 20 years with 6% annual returns is only $962k. So, not quite there yet. Not even close to a billion. Seems like it actually does take effort and work to turn $300k into billions. It wouldn’t even need 20 years. In 20 years your balance would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.4 million with it doubling every 6 years after. This, this is 100% true. If you invest 300k, and put 5k in each month in the market, starting at 40. At 65 you will have close to 6 million on average returns. This right here. After 20 years ypyre probably looking at between 2 and 2.5 million Or actually try your hand at business… or investment with involvement. People always say put everything into S&P 500 and wait 10-20 years. 20 years of the prime of your life. I’d say it’s worth attempting something more pro-active. Each to their own… In Japan in the late 80s the nikkei 225 was at an all time high then sharply dropped and hasn't even recovered fully ever since. Imagine if that happened to the s&p today with all the war and covid BS going on I did that with E*trade and they stole my money with fees until there was none left. S&P average return over the last 100 years is 10% per year. If the market were to dip hard and he got lucky he could be a millionaire in 5 years but he'll definitely be one in 15 years. I mean if your rich shouldn’t your activity be buying in a down market? I used to work for a company that had a client that had won something like $50 million on a lottery ticket. It was incredible to watch how quickly they squandered their winnings. > That’s the larger point people are missing. No, the larger point which you seem to be missing is that if the people turning $300k into billions and transforming society are only the ones with nepotistic access to that initial capital, then it means the human species is a severely undercapitalized asset. How many people born outside the global 1% have the *capacity* to change the world but aren't given the *opportunity* to do so? How much human potential has been wasted because nepotistic gating of opportunities for growth have shut out the best and brightest people in favor of narrowing the pool to only trust fund brats? (And I say that as someone born into the global 1% who had a wealth of opportunities to reach my potential. The world would be better off if everyone had the opportunities I had based on merit and ability and not parental wealth.) It's not just talent. Sometimes a nice, working network does the trick, even if you don't have capital, or talent. Yeah, the fact that really rich people always seem to get there from the the starting point of somewhat rich is *definitely* an indication that it's all about talent. Growing up rich isn't just about having some money. It's about growing up with connections and access. Lottery winners don't become billionaires because they don't have those connections. Conversely, somebody like Donald Trump can still be a billionaire after being too stupid to run a casino -- a business where people literally give you money and get nothing in return -- profitably because no matter how many times he declares bankruptcy, he still has enough connections willing to hand him capital that he can always afford to screw up some other venture. I don't think anyone legitimately believes that Bezos did nothing and magically became a billionaire. What we do believe, however, is that if you have one good idea that doesn't mean you get to hoard hundreds of billions of dollars while we have 60% of our workers living paycheck to paycheck. There's a huge problem with what we consider valuable in our society. Bezos does some coding in a garage and builds a multi-trillion dollar corporation. I taught middle school for 3 years and I'm still 10 years of saving away from buying a home. Which do you think is a more valuable service? Obviously it's way more important I get my new airpods with 2 day shipping than provide education for a future generation of adults. The connections they have from birth are even more important than the starting capital. The point is these people started on third base. You're right, not everyone can make it home but these guys had a massive advantage 99.9% of people don't have. The point you’re missing is that they aren’t self made and the vast vast majority of people who start with less have no chance of becoming a billionaire. They’re billionaires because they started rich and found great ways to exploit others That's not the point at all. Not everyone with money becomes a billionaire. Nobody without money does. [deleted] People don't understand shit. They go his parents seed him the money.. yeah and 90% of business fold in the frost 8 years. They had talent and took the risk who cares where the seed money came from? Yeah it makes it easier if mommy and daddy are loaded but that dosent mean shit. How many kinds inherent their parents money and piss it away. Howany lottery winners are broke in 5 years? It's super easy to go from rich to poor and fucking hard as hell to go from poor to rich... also just because mommy and daddy have money doesn't mean you get their money. That’s not how it works. 300,000 back in the 2000s though. Not 300,000 now. That's a whole lot of money. Furthermore, way less competition back then. These guys definitely have talents but they're not 2 million times more talented than the average person. When you already start from a position of extreme affluence it's a lot easier to reach those multipliers. Even being a lottery winning doesn't buy you the connections of generational wealth. *Shhhhhh* stop making sense in reddit... [deleted] I think part of it is having $300,000 and a solid back-up plan. Like if I had $300k, and I lost it, I’d be f*ck’d. If my parents were wealthy enough to give me $300k to start a business, I’m going to assume I have a bit of a cushion to fall back upon There's a lot more to it than talent. A wealthy family have connections and contacts. The children are brought up learning how to handle money and businesses. And maybe most importantly, they can make risky investments, if a rich kid fails, the parents can bail them out till they succeed. A lottery winner isn't likely to take major risks like that, knowing they could lose everything, and would rather just live comfortably. Even if they wanted to take that risk they wouldn't know the best way to go about it. Even if they tried, they would still need to get their brand out there naturally, can't rely on the family name. They'd have a hard time finding investors, not knowing anyone in the business, and investors aren't as likely to deal with some unknown untested individual. Sometimes talent, sometimes a brutal disregard for the human rights of others. But in the US it seems like that also falls under the umbrella of “talent”. That's *not* the point, the point is some people get this startup capital and some do not. How many poor people do you think would be good at this, just by averages? But not everybody gets the money to try It is about knowing there is a cushion to fall back to. Not everyone can throw 300k and cranking it to you get something out of it or write it off. Being born to wealthy parents affords more opportunities than just money. You could say the same about pro athletes. Many go broke. But others are buying up restaurant franchises and real estate and getting super rich. I think a lot of people confuse talent with luck. Billionaires are really not far away from lottery winners in terms of how they got rich. The right time and combination of factors. If it were talent, any talented person would be super rich. Your equating someone raised in and around money their whole lives with access to education and business knowledge and expertise with a random lottery player (always known for their excellent money management skills). But thats just missing the point. Yes, its not easy to have a succesfull business even with start capital and connections. But not having any pretty much makes it impossible. You need to be part of the 1% before having a chance of becoming part of the 0,01% Wait you guys poo flushes away? Mine just floats to the surface with no amount of flushing pulls it down. I think the point being missed is that they likely wouldn’t have been successful as they are without the advantages they have. That’s not saying that everyone with $300,000 from their parents is going to be a billionaire. It just means that they had advantages many others don’t. 300k then isn't 300k now. Not randomly, but not too difficult to do, jus takes some time. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0711/how-to-double-your-money-every-6-years.aspx#:~:text=%EF%BB%BF%20At%2010%25%2C%20you%20could,(72%20divided%20by%206). theres a difference between being some random guy with 300k and being the son of a rich family and getting 300k as a startup investment. in the latter, if you fail, sure you lose some money, but you are completely covered It’s weird to see so many people accidentally making leftist arguments on here lol Growing up in an environment where getting $300K is possible gives you the opportunity to take risks. Like starting a company instead of working in Burger King and giving half your paycheck to your family. That same burger king employee might get $300K inheritance later in life but it's going to be spent on housing and other debt. Different scenarios completely. its not that easy, but getting a huge sum of money that you can take a big risk with knowing you have a rich family to fall back on if you lose it all is what you need. Loads of people take huge gambles knowing they have a safety net in their family. Then you just take hundreds of thousands of rich kids and some are bound to hit and make it big then they too can say they are self made when really they had the capital to gamble and got lucky. Then after that you just have to exploit the shit out of everyone around you and your works and you too can horde wealth. With 300k, it's pretty easy to make millions unless you're a complete idiot. Billions of course is a different story but I can do millions easy. I'm not special at all. No, but the connections, the money and the option to try multiple times or fall back on mommy and daddy if you blow it helps *a lot*. Also having all of these opportunities at a critical time like the Internet exploding helped too. Certainly easier when you have $300,000 rather than nothing. Sure there's skill involved, but money matters more. You can have all the skill in the world but never get anywhere without that initial $$$. Sure it can but what is missing is the context. Parents who accumulate enough capital to give away a chunk of it also invest in their children. Really good private schools where you A) Learn things that the proletariat doesn't get to learn. B) Get to know people within your same station in life that can afford to invest in your business venture. C) Have contacts in industry to allow you to avoid common pitfalls for nascent businesses. D) Specialists who can be recruited to fill out your organization as you scale taking the guess work out of recruiting folks. So Jeff Bezos with $300K is going to use it better than Tom I Had A Scratcher. Bezos did work hard, but based upon the way he was prepared, that effort went into all the right directions. I know because I have been an Amazon customer since it was a book store and you had to use dial up to get to it. Well, it would be $600,000 today. And they lived in a house that his wife's parents bought for them so they didnt pay rent or a mortgage. They had a great idea and the drive to make it happen but they had a huge advantage over the average person who wants to attempt a similar endeavour. Invested in a US broad equity index fund with a low expense ratio and it’s an almost mathematic certainty that, in 25 years (without touching it and automatic dividend reinvestment on), you’ll have at least $2m and possible upwards of $4m if you get lucky. If the market took a historic shit you’d still probably have in excess of a million. This is based on rule of 72 and 10% sp500 returns No. Don’t do this!! There’s a reasonably good chance that you will pick the next IBM or GE. Buying a total market index fund is 100x safer. With the way markets have been, it might only take 6 or 7 years to get to a million from 300k. If you invest in dividend-paying stock, you absolutely do not want to walk away for 25 years. You need to be regularly reinvesting those dividends. Shit advice. Single stock portfolios have diversifiable risk, ie the company can go tits up. Broad index funds owning hundreds of companies can sustain dozens of failures, think What happened in 2008. It’s a lot harder for everyone to go to zero. failed strategy vs index funds And be the next eco crash bag holder, great! He said rich, not broke. r/wallstreetbets is literally gambling. It's even in the name. r/financialindependence or even just r/personalfinance will have better long term investing advice. Didn't Michael Reeves fish beat them in making more money? This is the second ""doge is shit"" joke I've seen today after a month or more of silence on it. Is this a signal? Keep my wife’s name out your ———- mouth! [deleted] You laugh, but in 2019, this would’ve been a great idea. Financial advisor for $300k? lol It's a combination of things, yes you need enough money like these guys to get going although there are probably many millions if not tens of millions of people who had similar or greater wealth available to them, yet these guys have massively outperformed them. As you say there is certainly a ton of luck and timing involved, though I would say all of these men at least with regard to business/marketing and such are extremely intelligent and I would kind of disagree that there are endless people smarter than them. Bezos’ success is so much less about even being in the right place at the right time. He came from a well connected financial institution and has manipulated those connections to basically do hostile takeovers of companies to steal products/services and keep his competitors from maintaining an edge over Amazon. He benefitted from huge institutional capital lobbying for pro-Amazon and anti-anyone in the way wherever he needed to. If you can turn a $1M investment into a $1T business, I will invest every cent I have on you. Here's a sneak peek of /r/Bogleheads using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [I started investing in my 401k 25 years ago this week. Hit a milestone today. 100% VTSAX and chill.](https://i.redd.it/j3rz0udmf4471.jpg) | [377 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/nvgx54/i_started_investing_in_my_401k_25_years_ago_this/) \#2: [Hit one milestone after 30 years of investing in Vanguard. 5 more years to go and I am done.](https://i.redd.it/4afubmopfyj71.jpg) | [264 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/pculvx/hit_one_milestone_after_30_years_of_investing_in/) \#3: [This is the dip that everyone is panicking about.](https://i.redd.it/m5y38a6kpad81.jpg) | [389 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/saashk/this_is_the_dip_that_everyone_is_panicking_about/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot) Ehhh I'd say do your own research if you have the time. I had a guy from JP Morgan handle 10k for a year, just to see what he could do (referred to me from my grandfather). Dude made $90. I was looking at his plays and they were God-awful. While my own portfolio gained 12%. Jesus christ!! What's it like to have a net worth of $25m? It says a lot about society I’m legit impressed. How many roommates you have now to keep up with cost of living? Did it have underground parking? After that you can be president. Yea. That’s some WSB talk right there! Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. Of course it is politics. It is designed to create class warfare, and justify taking people's money (these people's money). Yeah, the whole ""generational wealth"" concept is mostly a myth. There's a reason why we know who the Rockefellers and Ford's and Carnegies are: they're exceptional. Most kids raised with wealth lose it because they don't know how to make it. If anything it’s impressive these guys didn’t turn out like the rich stuck up slobs most kids do who grew up in a middle class / upper middle class family. Ehhh - Very rich family - Great schooling - Become a stock broker - Made a ton of money from shaddy stock moves - Reinvested that into amazon as well as doing more shaddy moves to help amazon. So money, rich parents, great schooling, and being a zero morale stock trader. That's not what it is. It's about dispelling the myth that billionaires become billionaires by JUST working hard and that anyone can be a billionaire if you just grind out hard enough. Even 1 in a trillion unbelievably rare success stories STILL require MASSIVE legs up to get where they were. Also, just a fuck ton of immoral, unethical behavior. Economics is politics. You can't separate them without undermining your own arguments, at least as far as real world applications go. Most or all family wealth are gone by the 3rd Gen (grand kids). Dude why some of you are missing the obvious point, these people aren't normal average Joe's, they had a significant advantage and their backgrounds definitely played a role to get where they are. Their background isn't just about the funds that were available to them but the networking, education and confidence most importantly that comes up with having an affluent family. Economics and politics are intertwined. You can't separate them. If someone gave me $300,000 no strings or obligations attached (besides corporate ownership) to start a website, especially at the time it happened for Bezos when there was still a vacuum in internet sales, I'm pretty sure I could at least have broken a few hundred million. That was also just his initial seed money - the money used to make a pretty enough facade to get other richer people to invest millions. Looking at you Nikola. the equal opposite doesnt make it more self made - nice try though - he is no where near self made, he still did something amazing with what he had though. him being less self made doesnt change that but we dont have to make up stuff to continue this self made story arc that is really serving no one. That’s cuz you’re a spoiled moron Plus, it's a little ridiculous to say that Elon, Bezos, and Gates made their empires and didn't work for it. Hell, having a vision and being able to properly execute that vision, hiring the right people, and making all the correct business partnerships is extremely difficult. Sure these guys aren't getting the black lung from the coal mines but to act like they haven't put in the work is crazy. Elon musk wrote software to become rich. Anyone can do that. Possibly on the same device they are reading this on. One of those other guys revolutionized those same devices and changed the face of the world with his ideas. Based on how it’s worded, it was an equity contribution, not just a windfall. Meaning his parents saw some potential in his business plan. This creates a bit of a bias as well since he was more likely to survive than those who received random 300k windfalls. I'm not even sure that one's entirely accurate. He worked for a hedge fund into his 30's and then moved to Seattle to try and get in on ""this whole internet thing"". Guessing he had a good chunk of his own capital by then as well as a few reasonably wealthy friends willing to invest in his idea. And fuck was it a good one. Pretty standard way to start a business if you're not a 20 year old tech prodigy. You could probably credit a silverish spoon for having the opportunity to get a solid university education and land a hedge fund gig, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to extend that to the 1.5trillion dollar company he built. I find the term ""self made"" problematic. How could he have made his fortune when the people who worked for him literally are complaining that they are not allowed to go to the bathroom to pee? His wealth is made by exploiting people. Let's not forget the children of major athletes and celebrities. All with access to millions. How many end up like Gates or Bezos? Shit, a large percentage of them in trouble for drunk driving and crashing their luxury car into something, or end up with addiction issues. I mean it's 4 people who come from incredibly privileged backgrounds who made fortunes based on the investment of capitol and high level friends of their parents. Other people failing in doing it doesn't take away the propping up these people received making them absolutely not self-made. There is plenty of people with privileged backgrounds that don't make it due to being inept. But there's exponentially more people with good ideas that fail because they never had the chance. Why, because they don't have the resources these people had. The post is about being self made anyways, and these people aren't self made. They were carried to wealth. Good ideas, sure, but the reason they blew up like they did was because of the support of wealthy as fuck family. You guys are like ""hey check it out, if you stand behind this tree the forest disappears"". I don't really care about the down flow. How many people become billionaires without this level of support? It's not selection bias if they're all the same But Noone is claiming these people didn't work as well. Just that they had a giant head start 99% of us don't have. He didn't just get $300,000. He also got to live with his wealthy parents with the knowledge that even if his business failed he would be taken care of. Also $300,000 in 1995 is equal to over $550,000 today. So it would be like his parents giving him over half a million dollars to start a company. There aren't a lot of rags to riches that have achieved nearly as much though. So the bias you're pointing out isn't the point. It's just pointing out the top wealthiest already came from wealth. And this is likely true even further down that line. Everyones pointing out wealthy people who don't succeed like ""explain this."" But that's simply missing the point. [deleted] Nobody says that coming from wealth will guarantee to have wealth or become even richer. It's just a critique on the people pretending that ""Microsoft was started in a garage"" means ""if you have a garage and the necessary skills, you can become a billionaire."" The narrative is that anyobody can become wealthy. The fact is that most people who become billionaires build on familial ressources, be it money, contacts or knowledge. And as much as he gets hated on, Elon Musk is pretty much self made too. His dad owned a share of an emerald mine in a different country which gave them a passive income, not *owned* an *apartheid mine*. Also, Musk almost never saw any of this money after moving to NA until his dad decided to invest in his start-up company. There are clearly things to dislike Musk for, but it’s stupid to make up stuff like this. Mostly slave made Economics is politics. Politics is economics. :/ It sounds like it would make statistical sense to just put all of your money into a trust fund which your child can inherit, but not change. So, the money will be invested automatically, and they can get what it pays out, but they won't be able to ruin it. That's widely different to inherit money and to have the possibility to inject the same amount in a company. Like way different. Especially 300000 in the 90's Not to be awful your daughter was an idiot. I hope you reminded her of that fact. She could have changed her life with that 200k but she chose to be an idiot. I sound harsh but it’s disappointing because she could have invested in her education, or bought a modest hone and rented out the rooms to pay all the bills, or she could have again, gotten an education. Why is everyone pretending like this argument is claiming its easy to make money if you have money? It's claiming the converse. It's difficult to make money unless you have money. Capital is just one part, but it's the barrier of entry that works. You can claim their smart and ambitious... but that's a dime a dozen in our society. It's the lack of wealth that keeps most of those folks down. Pointing to the random folks who got wealth handed to them doesn't disprove anything. You're either oblivious to what this post is about or purposely being misleading. I don't see any reason why you'd do the latter, so I'll assume the former. That’s wild, but not surprising actually. A big difference is that these folks (and many like them) could afford to fail over and over and over again because they had a safety net ready to catch them, so they really weren't risking anything. A single chunk of $200k can go away fast, and with no wealth to bail you out, the jig is up. > For everyone of these that got a head start and ‘made it’ The head start is not just the money, but the knowledge, support system, and connections that go along with it. Someone who grows up poor will not have the understanding on how to use that money. Someone who grows up where $200k is not life changing will be less likely to blow it, and will instead be more likely to invest it wisely. Someone who has a rich family will be more willing to take a smart risk with that money, which can make large returns. Making it is not just becoming a billionaire, for me it would mean retiring earlier, for others I know it means owning a vacation home, and for a ton of people making it is being able to farm or work a low-paying job that you enjoy. Sounds like you were shit parents if you didnt instill basic responsibility in your kids. Children dont just fuck off if you take time to actually teach them. That’s on you. This is it. To get to millions, even with a stroke of luck is hard. To get to a billion is even harder and no matter how good an upbringing you had, unless you inherit your billions it’s nearly impossible to become a billionaire still. Sounds like a biblical parable. When she was still a long way off did you run to her and throw her a feast? I’m just trying to turn $1000 into $4000 so I can pay my taxes from last year… My Mother came to this country with $0 and has created a small empire. its not 200bil or even a bil, but its in the millions. What no one sees is that she worked everyday and every night, worked her ass off. Capitalism is not perfect but its better then the other option. Dark Souls allows you to learn and eventually overcome the boss. Capitalism doesn't really offer that. Or if it does. It does VERY rarely. I can turn $200bln into $0. Learned that from Dark Souls what about -$30k in student loans to $200b? I'm still trying to make a dollar out of 15¢. As someone that has only heard horror stories of the difficulty of dark souls, I feel like I can’t fully appreciate this comment. Love it though. Lol How about $300 into $200 million? That’s the same relationship and $300 is a more normal starting point. How about $0.30 into $200k? Sounds like a third world success story. A lot of people in capitalism turn $0 into something like -$5000 *plin plin plon* It's easier to turn $0 into $300k than it is to turn $300k into $200b. Just look at the world around you- the former happens everyday, the latter has happened a few times (depending on how you calculate inflation). Jeff Bezos is a humongous piece of shit, and you can arrive at that conclusion by sticking to things that are actually true, that he actually did. It seems silly to pretend that $300k is that big a deal for a start up- nowadays, companies with way less promise start with $50m from venture cap. step 1: find something on craiglist listed for free Step 2: sell that step 3: buy something at a flea market step 4: sell that.. Keep buying and selling stuff until you buy and sell a corporation. It's amazing what you save over 30 years doing things you don't like to do. My parents: minimum wage workers, did crappy jobs in crappy areas that nobody wanted to live in, bought real estate that nobody wanted...and instantly over 30-35 years they were overnight successes worth millions. You can do the same thing right now in Detroit or any place in the rust belt. Don't go hollow. You should try Socialism then.... And even harder with socialism Why don't people understand this and apart from money these billionaires had so much other invaluable resources. Bezos sorta did. He convinced his parents to risk their everything on his amazon bet. Many if not most middle class parents near retirement can leverage 450,000(value of their investment in today numbers) if they are willing to risk everything. His maternal grandparents were very wealthy and well-connected. Uhhhhh any family with $300k to hand to their son is wealthy His biological father actually died a few years ago. Some news outlet did a story on him, it's actually surprisingly entertaining. Easy to find on YT. Aren't there stories of him trying to pay for things off the street with a pocket full of emeralds? That's not coming from nothing. Jeff is within arms reach of a known Iranian Arms dealing family. While I find his story less offensive on it's face, there is a reason he is in a news war with the SA royal family. https://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/article/incredible-story-worlds-richest-arms-dealer-adnan-khashoggi/ As Reddit is fond of pointing out, the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars. $300k, $600k, the difference is negligible. There are literally millions of American families with net worths north of $3 million. The vast majority do not raise children that become billionaires. Probably ~$500k in today's money lmao Dude VC investment firms will lend you more with decent planning lmao So you think having access to 300k makes you rich . Bezos cultivated that image on purpose, and it worked like a charm. He bought a house to say Amazon was ""started in a garage"" like Apple, but then moved the company to an office park within 6 months. Bezos is one of the more evil people on earth but I don't think of him as projecting a ""rags to riches"" personality. Musk, and Gates came from middle class families. Bezos, from a poor one. Your statement is untrue. Jeff Bezos did work a job before he started Amazon. He was a successful hedge fund manager. He probably had hundreds of thousands. Thats probably also why he knew people who had 50k he worked at a hedge fund I mean, it takes more than privilege to get people to invest in a business and it takes more than just those investments to turn said business into one of the largest corporations in the world. Pretty sure 99% of redditors would not end up with anywhere near these peoples' wealth even if they started with the same resources. It would be dumb not to acknowledge that their accomplishments are impressive. And acknowledging that is in no way mutually exclusive with condemning them for it. I mean wouldn’t most middle class people have at least 50k in their retirement accounts by the time they reach their mid thirties? Assuming you were a good enough salesman with a good enough product, I don’t see why you couldn’t get your friends to invest that in a business. Granted I never met anyone with 20 close friends though. No, it is not privilege. It is hustle. They had to find people, and convince them to invest. Not give him money, but invest. This kind of talent is incredibly rare. This kind of privilege is commonplace. Dude. I have 8 friends and we’ve got $5 million to start our business idea slash app. We aren’t pulling the trigger out of fear and losing our investment. We’re all middle class born and now I guess upper middle class. Someone that has a great idea that could turn into millions. Sign me up now Okay. Then do me a favor and take $1,000 and turn it into $666 million. That would be the equivalent. I think the 300 k was starting capital He got another 4 mil from family later. Armold was dirt por when he come to the US. His buddies from the gym brought him food and plates to his tiny apartment. He was a bricklayer in L.A. first. He always praises a ton of people from his bodybuilder and acting connections that pushed him forward in his career. He’s also not anywhere close to a billionaire Arnold came to America and couldn't speak any English. After Hard work and determination He then became the greatest bodybuilder ever. Then after that he decided to become one of the biggest action stars of all time. Then he married a kennedy, one of the most famous families in America. Then he became governor of California which has one of the world's largest economies. Hes the epitome of self made and the American dream. Wouldn’t Arnie sneak off base at night when he was in the military in Austria just to pump iron? [deleted] Arnold has genetics that he was given. You can’t him no matter how hard you try Bro, you should read more about Bill Gates Idk anything about these guys history, but how is getting 300k seed funding a deal? I literally just read a linked in post where one of my second connections (just out of college) secured about the same amount to start a business… this is like step one in starting a business… you usually pitch your idea and get funding… you have to be persuasive, have to have a pretty good idea, have to show some form of ROI for the investors… this is not something that just happens … you have to work to get the funding… And even so, if you have everyone 300k to start a business, how many people would become As wealthy? People that start a chain restaurant need to get a loan this large… most businesses require some kind of cash up front and tons of people get it by way of a loan or investors… Calling this some advantage would be like saying he needed to make his shoes from scratch, etc and so on I'd still argue that Bill Gates an Jeff Bezos are self made billionaires due to the fact that they actually came up with the ideas for there businesses an worked hard in order to create them not to mention the ""seed"" money Bezos received was in exchange for equity for Amazon and his parents claim that he made sure they understood all the risks associated with his startup before taking their money I agree, but Arnold would not. That’s the point he was trying to make, he got a lot of help. But that's the point of the statement. No one is self made, we all are socially created. It's all cooperation yeah , but just like those 4 , who got money and influence from thier parents , arnold got the best genetics from his parents ... you dont choose you what you are born with , its all abt what you make out of it ...arnold used his genetics and sheer hardwork to become the goat , similarly all 4 , used their family wealth and influence , along with their talent, hardwork , to earn billions and build such massive companies.... what difference does it make? Arnold already had massive gains by the time he moved to the US. Ehh…. Questionable. He’s married to a Kennedy…. How? Did he not inherit excellent genes, which helped make him so muscular and attractive? If someone gave you $300,000, are you saying you would return to us with Amazon? Of course not. Stop being such a retard. Maybe more self made definitely not more successful though…Elon musk has revolutionized our planet and potentially in a couple decades our solar system Arnold’s fame was his body, which he used steroids for. Hardly “self made” He’s made a ton of money on predatory lending, and also heavily lobbies against green energy. He is a very ruthless businessman, but tries his hardest to keep a squeaky clean image Taught a good lesson in the value in owning the land and not just tangible goods. They do that knowing a lot of fixed income folks can't pay the rent increase AND cannot afford to move the trailer. So, when they leave, they usually leave the trailer behind, or sell it to the leasing office for pennies on the dollar. Then the managing company rents the trailer out, making even more money. And, 9 out of 10 times the trailer really isn't fit to be lived in. But hey, it's not a home, so the rules and regs surrounding what is essentially a vehicle means that they don't have to really repair anything. There's few protections for renters. It's big money. It's not only buffet, big investment firms like Blackstone do it too. I'm convinced there's no ""good"" billionaire, it's just a slide of kinda shitty to bezos. buffett literally gives away billions of dollars every year. Not quite - he bought a company that made ""mobile homes"". But he's on the magazines :/ and they say he's generous, so.... Who is right then? You? Ah, a real estate investor. Like Ron Crock. You have to be pure evil to be one of those. What’s POS? The most rich screw the most poor Death on the installment plan He owns Geico too he raised the price of auto insurance what a piece of shit. I was paying $465 a month then went down to $250 when I switched to Progressive that 15% off my ass. He's a POS because he raised rent? Yeah this dude championing warren buffet lol what…. Musta watched a 60 minutes on him He did join Gates ""The Giving Pledge"" I mean… Anyone who is incredibly wealthy has achieved that wealth through the expense of others to some extent. I don't think that necessarily equates to them being evil, but they definitely aren't kind people. Yup, Buffet likes to play the friendly grandpa card but the man was (more so than today at least) a ruthless monster when it came to business. arnold 2024? I heard the statue of david’s johnson was formed from Arnold’s, he can time travel you know You don’t have to work physically hard to work hard. Yeah - you dont get to be at Buffets position without being a cold, ruthless bastard. He has just learnt how to turn on the grandfatherly charm while he figures out how to stab you in the back. I am not criticizing him. It is just what you need to get ahead in the world What do you want him to do? He's a powerful man but not powerful enough to change tax law in the US single handedly. He's donating over 99% of his NW when he dies. And please give a source on how he's ""influenced entire markets at the expense of the American public"". > revise your definition of working hard. Hoe would you define hard work? Me thread pipe. Me work harder than business owner. Should choose a different career path if your gonna get salty about computer knowledge workers and their workload. Save it, if you think it’s easy, go make a couple million with a laptop. Let me know how smooth sailing it is. People are just too susceptible to the ""frugal old man"" image. I can't count how many times on this site someone feels the need to talk about him eating McDonald's with coupons 1 time. Funny how people complain about climate change and continue to eat meat. When you get that rich, it becomes a game to see how much richer you can get. He doesn't want to put shackles around his own feet and let other billionaires beat him, he wants taxes raised on all of them. Elon musk literally slept on the factory floor for 3 years working 120 hours a week Do you expect him to buy the us government to pass a bill to raise taxes? And before you say that Buffet could just donate to charity… he does, he donates a lot, and if he didn’t he’d likely be twice as rich as he is, as those donations have come at the cost of half his Berkshire Hathaway stock. Yeah I wanted to ask exactly how any billionaire has ""worked hard"" for their money >bout how billionaires don’t get taxed enough (for example saying he pays less than his secretary) but then does nothing further This is always just PR spin. He can cut a check to the treasury for whatever extra amount he likes. They will take it, gladly. It's all just talk to try and stay on the 'good side' and people buy it, for some reason. It’s crazy how Gates used to be hated in the 90s. After spending billions on different PR, he managed to fabricate a good image. In truth, he’s played a big roll in hurting public education in the US over the last 20 years, built a predatory monopoly, and ran interference for pharmaceutical companies to protect copyrights of COVID vaccines. How many millions of kids had their education damaged? How many millions of people have been hurt, with many even dying, because they were prevented from getting vaccinated? People forget that, before Gates involved himself, the West was going to wave copyrights on vaccines so developing countries could mass produce them. He prevented that just so copyright laws could remain entrenched and he could make more money. He *literally* sold human lives for cash. Absolutely horrible person who’s no better than Bezos. Makes me vomit when Reddit licks his boots. In general probably true, but if I won the lottery for $110M tomorrow, doesn't make me dishonest. Plenty of people are worth a ton on paper from starting companies, etc, and not bad. Eminem? What about Stephen King? I disagree, my father owns a telecommunications company (basically they build and repair cell phone towers) he started it in 1989 maxing out credit cards and taking out loans to keep it afloat at first. He kept almost all of the equity with him throughout all those years and never took any buyout offers. The company is now worth a little more than 100 million dollars and my dad has 100% equity. Entry level workers at the company can make 100k a year and my dad takes a 300,000 dollar salary every year. He never cut corners, he was never dishonest, and he truly started from nothing. your broke and still dishonesty probably Sorry new to this reddit echochamber didn't realize it was richguy worship. Nobody is honest What about 99 million? Thats the most retarded thing Ive ever heard. Humans are dishonest. Nobody is honest because given the chance to become rich 99% of you would do it. Yeah it really does. I had a friend who I stopped talking too because he was helping make an NFT project that was so obviously just a scam. He was making a fuckload of money, but it was not morale whatsoever. It's way easier to make money if you are willing to fuck tons of other people over. [deleted] It was awesome there was Blood all over... Looked like a crime scene...and yet also a scene of nature to be quite Frank. Best part was the 8 foot tall goat man ... HE Knows how to party 🥴🥴🥴 Have you heard of Survivorship bias? Survivorship bias in the wild, everyone. and rich connected parents. theyre listed above How many people “try” and never become wealthy? Many more people put in effort and never achieve success than never try because it isn’t guaranteed Of course they tried, there was no penalty for failure. They weren’t going to lose a house or not be able to feed their families. If amazon had been a bust, Bezos would have shrugged his shoulders and moved on to something else. It’s a lot easier to try something new if you have the safety net. Give me $300,000 in seed money and I'll ""try"" too. For that kind of money I can hire someone to come up with the business plan. So what am I selling? And if they don't succeed, they have a huge safety net to land in, unlike most people. It's not that they didn't work hard, it's that they didn't have to endure many of the pitfalls normal people would have to deal with while starting a business. When you already have investment money, connections, and parents who will take care of you if you fail completely, your giant risks aren't really so giant. Yes, they tried because they could. They all had safety nets to fall back onto if they poured everything into their business and it failed. If most people poured everything into a business idea and it failed, they would have absolutely nothing to fall back onto- no rich parents or political contacts that can help bail them out. True and I send most of it back, as is my due legaly speaking. To hurt Amazon, you have to jam their supply chain as best as you can. They already lost a lot for having me as a costumer. I urge everbody to do the same and screw them where it hurts. I do and I am happy to decrease his wealth along the way, gives me joy. I send most of the crap back as is my due legally speaking Bezos has lost quote a bit of money for having me as a costumer. As he screws his employees, I am happy to screw him whenever I can. I urge everybody to do the same to bring Amazon down. Suicide Hotline Numbers If you or anyone you know are struggling, please, PLEASE reach out for help. You are worthy, you are loved and you will always be able to find assistance. Argentina: +5402234930430 Australia: 131114 Austria: 017133374 Belgium: 106 Bosnia & Herzegovina: 080 05 03 05 Botswana: 3911270 Brazil: 212339191 Bulgaria: 0035 9249 17 223 Canada: 5147234000 (Montreal); 18662773553 (outside Montreal) Croatia: 014833888 Denmark: +4570201201 Egypt: 7621602 Finland: 010 195 202 France: 0145394000 Germany: 08001810771 Hong Kong: +852 2382 0000 Hungary: 116123 Iceland: 1717 India: 8888817666 Ireland: +4408457909090 Italy: 800860022 Japan: +810352869090 Mexico: 5255102550 New Zealand: 0508828865 The Netherlands: 113 Norway: +4781533300 Philippines: 028969191 Poland: 5270000 Russia: 0078202577577 Spain: 914590050 South Africa: 0514445691 Sweden: 46317112400 Switzerland: 143 United Kingdom: 08006895652 USA: 18002738255 You are not alone. Please reach out. ***** I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. This user especially is pretty bad. I recognized the name because they've been spamming low effort, politically divisive crap to /r/conspiracy and a few other subs lately. And I mean absolutely spamming it like it's their job. It's likely a bot or astroturfing account set up by some political group. why are you still here then lmao I haven't seen this sub before, I was going to ask about the rules and mods, but then I saw in the sidebar ""Like a free market, this subreddit is mostly unregulated"". These kinds of posts are just the natural consequence of large audiences and no moderation 1 hour later after your comment and the post is now at 22k. Lul. 60,000 7 hours later lmao This! The accepted definition of economics is ‘how society allocates scarce resources.’ Questioning why so few at the top are allowed to hoard massive amounts of resources at the expense of everyone else fits that definition. Get back to work. Bezos needs another Dick rocket! [deleted] [removed] Its almost like those things are part of the economy, but maybe you’re not interested in being constructive. The poster of this is some stupid conservative who posts in the conspiracy sub. Also any time this sub gets to the front page its because of some simplified meme about billionaires...... you know, the kind of thing reddit loves. Surely its being boosted by some nefarious plot and not because 90% of this website hate billionaires and like memes. lmao, reddit has been on the anti-rich circlejerk for a while now and your immediate response is blaming it on that sub and upboat manipulation Are you even a person or just a bot responding to (and with) buzzwords? Musk can maybe be smart, but the main reason he got these positions except that is that he was rich from start. Not as in ""I am gonna buy this and that too"", but it is that he is somewhat smarter along the rich people, kinda like an aristocratic position. There are people who are tons of more smarter than Musk, that's for sure, or at least I hope. There are a lot of people with incredible credentials. But they aren't more trustable than Musk. Not sure about Toyota but until recently VW and Daimler were all petitioning for gas cars because rich people are gonna get more richer. The worst thing is that there is no evidence of this mine. It likely was a small land claim that put out a few gems a year if anything at all. Elon's dad bought a 50% stake for like ~$75k, or at least that is his story, since it is the only evidence of the mine. [deleted] But that view defies all statistical analysis of class mobility and wealth distribution in the modern US. Class mobility is shrinking. You can point to very few people that start a new business idea that succeeds. It's not like there is infinite room for infinite growth. If literally every single person tries to start their own business all we would have is a bunch of businesses which do not function, and the major businesses like Amazon etc would collapse overnight. The ""American Dream"" is propaganda. And teach them how to handle finances! Working hard is great, but all the hard earned money in the world won't help you if you keep spending it on stupid expensive shit. There's people in this world with 100k$+ yearly salaries, that live almost paycheck to paycheck. It's sadly an often overlooked aspect of raising children The universe is determined. You can only work hard if the causal chain of events that occur within the universe force you to ""work hard"". Your kids will only be wealthy if the universe forces it upon them. So easiest not to worry too much about it. Not necessarily work hard but learn to be opportunistic. Things doesn't need to be hard, it can. this is how it worked with my parents. my dad worked really hard so he can spend his money on my education and set me up for my future Or work hard for yourself and if your kids have a little dough, good for them. If their kids make something more of it then good for them. Who gives a shit.. your dead. This generational wealth thing is really absurd. There’s plenty of kids who started off with $300k and blew it. There’s lottery winners that were broke within a few years. Most actually. Sounds exactly like Ryan Cohen’s success story. Mom was a teacher, dad ran a glassware company. His dad taught Ryan about everything business related. Ryan started his first business at the age of 15 collecting referrals off of e-commerce sites. Didn’t go to college. Started chewy in 2011 at the age of 25. In 2013 he secured his first outside investment for 15 million (and no, he did not have any personal ties to the investor). By 2017, Petsmart purchased chewy for 3.5 billion. Ryan took some of that money and invested 550 million of it in Apple (up 330% in the past 5 years lol). Lived the good life for 2 years while raising his son. Then he saw an opportunity in GameStop that he couldn’t pass up. Bought 9 million shares of the company (later 12 million) and became Chairman to lead a new committee and a company wide transformation. Within a year those shares were up over 400%. Stop eating avocado toast went from poor to making 100K + a year with over 500K in assets at 27 years old. all thanks to actually working hard and gaining experience instead of crying on reddit about billionaires [removed] 20% interest rate for family...wow wtf. It does have to do with hard work, but also being smart, luck, and a lot of opportunities. My dad has worked hard all his life, but also tells us about the opportunities along the way that really helped him be successful in his business. I sometimes wonder if he hadn't had those opportunities where we'd be today. Or what if he had been discriminated (he immigrated from Mexico) and never given a chance. Also, he was never rich, but he made enough that we never had to worry about our next meal or that he couldn't pay the bills. A chance and opportunity go a long way. You're saying that the efforts of black folks didn't matter then? I don't understand your point. This is a fact. Colonization of Africa began because of diamonds, emeralds and other minerals. Musk is from South Africa says it all. Those mines probably did not belong to his father or family but were taken to enrich white S. Africans. The only thing I disagree with is hard work having little to do with their wealth. There are 10’s of thousands of people who have similar cash access to those people at the age they did, most of them don’t even go on to be billionaires, let alone $200bn. Hard work + opportunity are both required, you can’t have success without both of those >Musk was literally born into apartheid South Africa, it's not hard. And Musk literally left South Africa so that he wasn't conscripted into the army which was participating in apartheid. That is simply false. Those guys worked their a$$es off to get where they are. Plus, they are extremely smart. Bezos graduated Summa cum Laude from Princeton. That right there puts him in the top 0.1% of the populace. This is exactly why there aren't any rich black people in the U.S. /s So that means the 58 and younger black generation needs to work harder to make sure their kids have more opportunities than they did. I don't see what's confusing about that. Musk and Bezos didn't inherit even a tiny fraction of their current wealth. For all their many, many, many flaws, claiming they didn't work extremely hard, or that that work wasn't important in their eventual success, is completely incorrect. I'm black. My parents grew up in the segregated south and at no time did I say my ""parents just needed to work harder"", what I said is **""I gotta work harder""**. I can sit around all day and talk about how bad I had it, my parents had it, my ancestors had it, etc. Or, I can work harder today and teach my kids to do the same so that they'll have more opportunities tomorrow. ""A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."" I find it hilarious when normal people think they will be this rich one day This is a very silly outlook on the world, it's pretty naive. I'm very successful financially because I happened to be good at mathematics when I was a child and subsequently had that stoked, and I didn't grow up hungry enough such that I ever had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. It's substantially easier for someone like me to sit back and say I'm ""self-made"" and call people whiny if I want to selectively ignore all of the luck that went in my favor to get to where I am. Did I have to put in some effort? Sure, but there are some things effort could never erase. I don't think we should construct a world where people need to get lucky in multiple ways to live comfortably. That's pretty unfair from my perspective, and not an intelligent way to organize society. I saw an old old interview where he said his plan was to dominate online retail and the reason he chose books was because there were more used books floating around than anything else in the world so it would be the easiest starting point. I think he had plans all along to use hedge funds to short sell and sell destroy his competition all along as well as to invest in Amazon stock long term to make Amazon look better and more valuable than it really is. As far from “300k” start up money as possible. Risked everything? After attending Princeton and working at a hedge fund, he was basically handed access to leading market opportunities of new e-commerce trends. “Omg books” is not his own doing, he had stacks of data on what types of businesses would do well in e-commerce and he used that trove of data to ID books as a natural e-commerce thing (easily packed, stacked and shipped, easily indexed, tons of text to enable searches by author title etc). The risk was minimal to him, if he failed it’s just back to the hedge fund with a start up experience under his belt Public high school, worked at McDonald’s, not from a rich family. Summa cum laude with dual degrees from Princeton. Least privileged on this this list. Most of us probably can’t imagine how our lives would be today if these billionaires never existed, without Jeff Bezos- we wouldn’t have overnight shipping and he also revolutionized how logistics is done today Bill Gates- Can you imagine life without windows? He also did help develop Macintosh, and was basically given the source code to it to work on (what we know today as) MS Word, ofc Bill saw the potential in this and did what he was told to and the rest is history There’s lots more, but you get the point I think that entirely discounts the fact that he has hedge fund friends destroying all his competition and the ground level workers that are overworked and underpaid and the shady deals with Third party delivery companies and the way Amazon copies their competition and then delists them and the destruction of tons of products to keep scarcity etc etc. he’s smart but he is a giant piece of shit that deserves nothing for his intelligence. siphoning money from the American people and stepping on workers backs all the way up to space isn’t “smart” in my opinion. ""Bill Gates and Paul Allen fucking wrote an operating system."" Ehm Microsoft bought the OS (86-DOS) which would later be known as Windows Bill Gates only bought a non exclusive licence for the OS and then licenced it to IBM as his own OS to put it on their computers, he only bought all rights to the OS a month before IBM released their computers with it It all worked out for him and was never investigated but in another timeline his journey would have ended with him going to jail for fraud and breaking licence contract Idk if this is sarcastic, but it seems pretty reasonable to do to me The real story here is how Bezos' dad, mom, sister and brother in law made a 12,000,000+ percent gain on that 300k investment in 1995 I'm so glad for you! The point of the post is basically every billionaire had a huge leg up like 300k, not that any idiot with 300k can easily become a billionaire. One being true doesn’t imply the other. Cope 300k for starting a company isn't ridiculously huge just saying...... I mean the dude started his company with his 2 freinds and handpacked all the goods themselves since they can't hire people with just that much money Also his parents weren't that rich. And considering he built one of the top companies in the world, yes he did do something special. >t definitely seems to be a guarantee that you're going to make tons of money regardless of intellect, skill, or merit if you simply start with enough money. When it comes to starting a company? Lol no Yeah his hedge fund buddies destroy amazons competition and have been doing it for decades. It's what the media has been doing for many years now. Generates clicks. I didn't even say his name. Suddenly, I'm all in. :) If it is in r/all you can bet it is completely political or biased. *Admins have an agenda Politics ruins everything >Reddit is used as a tool to try and sway public opinions by political parties. The thing is that it isn't just political parties. There's people from all walks of life who get on social media solely to push an agenda. This could just be some random person who hates rich people and spends all day spreading memes. Propaganda can be decentralized. Crazies? You know, I once got a long lecture about fishing from a lady on a train. She had to tell me all about every fishing trip she and her husband had ever had. She literally talked about nothing else for the hour or so that we were seated together. I haven't been fishing in 16 years, and doubt I said much more than ""Yep"" or ""Uh huh."" Would you consider her crazy for her passion for fishing? and no one's doing anything about it because guess what guys - that was the whole point ‘Politically obsessed crazies’ you say? How about instead try ‘people who are fucking done being grossly exploited’. Lol, head on over to r/conspiracy, you delusional fuck Yup, the claim in the image is quite false, and I reported the post for misinformation. https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r Yep, exactly this. Post is FB tier garbage Not a Musk fanboy by any means, but in 2008 he was showering in gyms and sleeping in his GF’s parent’s basement How is he threatening oil and media companies? Yeah these are tainted statistics. Playing the lottery in the first place contains information. Especially when you factor in the vast majority of lottery winners are people who buy lots and lots of tickets. He was definitely blessed with being tall, but I wouldn’t attribute that to his successful business ventures. A lot of pro athletes blow all of their money and eventually end up broke. The rest just hold onto their earnings and live off of that the rest of their lives. But Shaq was smart with his earnings and used them for business ventures. It’s not often that you see that from athletes. I'm a huge Shaq fan. He contributes all his business success to dumb luck. He was will on his way to being one of those bankrupt after NBA players. But he lucked out picking a good financial manager. A Jewish man that gave him money lessons as if Shaq was his own son. Shaq started investing in businesses instead of buying exotic cars and watches. Most finance managers to celebrities or athletes will just let their clients spend all their money. Thinking as long as their always almost broke, they'll keep working to bring in more money. This is exactly what happened to T-Pain. Its clearly mostly a combination of luck and throwing enough darts at the wall. He's a kind hearted guy but thick like pigshit. Well his NBA earnings would definitely be thanks to him being very tall, that's like...not even a question, now for his businesses, that's a different thing. He was blessed with being tall yes, but he was also extremely driven. I walk past people that are 6'5+ every single day, none of them will ever be in the NBA, be in a strongman competition, be a long jumper or high jumper or sprinter or swimmer. His actual blessing, if you wanna call it that, is being driven. Driven to succeed despite how miserable 'grinding' is. Same reason the 4 men in the picture above are where they are. Sure, it helped a lot that they had a head start, but for every multi millionaire/billionaire businessman, there are 3 or 4 kids that started life millionaires and ended up having to work a regular job anyway, sat in the mansion all day being a waste of space or blew it all on some goofy business venture like flavoured socks. most of us understand this, but reddit tends to have this really distasteful group of people - that are a combination of hyper-jealous as well as hyper-dismissive of other people's achievements, and so what you get is antiwork types that think 20 hours a week working at the stamp factory is too difficult, but that if they were handed $300k by friends and family, they'd instantly be happy to work 100+ hour work weeks whilst making once-in-a-generation decisions, like the correct moment to fully adopt online shopping. Everyone knows Shaq made all his money in college. Dingleberry. Or Ronaldo or Messi? Or most athletes if we're being honest. Nothing to do with how he handled himself after getting into pro ball, but there are some encouraging (albeit contested) stats regarding your likelihood of being in the NBA if you’re over 7ft (he be 7’1). Some claim upwards of 17% chance if over 7 feet, while much less than 1% if just abnormally tall (6’6+ but not on the cusp of a 7 footer). I don't know Guy Fieri's net worth. But he has to be an example of a successful (albeit lucky) businessman. The dude went to culinary school to become a restaurant manager. Went on a small Food Network reality TV show about cooking. Wins it with his persona (and cooking). Fails at his cooking show. But pushes his persona into 10+ spinoffs, some temporarily on other major networks. People will say his audition video really shows he wasn't there to cook. He had his vision lined up from the start. Yea he’s not self made! His parents gave him the ultimate genetics. He did nothing of course Pretty much every doctor or lawyer who is well-off invested their money. You don't have to reach as far as Shaq. . . . I mean yeah he was tall and that did help him in life. You act like saying that is some great personal attack on him? Yup, true story: >Fred Smith, FedEx Founder And CEO, Once Gambled $5,000 On Blackjack To Keep Company Alive https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fred-smith-blackjack-fedex_n_1966837 Hush, you're ruining the narrative that everyone is just hard work and talent away from being a millionaire. Keep working 80 hours a week for 60k salary a year folks! That 12 bucks an hour is the gateway to your future riches! #grindlyfe Lmao COPE Definitely. No rich parents there. Or grew up with family members who had business/ industry knowledge. The people on this list probably wouldn’t be there if they grew up in a low income household with no exposure to people with the education, high social ranking and prestige So is being born in the US. If you make about $35k/year in the US you're in the top 1% globally. Or just being born in the modern era... people with very modest means in western countries are living better than kings of the past. It needs to be noted that neither are they from many generations of poverty. We know, empirically, that generational poverty is not something our society tries to stop. Cool ask you parents to give you $500,000* to start a business. Should be really easy for them right? *Low estimate for the value of 300k due to inflation You are also a pleb Lmao literally everyone in this thread is ""yeah butting"" that it's totally possible to just become a billionaire if your ideas are good enough, despite heaps of evidence that it actually means [very little](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115000062) It's actually kind of pathetic that a subreddit obensibly about economics would so vehemently rail against this easily googable fact. > as 99% of reddit Hates Jeff and Elon. for good reasons tho Yeah, nothing, just a dad with a fucking *emerald mine* to fall back on if shit didn't work out instead of being flat broke and forced to work 3 jobs to pay rent like the rest of us. people really underestimate how much of an asshole elons dad was. dude raped his stepdaughter FFS, like hell he was going to help out Elon. Interesting perspective of ""nothing"". Try starting with debt, while supporting parents that have no business skills or insight into the workings of society to guide you. That's nothing. Being downvoted for the truth Regardless, can you really defend a billionaire? No one on this planet is deserving of that much money. Billionaires should not exist. Trying to justify that is actually insane. Can't tell if you're joking or dumb Let me guess, you consider yourself a centrist? This is place is amazing at creating an echo chamber for people with the stance that the opposing view is out of touch because all of the opinions are developed in an echo chamber No lol just didn’t expect this bs in an economics subreddit That’s the only type of capitalism there is, everyone has to take care of themselves. If you’re able of mind and body there’s no reason why you have to be poor your entire life in a capitalistic society. Lol why because I don’t hate the economic system that has allowed me to prosper? When did being ""successful"" transform into ""billionaire""? I'd say if you have $300k you're already successful Seriously all these people commenting the exact same reason (300k doesn’t automatically become 300b, no shit) remind me of the guys who point to one dude from a foreign country who was successful so they can act racist towards the rest. > The argument is even if you work hard and you are talented without getting support from relatively rich parents & family it is very difficult to be successful. How does one possibly get this from the picture? I think people are getting the context just right. And connections [deleted] And most of all luck > without getting support from relatively rich parents & family Bezos didn't have rich parents and family Not true. My sister got seed funding of over 200k for an online art network. 0 contacts, she just Google'd found an angel investor group. Pitched to them her business idea and closed it. Unfortunately her delivery fell flat, but I was amazed what she did from nothing Getting investment money has never been easier at any point in our human history. [deleted] You do not need talent, hard work, and money to be successful. That is a bullshit take. It’s not that hard to get seed money if you have a good idea. It’s preposterous to assume Bill Gates only secured funding because his mom knew the CEO of IBM. Maybe it’s more likely the CEO of IBM understood the potential for home computers? Same with all of them to some extent. Having connections help but rich people aren’t just giving out millions to their friends, they’re doing it because their friends have a good idea for a business that was ultimately very successful. You can be successful without the initial capital, you just won’t likely be 200blillion successful. AND THAT IS FINE. Even 0 to millionaire is a level of financial mobility that has never really existed in human history, and that is VERY possible, You are forgetting luck. The fact is there is limited resources. Many must suffer for a few men to have so much. This. Your safety net is so much bigger. I think the founder of Nvidia is the only billionaire I know of that's actually self made. We tell the stories like it's all about hard work but it's money and luck that play fast bigger roles Works both ways though. So many of us could have $300k right now and never turn that into even half a billion. Exactly! I would like more people understand this! You need talent/hard work and connections to be successful. Connections can be made by going to a good school (scholarships, loans exist), working in a prestigious industry (engineering, CS companies mostly care about your skills, not who you know) and by making friends in general. There are numerous examples of people from relatively humble beginnings becoming billionaires. Inventing the right thing during an innovation bubble doesn’t even require connections sometimes, just a properly executed idea and a way to monetize it. Yes, ummm it’s called getting a job at 16-19 years old. I know multiple people that started businesses that came from nothing. It’s not rocket science. (One guy started a wedding DJ business, another friend started roasting coffee beans, another guy started making planter boxes, I could think of more.. but those are the three that came to mind. [Yeah Rentals/flashdance , Canyon Coffee, Victory Garden LA… all friends of mine. Started at zero]) An engineer could have $300,000 saved before their 30th birthday these days with no financial help from parents And luck. That's the hardest one to accept for a lot of people. History is full of thousands if not tens to hundreds of thousands of very bright people working very very hard and not hitting it as big as the 4 in the photo. The right time, the right place, with the right idea and good work ethic and connections. Had someone like musk, bezos, or gates started their tech business ventures months or a year or two later than they did, they would be in a very different place. Yes, quite right, but why is no-one in the comments mentioning luck? It might be the biggest factor. That's not what I'm getting from this Have you seen all of the new comments rolling in? Coincidence? Lol. It’s being maliciously taken out of context to completely discredit all of what this post is highlighting. And that’s who the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos aim for. Don’t at all be surprised to see more of these countering comments infiltrate comments sections on trending posts such as this one - that highlight how fucked it is that they amassed as much as they have and exploited all of us to the degree that they have. The likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates don’t want us to know this and 100% have troll farms abroad to keep things the way they are. God forbid everyone finally know, have enough, and decide to collectively take action. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his apartment with like 2 other employees who were friends. They were boxing up books themselves to be sent through the mail. If anyone thinks what this guy did with growing Amazon into what it is should in any way be tarnished by the frankly *small* loan his parents gave him, then in my opinion they're morons. My parents are middle class and they could afford to give me a $300K loan since they saved well for retirement. It's a lot of money for a middle class family, but it's do-able. I mean, damn, people already do it to pay for their kid's college education. They put up the equity of their home to get the loan. Let's not kid ourselves. It's also the ability of an individual to make use of resources that's available to them. “Connections” aren’t going to make you a billionaire though. It really sucks that people can’t understand that these people had start up capital, connections, AND a genuine good idea with the ability to back it, intelligence wise. Lottery winners file bankruptcy at an alarming rate. And talent, which most of you don't have even the slightest amount of. Sure, and did any of these people have connections? And knowing which patents that other people made are worth monopolizing. Having good connections is a skill on its own. Or just being a visionary and discovering and acting on things people will need before they even exist, online banking, online shopping, computer software, electric cars, etc. Musk did not get Much help from his father, so whats your excuse? Not sure how it's a strawman Yes? If 1 million millionaires live in specific gated communities that only millionaires live in, and you live with a million other people who aren’t millionaires in some other town… well it doesn’t matter if you know the whole town. So it depends very greatly where exactly you live. They might not be obvious about it Too bad Bezos takes out his competition by manipulating their stock prices and board of directors. No respect for him, he and Gates are tied as most evil Billionaires True but it's a much bigger difference from 300k - 200B There’s also a huge difference between 300k and 200 billion You want to give the impression that you can kickstart a company with 3 dollars? You are deluded friend, and your comparison is more than flawed, don't you think? This is the stupidest shit I've ever read [deleted] You skipped the part where he built the gigantic business that can now exploit people…. No one is saying he’s ethical lol Amazon employees are payed really well Good meaning he wasn’t just born into riches, he actually got where he is now by virtue of his own work and accomplishments (in addition to luck of course, but not as much luck as other guys). Not good as in a good person. ""Slave wages"" 100 percent true. There’s a billion reasons to hate Elon but to make up stories and spread like this just hurts the narrative more. To add on this, Musk made his fortune from startups such as Zip2, the emerald mine wasn’t much help as many plays out + he said that he didn’t have good relationship with his father Musk also was estranged from his father and left South Africa for Canada when he was like 20 with a couple hundred dollars to his name From what i’ve read, Errol made bank off of real estate the most. There was an interview where he said “we have so much money, we can’t even close our safe”. Also, Errol had a baby with his step-daughter. Very normal Actually the article said he had ""half a share"" without ever defining what that even means. Does it mean half of the mine? How many shares where there? Was the mine even profitable? Plenty of mines lose money. Did any of this supposed money even get to Elon? No need to answer any of these questions, obviously Elon is a fraud. Bake him away, toys. Not to mention the fact that he inherited virtually nothing from his father when he left for North America [This article is what fhota1 is referring to. Even though there have been no verifiable sources for any side, this is just to shed light on the other side of the story](https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism) Amen brother! I don’t care if people hate the guy, but the apartheid emerald mine story is just factually incorrect and annoying as fuck that everyone keeps resharing the meme without any geographical knowledge of Africa. If you think Zambia is in South Africa you are just a bigoted, ignorant, retard. Also people think of the emerald mine as this huge sprawling complex, when it was really just a hole in the ground that his dad bought for $40k. I hate to break it to you but it’s not often a white dude owns precious material mine in Zambia and it turns out they were trailblazers of worker rights Is Musk himself a good enough source? https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/ I think you are all missing the point. People are raised POOR, meaning they can't even fucking eat without their parents working three jobs, or dropping out of high school to work. There is a huge difference between your dad knowing board members or senators, and giving you connections, money, education, and people trying to fucking survive. There is no such thing as pulling yourself up when you can't eat or get educated. 300k dollars 30 years ago was a fuck ton of money. https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-sells-the-family-emeralds-in-new-york-2018-2 Go suck some more Elon Dick. He was fucking rich. You fanboys suck. >Musk disputes this claim Welp, good enough for me to know part of it has truth. The people desperate to defend Elon blow my mind. Elon has admitted multiple times to the fact that his father is rich. Stop nitpicking the minor details (it was only HALF an emerald mine!!!) so you can cling to the just world fallacy. Wow could you blow Elon any harder how do you fall for this weak ass bullshit? Elon musk isn’t gonna read this bro. Nah. Idiot fanboys like you have just bought into his PR firm’s spin and now regurgitate the stupid shit you just said endlessly. >In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp Yeah, his dad owned an emerald mine and was so rich that Elon ended up $100,000 in Student Loan debt after university and lived in a studio apartment with his mom in Canada. I wish we all had that kind of Emerald money. People are so full of shit. They’ll say ANYTHING to make their narrative work. Add to this that making zip2 didn't need that much capital to begin with. Exactly!!! A 100k loan theyd blow through and just complain more Get off your soap box. 9-5’s aren’t that deep, I worked and lived in my car for almost 3 years before getting my own place. You don’t become a billionaire by doing that. Idk id argue. Warren is a humble guy, elon worked for his wealth. And bill gates also worked hard. Maybe didnt dig a ditch but i bet they had minimum wage jobs. I make a good amount of money and allot of people fail to realize i worked several bottom tier jobs Elon musk did minimum wage job while in college lmao. Why do you judge others by your lack of hard work? https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/odd-jobs-elon-musk-had-when-he-was-younger.html So only low skilled labor is considered hard work? Would you say neurosurgeons are lazy and undeserving of money as well? Jeff Bezos worked at McDonalds..... IMO it's a mistake to measure wealth linearly. A millionaire has less in common with someone that only has $1 than someone that has $1b. Sure, the millionaire doesn't have a mega yacht but they may have a boat or a small yacht. Meanwhile the guy with $1 has nothing and needs to work for a living...which neither the millionaire nor billionaire need to do. Where did you get hundreds from? Personally, I learned more from my parent’s failures than I did from their successes. 300k is nothing compared to what he built, so yes, in a way he is self made. Was more priveledged than others? Sure. But he absolutely built the wealth himself It isn't hard if you're in tech, relatively young, and know what trends are. SV is hemorrhaging money to everyone, even the most inept of clowns. Whenever someone says they aren’t self made because they had help, I’m not sure they know what self made means. It means, you took a very small amount and made it much larger amount using your own wits and strategies. I've invested more than that several times. Not even close to a billion in returns. Why do lottery winners go bankrupt and not just become billionaires? It’d say it’s easier to lose $300,000 than it is to get it to a billion and to get 0 to a billion. > the Emerald mine It was also in Zambia, not South Africa Source? I've never been able to find anything that plausibly verifies that his parents or grandparents ever had an ownership stake in any gem mining operation. [deleted] [removed] yeah what's wrong with me posting in those subs? This independent article, a source so bad even r/politics usually wouldn't buy their dogshit .. but i did actually spend time reading this nonsensical hitpiece.. it doesn't have the name of the mine, no financial details of the mine, no whereabout of the mine.. certainly no information on how the mine helped elon.. Again , i would ask this, if the mine was so great, why didn't Elon start SpaceX, invest in ventures like Tesla from the get go.. initial investment in those companies were 100m and 90m Lmao so his dad bought shares in an emerald mine that was worth less than a Tesla? And this is supposed to convince us that Elon inherited his wealth? I would think you should have to prove it does exist outside of Errol Musk said it did. It's funny how you think posting that quote all over the thread is some sort of gotcha, when that's the perfect example for why the whole 'Elon is a blood emerald tycoon apartheid heir' reddit meme is a complete sham. Even IF you choose to believe the word of a man who has everything to gain from displaying himself as the source of Elons success, you're then also admitting that the 'mine' was really a 'half stake' whatever that means, worth 40k or about 130k in today's money, really fuckall for an investment. Also, you'll also have to believe other funny things like 'my children walked into Tiffany's in NY with raw gems and sold them', as that person claimed that in that exact same interview. >claims the story is false yet cannot prove it. You posted the only source there is. One person, claiming a thing. You can't prove a negative. > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. Man if I only had a computer in the 80s I would easily be a billionaire by now 😭 My dad paid his off before he even left college, but of course that was also the 70's where college with room and board cost $1500/year and a part time job could net him $4k/year so his part time gig as a security guard on the campus he went to school for more than paid for his life on that campus. Stuff like this is absolutely hilarious to me. You went to college...for a job, and had to slave away while working OTHER jobs, still took you a decade to pay it all off,, and you still don't have the ability to realize how shitty such a system is. No offense but people like you are the definition of worker bees. I read that said mine was not in a conflict area. Why are people assuming that just because the mine is in Africa it must be using slave labor? Musk fanboys take any criticism as a personal insult. It’s so weird. Woah. 80,000. In non-apartheid Zambian investment? That his father did? Yes this explains Elon’s rise to success totally. Lol. Funny how that article from businessinsider is linked criss-cross as the main source for that emerald mine story. Businessinsiders is as credible The Sun and Gawker are. You mean the word of a guy who had a [baby with his stepdaughter](https://www.businessinsider.co.za/errol-musk-has-a-baby-with-his-stepdaughter-2018-3)? The word of a guy, who by the accounts of his ex-wife and both sons, seems to be a pretty terrible guy and an abusive father? This guy who claimed to own an emerald mine (in Zambia, which was never an apartheid state btw, despite this post's claims) but was never able to provide any [documents or evidence corroborating his claim](https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r)? This guy who claimed that his children could just walk into a jewelry store on 5th Ave to sell emeralds from the street, ignoring the fact that no jewelry store actually does that? What we do know is that some man made a claim that he got involved with some exotic business but has literally nothing to prove it. Some news publisher wanted to capitalize on this man's famous son and try to push a misleading headline to get views on an article. Then some idiots on Twitter and Reddit and other social media somehow equated that to Musk being raised on Apartheid blood emeralds which according to Errol's own reports, amounted to $400k over 5 years, after which it stopped sometime in the 80s. Good chunk of money but not exactly billionaire status is it? Also didn't stop him from going bankrupt later. Again, all of this is from a single anecdote during an interview years ago by a man who is estranged from his family without a single shred of evidence. But for some reason, this is trustworthy enough to ignore any need for burden of proof and just accept as cold hard fact? Ah yes, the emerald mine in apartheid South Africa, or is it in Zambia? And if his dad was so rich then why did Musk go to Canada for university and take on student debt? As far as I can tell the only support he received after leaving SA was a 28k investment in Zip2, for which Musk was only a 7% owner so it really didn’t make much difference. Fair enough to dislike the guy but dislike him for his many terrible acts, don’t make up new ones and blame him for the circumstances of his birth. It’s not true. Did deeper than wiki As much as people think that Africa is one big blob, it isn't. Zambia and South Africa are different countries FIY few days ago one of the main contributors to the Elon Musk's Wikipedia page was banned from editing it for being biased against Elon, so that makes you wonder how much of it is really objective. Edit: [proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:QRep2020#Indefinite_partial_block_from_Elon_Musk_and_Talk:Elon_Musk) [deleted] [deleted] > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. Tbh they are good quality [deleted] No, not at all. It’s just a way for “unsuccessful” people to chalk up their lack of success to “not being born into money, so what could I have done?” rather than actually doing what it takes to be successful. And also forgetting scores of multi-millionaires who came from absolute poverty. Wrong. >In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp He has literally said his father had a stake in a mine in a Forbes interview. As others have posted, and provided sources, Elons Dad sure thought he owned one once. So you'll have to take that up with him i guess. That sub is absolute cancer. There it is. Seriously. You can be successful without being a billionaire. The problem with that line of thinking is the idea that all the money is in a big mattress somewhere, doing nothing. If he were to pull that money out of stocks in large amounts (which he can't do, there are restrictions) then it could financially damage the companies he's invested in. Tesla almost went bankrupt once, I could imagine there might be a desire to prevent even the slimmest possibility of it happening again. So right now his money in Tesla/Space-X is effectively funding new jobs for people as the companies grow. Also, if he chooses to give up those shares, the more he gives up the less control he has over his company, to the point of having no control. If I spent over a decade working crazy hours to get a company off the ground just to give control of it away and watch the board hire some Bobby Kotick style CEO and drive the company in the ground 5 years after, that would be devastating. What is your moral limit for how much money someone can have? It's morally wrong to not sell off all ownership of the company you started the moment people want to buy it? But how does it change your life at all? Half of them already said they'd donate their entire life savings when they die. Why does it matter how much money someone has? I say this genuinely. The truth is it doesn’t. Sure maybe some had the advantage in the start that helped them get rich but they still worked to do so. Beyond that they also worked to contribute something to society and thus where compensated through profits of us buying their products. Bill Gates, brought us Microsoft and all the amazing things that computers, outside of just personal ones have the ability to do. Steve Jobs, with Apple also was in the computer game but now is basically the best cell phone on the market. Yes they have a lot of money, but it’s because their product and their contribution to society with that product was valued so much by society that they accrued that wealth. They didn’t invent a phone and we handed them a few billion. No, they worked to invent something and we all saw that product as so useful, that we all collectively decided to buy it. And use it in our daily lives. There is a reason they are rich, because we the people of this world decided that they were worth that much. Now you can obviously argue that some of these companies do things that are unethical like lower wages or child labor in other countries. Let’s assume they correct all that, and their business is legitimate, Apple or Microsoft or whatever would still have made them incredibly wealthy. You may just need to shave a few billion off. To your second point about them hoarding this wealth. A lot of it they can’t control and they have to. The majority of their wealth is not in cash. It’s in stock and assets they own of the company. Sure they are still very wealthy but it’s mainly there. If they decided to sell all that stock so they could “fix the world” as you said, they would in turn be hurting the company itself. The company price would tank, they would lose investors. Investors help them pay debts that make the company function and grown. If this company we have said collective is so valuable that they deserve to have this money, then we would also be stripping ourselves as a world away from technologies and advancements that better our world already. You would be asking for companies to choose to make themselves fail purposely, and to make their product that we use become less available. Now you can say “well do we really need iPhones” no we don’t. But we do need computer chips for medical devices. We need computer software to help people with medical research and calculations so we can help our world. I understand your outlook but they are often bound without the opportunity to do so. Beyond that Elon has even given attempts to do so. He asked the UN for accounting reports to to prove a donation would help end world hunger. They chose not to. I can go on for hours about the issues with the UN and say with a very high level of certainty that the UN would not have A. Done so or B. Likely committed worse human rights abuses. I’ve studied international relationships and international politics. I want to get a doctorate in such. There is evidence for that. No wealthy person is morally obligated to help, but they can choose to yes. However there are very limited existing agencies and organizations that will actually provide real relief. Elon is atleast trying to do something with Tesla and electric cars, even though lithium batteries are arguably worse for the environment. However, he has even brought up ways to fix the energy crisis and to create clean energy. I would argue he is one who is atleast trying and he has no obligation to do so. Any abuse or suffering is not going to be relieved through an government, it will inevitably be done through the private sector. The best way to achieve that would be through getting the whole world on the same standards for ethical working conditions so companies cannot go to a different country that is more lax or incentivize them to do their business countries that has regulations. Allow them to make money. Let them make a lot. Because once they have extra money sitting around they may be able to actually fix the issues of our world because they are the only ones who have the funds to do so. It won’t be a government. It’ll be some billionaire who made his money and happens to care enough about an issue, then find someway to profit off its solution. That’s what drives humanity to be better. Capitalism and wealth is what makes technology advance. It’s some smart guy who finds a problem and discovers a way to solve it. That’s what every business at its core is. A solution to a problem that they believe they can solely fix better than anyone else and find a way to profit off such. Cause it's literally their private wealth, and nothing to do with you. Why do morons always hate random billionaires and not realize the government pisses away each of these billionaire's net worth's every 10-15 days on absolutely nothing? Get a job. And I'm sure if you had billions, you'd disagree with yourself even tho you might say otherwise right now. Your view of ""good of society"" would undoubtedly change if you had billions. What does hating rich people do for you? Why do you let it cause you stress? I support the current thing beep boop They rig the game in many ways most people don’t know unless you do the research. I consider boardrooms places where the rich scheme and conspire, because they look at us as pawns to be used and disposed of in their games. You are awful at math. Their net income was 14.32 billion. They have 1.1 million employees. They could give every employee roughly $13k more But they're likely spending that money on building new facilities to hire more people I'd like to know, seriously, what you would do without Amazon, or Reddit, or Twitter, or Instagram, or your smartphone, or your PC, because the companies that make and maintain these things are built and run by (gasp) rich people 😱 Could our CEOs not be greedy? Abso-fucking-lutely. Something happens to your ur brain when you become a C-suite employee and I don't understand it. But don't sit there and tell me with a straight face that you could run the world, because I know you couldn't. Nobody on here could. And you could split the entirety of their wealth amongst the human race and we all get like $90 lol. So? That doesn’t mean you can’t have a successful life > They knew people and that's more than half the battle No it's not. It's way less than half the battle. Lots of people know people. Thousands of people. I know a billionaire, I can message him on Facebook. Hasn't done much for me. If that was half the battle then half of the friends and family of billionaires, politicians, famous people etc would be billionaires too. >as well as having a shit load of money (comparatively). Lots of people started out further ahead than them. Hundreds of thousands of people. Obviously the further ahead you start the easier it is. Especially past a point: when your family can provide enough of a cushion for you to take a chance or give you a bit of start up capital you've got 1000x more chance than a child of a drug-addicted single mother living in a trailer park. But it's still a long way to go from billionaire. >but it wasn't like they really had to work very hard for very much to get there. That's laughable. These four guys and are known for insane work ethics. Like borderline mental issues. Bill Gates would sleep in his office and not come home for days he was so caught up in the early days of MS. People had to tell him to shower because he'd be too busy working. Like obsessive shit that makes them a little crazy. Obviously it's not all hard work alone but hard work is table stakes. Elon musk started with 1800 dollars, that's easily obtainable for a person born into poverty. That’s exactly what warren buffet is doing….. Lmfao nice meme now i am interested if psychopathy and hustle culture goes hand in hand imho, they goes... because psychos dont care how they do things, they just do when theyve got goal on their mind correct me if i am wrong, please People don’t understand that wealth does not equal cash. You can’t just donate all your money because the money is in stocks. Selling all your stock would kill the value of said stock What a dumbass Giving up your money to people who doesn't increase the Pareto efficiency is a stupid emotional choice. better be a psychopath in this case . Take care of your family and your descendants Good thing those extremely smart people don't spend their time shitting on Billionaires on reddit What billionaire does Reddit like? I remember Elon used to get love here, but that died a couple years ago. I mean, what does reddit expect the children of rich people to be, poor? To have to start at the bottom of the ladder as in a videogame? >except if they fit my specific ideals Yeah, that's kind of important. If your ideals involve overworking/underpaying your employees and union busting, I will absolutely hold contempt for you. That would go for anyone who has any amount of money. Bad? No. Just unappreciative. Is this moron actually defending these fucks? No, just billionaire bad. Totally agree with this. These redditors are either salty or dumb or very manipulative. >Edit: also PSA that r/politics is a subreddit filled with dumbasses All the big subs that regularly hit the front page share one user base. r/all and r/popular were mistakes. What is the pareto distribution? It's just ""billionaires bad"" - there are no good billionaires. Some from antiwork spam their content here now that antiwork has been shown to be quite the cesspool. >Health care pls No! Only F-35s Yeah why haven’t these guys worked on giving you healthcare? They are elected representatives after all and our taxes go into paying their salaries :( Just get a job [deleted] This is envy. Chiefly becuase these statements aren't accurate and paint insanely dedicated commitment and drive into something that makes it sound like oh their success is due solely to family money and connections. For example Elon's parents did not ""own"" an emarld mine. His parents owned shares in a mine that went bankrupt and was actually a big driver of the emotional abuse that Elon suffered as a child from his father. Also Elon and his brother started a company while in Canada that preceeded [X.com](https://X.com) (paypal) and he rolled all of his profits from the sale of that company into what became paypal. For fucks sake the jealous spiteful losers who make this shit can't even do basic research. One is often disguised as the other. The guy's user name is techbro78, pretty sure worshiping money is ingrained in his psyche you rarely see anybody on this sub celebrate the rich. everyone here likes to believe they are a product of handouts. They are a Musk fanboi, we're all just haters according to them Musk made so many people rich by just believing in him and buying Tesla stock, he changed so many peoples lives. Of course he has a loyal following. Do you? Let [Homer Simpson explain it for you](https://youtu.be/Tmx1jpqv3RA). This post is textbook envy i think all 4 of them had to work hard for their billions. they didnt inherit them from their parents. Yeah totally.. and you know, being white in South Africa during apartheid was probably a tad helpful as well. Once he sends it to you, send it to me. I’ll help you both. Right?!? Don't get me wrong. 'self made' success is pretty much always going to come from someone who is genuinely smart, socially adept, driven, and hardworking. But at the end of the day, there are an absolute shitton of people who can be described as genuinely smart, socially adept, driven, and hardworking who didn't get that kind of success. The difference can be described, in large part, by who you know. It's not necessarily nepotism, but it might be. It's not necessarily ""luck"", but it might be happenstance. It's not necessarily all you creating your own success, but it might be. But make no mistake, no matter how it fucking happened, it's arrogant to thank yourself for your own success without acknowledging that your success is, without a doubt, going to be largely a result of knowing the right people, at the right time. I dont believe in luck. Plus, luck often gets described as knowing the right people anyways. ""or a better tech invented"" -- who invented it? Did they just get lucky? 🤷‍♂️ ""GM deciding to lobby to get EVs outlawed"" -- they weren't and they didn't 🤷‍♂️ still wouldn't be 'luck' if they had. Doesnt matter if they failed someone else would get it and do the exact same things as everyone else Then describe why it's such bullshit instead of being too terse to move the conversation along Yeah, It's just a coincidence that The overwhelming majority, if not all billionaires, just happen to come from extremely well off families. Prove me wrong. ITT: people trying to feel better about not knowing shit. 5% what you know, 15% how willing you are to fuck people over, 80% how wealthy your investors/family is. And 100% reason to remember the name Or two fancy restaurants Anyone who gets a fast food restaurant up and running basically has a money printer. Especially if chik fil a. Orange Man Bad! I mean isn't that just assumed with most billionaries? To achieve such wealth. Like the point is mostly at how they got started and one would argue Bill Gates did get his start because his mother was on the board of IBM. Like even billionaires need to work hard and screw people over to get where they are. Also luck,we could've had Gary Kildall instead of the nerd. Invest 30k a year for 20 years, that's 1.2 mil.. it's just not that hard to do. Every job in stem pays enough to do this. If you were really upper middle class then your parents made plenty enough to do this. They chose to spend it on nice car and house. Turning $600k into $165B (not counting the billions that went to his ex) is no trivial task, just ask anyone who has $600k, but not $165B. That would be like turning $3,200 (the total of the 3 stimulus checks people got) into $880M. How has your progress been so far? True, but its still hard to turn 600K$ in 10 million, let alone billion. People think that they can make next Google if someone pays them... The difference between $200 billion and $600 thousand is approximately $200 billion. It's barely even a blip on the radar. It's meaningless. It's like giving someone $2 and telling them to buy a house. It's ridiculous to think it's comparable. If you have a really good business model, getting a $600k loan from a bank isn't that hard. The 200k was invested iirc not given. And it was invested when PayPal had already blown up and wasn’t a start up anymore > safety net Bingo. A regular person gets maybe one shot before bankruptcy; a wealthy/connected person has a safety net that allows them to fail and try again as much as they need. Easy examples are pop singers - you'd be surprised how many of them are on name #3 trying to make it on daddy's record label. In the same vein, there are fairly few famous actors that were truly broke. Somebody had to pay the bills while they were acting, striving for the big time. I dont know that I’d go to that extreme, but I wouldn’t argue much on it lol Im ok if reddit wants to sit around and wallow in their own piss. Just because they don't like the rules and choose not to play doesn't mean the game doesn't go on without them. You act like that's exclusive to redditors. Most people DO fail, this is all a big case of survivor bias. Plus jackasses like you miss the point, these people had AMAZING starting points. Regardless of how much work got put in after the fact. The fact of the matter is that it's much easier to find success with daddy's money than it is with 0 dollars. Is that a hard concept to understand? And? At least it would be a fair race. Becoming a billionaire takes: 1. Good initial conditions 2. Hard work 3. Luck Most people have like, one of those, at most. No amount of hard work will make you a billionaire if you don't have good initial conditions and luck. You could be working 3 jobs and never even be a millionaire. Right? At least I have the self-awareness to know if fail if given that kind of money. I'm not a leader type. There’s nuance in the argument. All these people had head starts. That does not imply that all people with head starts will do well, but instead that the majority of people will never even get the chance to try because they will never be given that opportunity in the first place. That’s the argument that’s being made. And I am sure these dudes failed multiple times and still had money to risk. The point is that almost no one gets that opportunity. I don't even get the opportunity to fail with 300k lmfao. Ok? 1 out of the 4? And some work hard, some work smart? Idk I dont know enough of beszos. I dont disagree, so shouldn’t the hardworkers that actually make it be congratulated? Do you genuinely think that its the only way and all rich people come from wealth? Just get a better job. How is that Elon Musk’s problem? You need higher aspirations if you think going to college will get you anywhere unless it's in finance or engineering or compsci. You may as well burn it or buy lottery tickets with it. Rofl you like sucking Rich guys dicks so much bro you can't definitely make your millions that way. Cope more Imagine taking time out of your day to dig through someone’s profile because they said “wahhh” That’s sad to say the least. It’s also incredibly likely that you’ll piss your inherited money away because you don’t understand the value of what you didn’t earn. It is very rare that wealth is passed down more than a generation or two. Fred trump died with net worth of $250-300M. Trump today at $3B. Don ruined family fortune. That's just his business model. It allows him to stiff contractors and not pay back his debts fully so that he can take the money and run. Shady for sure. Out of 400 businesses owned. Trump is a different story. Casinos are cash cows, and Trump lost money on his. Trump started rich, got lucky on timing the Manhattan real estate market, then BS'd his way through bankruptcies. He is an execrable human being. Do try to be a little intellectually honest and give a context of the close to 100 successful ones and that some of the those bankruptcies where businesses he had turned over running to other people. Then it can be compared to the businesses that biden started and his successes. [deleted] I hate Trump but that's a stupid argument. 6 bankruptcies across hundreds of businesses is not prima facie a bad record Point? [deleted] It's pretty easy to maintain wealth at a certain point. It's actually comically easy. But lifestyle creep, bad investment decisions, etc. can easily make it all go poof. That is known as revision to the mean. In the long run, all families are average. I agree with that. DJT Jr. is much more akin to Beau Biden than Hunter. For fucks sake the dude allegedly had sex with his underage cousin, his dead brothers wife, and countless other insanely degenerate things. There is a huge difference between those two. Doesn't mean that DJT Jr is a saint, but he sure as fuck isn't the blatant discrace of a son that the current President has. Drug problem. What you're trying to refer to is Hunter Bidens drug problem. [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] Gates has devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to proven, effective technologies — vaccines and medicines — delivered through partners like GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization), the Measles Initiative, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/features/alliance-pnd/gates-a-benevolent-dictator-for-public-health I probably can, but what’s the point of working that hard until I’m 65 ish🙃? That’s like my whole life thrown away. I mean, don’t get me wrong, consistently investing sounds like a good idea, but why wait? I could invest for my future family but right now, it’s my time. That’s kind of dumb saying that if I’m trying to get rich in 5 years, won’t get me to be rich in 60 years😅 Or maybe the field was invented to give excuses for the rich. I mean, skull phrenology was a field too. So what? Ben Carson went to inner city public schools and became one of the top neurosurgeons in the country. Sergei Brinn and Larry Page's parents were professors and scientists. Hunter Biden has had every advantage and ""privilege"" handed to him and his life is a freaking shit-show. Okay but there's also millions of people in recent American history who were born to parents who had $300k to spare on a good business model. And where are they now? It's such a stupid argument. If his dad gave him $100M to start an investment firm that would be a different story. $300k to a $1.5T company is incredible. A lot of rich kids with similar upbringings actually throw away the family wealth, so yea I'd say its pretty exceptional. The only seed I ever got was in my ass. I grew up in a shitty drug infested neighborhood. Many of my friends became rather successful. No billionaires, but plenty of millionaires. And some in poverty and jail. Same circumstances, different choices. Kenny Troutt, Oprah Winfrey, John Paul Dejoria, Howard Shultz, Do Won Chang, Steve Jobs, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Edelson. All of these people came from modest or even dirt poor backgrounds. And most people, even if given $3 million, could never become billionaires. [deleted] So what? Then work hard until you can provide for your children what these billionaire's parents provided for them According to google, she is actually worth a billion dollars Not talking about Kylie Jenner's dad...... well i started mine last year and i don't think i have 7 years left so hopefully it wont take that long These ""millionaires"" probably just think they started from nothing because it wasn't millions but actually starting from absolute poverty and ending up a millionaire, idk. These millionaires had some money before they were that rich. Guaranteed. Lol They did. They were born rich. That’s the lottery. Amazon is an important entity to society, you would only have to see it's usefulness during the pandemic. It would be better if Amazon was more altruistic. You're correct. Elon is white. Cuz rich white people are bad bruh we on reddit. I wouldn’t say never. But sure helped them accelerate the process. You always see the same couple of examples in these lists. Trying to see success as bad. Sure some of them are right pricks. Though you have to give them credit for the achievements. Many people have gotten a boost in wealth only to waste it away to the poor house. Now look at someone like Sam Walton. Had a rough start in life. He started what is now the worlds largest company by revenue. Success shouldn’t be penalized. But we should shame successful people, who hoard money, to do more. I like how recognizing a Reddit circle jerk makes you a billionaire worshipper. Thanks almost became an atheist, all hail Musk Did you even read the article? It was two emeralds they took from their father and sold for $2000. Rofl didn't even read article - he sold for 2000 have you ever had 2000 yoy privileged fuck or you poor as shot like you sound then told his dad to fuck off for being despicable, moved to america with a backpack of text books and took out a 100k loan to pay for college >ot once has musk said he was self made, not once has he taken credit from his engineers. He always gives credit where credit is due, Gates made his company by buying a piece of software under false pretenses and then reselling it to IBM. What did Allen do? Not disagreeing, legitimately don't know. Familiar with Gates and Ballmer's shenanigans, but don't remember much bad about Allen. His father says you’re full of shit. > In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp Except they are not true. Generational wealth did not help Musk, who was $100k in debt after college. Bezos did get $300k to start his business, but that is hardly what one considers ""generational wealth"" that many upper middle class people don't have. $300k is not generational wealth… half the people here could borrow that from their boomer parents if they had a novel idea and track record worth investing in. Walmart. Kmart, sears, Barnes and noble. All of those existed and Bezos dominated them all. It wasn’t $300k or generational wealth that had a hand in any of that. There a millions of people with $300k but none of them building something that successful Right but they still had a game-changing business idea/innovation. Yes, they didn't grow up dirt poor - but that doesn't take away nor diminish all of their accomplishments and the risks they took. Yes there are more obstacles for a person who has less. But look at success stories from people who started out in that position, and the theme is they still had a game-changing business idea/innovation. They also had massive safety nets to fall back on if their companies didn't pan out. Who's an average person? An ""average person"" born in America has huge advantages, for example, so what are we talking about? Of course you need money to start a massive corporation but the overwhelmingly dominant factor was business decisions for Bezos to turn $300,000 into $177.5 billion, that's 590,000x the amount he used to have The narrative here is that these guys built their resources on their parent's money and luck but I think that's vastly oversimplifying it to the point of being incorrect. And I'm not saying it because I like them > Trump also did it on his own. LOL! Did you miss a /s tag on that one? [deleted] Can you elaborate Bezos was born to teen parents and his mom was doing night school to graduate while raising him. He got his degree in college and through his own work he started a business that just so happened to fill a huge niche. He got lucky in addition to working hard. Theybhad money and resources so they COULD take the leap, unafraid. Gate's daddy ran one of the most successful lawfirms ON EARTH. His mommy was the head of united way. Bezos had a backup career of WALSTREET BROKER with a free Princeton Education and mommy and daddy floated him 300k interest free no repay necessary. Musk had the finest computer tutors and flew across the world to attend computer conferences. His dad bought computers for him to learn on when a PC was 10k+ 80s dollars. 25k now. I dont agree. I think it's actually very likely that they still would have been successful people. Do you realize how many people grow up having access to capital and business opportunities in America and either do fuck all or piss it away? I know this because I grew up in a city with the majority of kids being born into wealth and opportunity and so many of them have simply not gotten anywhere, or continue to just get by with what they have. Which is fine, but my point is that you have to have the will to do things like this for it to happen. You can have everything in the world and not get anywhere with it if you don't try. Musk came to Canada with a few thousand and zero business connections. Musk is self made. Also, why do lefties act like school & connections are bad? It’s a bad point to make, if the agenda is anti billionaire. Nearly the entirety of the middle class understands and values the importance of connections & schooling. It’s divisive & achieves nothing. So you're saying life isn't fair? Shit. Wait, what if we give all the money and power to the people in government? They will love us and make it all ok! Woe is me I'd argue just as important as the wealth/connections was the education/mentoring they received. These people were likely surrounded by successful businessmen who taught them things that the average person wouldn't know even if they had the same capital. I'm sure they have their own intelligence that played into it, but all of these factors can't be ignored when comparing them to your average person. Going to be honest here, long hours has always been a lazy way to say it. The real answer is ""productive hours."" I've seen people work their asses off and give years of their lives to a business/craft and get nothing out of it. Not everyone is going to make it off hard work alone. It's the same thing with crypto. You hear all about the Cinderella stories, but no one wants to talk about the failures. Jeff bezos went to the same public high school I did. Not a terrible school but not anywhere close to a nice private school. I don’t like the guy but if was really that privileged and well off he would not be there. [deleted] and skipping those avocado toasts and Starbucks, right? Closer to ""smart hours"". Long hours at Wal-Mart won't get you much. [deleted] [deleted] his mother had him at 17 years old. This idea that bezos is ""old"" money is ridiculous. If you want to spend it on drugs and cars yea. That’s unlikely. If you have a solid business idea getting 300k invested is pretty easy. Not to mention all the help the government gives. Not once has musk said he was self made, not once has he taken credit from his engineers. He always gives credit where credit is due, https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517214299923652609 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512382427876007940 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1508540042817376256 [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1504351035560763395](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1504351035560763395) But you know, lets spread bullshit that we don't know jack shit about, next time shut the fuck up, sit down, and let the grown ups talk. They are genius businessmen… not “self-made” (I don’t think anyone in that class is entirely self made), but they are absolutely genius businessman. Turning 300k seed money into the Amazon of today, not sure how you chalk that up to anything but being a genius businessman. I’m sure someone has, but I haven’t seen it, but who really cares what some jackass says if the guy it’s about didn’t say it. There’s no need to bash someone for something someone else said. ... they are genius business men 😂 The only thing you hear on Reddit is how Bezos and Elon are the second coming of satan. Too bad your mom doesn’t know someone at ibm. You could have been writing computer software and be a billionaire and it would simply be because she knows someone. The media will sell anything in a manner that gets clicks Who are these people saying that? I just haven’t seen it. Well said I know, the left likes to paint Musk as some rich kid that got an infusion of cash to play around with from his dad. he has gone far above any expectations and is an amazing guy You're right, there sure are a lot of parasitic sycophants simping for their parasitic idols. Yeah the millionaire simps are pretty fucking disgusting How can you speak with all this bilionaries balls inside your mouth? When you pay down a mortgage, you build equity, and prices increase, also building equity. Why is it that crazy to think parents in their 50s had enough equity to equal 300k? They lived in Seattle where the median home price was $300K. Solid middle class sure, but rich? No. The people who invested. Bezos didn't start out a billionaire. He told his parents there was a high likelihood that he would lose all their money. They took a risk and it paid off. LMAO the haterade is strong with this one. Ye i mean these people did have rich parents but they grew that inheritance through working, look just because you can’t become a billionaire in your lifetime means nothing, think about it like your working for your kids and Mabye there kids Well, yeah but that’s just capitalism evolving. And even then you need to get lucky You took that literally? I think you missed the point, but that's pretty typical of the average redditor. Want me to use a marvel analogy instead? Baby need his Marvel connection to get it? Or do you need to wait until John Oliver spoon feeds you on Sunday? No fanboys will ever defend us on the internet… tsk tsk Funeral costs I got a college degree and a well paying job. Living a pretty good life. I see you took yours and made 130k karma. Good for you my man. Are you kidding? I’m not following. No. It's a great analogy because turning a dollar into 600K is actually easier than 300k into multiple billions. You don't get to that point just because you have a small seed. The tree still needs soil, water, sun and proper care. Because the ratio is almost the exact same 600k/1 = 600k 165b/300k = 550k The analogy is also likely not supposed to be taken literally, a point that went extremely far over your head. The financial elite is far different than the bourgeoisie that sniff down their noses at anyone that doesn't cling myopically to the same political views they do. Nah, it isn't. Elon really didn't like his father and started out with basically nothing in college. That story of walking around with emeralds in his pocket is complete horseshit, I have no idea where the Guardian got that from. He founded his companies pretty much by himself with help from his brothers and used the money from [x.com](https://x.com) and zip2 to fund Tesla and spaceX. > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. That’s not proof lol. One journalist saying that Errol Musk said it, isn’t proof. What was the name of this mine? It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. Whether his father owned or partly owned or even had shares in a mine, it was not in South Africa and there was no need to bring apartheid into it. People with ideas like gates and bezos would have gotten funding from VC if they didn't have access to family money. It is easier to discount people who have great ideas and create wealth if you convince yourself anyone could have done it if they had rich family members. Unfortunately the truth is no anyone could not do it and those ideas would have made them rich regardless. Maybe the fact that most companies go bankrupt and the other fact that most people loose money on the stock market?^^ have you been you awake the past 20 years? Certainly, but how could you ever fix that. Just a consequence how society works. Some people have a headstart. [deleted] Ok clown. I'm sure you don't want billions of dollars Take some copium with that, loser [deleted] In context he's talking about infrastructure (internet, roads, airways, etc.,) capitalism system, US armed forced, education and generally US society being the backbone that makes it possible. It was just a sound bite picked by Fox to piss off the right's glorified idea of self sufficiency. [deleted] Good bot! Wow… Right after you lick my taint. No? These guys are far from saints. But it’s their job to make money, they did so. You really have a foot fetish? /s I am the boot. Learn to swim. You really have a foot fetish? /s No, I love bagging trades while you fellate the government for subsistence. You really have a foot fetish? /s You really have a foot fetish? /s You really have a foot fetish? /s Google also confirms it. He started with 15k, then got 200k investment including from his father. ""Tell me you are out of touch without telling me……"" Tell me you're a karma whoring cunt without telling me... In ways you are right. And I understand where you are coming from. But that’s not quite the point I was making. I am stating that many have had these kinds of opportunities in life and have gotten nowhere. Where as these guys, took what they had and turned into something incredibly bigger. Immensely bigger. Its obvious none of them would get anywhere without some help along the way, but that’s not to say all credit is due to the help they received. The ideas were still there own, the workload was still their own. The drive was entirely their own. They made the decisions and motivated themselves to make the wealth they have achieved. If it wasn’t for their drive to accomplish what they have it would never have happened. 1000s of kids have had similar opportunities and have accomplished no where near as many milestones. Zero new ideas or thoughts on how to create or enlarge companies. It’s like someone smiling widely at a home he built entirely by himself from the ground up. And someone comes along and says: hey nice house man. And the first man says: thanks, I built it entirely by myself. The second man asks: Oh, did you cut down the trees to make the wood? Did you turn sand into glass? Did you make the roof tiles in your backyard? ‘Well no..’ the first man replies… But I built everything from there all by myself. The second man claims he never built the entire home by himself, he had help from others. If it wasn’t for the timber yard, the glass cutters and the tiling company he’d never had built this house as great as it is. But that’s bullshit, the man built the house by himself. Sure. These guys had people in high places that got them where they are. But they achieved their wealth through their own drive. It was them themselves that made it happen. So then you can turn 300,000 into billions? Noted yeah he's literally as self-made as it gets... Agreed. He is Amazing. He owns really no other assets than his companies. Yeh I mean how many people had these same, similar, or BETTER starts/backgrounds and did jack shit with them. Just a bad faith argument to begin with, but whatever people upvote any garbage these days. Lol they can't you have to have drive and vision also have the idea in the first place. Opportunity? You think opportunity creates results? Gtfo I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say What’s self made to you? Literally zero dollars to a billion? Going from middle class or upper middle class to the top 100 richest people in the world has to mean something here. He didn’t inherit Amazon. I mean I don’t like bezos or anything but what does self made mean to you? Bezos just got a loan. That’s it. His father was an engineer and his mother is a sectary. I can’t find any secret mega deep connections. And they still can't. Do you know how many people work themselves out of basic retail level employment? Not many. Most people don't have a good work ethic regardless of the rest of the tool box. Exactly. And that’s why everyone isn’t a trillionaire. Because they get 1 billion and they’re done. Yee Prostitution! Are you sure about that? I have researched this and come to a few conclusions. 1) I have found no proof of this claim. 2) this claim assumes the emerald mine made Elon or his parents rich, another claim that falls flat because Elons dad isn't rich. 3) it relies on people thinking that the mine is connected to apartheid, and the claimed location for the supposed mine is not in south Africa but a different country altogether. All of my research into this topic shows that this is a hit piece that was extremely light on any facts in order to skew reality to people who eat up the narrative without actually reading into the specific claims. Outstanding claims should be made with outstanding evidence. Elons dads net worth today is maybe $2M which isn't nothing, but it's not crazy for a pilot / EE who is retired. It's certainly not enough money to say that 30 years ago Elon had a free ride to wealth and prosperity. Also there is no information on this supposed mine. If I bought a gold mine in California do you think I would be guaranteed to be rich? Which emerald mine is this, and how much profit did it produce? If you don't know l, it's because the answer would probably go against the narrative the article is pushing. If literally anyone can prove Elon is lying about his past through these rediculous emerald mine claims, show me the proof. What mine. How many emeralds, how rich. If you cannot provide me with that data it's because it's all bullshit. If you read my other post about a peanut conglomerat, you will see that he had no connection. He is selling peanut door to door. Your friends is your connection and your parent help you connect by sending you to school. (Sorry too lazy to connect the story I replied to another person) I don't know if you believe me or not, my parent never introduce me to any of his bus connections, he is too busy worrying his own business. I started my own company using the money I have during college working $7 per hour at school and getting $12 an hour at another place. When I opened my company, my first connection was my junior high best friend. Then everything started from there. Look around and see what you have, that is your starting point. Make friends with people, that is your connection. Business is not always smooth and easy, it is much easier and less headache to work for a company than to maintain a company. I think you agree with me … have an upvote :) These two statements are also extremely muddy. Just say you don't like Elon. You can certainly become a founder of a company even if you weren't the one to come up with the initial idea. This happens all the time. I don't know who claims he invented paypal, but he was certainly involved in that and that does appear to be how he got a lot of money https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/12/30/elon-musk-says-he-had-six-figures-in-student-debt-after-college.html His mom was broke and his dad sure didn’t help early on noice Yeah actually I like Elon and what he does and I don’t see why people have to lie so much to try and undermine him. Yup and the broke will constantly keep whining and tweeting while they continue getting richer and older without a care or consequence. Thanks 😊 That’s a terrible comparison and also has nothing to do with the original post. Post was about billionaires and their origin. It presupposes that those who earned such capital did it unfairly and thus are not deserving of it. That’s BS. You having not enough does not entitle you to other peoples’ stuff. Would it be moral for them to share what they have acquired to help those who need it and really put that money to good use in the world? 100%. And society should pressure them to do so voluntarily. Society should NOT, however, deploy the state to TAKE it and give it to you. That is theft and the opposite of progress. And government will be sure to take the fatty portions before divvying out the rest for the governed. Just look at social security and the VA healthcare system if you want to see how well government-run federal charity and welfare works. Charity should be voluntary. If it’s not, it’s theft. People have a right to use their money how they choose. We all agree that they should help more. But that doesn’t mean eroding the rights of personal property in the process. Also, Lake Town was starving because of a corrupt government official who decided to spend their tax dollars on what he wanted rather than what the tax dollars were meant for. Kind of like the US and social security. Good bot. didnt read + dont care + L Why not Split the studio with 3 ppl? You’re not taking into account the social benefits that’s already in place like food stamps, scholarships, etc… it’s not easy, but it’s doable. Immigrants do it all the time. Also why work a minimum wage job? Why not go work under a tradesman for minimum wage and learn the trade? You’re assuming a minimum wage job is the only option. Amazon pays more than minimum wage and they provide healthcare. C.O.P.E Nope. Not even American and i don't really ""trust"" any politician in general. But you are right, looked it up and it seems like a myth that developed over time. I'm betting you're a big Donald supporter?;) I mean he bought it as a tiny startup and then helped to turn it into a viable working company and spend 20 hours a day coding then he sold it for a ridiculous profit 😆 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal Checkout who are listed as founders I don't need a meme to remind me that. Or how billionaires came to billions. Tax season is sufficient. 😑 I don’t hate anyone. I just think their employees deserve a bigger piece of the pie. That shouldn’t be a controversial statement. Everyone wants to take home more money right? Would you say no to a bigger paycheck? What if your employer said they’re going to increase wages and take a cut in profits, you’re gonna tell them no? [deleted] See now THIS is what I’ve been waiting my whole life for. I mean still objectively better than most billionaires and I’d still largely call him a decent human being but it’s good to know my boy is no longer infallible 😂😂😂😂😂 You must since you felt the need to single out my comment. 🖕🖕🖕 I was going against what the post had claimed not that he didn’t make money off of real estate Oh true but seed capital isn't always just family Then you do it again and again duh. Repeat process as needed. More likely, it will zero it. Wow, twenty million dollars Bet it all on a number. 36:1 odds. Someone could put 300k on 16 and that would give a 10.5m return. LET IT RIDE WOOOOO Throw down on green Я покакал You repeat it for a little over 1000 times and you've got yourself a Billion Dollars then drive to vegas again Put it on green it'll double risk of losses) Ok. Put half on 17 and split 19/20. LET IT RIDE Repeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat That’s just step one. Then red and black at the same time! Gotta risk it for the biscuit Think we'll make it by midnight? You think we'll be there by midnight ? VEGASSSSSS Oh ya! Let it ride! Let it ride! This is how they build Venetian canals in the desert. Let the chips fall where they may. I now understand this statement. We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold You don’t even know how money you are, baby. Get your ass to Canada, we don't tax gambling/lottery wins they're called ""Windfalls"" instead of income. If you want to do the smart thing and bet your 300k inheritance on red you should really do it in Canada All yolo all the time PB def ain’t gonna approve that. Do you pay taxes on casino winnings in the US? Taxes would eat more than that. You’d be in the top tax bracket and it’s a short term gain And 12.5% of people will be called smarter and more hardworking than the remaining 87.5%. Bro ain't nobody paying fucking taxes on $1200 they won in a casino. If Jeff Bezos ain't paying taxes in 200 billion then fuck that. It's weird that America taxes you in the casinos. Can you do write-offs for the rest of your life if you lose millions? Taxes in a casino are based on odds, 2 to 1 bets are not taxed. Bailed out by autozone, who owned about 40% of fedex for years. Both based in nashville Clearly. I like to live dangerously… That's big casino propaganda You only have to hit once on green! Someone gets it 💁🏻‍♂️ I like your style Damn, that does sound responsible Damn is that where I’ve been going wrong? > It can’t stay on black forever. It doesn’t have to. It only has to until your bankroll is out. Although taking financial advice from Wesley Snipes... Who’a Wesley Snipes to be giving financial advice anyways… I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. Again…. Repeat as needed Your wrong, but it’s ok. I think you got it mixed up buddy So…. Your saying there’s a chance Nah it’s from my book, how to maybe become rich. But also guaranteed loss…. Wow, what a piece escheat Yup. This guy bought a few thousand in Amazon stock and left it untouched. In 2008 the state escheated it, for about $8,000. It would have been over $100k in 2015 when he retired and wanted to sell it. https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805760508/when-your-abandoned-estate-is-possessed-by-a-state-thats-escheat Jesus, never heard of escheatment. That's fucked up they can do that just for having not logged in for x years, even if the owner is alive and well. I need to add a calendar reminder every year to log in to each of my accounts lol. Yeah, I meant that more as a mentality. You don't really need to sweat what the markets or the economy is doing with following that advice. Yeah, logging in to check it out once a year when you do taxes and make sure everything is all good with the account, is best practice. You would also want to make sure there are auto reinvested dividends set up in the account and all of that. happy cake day! Unclaimed property is no joke! /u/eloquentboot Don’t you have to pay capital gains yearly? Or is that just when you cash out. when the markets are down, and you think 'oh shit I'm losing so much money', you have to have the discipline to understand that it only means you are now buying new assets at prices from a year or so ago. If you are no longer adding funds and just 'riding it out', well that's maybe harder but in the end, it's important to know that timing the market is a fools game and is absolutely stupid. If you have some 'play' money on the side for that kind of thing, great, but not with your nest egg. [deleted] Vanguard index fund. Set it and forget it. Didn't check my bank account. When I did... Someone was using it if you're curious and I have yet to somehow come to grip with it. What’s escheatment and what do you do if you notice it when you do check? WTF, its sick that they can do that with investments or bank accounts. Plus it doesnt hurt to keep adding to it 100 dollars (If I am being honest you should do specific % of your pay check if you want to match inflation or future lifestyle spending) per paycheck may not be much but it will yield a bigger difference in the end due to how growth compounds. Slight opinion based on real world current events: Obviously dont do it now the market may dip even more give it half a year atleast. Sure you may not have the maximum low price but you will have higher chance to avoid buying a false bottom. For now until things stable put it in saving accounts get a slight interest on it the market isnt growing from current point for a least a month. Alot more opinion pieced (ignore if you want): We may get stabilization but i think panic is settling in and may dip markets even more based on news. Funny enough while tsla is super manipulated it is kind of a morning star of erratic buyer behavior that represents people buying into trends not actual value. If you read last paragraph read this disclaimer (I don't want to miss guide if you assume I my knowledge as truth don't do that): This being said I'm enthusiastic about watching trends being a math major(actuary career path). But i am not crazy rich and I still have college debt. So take my observations with a grain of salt and think about my words critically. Is it a good time to invest in etfs like that in these tumultuous times? I prefer EVOO to VOO This guy gets it also ZIM has insanely high dividends VOO or VTI? Yep, absolutely. Which investment platforms offer DRIP? A friend told me about this and I have a hard time finding information about it to set it up as a fund for my daughter as she gets older. Thanks I’m advance. These are all historical returns and may or may not be an accurate representation of the next 20 years, but the concept is correct. There are other places to get more consistent returns, and places where you might get lucky and win big. But if you have the discipline to buy a diversified portfolio and just stay in the market for a decade or so, the US stock market has been the best game in town for the last 100 years or so. The rule of 72. If you get 10% gains for 7.2 years. It doubles your money. 8 years at 9%, will double your money too. Past performance does not guarantee future results. You think 10% annual returns is likely, given the future we are facing? Average income now, not necessarily average income 15 years from now. What about working and saving? There is a book titled ""The Millionaire Next Door"". Everyday people with everyday jobs can become millionaires. The tricks, avoid taxes by doing things that give you an advantage. Own property that appreciates and/or pays dividends. Avoid paying full price for anything. But he has 300K? Yeah, inflation is a part of ROI considerations. The longer the money is in there the more exponential the growth becomes. The final 5 years of a 40 years 401K likely makes just as much as the other 35 years of the account leading up to that final 5 years. Also, make sure you're calculating reinvesting dividends over the 20 year time period, it all adds up. Congrats man. That's a huge win. I would keep 25-50% in Bitcoin, invest 25-50% in Vanguard funds to diversify and go enjoy life on a small portion and reward yourself. Obviously you know your situation or what to do but that's a huge win! Ups and downs of the market. If it all goes to hell then money is the least of your worries. If not, it rebounds. The market dipping is a better time to buy then when it's rising, at least that's what history shows. Nah, time in the market always beats timing the market. Don't pay attention to what's happening, just dump your money in. S&P is basically globalized at this point. Many of the top holdings really aren't US companies but global behemoths. Beyond that, yes, it's just a high level generic comment on Reddit I made. People can research more and diversify as they prefer and buy total world market funds or international funds if they desire. S&P 500 are basically globalized companies at this point and it's essentially a globally diversified portfolio. For additional diversity you could invest in an all world stock market fund like the Vanguard ticker VT. If the S&P collapses then you've got bigger things to worry about than turning $300k into a million. I mean, if America collapses, how useful will USD be? Won't really matter what you do with that 300k. Do you mean 2.8m? Lol or are we talking about another way to become a self made billionaire haha. Yeah, dividends help and add up but not as much as the rough ~10% gain year over year. You only pay taxes when you receive income and realize those investments. This would be when you receive quarterly dividend payouts in taxable accounts, which would be minimal with 300K and you could cash a tiny bit out to cover the taxes OR when you decide to sell some of your holdings then you would pay applicable capital gains tax. Long term capital gains could be as low as 0-15% and only comes from the money you made, not the initial capital you invested. So you can generally control when you pay taxes and be strategic. You also don't need to cash it all out and can just sell a small portion. Regardless, you can't avoid taxes and it's not a reason to not make money just because you need to give a little up to Uncle Sam. You’ll get small amounts of interest & dividends, which you’ll have to pay tax on even if you automatically reinvest them. So literally not looking at the account is not a good idea, but keeping your mitts off it is important. Just look up info on the basics of investing in the stock market. Basically, you open a brokerage account (similar to opening an online bank account), transfer cash from a linked checking or savings account, and then buy shares of a stock, mutual fund, etc when the market is open M-F. You now hold an investment in that brokerage account. Fidelity is a easy to work with broker for basic trading. You set up a Cash account which acts almost like a basic checking account (you can even get a debit card) except you can also buy stocks. In the case of the above commenter, you’d: 1. Open a Brokerage Cash account with Fidelity 2. link you checking account 3. Transfer cash to Fidelity 4. wait for cash to settle (~3 days) 5. “Trade” in the menu 6. Place market or limit order for the stock or index you want 7. once order is complete wait until big bux 8. sell stock with limit or market order Market order: an order placed to sell/buy at the current “market” price which is the price you see on stock apps/sites Limit order: A specific amount that you set to sell or buy at so you can try to maximize your gains. For instance you can say “Buy 100 shares of Twitter at no more than $25” and assuming someone happens to sell 100 shares at $25 or less, you may get them Depending on your income, start a Roth IRA and max it out every year (6,000 for 22). In 30 years that’s worth over $1 million with 175,000 contributed. Compound interest is cool. Just Google brokers. There are a few big ones that will pop up, Schwab, Fidelity, E*TRADE, Morgan Stanley, etc. They all have online portals and basically do the same thing. It almost didn't matter if you're just buying mutual funds. History shows it does and history tends to repeat itself. If it doesn't eventually go up over an extended period of time (5-10 years minimum) then our world is likely facing larger issues and you investments and cash likely will be the least of your worries. Start small with a little portion of your money. Watch some basics of investing videos. Don't sweat timing the market or if you temporarily see that you've ""lost money"" if the markets are shitty. Buy smart, not the penny stock your friend recommends but a well diversified fund that holds up over time and requires minimal expertise in the markets. Exactly, ""ignoring it"" is key since most people are pretty emotional. I always tell me friends half of investing is just knowing the basics and taking the time to learn and the other half is not breaking the ""rules"" and getting all worked up in the day to day movements of the market or recession periods. We'll see, not much else we can do. Generally history does repeat itself and all we have is to play the game as smart as we can, while we can, with what we know and learn. If the world burns, I'm not worried that I dumped my money into the market. Currency is fucked, real estate is fucked, stocks are fucked, so what does it matter? I always place my bets on ""everything will be fine"" because most of the time, it eventually is fine. Have your dad become a Congressman, buy an emerald mine, have rich friends, or sit on the board of IBM. Yep, this method of passive investing basically beats like 99% of active fund managers and individual investors, day traders, etc. The key is time. I'm just hoping we get a nice taste of WWIII first. This time everyone gets nuked. Fuck us right? You're talking about DCA (Dollar Cost Average) and that works fine as well if it helps you sleep better at night. I wouldn't say one method is better than the other and I don't think the data necessarily shows that, again, without the biases of trying to time the market. I could say that if you lump summer in at the bottom of 08' then ""my method"" would be better. What's that story online? The investor bad luck Ben or something? Theoretical look at a guy that dumps lump sums into the market the day before each major recession over the past 40 years and in the end, he still ends up 7 figures on his initial investments totaling around 50K or so. I mean, I don't think I would trade places to be a billionaire. I'm perfectly fine living a low key millionaire life lol That's correct. I don't like that so few companies basically run the fund but it is how it is. Beyond that, yes, invest in the best and ride their success. Dumb people spend the money, smart people keep the ""millionaire next door"" mentality. Blowing cash is a dumb person's idea of how a rich person lives. I'm talking modestly rich, not billionaire insane wealth rich. A smart person recognizes money can buy the most important things beyond love. Freedom, to not have to work. Health, for medical care and expenses. Experiences, travel, hobbies, events, etc. Chasing super expensive dinners and buying a Ferrari is for people that want to look like a millionaire, not be one. Timing in the market beats timing the market. The purpose of this is to not sweat the ups and downs of the market but to park your cash, forget it, and let it grow over time. You can invest chunks over a multi month or year period if helps you sleep at night but I wouldn't say one or the other is right or wrong. Nah, the benefits of diversity can take a long time to show sometimes. You can't even consider this over a 7 year period. If China arose as the leader of a new world order and Asia grew to become a massive portion of the global economy (say for example) then your VT holdings would pay off while the S&P500 might lag more as the US losses influence, power, and economic might. It takes time for these things to come. Like if you always held 25% cash through a 10 year bull market feeling like an idiot...until a massive recession comes and your stocks dip 50% over two months. Now that cash isn't seeming like a dumb decision right? Wow, yeah I don't want to spend all night going back and forth on this lol. I suppose the major difference is a ""normal"" person laboring and trading their time for money, while saving and putting money away to build enough wealth for a comfortable retirement or a ticket out of the rat race. VS someone who has achieved such a level of success and wealth (and wealth hoarding) that this greed begins to damage broader society. It's similar to Pieter Thiel (I believe) using a Roth IRA to shelter billions of PayPal stock gains, meanwhile this was a special retirement account designed for normal Americans to save tens of thousands or even low millions in a tax advantaged way. Yet...it was massively abused (although technically legal) to shelter an obscene amount of wealth for one person, which obviously wasn't the intention of this type of account and the related tax laws. Americans investing are essentially putting their faith in broad index funds to gain a small piece of the pie and say, the S&P500 which they are apart of that system, the US GDP creation, and pay taxes in the country. So yes, they do contribute to it and want a small piece of it by reinvesting their hard earned money back into it. Furthermore, the wealth gap has never been greater in any recent period in history. Massive wealth hoarding was against what the fore fathers believed in as they saw this as a threat to democracy. No one is saying you can't be an entrepreneur, take risks, and reap the rewards...but for a society to properly function, we need to be in a world where we don't just have a majority of extreme poor and a few extremely wealthy. The way things are now aren't the way they need to be and for an example, Elon Musk could drastically reduce his equity holdings (while still being insanely rich) and spread his ownership stake among his employees via employee equity compensation but he doesn't. He maintains a massive percentage and effective control over a company that continues to grow and scale as the expense of a labor force that is poorly compensation and he works to stop unions from forming. You see this issue here? No one is saying Elon can't be a mega millionaire or even have a billion but when your wealth amasses to such an insane level and there is a massive discrepancy among your earnings to societies, then it's not healthy. There needs to be limits to wealth accumulation and just because you're successful, doesn't mean you can infinitely amass wealth. Just because the system may permit it now or loopholes are effectively utilized, doesn't mean the rest of society should roll over and take it. Elon isn't x250 times more productive than his entire workforce sitting in the CEO position and dictating orders to his VP's...he's literally amassing more and more wealth off of basically nothing, just having that initial wealth in the first place and playing the hand of the situation he's now in. Edit: And BTW I'm usually against most of the typical Reddit opinions on this type of stuff and I consider myself to be pretty damn successful in my life, but there are portions of the outrage that are fully justified and understandable. [deleted] My mom used to work for a loan company. They had a regular who got yearly lottery payments. She would come in for a loan half way thru the year because she ran out of money, and then would pay it off when she got her next payment. She was going to nursing school because her 20 years of payments were almost up and she needed a job. Still not a valid counter argument. Sudden wealth may not make you an able financier, but absence of the former remains a damning threshold for most people, especially without the connections. There is even a big difference between $500 and $2000 in liquid assets you could bear to lose, not to mention nothing and $300,000. Nice anectode that doesnt support shit. Lets try the reverse and redistribute earths wealth significantly more equally, lets see if poor people around the globe are poor because they suck, or its because theyre live in a nightmare thats out of your imagination, and their day-to-day struggles are on a level that you are not even capable of sympathizing. Ya man in todays dollars you can pay for your house and a few tanks of gas, groceries you better go get food stamps! If you've never been around money, you don't really understand how to manage it and buying something that has value that is an investment. People don't realize that you have maintenance and taxes that need to be paid on a home; they only think about the purchase price. That was also wild to me. Like, if I ever won the jack pot, I'd quit my job, buy a one bedroom condo, out the rest in a savings account, and use it as needed. The only time I would ever leave the condo is to get weed from my dispensary. Other than that, I'd cut myself off from civilization. Fuck, that would be amazing. It's incredible how enthralled people get about other people's money. Bet everyone has an opinion on how they would do it better. Or see like every pro athlete ever. [deleted] > And I say that as someone born into the global 1% Then the soloution is simple for you, give away all your wealth, and don't invest it in your children. How many cavemen had the opportunity to breed and have children because their tribe was lucky enough to find a reliable source of food, while others were shut out because their tribe was not lucky? It's always been unfair. That's was 'natural' selection is ALWAYS about. The thing is if you go helping everyone, you don't make profit. You don't make profit you go broke. Plus as soon as you got money everyone comes out wanting some and will blame you for anything and everything if you don't help. They will keep asking till you say no or go broke. It's how life works. “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” - Stephen Jay Gould >How many people born outside the global 1% have the capacity to change the world but aren't given the opportunity to do so? Quite literally zero. None at all. Not the first one. Does that answer your question? You can always start by giving away all your inheritance today and leaving nothing for your family after you pass away. Be the change you wish to see. Can I borrow some money I have a story of a multimilionaire in brazil that started off as a homeless can collector. There is a multibillionaire that started off as poor street salesman here... Brazil is absolute garbage for doing business. If you can't make it in the US, you can't make it anywhere. Im saying that from personal experience. The barriers over there are small and if you play it smart you run life on easy peazy mode. Its the only place I have seen complete fuckups succeede. Life is unfair and will never be fair, rageing against it won't change anything. Best you can do is learn how to make it unfair in your favor and it usually involves hard work and getting yourself out there, meeting people, playing it smart. >No, the larger point which you seem to be missing is that if the people turning $300k into billions and transforming society are only the ones with nepotistic access to that initial capital, then it means the human species is a severely undercapitalized asset. It's not like access to capital is the sole decider of who will be successful. Successful parents are more likely to teach their children how to be successful. There is no substitute for education and experience. Big words little content We can’t be afraid to make creative content on the internet. The cost to entry has been significantly reduced from leasing buildings, paying for customer service, and commute times. $300k can be blown like that, but understanding how well you are and leveraging that creates a competitive arena of 1. Human potential always wasted, It’s worth an indefinite amount of money. Discovering our own self’s worth (dollar amount) is key. I would be surprised if two of those four actually came from ""1%"" households. Even if everyone of them did, all four of those guys busted their asses to accomplish what they have; living and breathing their life's work. A sliver spoon does not guarantee success just an opportunity. Failure is easy without exceptional talent and unending drive. Those are not qualities found in ""trust fund brats"" or the soft, lazy rich as many on reddit like to imagine them. Tell em kromen They aren't the only ones with access to that capital. Banks loaned out like 2 trillion dollars for new home loans last year. Almost entirely to normal people. And we have squandered a lot of potential, but so far, no system has come about that comes close to matching the US' imperfect meritocracy. Could it be better? Maybe, because a massive driver of success is passing on success. There are probably 3,000,000-4,000,000 people who are like Bezos or Zuckerberg. Even if they’re lucky it’s not like they’re situations are uncommon. Now Gates or Musk? That’s not self made. In any given Major metro there are probably a dozen towns full of Bezos like families You realize the global 1% includes a lot of middle class westerners right? Capacity maybe, but no means. When you have 24/7 access to someone who can explain the world to you, you grow up much more capable of connecting the dots. Giving money to adults who didn’t grow up with this is not going to result in billions of dollars. And they won’t know enough to teach their kids. Some will succeed no doubt, but it’s nowhere close to what you think. Someone who has been trained to save and invest since they were 4 is going to have a massive leg up (in investing) on the kid who had to work as a waiter so his mom could pay rent. It’s not impossible to catch up, but it’s not likely. $300,000 is an average bank loan. People have the opertinunity but not the ability. You can make this argument about most animal species. How many Fish have the ability to be extremely successful by the standards of fish but are eaten by a bigger fish before they get the chance? On some level, life is random. There's nothing that can be done about that. The trick is to use your advantages as efficiently as you can. Network. Get to know the right people. Put yourself in situations and scenarios in which you might be able to meet people who can further your goals. At the end of the day everyone who has ever been successful got a lucky break or handout from someone they knew at some point. That doesn't mean they don't deserve recognition for how hard they worked to make it happen. And yeah, some people probably will never get the chance to reach their full potential. But that's life. Sometimes you get dealt a bad hand, but you still have to play the cards you're dealt. Downvoted. That's what venture capitalists and startup accelerators are for. And I think the even larger point is that it usually requires generations of a family having decent success to give themselves a chance. When you go back in these families there is typically someone in their family; parent or grand parent, that dedicated their whole life to a business or work. That enabled their kid to do x which then enabled the billionaires you see to do what they did. People still have the opportunity to create this success from absolutely nothing. It just requires 1-2 generations accepting their making a sacrifice and also a risk by being the one who has to do the hardest work in the process. From there you do your best and hope your kids don’t squander the opportunity and continue to expand on it as their parents and grandparents had. We are at the golden age of VCs, anyone with a decent idea and some execution is raising millions Well I don’t know if I’m misunderstanding you but a nice network won’t do anything unless you’re willing to put in lots of hard work to make it work for you. Just sayin oh having a network is enough is not true. It's actually almost never talent. The leader of a business represents, at most 30% of its sucess. Thinking fast and slow has an entire chapter on how survivorship bias and hindsight bias cause us to significantly underestimate the role luck plays in business success. > Which do you think is a more valuable service? I get what you're saying, but AWS is... nearly critical infrastructure A lot more people can be teachers than can make billion dollar companies that employ thousands of people and effect the world. >one good idea >does some coding in a garage I worry about the fact that you are teaching our nations children. No offense but the company Bezos built employs, and will continue to employ, 10s of thousands more people than most teachers will ever teach in their lifetime. And that doesn’t even include the business partners to Amazon. If we’re calling teaching and building Amazon to what it is today “apples to apples” (which it is not), Amazon is far more valuable to society. > I don't think anyone legitimately believes that Bezos did nothing and magically became a billionaire. You've clearly never been in any leftist subreddit. Obviously Bezos and it's not even comparable,that's a trash comparison Yeah sorry dude but obviously building Amazon is a much more valuable service than whatever youre teaching in middle school 😂 I love how you put it too : “does some coding in a garage”. You’re a clown and just bitter that you haven’t been able to do anything even remotely close to valuable with your life yet. Having assets in a wealth generating enterprise is the opposite of hoarding it. I mean, yes, Bezos has impacted billions of people while a teacher impacts hundreds. If you could somehow teach every student in America that would be worth billions. I am just tired of being a tax payer who has to support people who work full time at this big businesses bc the ceo doesn’t want to pay them a living wage. You are telling me, that amazon, walmart, mcdonalds, etc. can’t figure out how to pay their employees but have literal billionaires who sit at the top? How many students heard your lessons? How many people use his coding and his business? ​ You are only as valuable as your contribution to society. Why you mad at only at Bezos? Why don’t you get mad at actors or athletes, or Kim Kardashian? You know how bad ordering shit online was before Prime? He spent his time coding and (eventually) making Amazon, and you spent your time teaching in schools. Both of you chose to do something. Neither is ""wrong"", and neither is ""right"". Just because he created Amazon it doesnt make what you do any less worth - both figuratively and literally, nor is he the reason to why teachers (and other important workers) are underpaid and overworked. Not defending him, I dont like him one bit, but his earnings arent taken/made from your earnings as a teacher. Being surrounded by new adults at work now. I am no longer so sure. How many times do we have to tell, it’s not hording Money, you think it’s literally under his mattress Hundreds of millions of people can get cheap goods with fast shipping or one egotistical teacher educates hundreds? of kids probably about as good as others vying for teaching jobs? How many of your students won't be able to build the next Amazon or Microsoft or be the next Einstein simply because of lack of money and connections. Of course skill is important, it's a multiplier, but odds of success bends closer to those with no skill and money/connections much more than those with skill and no money/connections. Wait a second. I don't want to denigrate what you do as a teacher but Bezos created a global infrastructure company that billions of people use. Bezos is very very very smart guy. He went to Princeton and worked for DE Shaw, a company started by a Columbia math professor and is know to hire only really smart people. I mean I think you're kind of looking down at the work Bezos has done. Sorry dude but your previous job can be done at home with books/tablets by parents, same cant be said about making Amazon. Lol I mean you chose that path knowing you would get paid shit didn't you? >There's a huge problem with what we consider valuable in our society. Bezos does some coding in a garage and builds a multi-trillion dollar corporation. I taught middle school for 3 years and I'm still 10 years of saving away from buying a home. Which do you think is a more valuable service? Obviously it's way more important I get my new airpods with 2 day shipping than provide education for a future generation of adults. Bezos by a fucking longshot. You seem to think he only created wealth for himself. An organization is responsible for providing a great living for thousands of people. > Bezos does some coding in a garage and builds a multi-trillion dollar corporation why dont u give it a shot? AWS is far more critical by itself than anything you will likely ever do in your life. Amazon’s logistics networks are a god damned marvel of planning and engineering. The modern internet is basically functioning off AWS. he's not hording anything. people only read clickbait headlines that say ""x has a trillion"" when the truth is that clickbait title is counting assets with net worth. he owns a company that people think is worth a trillion. doesn't mean he has a trillion that he can spend. Network is important, but lots of rich kids in the world. Most of the those rich kids don’t earn more than their parents. Connections, better education to make sensible decisions, access to the technology. All comes from a privileged background. Some people who start with nothing become billionaires. Just easier to start with something I would love to see this company that was started by a goldfish What did that guy get wrong? So why didn't someone else just did it Look at how the average person lives their life and realize how untalented they are. I mean you can say that about any famous person though. Does LeBron James deserve $300 million dollars because he can throw a ball through a hoop? cringe Did you know it's possible to point things out to people without insulting them? Before starting Amazon, Bezos worked for DE Shaw, which was a quantitative hedge fund. In other words they traded on wall street using proprietary mathematical algorithms which they come up with. DE Shaw was started by a guy named David Shaw who was a math/CS professor at Columbia University. Bezos worked at DE Shaw and was known as one of the more capable people who worked there at that time. He has a bachelor's in engineering from Princeton. I think Bezos had plenty of options plus or minus 300k. His biggest asset has always been himself. Right, I can start several start ups and fail until I make it IF I have parents who were willing to fund them. It’s not even one million either How many zeroes is a billion 300,000 1,000,000,000 Bitcoin only got you 4 of them if you invested from the beginning $1 30,000 12 years to turn 300k into 1.2 M Calvculate how much for 200B But the goldfish, tho. (Michael Reeves' goldfish) [deleted] [deleted] Lmao Lol imagine going all in on K-Mart instead of Walmart in 1990 Something like Verizon that ain’t going nowhere is a good bet I mean not recently, and been a lot of talk about the long-term prospects of the markets not being so great... after inflation 2% gains /s Broke and dumb* r/bogleheads is a nice addition as well r/woooosh Yes it was hilarious When Bitcoin is an easy butt of jokes, the bottom is near. I like those odds [deleted] No. Being result oriented when looking back is just a bad idea. You can also say ""it would have been a great idea to guess the right numbers when the jackpot was huge"". Look at the process, causations and basically all major factors, don't focus purely on the outcome. I still kick myself for not pressing buy when I was going to pick up a few hundred for the meme. It would be worth over 100k People have financial advisors for 100k. It’s the best investment you could ever make with your money. It’s not even that expensive. Going to JP Morgan is the opposite of my advice. Pretty good, AMA. I have an entire fleet of international students living here with me. The real challenge was finding available parking spots for their exotic sports cars. Students these days. Or less!! 😆 Never trust a man with no shirt on. “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” - Warren Buffett It’s the billionaire class waging warfare. Class warfare is these guys owning about a dozen Senators each. Probably more for Bezos and Musk. Bro the richest 2000 individuals own more assets than the poorest 4.6 billion. If thats not grounds for class warfare i dont know what is. We needed justification? Don't worry, Michigander, you'll be a billionaire one day, so just keep carrying water for them, and one day you'll join the club!!!! Conversely, maybe the only thing that stopped another Jeff Bezos from making another 200 billion is taxing Jeff Bezos 1.5% and funding 10000 more Jeff Bezos. And that would be economics, it would only become politics if you add whether or not you think it's a good idea. There's already class warfare. Their winning, because people like you don't even realize the war is happening. Oh, *shut the fuck up*. It's not ""politics"" it's ""business"", Rich v. Poor. The fact that the political system has been warped to exclusively help those at the top so blatantly in recent decades, is no coincidence. The mass amounts of inequality created by the hoarding of wealth by individuals just like this, is what creates animosity. The concept of generational wealth isn't usually applied to people who make millions or billions of dollars. It's the theory that having some money in the family from a previous generation takes the financial strain off of individuals of later generations, not necessarily making it easier for them to be rich, but making it easier for them to *not be poor*. For example, my parents were able to pay for a portion of my college, and have a house that's fully paid off. The former meant less student debt for me after I graduated. The latter, or the monetary value it will generate when sold, will eventually be split between my brother and myself. That's money that we won't have to earn, and that we can invest to make still more money. My parents also purchased land and built a cabin on it. That land will continue to gain value for as long as it's held in the family, and if it's eventually sold will provide unearned money to any hypothetical descendants. Put this in contrast to somebody who's on the hook for absolutely all of their education expenses, and whose parents rented all of their life. There's no capital flowing to the younger generation, making it much harder for them rise into economic prosperity. Edit: it's also worth noting that when I bought my house I was asked by the bank if I was expecting any financial aid from my parents at closing. Apparently it's a pretty common occurrence for people's parents to cover the down payment, or more, of a child's first house. That wasn't the case for me, but it's a great example of how generational wealth can greatly impact somebody's situation. Some people might not even be able to afford their first house without their parents' help, and even if they could, having a parent foot the bill for a large part of your mortgage takes people off the hook for a significant amount of interest in the future. I don't think that most people in this particular situation would consider themselves wealthy, but they are certainly not poor. IIRC, like 60% of the richest inherited their wealth, and most of the rest had a pretty good head start. Bezos' bigger advantage than the $300k seed capital from his parents was not having to worry if any of his ventures failed. And while Bezos certainly worked hard early in his career and graduated from Princeton with a great GPA and so on, he is also the brightest example of how many in the billionaire's club are also **obscenely lucky.** I can't even quantify how unbelievably fortunate he was to have every single big box store in western civilization basically lay down and die while Amazon grew big enough to consolidate so much of online shopping. Sears, built on mail order, was eaten from within by vulture capitalism, and so many other CEO's and executives with cumulative pay in the hundreds of millions, great titans of industry, leaders of capitalism... couldn't figure out for a minute between all of them that the internet might be more than a fad. Yeah and modern rockerfellers are exceptionally incompetent (although still rich) despite coming from intergenerational wealth. Growing up too privileged can just as easily be a hinderance to competence as poverty. [removed] Right, it was the biggest myth I believe in for a long time. But the truth is that most wealthy people in America is self made. ""Work hard and you can be a billionaire too!"" is a myth. Generational wealth is not. You're just.. wrong dude > Yeah, the whole ""generational wealth"" concept is mostly a myth. You could not be more wrong. Also a racist take. If you had to use just one statistic to determine your future wealth, it would be your zip code. >the whole ""generational wealth"" concept is mostly a myth You have a lot of reading to do, it's really not. Generational wealth isn't just about being filthy rich. If you inherit or are given a deposit to purchase a house then you immediately get a big leg up in the transition from subsistence to wealth creation. A job is income. Assets are wealth, and wealth generates more wealth. Yeah still if you're piss poor you're not starting Amazon whether you're a genius or not, being rich is a prerequisite to getting bonkers rich. oy vey, rockefellers were exceptional...just a jewish family constantly destroying White lives to enrich themselves and then engage in historical revisionism to suit their agenda oy vey...how hilarious we jews can constantly gaslight all of you goy into thinking we are your friends we hate you all...you are our slaves...your kids lose generational wealth because we steal it to make sure none of you can gain power enough to stop being our slaves You think that generational wealth is a myth? Holy fuck, your politic opinions are about as developed as a first trimester fetus Generational wealth is not even remotely a myth, you're smoking dicks People squander wealth all the time, but it doesn’t take a genius to put it into a bank or extremely safe investments, and live permanently off the interest. If I had a billion dollars I would put it into a safe investment and live off the 50 million a year. You can have a good idea, but at the end of the day, “self made is pretty damn loose, given that the dude was already in the 1% the moment he was born. https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ There is this whole thing You are operating on a misunderstanding of what generational wealth means. >Yeah, the whole ""generational wealth"" concept is mostly a myth. I'd like to know what you think generational wealth is. Rockefeller isn't like the standard, thats an outlier. >Most kids raised with wealth lose it because they don't know how to make it. There is upper middle class and there is wealth. Upper middle class families might spoil their kids to the point of uselessness and run out the family money in a decade or so. Wealthy families have ""family offices"" who are staffed with professional wealth managers whose job is to invest the family assets to ensure that the family's wealth grows over time. The kids basically just have to show up to an annual meeting to be told how much they have available this year for living expenses. That kind of wealth has longevity built right in and it will last for several generations. Generational wealth doesn't refer to billionaires... If you believe the family you're born into doesn't matter for where you end up, you're very naive Have you seen Musk on Twitter? If you speak English. There might be a 90% chance that you are richer than 90% of the world population. We are the rich, make most of it. Did Bezos have a lot of family money? From what I can find his parents were 17 and 18 when they had him and then left him to be raised by his grandparents on their ranch. I understand owning a ranch is more than most have, but it isn't buy your way through life rich. I think the great schooling part is mostly earned, he graduated Suda cum laude from Princeton with a 4.2 GPA. Money can get you in the door but it won't get you won't achieve that without being smart and working hard. One bullshit take I saw earlier on a different sub though was that anyone has the potential to be a billionaire if they just worked hard enough, which is obviously ridiculous as money clearly buys opportunities that not everyone have. I don't think Bezos (or anyone really) deserves to be richer than millions of working class people combined, but as far as billionaires go he definitely seems like one of the more self-made ones. That being said 99.9999% of people will never be in a position to become a billionaire simply due to circumstances purely out of their control. To be fair, [Bezos' dad immigrated from Cuba at age 16 by himself and barely spoke English](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/16/how-jeff-bezos-dad-who-came-from-cuba-alone-at-16-inspires-him.html) So his father is definitely self-made I think that politics use economics to spin the story. It should not be the other way around. But I do like your take. It is hard work and luck. And if you live in America, or speak English, you have higher than normal luck. Right, makes me hopeless about asset protection. Going to donate everything when I die. I disagree. But I did believe what you said most of my life. But When I tried to find proof, it wasn’t there. But I can see why this myth lives. It just makes intuitive sense. And there are enough people to make some cherry picked antidote. Maybe 1 out of 5 are like this. True, but economics should favor the facts that can be challenged instead of the emotion that only feels correct or wrong. [Here's what happened to the vast majority of websites that got started around the same time as Amazon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble). To even think that you would have known that you should have started a website in 1994 is hindsight bias, but to think you would have been assured success is ridiculous hindsight bias How arrogant can you be holy shit [deleted] Since you are speaking English, There is a 90% chance you are living better than 90% of the world. We all should be thankful the privilege we were born with. It sounds like you need a warm glass of milk Proving my point even more. Post like this is supposed to bring out an emotion, not bring in facts. Fact is that Rich family’s are very bad at retaining wealth. But there is a mythology of the wealthy beings in the wealth that break down with facts. FYI, calling people fat and stupid isn’t factual conversation but childish name calling. I think they worked for it. But there are many people who also worked as hard and didn’t make it. I guess high risk, high reward. There exists 2 way to create value: work, and luck. Much of the difficulty you describe is due to the luck factor. For example, winning the lottery is “hard” or difficult. But it’s not really *hard*, all you have to do is scratch a ticket. Having a vision is easy, whether that vision is something the world population will care about involves a lot of luck. Making business partnerships is easy, those partnerships being the “right” ones involves a lot of luck. And hiring people is easy, hiring the “right” people also requires a lot of luck. That’s not to say these achievements don’t matter or aren’t real - they are. Yeah, I know that me and my wife are wealthy. But it was worth the help of others that got us here. I mean, we went to school and someone taught us how to do our jobs. Some one loaned us money for school. Etc. I think I saw a study showing that 95% (don’t quote me) of athletes in professional sports are not millionaires because they spend all their cash or don’t get renewed contracts after spending their first contract. And celebrities are the same because of the persona they have to keep up. It’s more than just money, it is also luck. Creating is business is risky. Very risky. If you are lucky, you will be a business that survives and thrives. If not, you will sink. These athletes don’t generally start businesses. I.e they don’t even try, so obviously they’re not even worth considering in this conversation. Assuming you have a bit of business knowledge, a decent amount of computer science knowledge, and Gates/bezos initial starting money, you could get to them. If you’re lucky. And yes, it is mostly luck. Making the right business decisions requires foresight, and we mortals cannot see the future. If you predict everything right (you get lucky), then you make it big. I read a book last month explaining why the kid with perfect health is worst off compared to the kid with a real trauma (For example: rape, loss of an arm, etc). Good health alone doesn’t build muscle but good health and exercises does. Same with wealth accumulation. You can have all the connections you can get and without drive, you are doomed. Data has shown that kids of wealthy families are more interested in looking rich than being rich. And wealth is usually gone in 3 generations. Over 60% is lost in one generation, I have learned from another commentator who posted a link. It also doesn’t matter if it is millions or billions. Every empire falls. Wealth retention is no different. That was the point exactly. Correlation does not mean causation. I believe it was his stupidity that allowed him to do this. A wise guy once told me, if you are on the news, or you become a house hold name, then you are the extreme minority. You have to be a little stupid or just love programming like Bill to ignore the care about fame, so to get into this extremely rare position. I was talking about this today. The best thing is to teach kids to save when young and teach them that it works unti it doesn’t. So keep an open mind for our changing environment. We covered that ad nausium. There were a lot of underlying issues and It took her another 5 years to hit rock bottom and it was the hardest thing I ever want to go through. But yeah at the time she could have bought 3 houses and would be a millionaire by now. Everything is good now and she is doing very well for herself. It is easy to make money? Yes. Is it harder to keep it? Yes. I have worked since I was 12 and been on my own since 17. I don’t have a degree in anything and have been in the top 10% of income earners for over 35 years - her mother didn’t have to work after we got divorced, the only smart thing she did with the money was buy that life insurance policy, she had blown through 7 figures in 6 years before she died. Will I ever be as wealthy as Bezos, Musk, Gates? NO. Do I care? NO. Getting help starting out is great and helps. Is required to be successful and be wealthy? NO Yeah. It’s actually just one end of the extremes. Most folks would buy a house, start a business, or something to make their lives less burdensome in the long run. I don’t understand why people think the only two options is to turn thousands into billions or nothing at all. [deleted] That’s exactly it actually, the above commenter’s daughter didn’t have the connections and finances of a family like the Bezos’ to ensure success despite failed attempts. It's the opposite. Take Musk for example. He made the initial fortune by hard work, mostly coding day and night, then selling his (and his borthers) project for millions. Then with those you could say he had lucky string of projects. But in fact he faced total and utter failure multiple times. He could live off those millions nicely but he continued to bet high on risky new tech. By sheer will he made through. If the last Falcon 1 rocket with garage fix didn't make it to orbit SpaceX would fold right there. No more tries for Musk, he was invested over 100%. Then it was the roadster, Tesla could happily make low volume sport cars and Musk would be average rich CEO. But no, he bet again on mass production EV, the model 3. He spent two years getting it into production, went as far as sleeping on the floor so he would wake up to another full day of problem solving. If they didn't figure it out Tesla would fold right there and all Musk's investment with it. No more tries either. I just wanna note that the 300k Bezoz got is closer to 600k in todays money. Enough to run 10-20 pizza places/restaurants. Most people do not have the capital to risk to even open up 1 shop and then operate it at a loss for a decade to stomp out the competition. Yiu haven't met many teenagers... Kids are like dogs to an extent. Some are behaved without being trained and some are shitheads with all the training in the world. I was a total fuck up and my parents did everything in their power to keep me on the straight and narrow. My brother was a star student and easy going guy. Never got in trouble. They had a hands off approach with him. Don’t be so quick to judge people by the way their adult children turned out. It also sounds like she needed to figure some shit out and it worked out for her. Good for her. You had one fucking line of context you stupid idiot. By 18 anyone can turn out to be anything. I cannot actually understand how people can say this shit with one damn paragraph of context. Checks date.... I have bad news for you friend Have you tried gambling on options? I made over 4K from 1k shorting the market this week. can confirm. capitalism is awesome came from a shithole and pulled up my bootstraps and am so much better off The issue is that effort is not deterministic. There are elements of luck to success you can't ever really account for. And things you might not even think qualify as luck. Imagine if America had a closed borders policy and your mother couldn't immigrate. Imagine if you'd had leukemia as a kid and she lost everything to medical expenses. Not saying she didn't put in effort, but how many people worked just as hard for nothing? Probably a lot. It's not either or, economic systems work on a spectrum. There are more options Can't imagine the missed time with friends and family your mom sacrificed for years to earn a living and thinking CAPATOLYZM IZ # 1 > the other option. Damn, your mom worked so hard and her child is dumb enough to think that only 2 economic systems exist in the entire universe. You're not as smart as your mom, work harder. Education is valuable, and she gave up a lot. Don't waste her sacrifice by being a dummy >What no one sees is that she worked everyday and every night, worked her ass off. You know there are a fuckton of people who *also* work their ass off 12+ hours a day and *aren't* running a business? Amen. [deleted] There's more than two options. Taking one anecdote doesn't actually prove anything. Good for your Mom though. > better *then* the other option Yo mama didn't work so hard for you to use the wrong form of ""than"" She'd also definitely want you to be smart enough to learn that there are many economic systems, with many shades of grey between them Whenever I see someone with a personal story like this, I have to ask, do you *honestly* think that EVERYONE can make that same empire? Think of an idea capitalist society where everyone is perfectly educated enough to become a business owner. Do you think that EVERY SINGLE PERSON can run a company? You run into a huge issue in that you run out of workers. Companies require employees in order to do work. Those companies steal labor value from those employees, because workers always have to be paid less than the value they add, that's what profit is. So while you're sitting here with a parent who can give you everything you need to live a stable life, there are people who work for her that don't. When we talk about alternatives to capitalism, how about one that doesn't require the threat of homelessness and starvation in order to convince workers to slave away for small empire moguls? Anecdotal. That’s what billionaire’s want. Be forever caught striving for that American dream and not notice the billionaires hoarding more and more of the wealth earned off our blood, sweat, and tears. It’s nice hard work resulted in millions for your mom but the vast majority are working hard to make their corporate overlords percentage points richer. If the best we got is to the benefit of the minority of the country forgive me if I don’t celebrate. Your mother came here prolly 2 or 3 decades ago or a time where you can easily afford a family off a highschool degree. Wages are not keeping up with inflation. Not to discount your mother's hard work (I completely believe she put in a ton of effort) but the world is full of hard workers who have little to show for it. Hard work is great, and will definitely get you farther than sitting on your ass, but luck and external factors have a greater impact than most successful people want to acknowledge. There are absolutely moments in your mother's life where she was in the right place at the right time for an opportunity to present itself to her. The fact that she had the wherewithal and determination to capitalize on that is admirable and cannot be ignored, but neither can the elements of chance. yeah but did she do anything illegal or immoral on the way up ? Does she pay her employees a living wage ? do they have benefits ? can they kive decent lives or are they exploited ? are they people with rights needs and wants in that empire or are they expendable parts in the machine ? Confirmation bias. There are many poor people who work harder than your mother ever will. It's more rare for someone to go from rags to riches than for riches to more riches. That's not the point. The reason no one sees what she did is because it's so ridiculously rare. That's the problem. It shouldn't be rare. One mistake or bad event could have ruined her. That's also another reason folks may be more afraid. They might not have $0 to their name so they have something to lose. Talking about ridiculously rare cases of rags to riches isnt really proof the system works that great. It's honestly no different than a rich person saying capitalism is great. It's just not proof of anything. The absence of how common it is for rags to riches? That's definitely evidence of something.... But there's plenty of adjustments we could make which would improve capitalism though. Had your mother not started in the batter's box, but rather on third base (ie: if she had say a $300k or $1 million dollar in start up funds from her wealthy parents) would she have been able to, through her hard work and dedication, been able to create an even bigger empire? Could she have been even more successful in her business ventures if she had been able to start debt free with an MBA from an Ivy League school with all the knowledge and connections that would have accompanied that education? In the US that boss is called ""Chronic Illness, lord of medical bills"". Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“If only I could be so grossly incandescent!”* - Solaire of Astora Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/ As Czechoslovakia showed, it tends to work pretty well until your authoritarian, dictatorial ethnostate neighbor invades you because your citizens are too happy. So many apologists in this thread it's insane. Like yeah, his parents weren't billionaires but they were still in the fucking top couple of percent of people in America. Not to mention $300k in 1995 is equal to nearly $600,000 today. So yeah, it'd be like your parents saying ""I want to invest in your idea son, here's $600k to get you started"" Totally had nothing to do with his parents wealth though. [removed] Wrong, you are stuck in the Matrix Most americans with that net worth comes from owning a house in the past 3 decades and it ballooning in value. Not saying it’s easy I’m just adding a little bit more context I was skeptical about that last part, but it turns out there are about 22 million millionaires in the US. TIL $596,894.12 according to usinflationcalculator.com Someones never gone through funding rounds with a start up if you think VCs will lend you more. If you want to trade away all your equity in the first round, crippling your personal profit potential and your business, then maybe. I think having access to 300k makes you significantly richer than the average person. Yeah, middle class families all have their own emerald mines. Categorically untrue, go lick boots elsewhere. Not poor, not poor at _all_. Born to parents who were teenagers? Yes Born to parents in low paying entry level jobs? Also yes Also related. To them being teenagers. Born to grandparents that could absorb costs and raise two generations Born to grandparents that got children from two different sides of the family into Princeton. Not rich, no, but almost laughable to call them poor. ding ding we have a winner. unfortunately we cant discount the fact that his parents once purchased him back to school supplies, allowing him to walk his way right into Princeton. Where, upon graduation they give you your own hedge fund. /s There's a difference between ""has 50 grand in retirement"" and ""has 50 grand to piss away on some dude's wacky internet startup"" and the difference is a whole heck of a lot more than 50 grand. >I mean wouldn’t most middle class people have at least 50k in their retirement accounts by the time they reach their mid thirties? Mid thirties? I doubt it. Only a jerk would take their friend's retirement fund to do fucking anything. No one is saying that these people didn't have good ideas or work hard, just that they are not self-made. Only the financial side. The friends and family that are already connected to highly successful businesses is the other more important part. If I could call up somebody at IBM and I know they would buy my product things get a lot easier than starting from scratch as an uknown. Then he made his first million running a mail order business for supplements and (I think) gym equipment Not exactly. He had some money from working and winning bodybuilding competitions in Europe. After he came to America he started a bricklaying business with some gym friends, then continued to grow it and made some wise investments in real estate. He was already wealthy before breaking into acting. Still pretty impressive, though. Elon was poor when he came to Canada It was impossible for Arnold to avoid any of it though. Same goes for the ""evil"" billionaires. The events that occur to someone throughout their life have to occur as they are a part of a causal chain. There is certainly no self-made as everything is forced upon us by our path through spacetime. Goddam, he was a brick layer and still had the energy to go to the gym for hours? I work a desk job from home and I have to convince myself to do some pull ups… And when he was younger there was no internet. He had to learn everything naturally or from gyms. He came to the US with $27k in 1968 according to google. That’s over 200k today. Not exactly dirt poor. Also Arnold is much closer to you or me in terms of worth than any of the people in this picture. What? Didn't he have a bunch of money from winning competitions? And he used that money on real estate to make his first million? Wasn't the guy who made titanic and terminator a former truck driver? He wouldn't allow people to direct it without him He was rich from investments in real estate before his movie career took off. He tripled his first investment in a year (a 300.000 dollar apartment, in LA) and continued with that through the 70s. Multi millionaire by age 25 Arnie came to the US with $24000 in the 60s. not a huge sum but he invested wisely on real estate and turned it into a million in a couple of years From bricklaying to having your own full-time maid But pretty darn rich regardless (clocking in at 0.45 billion) . Not anywhere close. At 45% I wish I was that nowhere close. .....no he is a multi-millionaire and is known the world over....and you are............ But as Arnold always says, even in his case, he was not self made. He had a ton of help from friends / connections he made and he had a ton of luck. And definitely artificial steroids. Of the law allowed it he might have become president. I can just hear Bill Burr's voice ""A Great Man...."" What is California's perception of Arnold Schwarzenegger's tenure as governor? Was he a good or bad governor? -Bill Burr- Bill Burr has a hilarious take on this This guy has been in the zone for over 4 decades! Kinda sounds like a male gold digger. Bill Burr is that you?! The American dream is over. That saying can’t exist anymore when the American dream is now asking if they can afford next months rent. Became governor of a state he can’t even pronounce. How many lifetimes would you need to do all that? He then traveled back in time eliminating the individuals that were in his way. He’s also active on Reddit and can occasionally be summoned by us mortals. u/GovSchwarzenegger >Arnold came to America and couldn't speak any English. After Hard work and determination He then became the greatest bodybuilder ever. That's an odd way to frame our imo, things are completely unrelated. You don't need to speak English to be a body builder. No, he has said that self made term is nothing but capitalist propaganda that only dolts believe At least source Bill Burr. You’re gonna steal half this quote and not go full Bill Burr? You shameless slut This is almost verbatim from a Bill Burr bit. Arnold is a piece of shit who cheated on his wife He also lied about his brick laying style and then went on to pardon a murderer because they were a friends son. yes, he would regularly go AWOL Not just to pump iron; he snuck off the base and across an international border (from Austria to Germany) to enter a competition, which he won. Upon his return he was jailed for going AWOL but because he won, his superiors really didn't feel right about the decision so he was released after 3 days or so, and they built him a gym and made daily workouts part of his ""punishment."" And pussy They would have benches and weights in the tanks and lift weights at night after the army training. He got meat every day in the military, where he used to get it once a week at home. Not that you need meat, but the calories, fat, and protein was a lot higher when he was in the military than at home. And he joined the military to be able to eat larger portions of protein ​ actually, its right. The initial startup capital came from his parent's personal savings. From an interview with Jeff Bezos, for the Academy of Achievement: “The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became [Amazon.com](https://Amazon.com) Bezos has admitted he borrowed his startup capital from his parents more than once, why are you lying? Agreed. Not even an Elon fan and the mine thing is very disingenuous. Bezos did seem to be the initial force behind the $15 ""realistic minimum wage"" via Amazon, although Amazon workers were expected to bust their ass for the wage. Liar **Make sure you exfoliate and moisturize before APPLYING YOUR CLOWN MAKE UP** 🤡🤡🤡 [deleted] Bezo's step-father is the one that gave him seed money, a wealthy Cuban exile (one of the Cuban's who supported the old regime of slavery and exploitation) of which he also took his family name. His mother's family is also well off, and both families had connections. He is still not ""self-made"". Yes, Bezos father owned a bike shop, who he was with until the ripe age of 4, when his mother went to Mexico, had an affair with an ExxonMobil executive, who would become his ""father"" (stepfather) when his mother went panning for gold. The two summaries do not contradict each other. Your summary is the ""Early Life"" part on his wiki. The one in the picture describes the one in the main body of his wiki under ""Amazon"" (sources 48, 53, and 54 on his wiki). His family growing up was poor. He did also accept an estimated $300k from his parents for Amazon. So care to explain where the $300,000 startup check came from? How dare you say anything positive about a person the internet hates! Hey BillySpacs. This is Jeff Bezos. Thank you so much for sticking up for me man. These fucking poor pathetic haters are all just jealous of my massive wealth (and muscles). They keep trying to tell me things like “let your workers unionize for better working conditions” but that shit is so gay dude. I’ve been working to get them all diapers so that they can just piss and shit themselves in order to keep themselves from getting fired for “time off task”. Oh and those rumors about Amazon forcing those workers to die in a tornado instead of going home to safety? Yeah if you see someone talking about that, please make something else up in my defense. Thanks Billy, if you keep it up, maybe you too can be one of my warehouse workers. I may even let you polish my head Even if bezos had literally scraped the investment money up from slave wages and monster effort, self sacrifice and on… …it still does nothing to justify the Amazon of today. Zero ethical billionaires. His biological father was a unicyclist, but his mother remarried when he was still a young boy to Miguel Bezos, who was a more reliable parent and why his last name was changed from Jorgensen. His maternal grandfather owned the 250,000 acre Lazy G ranch and was a regional director of the US Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He would spend many summers at that ranch and had access to some unique opportunities throughout his education. I have seen several his family and angel investors provided millions in funding for what would become Amazon. There isnt anything wrong with accomplishing things with help, they just shouldn't make up stories about doing it all on their own afterward. I'm not sure what is criminally wrong in any of these. Musk freely admitted to the Emerald mine until he seemed to realize how problematic owning a South African gem mine during apartheid was a few years ago then pretended like it wasn't true. Arnold was a dirt poor emigrant. Bill was a Harvard (read: wealthy parents) dropout who's best move was selling IBM an OS he didn't even own yet (that he bought for pennies compared to what MS-DOS ended up making) Not sure what you're getting at here. What about Bill Gates? Bill Gates Jr. Son of one of the foremost lawyers on the planet. Son of the head of the board at United Way? Bill, I had a silver spoon from day one, gates? A loan is different from being given money. And it’s more complicated. His family owned a 25,000 acre ranch. He went to an excellent college, had a Wall Street job. It’s a path to success MANY people are locked out of. Or are unable to accomplish due to luck. Plenty try JUST as hard or are just as smart and circumstance kills it. I will admit his story was more difficult than many other billionaires. Ethically self made? I like the distinction. You just won't make that kind of cash playing nice and not hurting people. Look at Besoz. He had a nice book website, but to turn it into what it is today, at the speed he did at, he had to fuck over a lot of people. That fucking over people is basically the difference between billionaire and millionaire. There isn't a billionaire on the planet who didn't step on someone to get to where they are. If you keep repeating that you pay a lower tax rate than your secretary you somehow keep the praise of the plebs all the while paying a lower rate than your secretary. He's also the main reason why we spill more oil since he owns the railroads that carries the oil and donates money to anti-pipeline politicians. Just another corrupt politician bribing, more pollution causing, piece of shit old man. He also had a big hand in helping limit the impact of the financial crisis probably saving many jobs and the country/world avoiding a worse fate. THIS He is an ahole >His relationship with his first wife was also weird af. Dude had an open relationship with his wifes best friend or some shit like that. I’ve always said the way to get somewhere is stop other people doing it. As horrible as that sounds it’s the truth. If you break it down to the simplest level, less money in their pocket is more in yours. We didn’t become a dominant species by sharing food and land, we did it by tying up weaker humans and dropping rocks on their skull. We all naturally have that bloodlust, the desire to take from others, but you quickly learn that’s wrong, take out education and you have gangs/cartels, and they are extremely successful [deleted] Considering the difference in price, that lesson amounts to ""having more money is better than having less money"". It's not as if the people living in rented trailers could have owned the land if they chose to. Which makes it charity honestly... The man is a legend My business mentor taught me about holding until I got into wallstreetbets and 💎 👏 🦧 🍌🍌🍌🍌. Edit 🚀 🌚 Yeah because the entire point of a trailer park is to own the land /s you muppet You guys always say stuff like that but society legitimately cannot function like this. These people might be dumb but dumb people still have to eat and when dumb people run out of food they are going to come for you. What a great lesson to teach a bunch of poor people and retirees. /r/wowthanksimcured Surely you’re not dumb enough that you don’t realize people who own trailers on leased land are not able to just purchase the land See, when billionaires do shitty things to exploit people for money through their homes it's ""teaching a lesson in the value of owning the land"" but when *I* do it it's a ""hostage situation"" and I need to ""put the gun down and let the family go."" Buffet owns Berkshire Hathaway which is 10 times bigger by revenue than Blackstone. And its amazing how none of those problems were solved with all that funding. Almost like it went in the pockets of other rich people who own those orgs🤔🤔 Gives it away to who when and where? So do Musk and Gates, I’m saying Buffet doesn’t have a clean slate, mans has some dirt as well To charitable foundations aka socially acceptable money laundering (most of the time), and then writing it off during tax season. Fuck Warren Buffet. [deleted] POS = piece of sh*t He bought land that’s typically owned by low income individuals/families and raised the rent knowing the can’t move and had to pay. Yea, that’s pretty POS behavior. Especially since someone was already profiting before They have also employed a lot of people, so that’s good, no? Arnold for president is on my auto fill Unless you're not smart enough to get someone to pay you to think hard. *Clammers*, for example, would probably choose to do something other than farming shellfish if they could. if hard work is all it takes, show me the rich donkey Yes. I’m sure they work much harder than the child laborers in China, et al making the products sold at Amazon and other companies fueling their wealth. Given the literal example of how these people came up thru nepotism. And you fucking boot lickers are like….. “ they have a lot of money, they must work hard…” Bullshit, these are the asshole standing on your shoulders, with our tax money. Tax money they don’t even contribute in nearly the same percentage of our resources that we have to. Unless you’re uneducated It’s not what you need to get ahead. Plenty of kind and good hearted people get ahead. But none of those people are billionaires. There are no ethical billionaires. Funny how making economic decisions in your own self-interest is now viewed as cold and ruthless. Stabbing in the back or just outperforming and straight up beating your competition… Michael Jordan may be an asshole but he didn’t need to stab people in the back to be a winner He could like... start encouraging more companies to put in more workplace democracy. > ""influenced entire markets at the expense of the American public"". Do you know how hedge funds, investment firms, lobbyists, and back channeling work? Why doesn't he donate it now. He's only gonna be charitable after he can no longer enjoy his wealth and power? I suspect the simplest explanation is going to be an unfavorable ""calories per dollar"" ratio I’ve worked harder than those four fucks puts together. Calorie output, my person time, and my person output. Man I’ve worked in the Oilfields in North Dakota in winter. Hard work isn’t a factor for these people. All born on third. Access to home base and the fucking club box. They all had access more than 99% of the population. This bullshit pretense that they out worked anyone is laughable. You guys have been literally been given a small example of how they got their assets and everyone is…. but they worked really hard…. Bullshit. Sell your soul to the government, endure their abuse and then they'll pay your way! Also, be prepared to oppress/murder your fellow citizens if the gov calls for it. ""Im just doing my job/following orders"" I’m a 42 year old retired CoMan. Yeah, I’m ok. Just tired of you idiots and your boot licking stupidity. I’m retired at 42 and my daily driver is a 911 Porsche. I’m fine. By the people I’ve worked with in my career in the Army and Oil Field, these 4 are not hard workers. They are opportunist who took full advantage of their advantages they should not have had. All of these are examples of nepotism to the extreme. I’m bitter that you idiots think they worked “hard” I guess man. Maybe Elon is a exception. Maybe. But these other three… give me a fucking break. If you don’t think with his giant fucking platform he couldn’t do more? Shut up with the billionaire boot licking. You not impressing anyone. Buffet is fucking disgusting. Look at how his family is run. Had mistress issues, family infighting. Enough. https://www.businessinsider.com/2008/9/warren-buffett-s-greatest-mistake-letting-his-wife-leave-him Do you have a source for this information? Cause I’ve literally never heard of any of the Covid related part. Duh… cause if you won 110 you only taking home like 40 !!!! I mean that's debatable. Imagine you see a baby stroller left unattended, heading towards traffic. If you see it, but choose not to stop it, are you bad? Now imagine you have 100 million dollars. There are literally hundreds of millions of people dying prematurely due to lack of basic healthcare and nutrition. If you just sit on the 100 million instead of helping them, are you bad? Most people would say the first person is bad but many would not say the second person is. It's not really logically defensible. If anything the second person is much worse than the first, measured in human suffering they choose not to prevent and lives they choose not to save. Nah. If youre worth 100m+, youre a shitty person. Period. How many lottery winners hold onto the money and aren't murdered? But yeah they're not honest either. Riches and honesty do not mix are you kidding me? Get real It would make me dishonest, cause I would straight up lie about winning. Although I don’t think I can avoid my name being broadcast when I claim it, so it wouldn’t work out all that well Yes A lot of old school rappers are self made. Edit: rappers that was founded in the 90’s. Stephen isn't a capitalist. He doesn't survive off the work of others. Idk man, doesn’t one of his books describe in detail sex between minors? I don’t read horror, so this is only something I’ve heard from comments on Reddit. I vote Gaben He wrote a book with a child orgy in it He writes lies for a living. Nothing that happens in those books is real. Give us a hard one (giggity) Wow a comment with actual thought put into it. Thank you. [deleted] Loans are not nothing. Some people can't get credit. Bezos' parents $300k was financing, it wasn't technically a gift, but it's still a huge thing to be given. Yeah probably. I don't believe you. THIS. This whole thread is proof. Honestly Yep completely honest. So you agree with me. >Pussy is always a good investment. > >\-~~Warren Buffet~~ Divorce Attorneys > >There I fixed that for you. He never said what they're eating at the Warren Buffet Agreed, it's better not to try. But wouldn't survivorship bias also work for his argument? I'm sure there are a lot of people who were lucky to have rich parents but were too lazy to capitalize on that and lost most of that fortune. Hell, it's almost a streotype about nouveau riche that their wealth lasts only their generation. I'm trying to understand. You hate the company? Or using it as a free resource? You have a lot of time to lose.... [deleted] Reddit is full of guillible BLM type teenagers/20 year olds too. The love these kind of superficial posts. >unironically browsing /r/conspiracy post-2016 for what purpose This post, except for the lie about Musk, is not divisive though. Both the left and right rail against the super wealthy. No much reason to blame the user. Offer and demand... Hey there rustythrowawayforprn! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **""This!""**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :) *** ^(I am a bot! Visit) [^(r/InfinityBots)](https://reddit.com/r/InfinityBots) ^(to send your feedback! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments) Wealth accumulation has problems but the bigger problem is market power blocking small firms from entering the market. Something only 2 of the people in this pic partake in (Bezos and Gates, and only kinda Gates). Amazon certainly pushes smaller retailers to sell on their site so they can drive them out of business as well as take a cut of sales, and Microsoft has certainly violated some monopoly laws in its past, but Musk is competing against countless car companies and the only one that is actually investing in electric cars by in large, and spacex is an incredibly niche business. Most of his wealth is asset value. Buffet is an investor. His does boring work and moves around money into businesses he thinks are profitable. I’m no fan of Wall Street but he specifically is not robbing people blind or taking advantage of people like the big banks did in 2008. We are conflating the wrong issues and people into just “rich people bad” Your first mistake is thinking it's a zero sum game The simple truth is simply by being a billionaire you are an obstacle to economic development [deleted] > at the expense of everyone else This isn't the economics subreddit. This is r/economy. This is a far lower bar. If you are looking for discussion on economics, head over there. This is kinda like comparing a tabloid to a more reputable newspaper. Do you own a home? Did you buy a car? What computer do you prefer, what phone did you pick out? You love Capitalism, you just want something for nothing. Yeah those vegetables and steel bars are figments of your imagination cringe Yep, I remember reading something about how wealth often cycles with families, sure extremely rich people often have parents who did quite well but within another generation or two usually their kids are grandkids are not poor but have definitely lost a lot of the wealth. I think it's just human nature, you see the same thing happening on a macro scale with regard to the rise and fall of empires and there's a lot to be said for tough circumstances coupled with ambitious people making for a successful combination and then once people don't have to work as hard the work ethic and such suffers. Maybe if by class mobility you only consider from middle class to billionaire, because class mobility is pretty much alive and you get there through education. Not everyone can start a business, that's true. But most people don't want to because it's way too much work. That being said, if you want to start a business and become the next big thing, the US is still the country where you're most likely to succeed. There's a reason everyone and their grandmother tries to move to the US. It depends on how you define the American Dream. Its simply saying that unless generational wealth is past on, and that wealth grows because of someone else's intelligent invesment. Lol what is this Calvinist garbage >The universe is determined 🤣🤣🤣 Sounds like slacker excuses to me. It's not my fault I'm bone idle lazy, have failed at everything and have not a pot to piss in..... iTs ThE uNiVeRsE I tend to believe in determinism too, but it’s not provable and your experience is literally identical whether you have free will or whether it’s an illusion. Start acting like you have some control and things just start working out a lot of the time. And yes I know there is a logical inconsistency in what I just said. That's because of how it works. If X person works hard Then Y = future generation of kids will be rich, IF which is a conditional statement, will do something smart and actually invest it wisely. Then IF the next generation Y2 does something good with the money. Then they get wealthier and wealth can successfully get passed on. IF no one breaks the cycle of wealth. Avocados are cartel fruits. Damn so not even close to a billionaire huh? You must be a lazy bitch. So what did you do? Your still broke bro. I had amassed way more wealth by 27 than you. And I grew up poor poor. But unlike you I know my success is due to many factors not just hard work. Happenstance and luck are just as much a part of it. Its always funny to see some schmuck think the only reason their dick is plump is because they are them and not anything else that goes into it. You will always be gaining knowledge bruh. Quit making excuses. Trump had made 5 million at the age of 3. Nevermind that his dad had put companies in his name. Hahaha My Crocs don’t have straps… We paid 40% on 10k in year 5 that was paid back in 45 days when we landed Walmart and Loves in the same week. They hit our inventory like a 10,000 LB gorilla. We tried banks, credit unions and ended up with some loan shark company. After that we went with family. Now we use it as a tool to teach our children the power if discipline. We had the receivables but capital has always been our challenge with massive growth. We still have to move things around now at times, but I'm very happy to say we no longer have any cash flow challenges. The guy he is replying to just said hard work is needed. Like you said, it takes more than just hard work to make it. And honestly, I'd say luck or opportunities matter more than hard work A lot of success is recognizing good opportunities and taking advantage of them. Red lining (still being done today by Wells Fargo). Tulsa Race Massacre. Much higher conviction rates compared to white people for the same crimes. PoC have a lot going against them compared to white people. It doesn't invalidate either groups' efforts. It's just important to be aware of the struggle Not sure your point since you added the /s, but it isn't why there aren't rich black people... it's part of why there is a racial wealth gap though. >that means the 58 and younger black generation needs to **work harder** to make sure their kids have more opportunities than they did. Exactly right! That's literally what systemic racism is. Black people have to work harder than white folks to achieve the same success because of the ripple effect of their ancestors' oppression. Of course there's also still active oppression going on today, of course, such as resumes with ""black-sounding"" names being passed over in favor of equivalent resumes with white-sounding names. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-applicants-with-black-names-still-less-likely-to-get-the-interview My idea is to dispel that ""success"" comes solely from ""working hard."" I am not interested in blaming black people for ""not working hard enough"" causing the racial wealth gap, thus the concept of ""work hard = succeed"" being a simple formula is one that upsets me. Inherited wealth is deeply entrenched in colonization and slavery, thus it's not fair in a vacuum. I think it's more about successive generations having more opportunities. Parental sacrifice has an effect most of the time. If you work hard enough you can. If you’re children come out smart they’ll be 10x richer than you. You have reading comprehension maxed out I see. That's not the point. Being this rich is a ridiculous goal. But it's simple with hard work and a plan to dramatically change the life of yourself, your family and your children in the West. In what world did I say anything about the self made claim being valid? The way I think about it is that we can't push people to be more successful, but we can create safeguards. Creating systems that provide foundational services like healthcare, education, child services, and affordable food and housing allow folks to live their lives in a heathier, more confident way. I believe that a lot of potential is being wasted just because so many people are having to spend so much time and energy on simple survival instead of making their personal mark on the world. >I don't think we should construct a world where people need to get lucky in multiple ways to live comfortably. That's pretty unfair from my perspective, and not an intelligent way to organize society. I grew up with nothing in the backwater country of the midwest, with uneducated parents. I definitely had to worry about where my next meal came from. I applied myself and while it took me longer than most. And I wouldn't get the privledge of being called ""white"". I think society is pretty well fucking organized compared to the history of how society has been organized. You're literally already lucky to be born in the country you are in the time you are. If we are talking about fair, its more fair now than it has ever been in the history of the world, you should get some perspective. Well said Books also provide a very high number of SKUs. Using this as his building block allowed him to build an extremely dynamic and capable supply chain. Starting with a low complexity/SKU portfolio would not have allowed him to pivot to a store that sells/ships EVERYTHING nearly as effectively. They bought an operating system (86-DOS) from Gary Kildall, and they renamed it MS-DOS. They were able to finance the purchase because they come from wealthy families. They were able to license it to IBM because Gates mother served on a board of directors with the CEO. Your average college dropout can't write a check for (allegedly) $50,000. They also can't just get a meeting with the head of one of the world's biggest corporations. He’s extremely smart. He hardly makes any money off selling something with 2 days shipping. Which gives jobs to the workers you mentioned. Amazon has grown into a company that could entirely eliminate their marketplace (again, which gives thousands of jobs to the workers you mentioned) and still be just about as profitable, but it grew into this behemoth with Bezos’s foresight and strategic planning. He definitely should pay his fair share of taxes, but let’s not forget with the US Federal budget of $6 trillion Bezos could give up his entire wealth and the US government would waste it all within 2 weeks. Its not sarcastic. That kind of start in life is available to anyone capable of obtaining a high quality Maths degree. ""Pretty reasonable"" is earning a bachelors in communication and working at a marketing company or something. Getting into a hedge fund and having 300k capital is far from reasonable for the average person and its a privileged perspective to even think its reasonable in itself My point was that having $300k in starting capital doesn't automatically mean you're privileged. I had twice that simply because I had a good business plan and found someone willing to invest in it. If that investor had been a parent it wouldn't change my entire life story. You realize bezos was a SVP at that hedge fund right? He was already making millions with that position. The seed capital came from 22 investors with his parents only being one. With what? That I'm not a trust fund baby? xD At least I'm not stupid enough to think that receiving 300 grand out of nowhere isn't a big deal. Most of what he said was true though. Think broader. Yes, 300k for starting a company isn't a ton. But, *being in a family that can just give you 300k*? Have you actually given serious thought to what your life would be like in that type of situation? Seriously think for a moment. You've received all the benefits of a life with parents that have no shortage of money. They have over 1/10th of a lifetime worth of excess cash laying around, unused. You get the education, the networking that comes from wealthy parents, and then you get a job with a hedge fund, not a common number-crunching job. Everything up to that point is heavily influenced by the parents' wealth. Then, you're simply given *over 10 years of salary, and it's not even a loan.* At that point, could you really fail in life? You'd have to try. Squander your money, act like a complete idiot and bet it all on stocks, get addicted to drugs...you'd have to really screw up. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from living a upper-middle-class life with no effort. You could go work in your low-intensity, high-pay hedge fund job and never think about money again. In fact, *you've never worried about money. Ever.* Yes, he made a company that was successful. But he started from a position where he had already won. Economic failure was something he'd have to work towards. That's not normal, and definitely not ""self-made"". And that's to say nothing of how he couldn't possibly ""earn"" his wealth. At some point he started taking compensation that belonged to someone else. He wasn't personally generating that value for his company, but someone was. And for those many people that were doing that work, they were not paid a fair market value for their labor. Bezos' wealth is not meritless, but it is nowhere near as merited as people like to say, and is stained by legal theft. His status as a billionaire is built by many others, and only minorly by proportion, himself. “Things I don’t like are politics, unlike economics which isn’t political at all” [deleted] Are you under the impression that these high profile celebrities don’t have PR teams or at the least a PR manager to keep their name in the news? Tesla & SolarCity are you living under a rock? There’s plenty of people who casually played the lottery and won $500k and none of them are billionaires. There’s plenty of people who inherited 500k and are not billionaires. Steve Jobs inherited no money and was a billionaire. This post is nonsense. Michael Jordan took the easy route 🤣 by making a deal with the devil Nike during the 90s. Being tall helped, but it's not like the NBA just looks at height and nothing else. You need to work your ass off to get to that level. My point was stupid rich. I'm worth plenty, and not a doctor or lawyer, just well invested. But I'm not $100M+ rich. Shaq took his salary, and did great for himself and owns a small business empire that is only growing was my point. My point was that people here seem to get impression that you only get super rich off your parents/etc giving you something, not hard work. So was trying to figure out what excuse when a young black kid from a poor area goes from nothing to $400M+, if we just say he got good genes, or what. It is actually a thing that people who are taller and better looking are more likely to succeed because of social bias when interacting with them. [deleted] OK, great. They didn’t come out of complete poverty. But this whole post is painting a picture like these are trust fun kids who are coming from many generations of multi millionaires which isn’t the case. (and there’s plenty of cases of people coming from poverty who are success stories, and tons of cases where they are doing really good. It’s not a death sentence. It’s not the caste system in India. ) A LOT of people have 500k for their kids. Wow investing 40k in an emeral mine. Truly, the wealth of kings. > to fall back on if shit didn't work out Do you have any clue whatsoever that this ever happened? Admittedly I’m not up to date on his beginnings, but if what the other person said is true, why does it matter that his dad was rich? It sounds like he made his own way. It doesn’t matter if he had a backup if he failed. It didn’t fail. You’re basically saying that no person born rich can attribute any merit or skill to their accomplishments. You could have done well in school and gotten a scholarship, picked a good major and gotten a job in a high paying field. That’s one job without being flat broke. Then you could save/invest that money for a few years while making friends in your industry. Then you use that capital and contacts to start a company. Also there are billionaires who weren’t born into wealthy families. Mark cuban was born into a working class family in Pittsburgh. Steve Jobs was adopted by a coast guard mechanic. Larry Page’s parents were computer science professors at Michigan State. Sergey Brin’s father was a lecturer at University of Maryland. Elon Musk has been mostly estranged from his father, who was not part of the initial investments. When him and his brother founded their first company, zip2, they could only afford to rent a small office and had to live there instead of an apartment. They had 1 computer and showered at YMCA. They were invested in by a venture capital firm after a year without any outside investment, in exchange for majority ownership and Richard Sorkin replacing Elon as CEO. Elon also got a solid education before starting his business, so he would still have that to fall back on in the case that zip2 failed. You don’t have to like these people, and there may be bad things they have done to accumulate wealth, but it is not true that you can’t become a billionaire/wealthy unless you are born into wealth. That’s a self limiting view. Nobody with half a brain needs to work more than one job to make a comfortable living. Who are you referring to other than the bottom end of the bell curve Lmao you are so aggressively ignorant But he had a £40,000 stake in an Emerald mine which apparently makes up for it! You people are children lmao Yeah, compared to becoming the richest man in the fucking world, he came from nothing Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 746,339,364 comments, and only 150,105 of them were in alphabetical order. Lol that has less than nothing to do with my point If they made the money why shouldn’t they keep it? It’s not like he has that money in cash. His wealth is tied up in the company which he built. Being wealthy just means he built a massive company. And the company only grew because it was providing products and services that people loved. And because it’s so big thousands and thousands of people are employed. So your position is that it’s insane to defend people who have built a company that contributes massively to society? When does someone ""deserve"" their money? Who determines that? I can tell you're dumb. I don't see how that would mean anything, but not really. I do. What now? If you don't have at least that saved by age 50 (probably 40), you're going to be in trouble for retirement. Its relative. Id call myself successful for the company I built. Building a $1T company that changes the world is also success. Having $300k saved up vs having that much to toss at a business with zero real expectation of it succeeding, *is* succeeding. It’s like saying the person with $300k in their retirement fund should’ve tossed it all in bitcoin back in like 2009, they’re both about as risky. Based If you have a billion USD, it means you've been greedy, not successful. 300K? More than enough. Have you seen the price of housing? The median home price in 2021 was $346,900. $300,000 doesn't even get you an average house. Perhaps at 300 K you could consider yourself to be individually successful. But you’re didn’t found or lead an organisation that employs a million people or sending rockets to space. There’s various levels of successful. What point are you trying to make What are you even talking about? That plus a good idea is all it ever is His grandpa was pretty high up in federal defense work if I remember correctly. Those kinds of connections are significant. He had a great dad with a ranch the size of big cities and the connection of a tarentula lol. Back then a single mom with no job would have ended up under a bridge if it wasn't for great dad. Celebrities are totally not the same and you’re either deliberately obtuse or genuinely retarded to suggest they are. chamath palihapitiya, Oprah Is it weird that homeless people don't turn into billionaires, yet Bezos - whose parents spent 200 k on his education at Princeton and then seeded 300k on Amazon - is a billionaire? Does that seem odd to you? The point the post is making is that it takes a lot of initial capital. Most. Americans will never see 300k. Or go to. Princeton. The reason there's just a few like Bezos is also because of the unique circumstances of available money, contacts and personal drive. Not to mention the systemic biases that help the rich get richer, avoid taxation etc but not the regular fellas. The posts wants you to know that the game isn't fair. It's lopsided. And it favors the rich. Thats it, I think. No one is saying you can't be a billionaire. Just that billionaires have a lot of help - help most of us can never ever get If you’re parents could just loan you $300k and you consider that a small loan, you aren’t middle class Have a look at the 4 pictures and see if there are any other common traits apart from the money. It's all almost like the system is rigged in certain peoples favour. 300k? I don't even have a home. I agree that you would not turn 300k into Amazon though. If you take inflation into account, its quite a bit more than 300k since Amazon got founded almost 30 years ago. Obviously you wont just become a billionaire by getting that money. But if youd get the equivalent of the 300k today, theres a very high chance you could start a business and still become a millionaire if your business is any good that is. No one who could afford to lose $300k isn’t rich. I’m pretty sure just having that amount in total assets puts you in the top 1%. $300k is the same amount thousands of kids take every year for medical school and they’re not turning into billionaires That's fair. And the more resources and knowledge how to use them the better. I'm not saying there is a magic button. But it all helps. Lot of people work hard and have good ideas. Money and connections help. You can alemays tell a conservaive because insults make up 99 percent of their arguments. Yes? Lol, duh. Connections often have advice like that. It can be, of course those are often taught by parents who have them. Massive advantage. That helps. But there were others doing similar things. > Musk did not get Much help from his father, so whats your excuse? I mean aside from the investments he had a private education and his own computer when that wasn’t a common thing. And excuse for what? Of course he got tons of help. I run my own business and after 8 years I own my own house. You think Musk spent a few years working 60h so he can pay rent while also saving for a bank deposit to buy a house to then pay off the mortgage? He got at the very least a 5-10 years head start in a system that is all about competition. That is what makes the difference. It's attacking an argument that wasn't made. A classic straw man. Not sure what this means. Saying ""yes?"" to a reply that poses multiple questions is useless. Yeah that makes sense. It's easy to lose perspective when talking about such large numbers over such a large area. That is mathematically not correct. Numerically yea, but it’s exponentially easier to make money the more you start with. I’m not giving my opinion on bezos or anyone else specifically, but starting with 300k means you can be much riskier, increasing your potential returns and decreasing the negative impact if your venture fails. Going from 0 to 1 mil is much harder than 1 mil to 1 bil, even though numerically 1 mil to 1 bil is much much larger No, it's nearly impossible to turn $3 into $2m, and that's precisely my point. If everyone who had $300k could easily make it become a $200b empire, there would be a whole lot of people with $200b, wouldn't there? Agreed I’m sure his parents were completely unbiased when filtering all the proposals… You should definitely go work for them then. Actually they're not, and they're very over worked. > employees are *paid* really well FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot* I wouldn’t say that. I make 40k more than I would in a comparable role at Amazon. Define 'paid really well'. A modern day slave driver. Yes, slave wages. Wages where you can only afford housing and food. [deleted] Give me one solid reason that I should hate Elon Musk You’re telling me the guy who raised Elon’s stepsister from a child then got her pregnant doesn’t have a good relationship with Elon? Wonder why. It doesn’t even make sense lmao. “His father owned an emerald mine! That’s how he came up with Zip2 and sold it for millions!” Emerald mine is a myth. And more to the point, Zip2 received $20k in round 2 funding from his dad. $20k of $200k total, so not only is it not *THAT* much (while I don’t have $20k to throw around it’s somewhat reasonable) it’s not even much compared to the total they raised. Elon's dad was basically an ass. ""A terrible human being"" is what I remember him describing him as. Huh, interesting. And went into debt to get an education. Started with negative money and became the richest man on earth. [deleted] Left when he was 17 So his dad had more money than 99% of South Africans a few decades ago when he bought it? Fair enough. He didn't say that, but the claim, that he owned an Aparthied emerald mine which Kickstarted Elons wealth is false > EM: Company death – not succeeding with the company – causes me a lot more stress than physical danger. But I’ve been in physical danger before. The funny thing is I’ve not actually been that nervous. In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.” Haha yeah his father totally treated those guys differently from the mines in south africa This is about elon not Bezos. Anyway 300k still isnt ridiculously huge for starting a company. [deleted] His argument was about this was not in SA and in some where else instead, and has no connection to Apparthied like the OP was implying. You straight up ignored that..... > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. Sorry for needing a place the live. Most people can't afford to blow 100k into some business idea that might or might not work, when having a housing loan running. I started a software business and I'm not a millionaire either if I screwed over my business partners. 🤔🤔😏 Yeah I've crawled up out of the swamp myself but still I guy like Elon would get knocked the fuck out in any dive bar in the USA. Not a worker. Get off your soapbox. Sorry mate it's a free country Which is a fucking shame. I'm sorry you had to endure that. Truly. [deleted] > elon worked for his wealth Genuinely hilarious. Bill Gates and his homeboy Paul Allen were working on a software together while the boy was in freshman year of Harvard. The real G is Steve Jobs with his buddy buddy WoZ doing all the work. 🤣🤣 For how long? Until his family took care of him? And now he's a union buster. And cnbc? Cmon at least try In some ways yes. No one is undeserving of money. But cmon dude He also got a shit load of money to start a business and then did every thing in his power to subvert local government A millionaire today isn’t what it used to be with house prices what they are and stuff so I’d maybe bump that up but I get what you’re saying. Yeah not at all many middle class Americans nearing retirement are probably millionaires if they have their house paid off and have any retirement account but means Jack squat Yeah. Nevermind. Sorry to bother you. Being given 300k in capital automatically disqualifies someone from being “self made.” How can you possibly argue against that? You really have no concept of money. Going from $25k/yr salary to $50k/yr brings you from poverty to right about median. Then most people will find security around $75k/yr. How much money would you already hold to feel secure and donate $300k to your family? This is all moot anyways because the argument at hand is that Bezos' achievement isn't proportional to his wealth. There's no doubt that he is talented in his way and certainly hard working at least at some periods in his life. You wouldn't say a NBA superstar who makes 10x more than a new prospect to be 10x harder working. At some point, the talent/effort are no longer scale. Also, survivorship bias. >300k is nothing compared to what he built, so yes, in a way he is self made. Lol, if you're rich and spoiled and have no clue how much 300k is to most people, yes in that way he is self made. You are missing a very important factor here. Take 50 people with 300k into a casino and have them bet on a number in roulette once. You are likely coming out with at least one millionaire. We only talk about these millionaires right now that got lucky. Try taking 50 people with $0 into a casino. How many do you think will come out as a millionaire? Well...no shit? 300,000k yolo'd into a new venture with some slight research could make you a multi-millionaire over night though. That's not what he said. Lol I'd say you actively want to run from his point. Funny how BS rumors spread and so many don't even question them. And Zambia at the time was run by a socialst party, so not the friendliest investment market I only recently heard about it from some British talk show that was debunking the whole Musk's parents owned a blood diamond mine in apartheid Africa. They said he made a good bit of money off some business shortly after college but before PayPal. Thats all I really got. Nostrovia! that part I didn't know until someone else pointed it out, so yeah the whole rumor is BS, but as long as it supports the whole, ""all rich people are evil"" msg then it spreads like wild fire. ... He invested 160 000 dollars in todays money, in Africa, in the 1980s. If one needs to spell this out more to you, that's a huge risk/reward investment. He probably earned shitloads from it, so pointing it out as the first serious rise of the Musk family wealth seems fair. Elon Musk was wealthy and he benefited from that in getting family related investments and in giving him personal security for taking risks. I just give people [this](https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r) article who actually investigated this Emerald Mine claim. This is all that’s needed for people asking about this Emerald Mine. So actually read the article. [deleted] Quite a lot of assumptions you’re making there Do you understand the history of colonialism…? Because that would end your speculation right there. People can question things that aren't well sourced without being Musk fanboys. I feel like too many people want to paint this biased picture of him. I don't really see what is so wrong with wanting to understand what really happened, good, bad, or ugly. It's because it's not criticism, it's usually irrelevant or qualification/historical fallacy. Criticism would be: ""I think he moves the stock market in his favor by regularly over-promising on what he can actually deliver"" or ""Giga New York factory was built and equipped using nearly $1 billion of taxpayer money and should've come from Tesla or Musk directly."" But what's typically said is, ""his dad owned a mine and he doesn't pay taxes"", and not only aren't those true, it loses the forest for the trees of whether we, societally are better off because of the things he's either poured his own money into and had a hand in creating - which I'd argue we absolutely are. [deleted] More like people are sick of seeing the same false shit re-posted on reddit for the 500th time. Almost as tiring as Steve Buscemi and Jackie Chan ""did you know"" parroting of random shit. Must you equate reasonable discourse and calling out bad faith arguments as insult? Also, it seems to be unreliable, according to https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r > why did Musk go to Canada for university and take on student debt? He was avoiding the draft for the SA Army where he would have been fighting on the side of apartheid. He went to Canada because he's half Canadian from his mother and was trying to get into Uni in the US. These sources for this part are cited on Wikipedia from The Buffalo News, The New Yorker, Forbes, and The Independent. Oh I’m sure your alt right YouTube channels are much better sources lmao Who cares which African country his emerald mine is in? Where’s your proof, r/TeslaMotors regular? I think I didn't write that quite right. I was speaking more towards his time in silicon valley (zip2, x, paypal) and how he used the money from each success towards the next venture. When it comes to SpaceX and Tesla, he kind of did the opposite and nearly lost it all. Very few people would have viewed what he did as smart business decisions at the time. He is lying. Guy can’t even quote the original report. > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” He posts a link to Independent because Independent doesn’t clarify which country father musk owned emerald mine in. When you go to original report you learn its Zambia, a country that never had apartheid. So that disproves his claim that Elon benefited from apartheid emeralds. I know, right? Mind blowing. > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Don't act as if the people in this picture had no liquid wealth. It changes peoples lives because they get their money by underpaying workers. Having people with so much wealth concentrates money towards a small group of society when many people are struggling with paying bills and such. Plus even Billionares like Bill Gates still increase in net worth while donating money because of their heavy investments. I support the current thing beep boop > > Any abuse or suffering is not going to be relieved through an government, it will inevitably be done through the private sector. The best way to achieve that would be through getting the whole world on the same standards for ethical working conditions so companies cannot go to a different country that is more lax or incentivize them to do their business countries that has regulations. Am I missing something here? You say abuse and suffering will not be relieved through government and then your next sentence says that the best way to achieve this is through actions that can only be taken by some sort of governing body. Explain to me how exactly you are going to ""get the whole world on the same standards for ethical working conditions"" without any government intervention lmfao. To hire more people and still exploiting them. Waow thanks to them why aren't we happy? [deleted] How could they be so selfish? I want my 90 dollars! Lol Okay billionaire boot licker Ok so maybe Warren Buffet is almost as smart as me, but the rest aren't even close Damn, I should have put /s All of the econ professors jumped out of the woodwork they spend their time shitting on redditors instead on twitter [deleted] Redditors still get raging hard ons for Cuban for some reason They like Bezos' ex wife. Rihanna [deleted] Mhmm I bet Probably. Just in case he too can rise from the depths to the billionaire asset class! I just want him to show us the deed to his factory already if he’s such a staunch capitalist #BombsforBabies Brimful of Asha on the 45? Tbh I wouldn't mind an F-35. It wouldn't fit in my garage though, so I'd have to street park it. How much does F-35 worth in the blue market? To be fair F35s are cool AF, I wish they would let me fly one. As if that was the only thing the US government was wasting our money on Except.. that literally large sums of taxes you pay do go into their companies..... But i guess that boot must taste pretty nice lol The Musky boys coming out in full force in response to this is hilarious lol. Other countries have politicians elected and paid for by the people yet they get healthcare. Why can't we? Do we really need a military ready to blow up some middle eastern hospital in a country half of us can't find on a map? Cool. So if u get cancer and can't work, you can die with immense amounts of debt. Aren't you the guy who deletes his comments and daughter? “His father is Errol Musk, a White South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer who was once a *half-owner* of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika.” Literally from Musk’s Wikipedia. Lots of people have insane dedication and commitment and drive into stuff and don't become billionaires. Stop talking like their wealth is justified by their actions as if they're the exception and not the rule. found the elon dickrider Oh my mistake. Only owned *part* of an Emerald mine. In apartheid south africa, one of the most inhumane social environments since world war II. Yep, just another tract from the gospel of envy. Its ridiculous to say that Elons success only comes from generational wealth, as if having access to money makes you smart too… If the people who post this kind of stuff could just get their heads out of their asses for a few minutes, they might actually be able too see the reason they feel fucked and envious is because of monetary debasement and the federal reserve, not some rich guys who have more monopoly money than everyone else. I know a couple E-2’s in the armed forces with, I’d wager, just as much if not more commitment to their work than a lot of these guys had and with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the pay. The real difference is one’s empathy because billionaires aren’t made from good people. You have to fuck over innumerable people to get to that level. I’m generally inclined to say that millions can be the result of doing the minimum to not fuck up a very good hand in life, but billions is the result of a good hand, intelligence, some additional luck right when you needed it, and sacrificing everything else in your life to the cause for a long, long time. Plenty of billionaires are assholes, maybe. But they earned it. They at least did that. And you know how much money they amassed by abusing the conditions of apartheid? Because that’s the point. They owned a large chunk of a business that turned oppressed human lives into green rocks. He himself told stories about carrying around emeralds in his pocket as a child, but sure that’s not a golden spoon or anything. What a self made man. You’re scum apologizing for literally one of the worst people on the planet hoarding wealth like a goddamn dragon, except even dragon hoards are mathematically less money than today’s billionaires have. This is what I don’t get. Elon and his dad like hated each other and pretty sure he’s one of the reasons he went to Canada for college Eat shit, Musk dickrider. > In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp Redditors: can’t Google, can’t take a corp finance 101 class, can’t wipe my own ass Also redditors: evil bezos is the reason im gonna die poor and fucking retarded I always see stuff like this and can’t help to just hope they will open their eyes and introspect why they have these feelings. There are people who are spiteful and blame the world for most their issues and shortcomings. Some people get lucky at birth and some don’t. Regardless, they both are rooted in things that you cannot change, meaning spending any energy or mental effort on the unchangeable things in life and comparing yourself to the 0.01% will lead you down a path of failure and envy. It also takes away time and energy that can be used on yourself and bettering your goals. There will always be people that lack the competence and blame others, then there are people who blame but actually can be competent if they changed their mindset. Apologies if I got too preachy but trust me, your life will be more fulfilling and positive and I wouldn’t be saying all this shit otherwise. Removing that envy from my life propelled me to a great position today and i’m increasingly happier than I’ve ever been, year after year. Even a few years back Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy. Nothing in this life is certain. [deleted] They received a lot of handouts. They spend billions of dollars in lobbying to convince politicians to give them even more handouts. Musk especially has taken a shitload of government money. I mean, yes. I literally do hate billionaires. [deleted] Gates had an insane boost from his parents. Just access to computers long before most people ever heard of a ""PC"" and the best connections that money can buy. But obviously all four of them worked really hard. The point is that hard work isn't enough, you have to be very lucky to even have the opportunity to take the chances these guys too. But having your parents give you a bunch of money, or having them set up connections and opportunities, makes it a lot easier to take chances and work hard at something that won't pay off for a long time. No one becomes a billionaire without a ton of stuff going right for them, and then also working hard on top of that. Shit I didn’t know they started giving out money to white South Africans. South Africa must have a few hundred thousand white billionaires with a that apartied being such a leg up on every other human being on the planet. As apposed to being black in South Africa? Yeah, sure he’s was privileged but it’s all relative. Once in Canada most of the privilege meant nothing. I mean, Musk got a good education, but not anything special or significantly better than what many people in any developed country get in primary school. If anything, it limited his choices because he didn't want to have to join the military for mandatory service. Especially given the government's terrible policies at the time. Do few pretty much had to leave he country when he was 17. I really can't see how growing up white in South Africa would have had any meaningful effect on him starting and selling Zip2, half a world away and many years later. How exactly does that help him? you're lucky you werent born in syria 20 years ago and blown up in a war Luck was bezos being born in just the right year. So you were born healthy in a first world country cuz you did God a solid or.....? I'd imagine all the people who are getting in car wrecks tomorrow and ending up with a lifetime of disabilities don't believe in luck either. An idea for an invention is just a small part of founding a successful company. Point is it takes a good idea and a shit-ton of work, and a lot of luck for things to work out. Working harder than anyone in history on the greatest idea in history is still not guaranteed success unfortunately. Because you just made it up. How could it be anything *but* bullshit? It's like it popped into your head and you said, ""Hey, that sounds like a thing a clever person would say!"" Then you said it. Except it's stupid, false, and copium for your condition of not knowing much. Bezos started Amazon in his apartment with 2 employees. They packaged the books they sold themselves and shipped it through the mail service like you and I would. In 4 years, the company was making millions of dollars of revenue. In 8 years, they were making billions. If you think he did that due to having inside connections then you're a fool. It was done by identifying a demand for an online marketplace before the demand had been realized by anyone else other than eBay and also by doing it much better than eBay. Do you have data to support that claim? If it was true, would it constitute evidence of a general 75/25 breakdown for ""who you know""/""what you know"" in terms of one's fate? No. It's bullshit. It's a thing that people say, so it must be right, right? This is called bullshit. You want to believe it even though there is no basis for you to believe it. Because you are full of shit. Prove yourself right 🤷‍♂️ You know what fuck you, take my upvote and never speak to me again. [deleted] He really didn't though. Look up Gary Kidall. The reason Gates is successful has nothing to do with his mother and entirely the scamming of Gary. Gates mother wasnt on the board of IBM. She was on the commitee board for the charity United Way. IBMs chairman at the time John Opel was a member of the commitee board aswell. Would rather argue that knowing the right people paves the way for richdom. [deleted] >If you were really upper middle class…They chose to spend it on nice car and house. Dude seriously? Shut the fuck up. You know literally nothing about me or my family and yet you sure are quick to make assumptions about them. You are living in your own delusional world. Your privilege is showing. Wouldn't one argue, at a certain point of wealth you have achieved financial security. So when people have said safety nets they can take risks that those who can't. Like all I'm hearing is you trying to justify the false idea that poor people are merely inept and lazy to every achieve such money. Especially with your stimulus bashing. Like 3,200 dollars covers the national average rent of a 1 room apartment (1,098) for only 3 months and that ignores other utilities, food, gas, etc, at a period of time with many people losing their jobs or losing hours. Also keep in mind this wasn't some lump sum that was just dropped off at once but was spread between 6 month intervals. Have to remember also the 165b is only his net worth. In reality he turned 300k into the almost trillion dollar company that is Amazon. I'm not defending him but clearly he worked hard to establish it. Well yeah, 90% of people would fail to turn $600k into that kind of money in 20 years but regardless that is so much money. I make $500 a week and I really can’t even imagine. The fact that his parents just gave that to him is a massive unfair advantage. Jeff did an amazing thing and changed the world, but he couldn’t have done it without his parents. It’s damn near impossible for poor people to get ahead. On a humorous note, if you were to invest $600k into the s&p in 1993, you’d have a bit over $10M today. I get your general point, but the coincidence was kind of funny. It was a bad investment to make at the time, and investments in bankrupt countries become worthless. It was a gift. Safety nets don't magically grant you the ability to multiply your starting capital, it still requires competence and hard work. Of course they had a safety net and obviously that gives you more of a risk free opportunity to try something but if everyone had an option we would do the same thing if we were ambitious enough to try to create or develop something I don’t disagree with that at all lol and I never said these people didn’t have a starting advantage so let’s dial back the name calling there pal. None of these people claim to be self made and a vast majority of successful and wealthy people will be the first to tell you they didn’t get there alone Thank god someone else speaking sense in here Certainly not all, but the vast majority do, yes. The post isn't directed at Elon Musk. It's directed as us as a whole. WE have a problem. WE have a problem when there aren't enough good jobs out there. WE have a problem when the middle-class disappears. Do you think everyone can be millionaires? That they just aren't making it happen because they're too stupid or lazy? We are fucked as a people unless I can change your mind on this. OK. So what are the paths for the poor and middleclass to rise up? If not education, then what? You think there's enough room for everyone to be the CEO of their own company? If it's lottery tickets, then what happened to social mobility? Fuck, what happened to just having a decent life? The American Dream? What is the plan, seriously? Thst only applies to the ultra wealthy, since that's unsustainable anyway. Most people born into riches will stay there through no additional hard work of their own. Kinda hard to gauge how much money he actually has, but I wager it would be more if he wasn't fraudulent. It is pointless. Don't you know the orange man is bad? [deleted] Across his core businesses. Of course it is. Child grifters of successful men. But bankruptcies does. It just means not succeeding. Imagine going out of your way to defend Don Jr... No that’s not it… it’s something else that all these people have in common that seem to make them evil/liars…hmmm.. But that's exactly the point I'm making. 'Success takes a couple generations' is just another way of saying 'the second or third generation, who are born into wealth, have a better chance of making it'. But isn't that unfair? That just by plopping out of the correct vagina, the game is tilted in your favour? I thought we were supposed to be living in a meritocracy? That is not super rich. You don't know many hillbilly billionaires, if any. Or trump Yeah, like appointing a shadowy board of directors to his foundation which proceeded to dole out cash to credit card companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers. His foundation exists to buy him influence in the extremely lucrative and fast-growing Healthcare sector. Sure, there's no doubt some of those dollars helped good things happen. But I guess it comes down to whether you care about what he did or why he did it. Oh and he most likely had sex with trafficked underage girls. Explains why Melinda had enough of him. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/opinion/bill-melinda-gates-foundation.html https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/ https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-bill-gates.html You shouldn't wait to start investing. I you aren't already doing it you should start now. My point was that a lot of people chase schemes to get rich quick that ultimately leave them with less money than they started with. So my chasing the goal of being rich in <5 years, they sacrifice the option of being rich in 30-40 years. Most of the people involved in this stuff to make quick money are just the victims of someone else's scheme to get rich. They buy into something they thing will be quick money, the people behind it pull out their profit and leave all the suckers holding the bag, who ultimately sell at a huge loss, or just hold until the position is effectively worthless. There are some winners that get shown and everyone thinks it will be them, that's why people keep trying, but there are many, many, many more losers who will never make the headlines. It's not unlike playing the lotto. I will buy the occasional ticket for fun, but it's not my primary plan. Yeah, but you're speaking of the anomalies. Most people stick in the cycle they're born into. Also, what's your obsession with Hunter Biden? We could do the same with all of Trump's children considering they were born into far more wealth. I agree. It's still an incredible accomplishment. Most people stick in the place they were born into. Environment plays a bigger role than you think, those people likely had other advantages. Also, I said ""no capital does guarantee poverty"" - meaning if those successful people worked even a little, they would have capital. Definitely not anywhere close of the advantages these assholes had over %99.9 of people though. They should not be praised. Actually yes, lots. Eg. Larry Ellison grew up poor. Many successful business persons also got their funding publicly without reliance of family background. Stop being salty loser. That’s pretty damn near. Forbes puts her net worth at $340 million. Which is at least twice the national household average, but a far cry from a billion. [deleted] You could guarantee it with a source What even is your definition of self made? If you just live in the USA, you’re already richer than like 80% of the entire world. It seems by your logic, nobody is self made unless theyre born homeless in a 3rd world country. Seems rooted in jealousy. Going from not millions, to millions, sounds pretty self made to me lmao Name a billionaire without this level of support then I like how popular public discourse is suddenly circle jerking if it's not your discourse. Kind of like how every argument brought up is shot down by some arbitrary prejudice 🤔 ""You're over reacting"" ""There's a different problem over there though"" ""What about Bidens laptop?!"" You like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste. But when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor. In '87, Huey released this; Fore!, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is ""Hip To Be Square"". A song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends. It's also a personal statement about the band itself. Hey, Paul! https://i.imgur.com/pAEK3Tb.jpg The best way is to go and research this. Don't take other people's word. All the info is waiting for you Weirdly there is no proof of this mine even existing. No name, no business, nothing attached to Errol Musk at all. This is one journalist who just said Errol said all of these things. No video recording, no nothing. Plus Elon said that it’s not true, which would be a pretty bad look if any proof came to light. > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. College kids or failed cunts don’t know how hard is to manage a group of people and actually come up with some successful shit I can’t think of a single family of any type that I know that has a spare $300,000 to lend to somebody. > $300k is not generational wealth… half the people here could borrow that from their boomer parents if they had a novel idea and track record worth investing in. The median net worth of Americans is around $125,000 and more than 50% of Americans would not be able to come up with $1,000 in an emergency. Your perception on this is completely delusional. I think you overestimate what kind of retirements people have. That said, have you considered those people who had good ideas and good business acumen who didn't succeed? They are out there. What exactly makes Bezos different, in your opinion? Median family ~$120,000 doesn’t have that but average family does ~$740,000. I think you’re right, it’s not generational wealth, but also, if you picked some random family, >50% chance their family would not be able to come up with $300k for starting a company. “Just borrow that extra $300k your parents have lying around” 🤣 Many people had similar potentially game changing innovations. Amazon wasn't the first online book store, Facebook wasn't the first social media site, Tesla didn't make the first electric car. In additional to the fact that these guys started with enough capital to try their ideas, we need to remember that they also happened to get really lucky in finding success. I highly doubt Muskrat knows the intricacies of electric battery design or that Bezos knows much at all about how AWS works. The work that made these people astonishingly wealthy is done by others, but they reap the vast majority of the proceeds. Which isn't to say they don't deserve some reward, but no amount of hard work or innovative thought can explain the accumulation of a billion dollars. It would take a thousand years to make your first billion if you had a salary of a million dollars per year. You could argue that leaving the cash and power with people like Musk helps encourage innovation, but there are likely a lot of good ideas out their in need of funding which get looked over or caught and captured instead. > Right but they still had a game-changing business idea/innovation. Yes, they didn't grow up dirt poor - but that doesn't take away nor diminish all of their accomplishments and the risks they took. Pointing out that they had the kinds of advantages that aren't available to the vast majority of Americans doesn't diminish any of those things. The weird part in this is that for some reason you seem to think it does. That is not true. Other than Buffett, who I know nothing about, none of them had anything to fall back upon. This. Overall I hate this kind of post. Warren Buffet has undoubtedly had the greatest run of any investor and business purchaser ever, but because he wasn't living in a box growing up, he's not self made? BUT. When you have no inheritance to look forward to, as in your parents don't even own a house, it's a much harder decision to risk everything on a business start up rather than save some cash for hard times and try to put money into your retirement account. If you know that your parents who are even moderately wealthy are going to die and leave you enough to live middle class on right before you retire, easy to go for it. Yes Trump did make most of his money but his parents owned a huge amount of rentals in NY City and were very wealthy before Trump borrowed money from them to start his own business. Trump was born with a golden spoon to feed him but still made his large business and fortune on his own no matter how many times he was sued or sued himself to build it. oh yes I didn’t put the /s. I would assume anyone thinking Drumpf was self made must be insane. >45% don't work (children, retired, the elderly...), hence, don't pay taxes. No. >This year, an estimated 45% of tax filers — or just under 79 million households — are likely to have zero federal income tax liability, according to the Tax Policy Center. https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/taxes/2018-no-income-tax-explainer/index.html >This is about percentages of ones income, in most cases, mine is higher than many billionaires who can easily afford MUCH higher percentages. You are likely confusing net worth or unrealized gains with standard income and realized gains. Most of the wealth these people have is tied to stock in their companies. That's not real until they sell. Elon paid $11B because he sold a bunch of stock and realized those gains. Are you trying to say that these people should pay a larger percentage of their net worth than you pay of a single years income? If so, that's pretty messed up. Gates and Bezos both had massive boosts in life.Gates daddy and mommy funded him, and gave him connections.Bezos mommy fucked her way to the money that got him started, and paid for his princeton education. Buffet's daddy was well connected politically and in business. Musks daddy spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (in the 80s) hiring the best computer tutors, buying elon the best computers, and flying him around the world for computer conferences. None of them built SHIT from scratch. But his family still gave Bezos $300,000 to start his business, free of interest or any obligation to pay it back. How many people have that opportunity, to start their dream business with $300k of free seed capital? I guarantee that it's a lot easier to establish and expand a business when you start out $300k in the black on Day 1. Right that's why the Vanderbilt's are the richest people in the world. All that family money really helps! > Do you realize how many people grow up having access to capital and business opportunities in America and either do fuck all or piss it away? Do you realize how many people work two or even three jobs, for six or even seven days a week, for their entire working lives, and yet never manage to get even into the *middle* class, let alone get rich? Spoiler: there are *vastly* more of these kinds of people than there are millionaires and billionaires combined. > Which is fine, but my point is that you have to have the will to do things like this for it to happen. And the point you're responding to is that, except in a vanishingly minuscule number of cases, you have to have both the will *and* the advantages of the wealthy and/or well-connected in order for it to happen. No one is downplaying the drive and passion to succeed of the four men above by noting that they're not, in point of fact, ""self-made"". They're just exposing the ""self-made"" myth for what it really is. >I think it's actually very likely that they still would have been successful people. I actually agree with you here, but there's a HUGE difference between ""successful people"" and ""having hundreds of billions of dollars"". Lots of people are ""successful"" without having rich or well-connected parents, but it's a lot harder to become wealthy without those things. It just is. And I think these guys probably would have become wealthy and successful if born into less fortunate life circumstances, but they probably wouldn't be where they are today, among the top 0.01% of wealthiest people who've ever lived. >So you're saying life isn't fair? Shit. Overreact much? Nobody's arguing that life needs to be 100% fair; we know it's not. I'm just saying let's put the brakes on the ""these guys built up their fortunes all by themselves from nothing!"" narrative. They've made smart moves and done very well for themselves, but they also all had great deal of help starting out that just isn't available to most people. Im not arguing that point. The long hours being the key lol Sure you can. With a bit of luck and a few million sprinkled in you too can be 'self made' lol smh You already know it boyyyyy Sprinkle a little luck and a few million and you too can be 'self made'!! Smh [deleted] Yeah. Tell that to all the lazy fast food workers working 60 hrs a week and still broke. They lazy right? Lol yes they love dumping money into random very young adults with no connections or capital. You're just butchering a perfectly good analogy. Being able to raise almost a million dollars from investors isn't easy. If you have rich friends and relatives it gets much easier. Now, most people won't turn it into billions as most people of the same work ethic and caliber as those billionaires would simply have retired when they made a couple million bucks. We can ignore he’s said shit like he founded Tesla and PayPal lmao Grown ups? You didn't even read what they said. You couldn’t even comprehend what op said Mr. Adult Can you repeat that? It's hard making out noises when Musk's cock is in your mouth No doubt they're intelligent & hard-working, but there are quite a few people who are just as intelligent and hard-working (or more) who don't become billionaires. The primary ingredient to becoming a billionaire (if you are not already one) is luck: having the right ideas, the right resources, the right connections, all coming together at the exact right moment in time. The only thing an individual can take credit for is the ideas, and even those are going to be heavily influenced by their environment. Dude gottem dude Bruh you ain’t on top either. There’s a pecking order and you’re near the bottom. Maybe once you move up a few pegs people will start showing you some respect. If you’ve ever purchased from Amazon, paid via PayPal, USED A MICROSOFT PRODUCT, etc. then you need to shut the fuck up. These men might have plenty of issues that are fair game for discussion, but they’ve created value for countless consumers, as well as jobs for hundreds of thousands of people. They’re not parasites. Take that commie shit elsewhere. You’re objectively wrong. I'm not saying it's crazy, I'm saying its obvious that they were in a good financial position to give him the support he needed to succeed. A quick Google says that it was around 225k. So they had 300k in equity alone. So they either outright owned a home that was nearly 40% more valuable than the average home in Seattle, or they were still paying down a mortgage on an even more expensive home that had 300k in equity. Either way, it paints a picture of well off people. If investing had negative expected earnings then nobody would do it. Investing is a way to get rich off of others' labor. That's what makes it a rational decision. > they grew that inheritance through working You can't earn a billion dollars through work. Which job is paying out millions of dollars per hour? *Business owners* don't make their money through *work*. They may *do* work incidentally, but that is not where they get their money. They get it through ownership, which is a passive activity. Their employees do the work for them. The wealth generated by the labor of more than 100,000 employees is where Elon Musk's billions came from in the first place. Material wealth can only come from one place, which is people doing physical labor with their bodies in the real world. There is nothing wrong, in itself, with being a billionaire. The problem is that the only realistic way to become a billionaire is by underpaying and overworking your employees, using your wealth to lobby for special treatment, crushing your competition with dubious ethics, union-busting, *buying a social media platform or a news company* (like Musk and Bezos have done), etc. The money's gotta come from somewhere, and it sure doesn't come from paying your employees for the full value of what they produce. Otherwise how would you make a profit? but how can we made it so one company wont own everything in some scope of maybe thousands of years? and would everything be for subs/rent? what then? Sorry to hear that. At least if you do make it out of the debt (I'm confident you will). No one will be able to question the merit of your accomplishments. If you ever have any finance questions hit me up. A good examination into personal finance is more powerful than many realize. Cool story, didn’t answer my question. Tesla posted its first non-tax credit profit last year…. Starlink is an absolute mess, if it ever goes fully wide SpaceX is still mostly proof of concept Literally none of elons companies have actually added value to “millions of lives” He’s an amazing marketer and snake oil salesmen, but not so much at producing value for people Do you have any examples of people like that? How are they functionally any different from Musk? Where are your sources? I am sure if they were poor they wouldn't have been able to get to where they did. This is why rag to riches stories are popular because they are very rare. They must have also failed multiple times to get to where they did, while the common man wouldn't been able to rebound to try again. And no VC wouldn't give them money, those people believed Amazon was a joke back in the day. Yeah you can’t and shouldn’t, it’s fine for people to have an advantage. but people can stop saying self-made to imply it’s equally possible for the non-privileged when it’s apples and oranges. Well ya, its just luck and speculation. The pareto distribution is still based on luck most of the time. I don’t want billions of dollars. I’m happy with what I have. It’s pathetic Americans view success solely by how good someone is at making money. Many of the worlds richest and greatest empires have fallen throughout history. Wealthy people have been around forever and they’ve done society more harm than good. So much”notice me senpai” vibes That's not true. I personally know a handful of Small to medium business owners who quit their jobs and started their own business and are now millionaires. Okay. Since you found so many of them care to link me one? Being able to criticize the USA is one of the blessings we have as citizens to try to improve our nation. That spot between your ass and your pussy? At least you take it one step further than most people No, I’m trying to talk to somebody who thinks that some peoples total monthly wages are an “only” amount. If many people put “only $500” into savings monthly they wouldn’t be able to eat, drive to work etc. if you are so out of touch with the common person that you think that “only $500” is a paltry sum then you are part of the issue. It’s great if you have $500 to spare for savings, and I’m honestly happy for those who can. But for millions living paycheque you paycheque, that’s a condescending statement and I don’t think you understood that when you wrote it, did you? I think you were trying to be helpful. But you perhaps don’t understand how that statement sounds to people worried about making enough to pay rent this month. The ideas were still their own- not always though. I respect your conversation but to think that it was all their ideas that propelled them forward isn’t quite true. Musk was not the person who formed Tesla, it was not his idea- as a singular example within this. The framework of the company was from others, that he legally disputed and changed title in court. They did take what they had and made it bigger, I don’t think anybody is saying that they didn’t. But the “self made” BS is just that- BS. Nobody exists in a vacuum, nobody had the ideas by themselves- Musk again for an example isn’t an engineer- he hires engineers and profits off of their work. They have drive, opportunity and of course luck. But not a vacuum that they did things in by themselves. Self made is a garbage term. That guy in your example also had help with framing/setting joists, putting walls up, laying concrete, setting the wiring and gas fixtures, getting permits and passing code- he didn’t just relay on the manufacturers. Otherwise he wouldn’t have succeeded. And again, about vacuums- the funding likely came while the receiver had already somewhat set themselves up In life, it’s not like they started homeless and deep in debt unless I’m wrong about their upbringings. sure it'll take about 15 years or so. That's the point. You can have all the drive and all the vision you want, but the start up is too risky without connections and a comfortable fall back. Like wealthy parents. It means taking the initial risk and having it actually be a risk. Of course they can't, it's a pyramid system. Work ethic is irrelevant. If everyone works equally hard and makes no mistakes, there will still be only a few at the top. > I started my own company using the money I have during college working $7 per hour at school and getting $12 an hour at another place And I am telling you that you will never be a billionare How don’t I like Elon based on that? These are true statements. Why is that the only comeback for people defending Elon? Elon invested in Tesla. So why aren’t VCs named as cofounders in Facebook, Uber, etc? It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/30/elon-musk-says-he-had-six-figures-in-student-debt-after-college.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/30/elon-musk-says-he-had-six-figures-in-student-debt-after-college.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) His dad helped.. [Errol musk](https://techiegamers.com/errol-musk-net-worth/) [deleted] So three people in one room? That's your solution? The fact of the matter is that it's borderline impossible. Those social ""benefits"" in place are not as easy to come by as you're making them out to be. How tasty is that boot ?👢😛 Yes I am So you know nothing about him. Not only did he not build it or “turn it into the company it is today” he almost killed it and it only became profitable when he was replaced as CEO From Wikipedia: The following year, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition.[44][57][58] Founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel,[59] Confinity had its own money-transfer service, PayPal, which was more popular than X.com's service.[53][60] Within the merged company, Musk returned as CEO. Musk's preference for Microsoft software over Linux created a rift in the company and caused Thiel to resign.[61] Due to resulting technological issues and lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000.[62][note 2] Under Thiel, the company focused on the PayPal service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.[ **[PayPal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal)** >PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. Established in 1998 as Confinity, PayPal went public through an IPO in 2002. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay later that year, valued at $1. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Check out this from Wikipedia The following year, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition.[44][57][58] Founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel,[59] Confinity had its own money-transfer service, PayPal, which was more popular than X.com's service.[53][60] Within the merged company, Musk returned as CEO. Musk's preference for Microsoft software over Linux created a rift in the company and caused Thiel to resign.[61] Due to resulting technological issues and lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000.[62][note 2] Under Thiel, the company focused on the PayPal service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.[ They do take a lot of money tho? The companies listed here are like, the top paying companies in the world. Either way, your original comment has nothing to with this. Funny, that's what I thought about you. No one makes a billion dollars without doing some shady Shit along the way. Oprah’s show was flailing in Chicago until she copied Phil Donahue’s format and made it as trashy as possible. She basically inspired Jerry Springer way back when to lower the bar even further but that got swept under the rug … until she single handedly inspired the anti-vaccination movement to grow to ungodly levels by promoting unhinged lunatics who claimed vaccines cause autism. I don’t see how that won’t work Now you swear and kick and beg us that you're not a gamblin' man Then you find you're back in Vegas with a handle in your hand Your black cards can make you money so you hide them when you're able In the land of milk and honey, you must put them on the table Let it ride!! Someone stop him. No single person should wield that much power There is a hard limit on the number of caps you can win. No. Alternate between red and black. Each has a 50% chance, so as long as you alternate every time, you should win 100%. I think your math is a bit off When someone says “put it on red” or “put it on black” that is referring to the outside. Not an inside bet. It would only double if it hit . Please tell me it’s a chocolate biscuit. Other wise no deal I’m blowing it on cocaine and hookers. Gotta squeeze it for the cheese-it! It aint worth it, not over this shit I love being last on the biscuit You’re so money, and you don’t even know it We’re gonna be up five-hundee by midnight! You're so money, baby! Honey we're gonna be up five hundy by midnight! jokes on me as an American we need to pay taxes regardless of if the income was earned in the USA or not. :( If he loses the 300k in the US he can claim it as a loss for some kind of deduction, I don’t think he could claim the entire thing all at once, maybe split up over several years though. We pay taxes for everything. Income is income and Uncle Sam wants his portion of your hard earned income and winnings. Yes. But also no. I never have in my life and I've won over $1000 probably 3 different times in my years. Only slot “jackpots”, rare table bonuses, and lottery. Odds have to be (don’t hold me to exact number) something like 282 to 1 before they tax it. I’ve won 12k on a craps table starting with 100 bucks and didn’t pay taxes Pretty sure gambling winnings are taxes as regular income. It's certainly not a capital gains tax. This is what I was referring to. https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/fred-smith-fedex-blackjack-winning-formula https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awcx-gTQDLM There’s also a non-zero chance that it only rolls black for the rest of eternity But if you have a $300k bankroll and start with $100 and are patient and disciplined enough to not increase your betting beyond the slow method then you should be fine. or until you hit the table limit ….is a lot like taking financial advice from someone telling you to throw it all on red in vegas. No sir. Betting on red has lost more fortunes than a stock market collapse. ""Mommmmmm, he escheating at street fighterrrrrrr again!!!"" r/politepain I applaud you. This is a comment that would’ve gone done in Reddit history 10 years ago. You did good! Jesus US authorities love to steal people’s shit don’t they When your-a bandoned estate Is possessed by the state That's escheatment Amazon stock price more than doubled throughout 2015 alone. The fuck. How is that not grounds for a lawsuit? That's stupid that a state is able to do that How can the state escheat someone’s property when they’re still alive, that’s absurd that that’s legal Jesus. So public healthcare, that’s communism. But the state straight up stealing your shit if you don’t look at it for too long is perfectly okay? Just when you thought the US can’t get any shittier. What a bunch of escheat!! Damn both democrat ran states in the article You may also need to actively use the account such as direct deposits or bill pay. Check your state’s requirements. https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/what-is-escheat-law/amp/ Makes me wonder how long till the government gets their hand on all the crypto wallets ppl lost passwords too… *Some* business have rules in place to attempt to contact the person but it doesn’t always work out that way. I work for a credit union and you typically get letters and other notices sent to you years in advance warning of the escheatment. You think that is bad? You should look into civil asset forfeiture Yeah. That’s 100% my market philosophy. I had an account get flagged recently for escheatment. Took forever to get access to my funds. Pretty bullshit as it was attached to other accounts that were actively used. Happy to see some great advice here! Only when you cash out or never if you die and give it to your heirs. Your State should have the assets in cash after the shares were liquidated. Vanguard is still covered by states’s escheatment laws. I suppose it would be ok to wait a bit longer. There have been some predictions that the S&P will fall to around $3,600. But it is hard to time the market. We also have an election around the corner so I would get in by September as I believe the market will react well to a Republican take over of the House. There's a difference in taste, right? I think either would be ok. And then there is WSB where he is able to make 10mil in about 2 weeks to then loose it all on SPY PUTS the week after Not sure, but I do know scared money just loses 4-8% in a savings account… In the future we're facing, money might not matter, anyway. Might as well prepare for both possibilities. Invest in the stock market, and invest in long term food stores and survival gear. I agree wholeheartedly with the concern around return expectations, not likely that the next 20 years are like the last. But in terms of the implication on your investment strategy, I still think stocks are the best place to be. If someone gave you $50,000 today and said you can invest in whatever you want, the only rule is you have to leave it alone for 20 years (or at least not change strategies), where would you put it? I'm probably buying the S&P 500 It's true that past performance doesn't guarantee future results. However, if you can pick any 15 year period of results for 100 years and it averages to 10%, then yes I think that is likely to continue. Wealthy investors drive stock prices, stock prices go up and down, bad companies are ousted from the DOW and S&P, good investors buy cheap stocks with future potential. The indices have more than doubled since their peak before the 08 crash. Cool, I'll work and save and maybe one day, I'll be able to retire, and someday after that I'll be able to buy a house With inflation out pacing wage increases, with property prices sky rocketing, you're basically losing by just working and saving unless you have investments that are working faster than inflation. Lol Money now is worth more than money in the future. > Own property that appreciates and/or pays dividends. Ah, so the trick to having money is to already have had money. Got it. I know, I'm just speaking generally about the comment above mine Always have a plan B! Set aside $20k for ammunition and water purification tablets. [deleted] Not looking to avoid taxes, just want to make sure I understand what I need to do and when before I invest anything. I'd hate to miss paying taxes and then be fined. If only most people in the world could afford to stash $300,000 in the markets and just let it sit. The world has many problems already but hey, so long as rich fuckers can make profit from it, none of it matters. The only people ""gaining"" anything are those that already have too much. Oh no I’m already well into it, just tough to not sell when you watch your balance take such a hit as the market sinks. So many variables and uncertainties right now. Intellectually I know to ride it out but it’s just stressful! I didn't log into my account from March 2020 til probably Jan 2021. I knew what was happening I just couldn't watch lol So you’re telling me I don’t have to get off my ass then? When I read the article I had to laugh because most people would think ""you know what I'm gonna hand my money to someone smarter than me and they can take care of it."" Doesn't make this meme any less ridiculous. >A smart person recognizes money can buy the most important things beyond love. Freedom, to not have to work. Health, for medical care and expenses. Experiences, travel, hobbies, events, etc. You just spent it though. If you get sick in America, you'll need the money. If you want to travel, you'll need it. If you want to quit your job, you'll need it. Obviously that's obvious, and i really enjoy the low worry i have because of my large (ish) savings, but you're still suggesting spending it Totally makes sense. Appreciated. Just because one did well doesn't mean the other was a poor choice. Both are broad index, which is a wise choice in the end? Spending, gambling and being sued I think we’re the top 3 reasons people who come into a large sum go broke Drugs, clothe, jewelry, nights out, etc. If you think your money will last forever it's easy to squander it. Someone with no impulse control and that kind of money is probably buying a $10 million home and millions of dollars worth of luxury cars, flying private to very exclusive vacations, buying homes for family, funding their friends' ""businesses"", blowing tens of thousands of dollars at casinos and strip clubs, etc. If you spend like your money will last forever it will be gone before you know it. They buy a multi million dollar house, a couple expensive cars, blow a bunch on vacations and stuff and think they’re good. Then they have taxes on a million dollar house every year. A 8,000 a month mortgage, the upkeep for said million dollar house. A mortgage on a 10 million dollar house is like $1600 A DAY. It’s really easy to run out of money when you spend $50k a month on a mortgage. Easy come, easy go. One of the best known comments in Reddit history for you here, gives a history of many lottery winners’ fates: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/whats_the_happiest_5word_sentence_you_could_hear/chb4v05/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3 >Where? How? See this story often, but where does it go? They buy houses for their whole family, 10 cars, and... just baffling. In short, most people have no idea how much $50 million is. Like, obviously, they know it's a lot....but they have no idea how much it really is and how long it was last while they are spending it. There was an article about this a while ago. Basically, people learn how to live at whatever income level they have. Whether it's $25,000, $50,000, $100,00 a year or $250,000 a year. And usually, people slowly move up in pay scale. So for example, an engineer might start out at $75,000 a year, then over the years, they switch jobs or get raises, and each time their pay increases, they learn to live at the next ""rung on the ladder."" That is, they know how far $75,000 will take them...so they have a pretty good idea how far $100,000 or $150,000. And so on and so forth. With people who win the lottery (or athletes)...they can go from broke to an unfathomable amount of money. Like, sure, they know that $50 million enough to own a $1 million house? But is it enough to own a $5 million house? And a Ferrari and a Bentley? And to buy houses for close family? Maybe they've always wanted a horse farm (or a brewery or whatever). Maybe it's classic cars and some fancy Rolexes. But like, even if you try to find a money manager...how many money managers do you know deal with high net worth people? Who can you trust? How do you know you can trust them? What makes someone good? What are reasonable fees what services should they provide...what should those services cost? Go read about Dane cook, Bernie Kosar, or Tyron Smith and their friends/families. And there is the belief, that there will always be more money...but then suddenly, there isn't. And your lifestyle inflation is incredibly hard to scale back. Monthly payments can eat up your principal really fucking quickly without you even knowing it. A $4k monthly payment for a house seems like nothing when you've got $1 million, but compounded over a few years that can be a sizeable chunk. Now, throw in several of those monthly payments (expensive houses/cars for family or friends), because you see each one individually as ""nothing"" when you are now a millionaire, and your wealth disappears real quick. When your riches are made up of a stagnant principal that isn't actively generating you more income, it goes away very quickly. Just think about how quickly someone's savings is depleted if they were to stop working for a few weeks. We need to be constantly generating income to sustain any sort of expenditures because that's how money works - it's not a static thing. Just because you have a lot of it *at one time* doesn't mean you actually can do a lot with it *over a period of time*. I think the type of person that plays the lottery doesn’t have the best grasp on good investments. For starters, $50 million lotto win is like $25 million in cash. Half is gone before you even touch it. Second, you pay off debts you may have, including those in your family. Your parents might need help, you can’t withold from them right? And maybe a wayward sibling too. Oh, here’s a cousin with a stretch of bad luck, you should probably help them out as well. Gosh, great aunt mildred has been quite needy lately! Your good friend shows up with a can’t miss investment opportunity for an asian fusion restaurant chain, that sounds great! And before you know it, you are back where you started. It wasn't 50 millions, but it was significant. My parents paid down the house loan and followed their dream as to building a cabin in a nice skiing area, when the cabin was 70% done it turned out that my dad had a mistress. Then he went awol for a long time while their money was used to keep the cabin dream alive and lawyers. He had already skipped town so they agreed mum would buy him out of the house. The cabin dream was more mum's dream than his, so instead of letting her buy him out at 50% above estimated value he claimed it would be more profitable to sell it. It was not, while the exterior was completely done, none of the interior had been done, it was sold for about 75% of estimated value also the new owners didn't want to buy the interior things they had bought (like kitchen cabinets and shower) was sold for pennies on Facebook marketplace. My dad owned a company with my uncle at the time. It was pretty successful, but small, only two employees in addition to my dad and uncle. To avoid bankruptcy while my dad was awol my uncle sold the company to a competitor and since everyone knew how bad things had gotten they offered pennies for it and my uncle really had no choice. All this time you have two divorce lawyers on retainers. My dad refusing reasonable offers, good offers and excellent offers. In the end they get the divorce, but it leaves mum with a lot less than half which is what she should have had. She has done okay since, she drives and old Mitsubishi and has built a cheaper cabin. I believe she has a semi-decent nestegg left. My dad married the mistress and she didn't want to work as she was writing a book. Coincidence has it that being a being a lazy delusional mooch ran in the family and he bought her daughter a small flat in the capital and rented her son a flat in LA for years while his 40 year old ass attempted to be a famous actor. Currently he is divorcing the mistress, another round with divorce lawyers dragging the whole shit out and trying the recoup some funds by selling the flat in the capital, but as far as I know, he isn't doing very hot financially. ....and that's how you fuck up. There was a documentary on YouTube called ‘the curse of the lottery’ and it was really insightful. Even if YOU can handle all the money, it WILL change people around you and that can break almost anyone. Many lottery winners say it ruined their life. This is why the first thing you should do if you win the lottery is talk to a financial advisor. Use it to pay off bills you already have, then put money away into savings and investments. I am also convinced that winning a relatively small amount is better than a mega jackpot. If you win say $500k, it probably doesn't make the news, you can pay off bills, loans, buy a reasonable house, etc. If you win $500M, then everyone comes out of the woodwork looking for handouts, and you have more money than you can handle, and before you know it, it's all gone on stupid shit. [deleted] You can live 40 years like that ? Ah yes because all of musks money was definitely deserved. Not like he avoids taxes, left California for that, or is known for hostile and racist work environments. This. Not all, but many people can go into a bank with a solid business plan and get a loan. Guess what? Most people don't have that in them, and if they can't get to that point, they are not an entrepreneur, and that's not what a bank wants. A good entrepreneur can turn $10 into $50, $50 into $100, 100 into $250..... You get the point. Getting that boost just shaves off a year or three. You can't discredit their life's work on the notion they only got there because of mom or dad's money. After all, mom or dad didn't get there with their own money. $300,000 even at the time he got it isn't even that much money. Private equity will throw a lot more money than that at the right idea/team. Turning a $300,000 investment into an Amazon takes a massive stroke of hard work, genius and luck. All that plus insanely good luck. These people took huuuuge gambles that could have cost them everything, several times. Countless others people have taken similar gambles but lost and subsequently nobody's ever heard of them. Elon in particular has failed upwards so many times it's unreal. He's made some ridiculously risky choices and just been super fortunate that things have panned out. He made a fuckton of money from PayPal and basically bet it all on Tesla and that company was running on fumes for a while and barely made it. Warren Buffet made a huge extremely risky deal very early on in his career with American Express that easily could have gone south and he probably never would have been heard from again. Bill Gates - you could fill a library with all the risky choices he made. ""Micro-Soft"" would have probably been dead on arrival if not for some extremely lucky opportunities and a fair amount of bullshitting. Basically writing code on a plane with a pen and paper and doing your first test boot in front of the client could have gone wrong in so many ways and derailed everything. People always say things like ""talent, money, and a little bit of luck"" but that's so backwards. These people are like 99% luck - there's lots of talented folks out there and lots of people with money. These tech billionaires are not gods. They're just smart, well funded, and extremely fucking lucky. Get this fucking nuance out of here this is reddit sir I agree with you, it’s not about the capital, it’s about the connections… The rich have their own cycles, and it’s easier for them to make connections. > there are thousands of trust fundees that simply exhaust their capital. Exactly. Just think what the world would look like if we better optimized investment in human potential such that we even just cut *in half* the dollars invested in trust fund kids' stupid ideas and redirected that towards people who got access to kickstart funding based on skill and merit. My point is that humanity is undercapitalized. Not that trust fund kids are a sure thing. If they were, humanity wouldn't be nearly as undercapitalized. I mean another factor that you aren't mentioning is how the company he created actually made most of its money from leveraging the gov't and IP law. He did not actually get his fortune from providing society with anything useful. So his skill, work ethic and drive is distorted toward personal vanity and greed to the point he actually has negative impact on the world. Ultimately our society is so deranged even if we removed the start-up capital advantage it still wouldn't change much. I respect a trust funder who drains their capital more than these 4 guys. Yes, but its a huge fuckoff legup vs people of equal talent that are working 3 jobs to make ends meet as they didnt have rich parents/family/connections >make connections, Money is the best way to make connections that matter. And no one is saying capital is the only thing that matters. Just that it's severely restricted in who has access. Usually, if you have the ""learn"" and ""create"" down, you more often than not lose control of your creation by having to sell ownership of the ip just to get it off the ground. Investors who are parents are a lot better than run of the mill investors. Plus the outcome of failure is a bigger risk. Not paying back mom and dad is different than literally becoming homeless. Being able to afford failure allows more risks. Think of all the rich people who have had failed companies but stay rich. So,its ridiculously naive to 1) think of it as solely capital and 2) downplay it so much. The four above had some good ideas and drive, but what set them apart was their access. Tldr: Ideas, will and drive are a lot more common than money. In what way does that achieve the systemic change this person is saying we need Being in the global 1% is having a net worth of just shy of a million dollars. That literally isn't enough money to buy a home in a major city. No, it's not. That just takes away the opportunity from their children, it doesn't give it to others. That's some fuckin' mouth breather thinking right there. > give away all your wealth Global 1% is less than you think. Parents were first generation wealth, which tends to not stick (and indeed, some unscrupulous money managers made out well, parents not so much). So I don't expect to be inheriting much wealth and am planning to support my parents in their old age. And in my own path, part of my learning was the realization that there's diminishing returns on personal wealth and diminishing supply on personal time, which led me to turn down the offer of ""let's create a role for you doing whatever you want at this multi-billion dollar company"" in favor of going into business for myself with a friend. If that ends up more successful than simply affording me (and said parents) a middle class life without additional need for working, my plan very much is to invest it in ways that maximize not financial returns, but social returns. I'm a big believer in the wisdom of someone long ago who said ""If you have money, don't lend it at interest. Rather, give it to someone from whom you won't get it back."" (Though I think discernment in whom it's given is warranted.) > don't invest it in your children Given that I'm not planning on having any, particularly as I think it unconscionable given current global trends to do so, that's a pretty easy one. > Then the soloution is simple for you Less literally, your pithy appeal to individual action overlooks the prisoner's dilemma underlying the situation. It's like saying to someone that's pointing out that the boat has a leak to start spitting overboard. Technically I guess that helps. But the ship is still going under unless other solutions are entertained. Sub 80 IQ people stop proposing individual solutions to systemic problems for 0.3 seconds challenge (IMPOSSIBLE) Of course it's always unfair. It always has been. Doesn't mean humanity has just shrugged their shoulders and said ""oh well"". People invented and innovated to make it less unfair, to give more stability. Give more of a fair chance to everybody. As we should be doing now. You say this as if there's something good about 'natural' selection. As if that's some sort of ideal existence. Natural. And if people hadn't helped eachother out we would still be living in those caves. It's called living in a society and history has pretty much showed that the more opportunities for the people on the bottom the better results for all of us. Social darwinist get out. And that's bad? LMAO if you dont know what you are talking about just say that. You know what else humans are? Social creatures. You know what else was naturally selected? Being outgoing, honest, social and helpful. Our single most specialized characteristic compared all other genuses. Arguably the sole reason we prospered. And you Science© Understanders™ love to cover your eyes and pretend it doesnt exists. Im sorry if this is news to you, but this selfish, sigma grindset, i got mine fuck you mindset is the trait thats out of the norm and bad for the groups prosperity. Its also fringe, and will stay fringe. You are not enlightened and rational, you are just severely, disorderly asocial but unaware of it. Pretty sure we don't want to live like cavemen tho. You're welcome to, I guess. I'll be over here with my reduced infant mortality and internet access and stuff. >That's was 'natural' selection is ALWAYS about. Not as Darwin described it. Social Darwinism is 19th century reactionary ideology wrapped in pseudoscience which was used to justify existing social structures but discredited by the end of WWII, partially due to its usage by the Nazis. Furthermore, natural selection has no value judgement in the definition of fitness. Fitness is simply the ability to further self-propagate an assembly of genes. It's the unpredictable interplay of the environment and inherited traits. However, this thread is solely about value judgements. Are these ""self-made"" Billionaires any smarter than the rest of us? Do they deserve society's hero-worship of their rugged individualism, and their auras of having innovative vision and business savvy? How many thousands of Americans might have had the knowledge and skillset to have done what they did with their start-up capital? How many hundreds of thousands more have the raw talent which could have been nurtured into that skillset? Furthermore, humans and cultures thrive due to cooperation, mutualism, and altruism. Amazon would have been impossible without the internet, the highway system, and a largely publicly-educated workforce. Bezos is deriving a very disproportionate benefit from public investments into public infrastructure. Is he paying his fair share back to support what he exploits? Natural selection is about fitness with respect to an environment, and the environment is defined by (among other things) economic policy. Natural selection would happen just as much in, say, an environment where inherited wealth was completely eliminated as some of the US founding fathers proposed. If you feel that a 100% inheritance tax is unfair, or if someone else feels that it is fair, then you need some tool for adjudicating whether economic policies are fair or not. Natural selection can't be that tool because it's completely indifferent to policies. It is literally the same as saying ""once the rules of the game are defined, the ones that do best in the game are most likely to breed."" It doesn't care what the rules of the game are. Maybe you already know that. But your comment comes off a bit as if you believe in some form of social darwinism, which has much more to do with authoritarianism than biology. Which was a poor selection criteria compared to things like ""could build better tools"" or ""could hunt better."" Selection based on luck is a selection inefficiency. If you have a company with 10,000 employees, do you think your company will be better off giving key roles to people based on lottery, or based on things ranging from testing to performance review? So why would you think that a planet with over 7 billion people would be best served by handing out opportunities for advancement based on a birth lottery that poorly correlates to job performance? We’re not cavemen anymore and that’s the point. We’ve come too far along to be exploited for resources when there is plenty to go around fairly. > It's always been unfair. That's was 'natural' selection is ALWAYS about. We have the resources, technology, and knowledge to make it fair. > It's how ~~life~~ *capitalism* works. I'm not proposing that we go around feeding the homeless and poor out of bleeding heart intentions. I'm saying a smarter society than ours would better measure human potential in early childhood in underprivileged and thus undercapitalized populations and invest heavily in making sure that potential doesn't end up squandered. If the only people capable of taking entrepreneurial risk are people whose parents don't depend on their working a 12h shift at the 7/11 for the family to eat, or that can afford private health insurance, etc - then you have severely restricted the candidate pool. Bill Gates famously said the Middle East couldn't compete on the national stage because half their population couldn't work. We have a lot more than half the population gated out of leading innovation in business because of poor social structures forcing them out of opportunities. I'm saying we'd be better off across all of society fixing that. A thought that has often kept me up at night. We all have the capacity to change the world and we all do. It's just that the higher up in society one is, the larger the ripple of change. WhY dOn'T yOu GeT a JoB?!?!?!?! Raging against unfairness is how we arrived at modern democracies. There's no need to be defeatist to the point of apathy. >Best you can do is learn how to make it unfair in your favor and it usually involves ~~hard work and getting yourself out there, meeting people, playing it smart.~~ money and influence. FTFY Okay, explain Trump. Of course it's not the sole decider, nobody is claiming that. But most people could turn that money into a lot more money. To be a billionaire there's a decent amount of luck involved too. > It's not like access to capital is the sole decider of who will be successful. Exactly. We should probably restructure society to hand out opportunities with better correlation to the factors that actually decide success so as to reduce waste in handing out opportunities to borderline moron trust fund kids. > Successful parents are more likely to teach their children how to be successful. From this, I can tell that either you haven't met many trust fund kids, or you are one of the mediocre ones self-rationalizing. Having gone to school with the kids of Nobel prize winners, celebrities, nationally recognized scientists and doctors, etc - most of their kids were impressively stupid and would have starved in the streets if not for their parents' connections and money. What we had access to that other kids didn't were PhDs for middle school and high school teachers, teachers who were the ones who wrote the AP exams, etc. Which again, was wasted on 90% of my classmates. Had the school been filled with people who were there solely on merit and not on parental wealth or legacy, the value of the teachers would have been maximized rather than mostly squandered, and the output of the school would have had exponential gains. > There is no substitute for education and experience. Which is why we should pair education and experience with compounding factors like innate intelligence rather than disconnected factors like parental wealth. Even the trust fund kids that are idiots will be better off in a society advancing far faster by maximizing human potential than they will be taking up resources wasted on them and slowing down progress of everyone as a result. Too many people evaluate success against their neighbor vs against their ancestors. Life even as a king in the middle ages was utter crap compared to middle class US today. Given the accelerating rates of change, optimizing the progress of the entire species would benefit everyone across it far more than the ""I've got mine, Jack"" mentality we're currently squandering away collective human potential with. > A sliver spoon does not guarantee success just an opportunity. Correct. The opportunity is the whole point. Merit based opportunities is a much smarter way of doling out opportunities than initial wealth based opportunities. The pool of candidates with initial wealth are mostly morons with smart parents, and giving them opportunities is a waste of resources. Yes. Having gone to middle school and high school with the kids of celebrities, Nobel prize winners, nationally recognized heads of medical departments, etc -- you'd be surprised at just how little translates generationally. Yes, people with access to the top education will have greater capacity than those that don't *all else being equal*. But I've seen firsthand what a waste of resources giving people that access based on parental wealth ends up being. It's not even that great for the kids, who struggle and underperform in such a rigorous academic setting both their peers and their legacy, and end up internalizing a narrative of failure. Give access to those who excel based on merit and ability instead. There's a lot more that goes into it than just the funding. Can you afford private health insurance? Do your parents need you bringing in an income to put food on the table for your siblings? Do you already have student debt? Etc. You're looking at it as if you are one fish, and the other fish is a disconnected different fish. Undercapitalization of human potential negatively effects *you*. It's in *your* personal interest that someone born into poverty in Africa with the brain to be another Einstein gets the opportunity to do so. The type of genius that moves forward society is far too rare to casually squander them where and when they occur. Having worked with a number of those in various roles, you far overestimate their efficiency and competence in that role. Survivorship bias. Society gives opportunity to the wealthy and connected, so then the wealthy and connected succeed. Was this because success necessitated multiple generations of building that wealth and networking? Or does the surviving sample simply reflect the arbitrary selection criteria of the system? Having grown up with multi-generational wealth kids and known others who didn't have those opportunities, intelligence and wisdom is pretty randomly distributed. If VCs only gave funding to redheads, you'd still have successful and unsuccessful companies, but right now you'd be arguing that only people with red hair have what it takes to succeed. It's arbitrary, and can be optimized by shifting to more merit and skill based criteria. Standardized testing would be a useful start. Gates was legit brilliant on a standardized scale. He was also economically comfortable. I think the key to his success was much more the former, not the latter, and expanding opportunities based solely on the former irrespective of the latter would work out well. si know people who can work half as much as their peers simply because they knew the right people. The idea that hard work always the best results is a myth. Hard work is better, but you can offset it with network, capital, and in rare instances, luck. There's a lot of talented, hardworking people living paycheck to paycheck. Nah, just having a network lands you a cushy job at your dad's friend's company making a ton of money. Your grandmother buys you a starter house. Your roommate's father owns an investment firm so he handles your paycheck and your trust fund. In '08 your dad and his friends thought it might be smart to buy a bunch of property so you told your roommate's father to try that and see what happens, boom you're a multimillionaire. No talent, no skill, no hard work. I've known a LOT of rich people, and they're all just people. Some talented, some not, almost every single one of them fortunate. That's the thing, luck (either being born into the right circumstances or happening into the right circumstances) is a NECESSITY. Skill and hard work is not required, though it can certainly help. Schools are literally critical infrastructure, though, not just nearly. If it didn't exist then someone else would've become that infrastructure. So then it nearly needs to become a regulated utility Which is developed and maintained by software developers not Bezos. Only because they dominate the market. What reason is their that it couldn’t be done by a nationalized company? What is 'AWS'? Teachers on the other hand are just wardens in kid prison, amiright guys? :D /s Then it should be nationalized. Imagine if in the 1910's Amazon existed and owned 40% of every road in America. I for one don't want to be subject to a single corporation deciding to build infrastructure to suit their own benefit and not the benefit of my community. No one can be a billionaire if they don’t exploit thousands of employees. Why do we need billionaires at all? Have you seen Mark Zuckerberg talk to a room full of kids? Dude forgot how to speak so hard that he said he wasn't a human being. Having lots of money can't even make you a good public speaker - teacher is off the table. Teachers have a valuable skillset - people with a load of start-up cash just have cash. There was OSs before Windows, online delivery services before Amazon, electric cars before Tesla (& Musk didn't create the company, he bought his way into it with stock & sued to become a ""co-founder""), etc. & if you do the barest hint of looking into things, you'll find a lot of these jackwagons just jammed their foot in the door by paying off politicians, buying up competitors, etc. & that's just what cash can do - doesn't mean their product is better. There's billions of people on this planet who'll start a business, paint a picture, write a book, produce a song, invent something, etc. that might've been the best thing you ever saw, read, used, whatever - if only they had the start-up cash or promotion to get it off the ground & into your hands. That's not a judgement on their talent - just a judgement on their wallet & social status & that's one of the biggest injustices there is. I worry about the fact that you're running defense for a faceless psychopath for free. >No offense but the company Bezos built employs, and will continue to employ, 10s of thousands more people than most teachers will ever teach in their lifetime. And a teacher teaches hundreds of students, some of which will start businesses that will employ local people and contribute to the local economy. Not an interstate corporation that sucks money out of your community, however some teachers will teach students that do exactly that. Certainly Amazon's greatest service to their customers is the benefit of '*more time to do other things*' versus '*physically going to a store*'. Keep in mind that it's not a zero sum game here. [deleted] [deleted] I've never heard a more bootlicking walnut brained comment than ""amazon contributes more to society than teachers"". That's a level of brain rot that might need medical attention bud. This is a hot, dumb take if I’ve ever heard one. It’s almost like you could have benefited from a decent teacher at some point in your life. LOL Holy shit what a take. Being a cog in the Amazon machine working in bad conditions for a less than livable wage is more important to society than educating people. Holy. Fucking. Shit. And the teachers create a functioning class of people that can actually be employed by Amazon at all levels of need. Also no offense, but that is absolutely not an excuse for them. Most current web based companies require FAR less humans to run them than their equivalents in the 90s/early 2000s. https://youtu.be/WSKi8HfcxEk?t=114 The rate of productivity is trending up, but the rate of actual humans employed per capita is trending downwards. The billionaires can effectively make more and more money with fewer and fewer of us. Productivity and the wealth in society at large have become decoupled. This is a major fucking problem. The total number of people employed would likely be far greater if he never existed, because they'd be spread out at a number of other companies. He's made the business more efficient and streamlined but that has the cost of decreasing the number of workers. So, yeah, the 'job creator' mythos here needs to be toned down a bunch. These billionaires want the least number of you employed that they will get away with and will automate like crazy to get rid of the rest. You are disposable to them. You should absolutely not be praising them. I disagree with that statements, teachers are less valuable than Amazon. The sum of the parts, teachers, are extremely valuable to a high functioning society. There are many pillars with interdependencies in our modern society. It would be a mistake to under value teachers… but sadly we do. Employers and teachers serve different but important purposes. I won’t go into listing them all out here but I will say, in our democratic form of government, that makes it even more critical to have an educated electorate. show us the receipts They're one in the same. The ultra-wealthy uses those assets to leverage loans, and those loans are liquid enough to fund whatever they want. Billions of dollars that could instead be taxed and used to fund desperately needed social programs like public transit and housing. Yes get rid of taxes I agree They pay $15/hour for entry level positions in areas of the country where the **median** wage is below that. While offering things like education benefits. But if it's easy to figure out how to do it better why don't you? Huge difference. Athletes are probably the best example of an industry that has a true meritocracy. You cannot fake your way into the NFL. You cannot get to the NFL by paying millions of workers to do it for you. There are ways of generating wealth that does not involve the exploitation of others, and athletes are a great example of that. Billionaires on the other hand, can fake it. FFS Elon just bought twitter for $45 BILLION, what does he know about running a social media site? All he has is money and fame. It's like if Bill Gates spent $45 Billion to play shortstop for the Yankees. His earning absolutely negatively impact my job teaching. By centralizing wealth in a few people who avoid taxes, that leaves less funding for schools and thus less salary for teachers. Not only that, but wealthy people can also use their money in ways to influence government, to siphon resources away from things that don't make them money (schools) into things that do make them money (oil subsidies). It's all the same. Bezos can use his assets to leverage loans and acquire enough cash to buy whatever he wants. If he can buy borrow die, he can afford to pay more than 2% on his taxes. They all just went to space separately on their own spaceships. Musk just bought Twitter. Stfu. You think Bezos did that all himself? He was the only one who built the infrastructure? He was the only one who coded the entire website? He was the only one who maintained AWS? He was the only one who built the warehouses? He was the only one who delivered packages? He did a lot, sure. But Amazon was ultimately built by the WORKERS, not Bezos. Amazon would be nothing without the exploitation of their workers, that's why they spend tens of millions of dollars fighting unions. A government is also responsible for providing a great living for the entire country. There's nothing mythical about a corporation paying people shit wages, we can easily do the same by taxing them instead. The infrastructure that made AWS would exist regardless of if Amazon owned it. The WORKERS made the infrastructure. The WORKERS maintain the data centers. If those workers worked across 10 companies or 1, the outcome would be the same. If anything, it would be more efficient if there were more competition in that space. But instead we allowed Amazon to run away with the critical resource and grow so large that nobody else can even come close to entering unless they're also a tech giant. I didn’t see anyone say that an inheritance automatically equals billionaire. Obviously there’s a lot of luck involved. The post argued they’re not self made, so you’re either misunderstanding or intentionally taking down a straw man. >Most of the those rich kids don’t earn more than their parents. Source? The biggest predictor of individual wealth is familial wealth. That doesn't really prove whether or not kids make ""more"" than their parents but it's obvious that networking and ability are not as important as just being born rich. Some studies https://ifs.org.uk/publications/15595 http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/ Statistically though... There is a bias. That bias is an economic injustice. [Plenty of other people did.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble) Look at the average CEO and realize how not superhuman talented they are. >Look at how the average person lives their life and realize how ~~untalented they are~~ few opportunities they have in comparison. There are plenty of rich, untalented people. You think Jaden Smith would be a millionaire if he was born to your parents? Low hanging fruit but there's plenty of examples. The point is that most people wont ever see 300k while working their ass off their entire life. So calling him a ""self made"" billionaire, when he had acces to impossibly large (for the average person) funds to start it kind of takes away the self made part of it. Its still impressive tho 200 billion is impossible without exploiting thousands of employees [deleted] I don't think this is quite right, though almost. I'd wager the titans of industry in the post don't really know more about business than many of the failures littered in their wake. The two biggest things they both had were influential friends and family, and luck. Its always about who you know, which is much more important than business acumen osmosis. Add to that each of them got into the ground floor of new industries and if they were born a decade earlier or later they'd have no ability to do so. Luck is honestly probably the biggest reason for the rich getting rich that isn't talked about much. How exactly? That's roughly how much top doctors, lawyers, software engineers and investment bankers/accountants/financial analysts etc. can expect to earn in their early to mid 30s. And to become one of these you have to be very smart, get an extremely good education and build your career successfully. And that's just yearly compensation before deducting taxes (so about 40% of that or even more depending on the country), rent taking up at least 20% of your salary, living costs, medical costs, car related expenditure and potentially family costs. To save that amount of money, assuming you are earning a generous 100k average p/a in the first 10 years of your career (i.e. you are doing one of aforementioned jobs), paying tax of 20% on the first 40k and 50% afterwards (approximate UK income tax rates + NICs) and saving 30-40% of the remainder it would take 8-10 years to save 300k using a normal 9% annual return rate (average annualised stock market return rate). All this is before also accounting for inflation... It's not that easy man unless you already come from money or own property. Don't forget you also have to buy a house at some point. But yes, if you have 300k, just invest it into a Vanguard index fund or something similar, with the 9% annualised return rate, you'll be a millionaire in 15 years, +3-4 more if you account for inflation. I didn't have 300K. Nevertheless with a family, mortgage and all that, I did well enough that I do not have to work. Good try though. I actually started out with 100x less and managed that. I do think it's cute when people are trying to be clever but are clearly dummies. Literally stick it in s&p500 or buy rental property and keep leveraging up. It’s built into the system in the US, money works for you. Laugh all you want. I can't believe people are so dumb. Seriously sitting here thinking, are these people really that stupid? F in the chat S-Mart Sears was once such a massive retail giant that they built the tallest building in the world for their headquarters. Things change. Yeah phone companies have never gone bankrupt… Ugh. Index funds are absolutely superior to single stock investments for virtually all retail investors I would go into depression if I encountered the loss some of them folks have. Then again idk if any of them even grasp the seriousness of it all (like the guy who lost his son's college money on YOLO) You may have been joking, but I was posting for anyone that may have seen this as actual advice and had similar questions as OP. I guess I don't remember a time when bitcoin wasn't an easy button of jokes that guy is farrrrrr too opimistic. 99,9% of starups fall What makes you say that? I would love for that to happen, but I’ve given up on any specific expectations when it comes to crypto. You have a much, much higher chance of profit with crypto than a lottery ticket, so it’s not really comparable. At this point, there is a reasonable amount of evidence to conclude that investing in crypto can pay off at some point. I’m not trying to give anybody any sort of advice or pretend that the same results could be replicated, just saying that it would’ve been very possible. It would have been a stupid decision that ended up paying off, so yeah, it was kind of a pointless comment that wasn’t meant to be taken any other way than that the circumstances did exist. Whenever I hear stories about people buying Molly on the dark web for like 500 bitcoin back in the day I feel physical pain for them! I didn’t know shit about dogecoin or crypto in general but I periodically bought some for fun on robinhood, only wish I bought more 😞 once I did though I had a feeling it would go somewhere, I recommended buying it to some people on an astrology subreddit because I thought a meme currency seemed very age of Aquarius lol, I hope someone was dumb enough to listen to me. I'll take that condo off your hands. How's tree fiddy sound? Does your bathroom double as your kitchen and laundry? When was your last bowel movement? How much are property taxes? Why are you gay? How can I be a millionaire? Everybody else can give ya shit, but I’m tryna get paid.. Got any spare change m8? Or advice🤷 Hey that’s the picture man Wtf I had to verify the quote, it's real. How is buffet not in prison for war crimes :/ That is on a world basis. There is plenty of theft, corruption, lawlessness etc. to go around. But if you want to correct the world inequality situation, creating a system of equal justice under law is the first step. Warfare creates no law. I will never be a billionaire. I don't have what it takes. I don't have the drive for money, nor the salesmanship, nor the leadership ability. But I am a millionaire. And I got here on my own devices. It's just sound economics to keep money where it belongs. It's politics if you suggest... other... people should be able to create wealth. /s cause I don't think it's ridiculous to believe someone would say that anymore, so I gotta be careful. I mean some conservatives believed Colbert was an actual conservative and that was years ago. It's only gotten worse.... If Jeff Bezos wishes to do that with his money, it would likely be a good thing. Stealing his money while claiming to do that (but really just spending it to get re-elected) would not. ""Hoarding"" implies there is a finite amount of wealth, and that if one person has it, another doesn't. That is false. What you are in fact saying is that it is jealousy. You don't like that someone else has more that you, even though you are better off in a system where this is the true state of affairs. It adds up a lot over a lifetime. Person As grandparents on both sides owned a house. Their parents inherited both houses, and also paid off a house themselves. When Person A went to college their parents had two rentals, and their college educated jobs income. With this they could pay for As tuition, and bills during college, and supplied them with a car. Due to not needing to work for bills A was able to take a lot of unpaid internships and landed a good job right out of college. When they graduated they were given one of the houses their parents owned. At 22 A has a great job, zero debt, a car, and a house. With a nice inheritance coming eventually. Person B came from several generations of high school drops outs turned factory workers. They all rented their entire lives. When Person B went off to college they had to take out massive loans and work to pay for their bills. B couldn't do many internships because they had to work as a server. When they graduated Bs job search was prolonged due to no internships so they briefly moved back home. At 22 B has a entry level job, large debt, and is renting an apartment. They will not get any inheritance. Just by 22 the difference could be hundreds of thousands of dollars and both people could've grown up in similar neighborhoods and went to the same schools. On the surface it seems they've had the same chances in life. It really doesn't have to be millions. Just a childhood house that gets passed on that'll give someone down the line an advantage. That's literally the point of being a human. To make sure your descendent live better than you. You make it sound like it's a bad thing. You westerners are weird that way. While I disagree about how to define ""generational wealth"", I totally agree with your point that my grandparents (who grew up in poverty were) able to help my parents who helped me in ways that others don't get. I think that's a different issue... or at least a subsection of the overall issue. I believe generational wealth is the single biggest reason for the widening gap between poor and rich. People keep building their wealth like you do but if you've got absolutely nothing you can't start the cycle So if generational wealth is something that doesn’t keep people wealthy just prevents them from being poor why do people go after it so hard? I get other people don’t have it so it isn’t necessarily fair (shoot as it stands I’m not ever inheriting anything) but nothing in life is exactly fair if it’s mainly just preventing peoples lives from being shitty it sounds like a good thing must be nice Shut up and just let people stan for the rich, jeez /s the wealth they inherited gave them the courage to do things, or to challenge. All these other posters talking about how ""anyone can just get in on the ground floor of The Next Big Thing at a time when everyone on all the other floors are shooting themselves in the foot"". lmao His parents contributed a part of the seed capital, not 300k. You would do the same for your children wouldn't you? The meme definitely flattens a lot of what's going on so lazy meme can get lazy responses about how others got 300000 and didn't turn it into billions because, well, it was more than 300,000. So much more lined up for him. His family IIRC on his mothers side was one of the first families to settle in Texas so they had a 25,000 and he was allowed a bunch of freedom to express his engineering interest on that farm since he was little, his grandfather was regional director of the US Atomic Energy Commission etc. His family didn't have millions of dollars but it was still quite the leg up. Once he got started yeah he made the right moves by working in fintech, banking and then for a hedge fund. You gotta be able to talk to rich people if you want them to had over their money to you and that's really where the 300,000 comes in and even then he was willing to be more ruthless if you see how badly Amazon goes after cost cutting and how he treats his employees in the warehouses and at their offices. So having a bunch of things line up for you and willingness to be ruthless will get you billions... I guess we shouldn't be surprised. 1. You're talking about social mobility which is not what I talked about. 2. Just because the bottom doesn't come up, [doesn't mean the top stays there:](https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/5-huge-lies-generational-wealth-181719865.html) >A staggering 70 percent of wealthy families lose their wealth by the next generation, with 90 percent losing it the generation after that. staying within a quintile means the son of a billionaire could make 150k - that’s not really generational wealth generational wealth is largely a myth in the US, because we used to taxed inheritances very steeply. the early 1940s and late 1970s, there was a hefty estate tax, that took 80% of any amount over $60,000. This included real estate, stocks and any other form of property. Poor people are usually dumb, lack practical marketable skills and entertain a, attitude that keeps them where they are. Chances are, their children will do exactly the same. Most American millionaires are first generation immigrants who own their own business. Got a source on that? Depends on how you define wealth. Millionaires are mostly made through luck. Billionaires are mostly made through generational wealth used appropriately, horrific human rights abuses, and far more absurd amounts of luck. >""Work hard and you can be a billionaire too!"" is a myth. Does anyone say that? Work hard and smart and you can improve your situation and even be ""rich."" Billionaire status isn't for everyone. Different economy, different government, different context. In the US, you cant use titles to keep your family fortune intact. No Popes, either! Not to say we don't have our dynasties. But they don't typically run that long. Also, the rain that article was published is because it's newsworthy: atypical, and thus a curiosity. I just dont really believe much of the stuff for autobiographies online. If his parents could give a hedge fund manager 300k I believe they were far wealthier than the stories lead you to believe. I'm sorry i would like to also believe that i have access to a billionaire VC pool and connections in top lobbying firms but maybe I'm just wrong maybe we are all just born with this access and my father is sitting on an IBM board and we have some investment bank as well, i just don't see this evidence maybe I'm just an exceptional case. what I'm saying is that Even if we use your method of predicting multi billionaire per Capita they still are coming out of a demographic that is significantly much more wealthy and influential than the family of an average Joe >The dot-com bubble, also known as the dot-com boom, the tech bubble, and the Internet bubble, was a stock market bubble **caused by excessive speculation** of Internet-related companies in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. The difference between Amazon and these ""dot-com bubble"" failures is that Amazon had an actual purpose. It's still common to invest completely based on speculation, and I've never understood the concept. Nikola, for instance, has been trading successfully for years despite delivering only 2 electric trucks to date. You are right that it is hindsight bias to say ""if I had started it then"", but it's also complete fantasy to say ""if someone handed me $300k no strings attached"". The whole scenario is an example, and the point was he *did* start it then, and he *did* get handed $300k no strings attached. Sure he may have worked hard, but so do most people, and ""luck"" in business always seems to favor the already wealthy for reasons beyond money. Desktop version of /u/JeromesNiece's link: --- ^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete) Is it arrogance if I know my worth? Is it arrogant for someone to state they could run a successful business with more if they've already run a successful business with less? Or are you purposefully ignoring the point I'm making just for an excuse to throw insults around? Do you really think I'm standing around hoping for a rich uncle and a time machine? But let's just pretend Bezos is a fucking intellectual prodigy, that he just works harder than everyone, and things *weren't* laid at his feet along his path. How naive can you be holy shit. Again, $300,000 seed money with no strings attached, family connections to billionaires, having to work a real job to feed a family, 3 decades after the web boom... I could go on, but isn't this common sense? What from my precious comment made you think I currently am in the position that Bezos was to start Amazon? Because you're the second, and from my perspective of the other guy not in good company Edit: do you guys hold stock in Nikola? I am okay with people who have more than me when they worked hard to get where they are. Even when luck or say privilege to go to good school are involved in attaining success. I see that in the same way I see athletes who are born with good genes. Good genes is not enough to get you success, and as there are a lot of hard work and luck involve too. It's cool to have success, and we all hope to make it too. My issue is when people take pride that they are 'self-made' when in fact their wealth is built upon the exploitation of the less fortunate. How could Jeff take pride in his wealth when he is rich, while those who worked for him are not even treated with dignity and respect? He is rich not because of some amazing virtue he has, but because he exploited people. To me, that is just wrong on all levels. So you need more than money I suppose. Hindseight is 20-20, good shes okey now :) You didn't show evidence of me being wrong other than making the same logical mistake of pointing to one person as proof that it works for everybody. You overestimate your fellow humans. In this case, I meant a safety net as in someone that would continue bankrolling them. Food and shelter is a a more baseline safety net, for sure. Sure difference being is that for the wealthy their safety net is another $200k to try again, instead of being ruined like everyone else. Trump is a great example of this. His father put millions of dollars into the casinos and other ventures to try to keep them a float. Bezos didn’t take his $200k and go backpacking. [deleted] Your kid doesnt devolve that badly if you cared to be a good parent. People become their own person when they are influenced by things around them. Such as their parents. 18 is young. Losing them that badly the instant they turn 18 is clearly a parental issue and not the flex they think it is If they paid what they could before the date, then filed for an extension, they can pay the remainder + fees on the remainder later. Always better to take care of it all by the date, but 4k+fees on that 4k can be delt with via a payment plan. Edit: forgive me bot But should everyone HAVE to pull themselves up by their bootstraps ? wouldn't it be better to help people instead of exploiting them ? [deleted] And how many trillions of trillions of people weren’t lucky enough to simply be born? Just existing is profound luck. Nothing is deterministic in life. We're not a math equation and neither is life. > The issue is that effort is not deterministic Nothing is but it's the closest thing we have to a ""sure"" bet. nothing in life is certain. However, it is more likely for someone living in the USA that working hard will become a millionaire than someone who doesn't. I came from a third world corrupt country. No amount of effort there will allow me to be as wealthy as a poor person here in the US. Working hard here allows me to make a pretty decent living for myself. 100% agree. Life is a bitch. But what are you going to do cry like a little child, that mikey has a nice car and you have a 99 Honda? or are you going to go work so that you can buy that BMW... and yes maybe you die the day you decide to go to the BMW dealer. it sucks. All or nothing is a false choice. Most modern economies blend market types. Strict capitalism is just a dog whistle for people that don't understand how the economy works. Strict capitalism is no more viable than pure communism. The question isn't one thing or another, it's which markets you tend to regulate and to what extent. For example the market for education is generally regulated as a public good, as in something we agree everyone should have access to. Roads, military defense, these also fall in the category. In other countries things like healthcare, energy production are included as well. Name one Better options? Doubt. That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t increase the social safety net to give people more opportunities to take risks and prosper, but capitalism works. You... Going to give an example there champ? Show me. [deleted] [deleted] They gave an opinion. Why result to insulting them? Is anyone telling them they can’t run a business if they wanted to? Sounds like the other option was a labor camp What other options are you comparing capitalism to exactly? There are basically zero nice countries to live in that are not capitalist. There are countries with different levels of regulations or social safety nets in their capitalist system that are nice to live in, but I don't think there's any place you personally would choose to live that is not capitalist. She never gave me a penny the only thing she gave me is a work ethic and i work to make my own... my sister never got a penny and all she can do complain about how our mother never loved us and she a narcissist... Yes damage was done, no life was not perfect. One can sit and complain or go do something. Life is not fair or Beautiful... its hard work and I would rather go and work, lose everything and be able to say i died trying then to sit and expect it given to me. Oh 100%. Or “Federal Government, Waster of Vast Resources” Your perspectives are warped, simp. Classic reddit [deleted] A million dollars is not a lot of money. There is a pretty big difference between having a million dollars in net worth from your home and retirement accounts and being able to give your son equivelant to $600k in today's money to start a business. Well yeah but you use what you made to make another business like the Sigma Grindset Redditors who think you can just flip 300k into a cool wealthiest man alive with ease. [deleted] And regardless 99.9% of people given the same opportunity as the 4 men listed in this sad jealous meme . Could not do with it what they have . They have a lvl of drive and determination that the avg. Person does not possess. There are far more instances of people failing to make it and businesses not succeeding for that very reason so trying to imply that these men are some how successful do to some sort of privilege is just uneducated jealous asinine thinking . What are you calling the avg person ? If you own a truck there is a good chance you paid more for it than they paid for their stake in the mine [deleted] I mean, it’s a bit facetious to call Amazon a “wacky internet startup”. If someone presented me with the idea for amazon, with a solid business model we know he had, I’d hope I’d be able to see it as far more than that. While it would obviously be a risk, I wouldn’t call this “pissing away”. My dad and his brother-in-law had 50k to invest in a rental property in Texas 20 odd years ago. Not like they were rich either, Dad was making 10/hr. If any of those original shareholders took investment advice from you they’d be several billion dollars poorer. It was the .com boom, everyone was investing it anything with a domain name. It was the crypto of its day. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a normal person to have that much saved by 35. The general rule of thumb is that you should have one years worth of salary saved by 30. $50,000 is a pretty normal lower middle class salary. Everyone from truck drivers to plumbers, cops and teachers can all make around that much, if not more. I guess it’s a matter of perspective. If you were one of the first 20 investors in Amazon you’d be a billionaire now. I’d name my first born son after the man who put me in line for that sort of opportunity. He made most of his money initially from investing in California real-estate back in the 70s. He was already a millionaire prior to becoming an actor. Arnold made the Terminator when he was 37! He did Terminator 2 when he was 44! I think it was his first million in the construction business and then he pivoted to bodybuilding, could be mistaken though. Juicero for gym bros? /s just kidding, juicing started later >He had some money from working and winning bodybuilding competitions in Europe. Soooo money that he worked hard on for himself... that wasn't just handed to him... I thought he was a real estate flipper His memoir had him doing some really shady shit though. Unless assembly theory is true, I suppose [deleted] Same Money he earned though. He grew up pretty lower working class at best I'd say half a billion is pretty close to being a billionaire. You’re stupid as hell lmaooo His point being that even with a TON of luck and hard work you still are really really unlikely to ever be a billionaire. Usually involves some pretty unethical shit to accomplish. Look at those 4 and tell me they didn’t fuck over a TON of people to get where they are His love child was self maid. In respect to politics i guess. He definitely is self made in respects to bodybuilding. People guided him of course but he himself pushed the boundaries. Idk who helped him become a movie star. It's a humble thing to say, but the reality is many of these people including Arnold are simply exceptional. Some will thrive in any circumstance. This is why it's not uncommon for them to be great at more than one thing. I could have all the help in the world and for whatever reason, not achieve much at all, which I've clearly demonstrated. Marrying the Kennedy definitely helped give him some political legitimacy. And that's what it takes to be a millionaire... You gotta be no.1 Since when does getting lucky mean you aren’t self made? Reads like gratitude to me Like a lot of people but it also takes a lot of hard work. Something not everyone has. Majority of people just take pictures of their food on social media and get mad at elon musk for being rich. Yea hes admitted to that Every bodybuilder uses steroids. Ignorant comment. Of course he took steroids, thats what bodybuilding is and always will be, pushing the human body to its limits through whatever means necessary I think it was a British comedian that said this Did he atleast tell them he'd be back? I think that was more for a bodybuilding competition, not regular workouts. Regularly SWOLE ASWOLE A-SWOL bro. You missed an easy one there. Pretty sure he joined cause he sorta had to... Who cares? As if $300k is a ton of money when starting a business, it’s not. Turning that into billions, give the guy credit where it’s due So his parents risked their life saving and their son turned it into being the richest man in the world. What is wrong with that? [deleted] How? Musk has stated himself that he used to walk around with emeralds in his pockets and that his family was so rich ""They had trouble closing the safe it was so full"" So what 300k is a pretty good head start, but nowhere near the head start other kids from real wealthy families start with This is so dumb. Everyone can’t be born poor, sorry! It doesn’t make all their achievements less impressive. Lots of rich kids squander everything, he became the richest man in the world. You think he wouldn’t have figured it out without his parents investment? Ffs, get over yourself. Not that I disagree here, but it’s fallacious to say Arnold was ‘a dirt poor immigrant’ when the man came over with $27,000 in 1968 money. Which is worth the equivalent of $220,000 today. Ah, I see, even if you start a company at 20 that revolutionizes the world, and you're basically a supergenius that was too smart for Harvard, it's not *really* your accomplishment unless your parents were poor. Seed capital is not the same as being given money, no? He fucked over his wife by fucking his new wife who was married at the time. 😉 Even the owner of the biggest kombucha brand in the US(who is a billionaire) has done some damage to small kombucha breweries by pumping out mass produced stuff for $2.50 a bottle (it is very high quality as well.) There is no way to compete and he has purposefully done that to corner the market. I appreciate him bringing a health food to US supermarkets, probiotics are very important to health and I am sure his products have helped many many people be healthier, and to a degree he certainly earned his billions, but he still has done some underhanded stuff to get there. He sold books online because books ship easily, and book stores had a 1800s business model. He would sell chemical weapons if there was money in it. I'll step on someone just to get out of a grocery store 5 seconds faster. Where are my billions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling Did he? The government gave out low interest loans that all got paid back. He gave out loans too, but much different terms. He’s got good pr though Elon is the only one out of those 4 that actually (to my knowledge) isn’t doing that Well played Just buy an apartment complex and become a landlord, its so simple Boot polish is toxic if ingested. This is essentially the basis for modern media and the tactic of pitting people with nothing against each other. Give them a different enemy. We are watching it every day This was a tongue in cheek comment that seems to have confused most redditora. Ok sources ? It’s almost like the issues you’re talking about don’t have direct solutions... Explain to me how you can keep housing affordable sustainably in this country by simply throwing money at the problem. How much money did you donate this year? everybody has dirt. sources? so he should go broke because they’re broke? Raising rent is pretty standard. Especially when you have 7% inflation. Clam farmers can enjoy their work very much lol I’m not sure that anyone thinks hard work is all it takes. It is often necessary, but not sufficient. A lot of luck goes into success. But we shouldn’t pretend that they didn’t work hard. They almost certainly did. They just also won the luck lottery in certain respects. And it is that luck lottery that justifies imposing taxes to redistribute much of their wealth (while still rewarding their hard work) to those who didn’t win the luck lottery. Edit: I’ve also met many rich jack asses in my life. You have to work hard and work smart. Not a lot of high school flunk outs become successful. But neither do super hard working donkeys. It’s the same thing for good health. Working hard is not enough. If you work really hard at eating donuts 15 hours/day, you’re not going to make it. But you can’t not work hard if you want to be in good shape. Truths Once again, you're defining hard work as toiling manual labor. Why? You need more than ad hominems and cultist conspiracy theories. These people worked their asses off by any definition. They also grew up with some privilege. Neither negates the other. Bezos went to a public high school, was a valedictorian and a national merit scholar, and then graduated from Princeton summa cum laude as an electrical engineer. Then he got a job doing math for a hedge fund. Those jobs require 80-100 hour work weeks. I’m sure you work just as hard though. Tell me without telling me that you have little to no experience working with senior management at large successful businesses. That’s always been the case. Did you not watch It’s a Wonderful Life? Or read/watch Merchant of Venice? Legality doesn’t define ethics (fiction doesn’t define ethics either. i’m just referring to popular examples because they reflect the morals of society) It's perspective. I've been screwed over several times in my life and I feel empathy for the people getting screwed over. At the same time - I acknowledge the fact that you need to be cold-blooded and ruthless and screw others over in order to get ahead. There is nothing wrong with it. Its just the way the world works. If you are cold-blooded and ruthless and regularly screw others over in order to get ahead - good for you. And if you are really upset by my calling it out - I dunno. Its not like you can force me to retract my statements so your fee-fees dont get hurt. Sure. That would be awesome. And when I first started in my career - I thought hard work and talent would take me to the top. After a few years of seeing less capable co-workers move on up while I kept slogging away in the trenches - I learned to play the game. Work smart, not hard. Learn image management, handle asshole bosses, make sure I get what was due to me etc I was way too squeamish to exploit others and take credit for their work. But at the wnd if the day I am happy with whatever I achieved. Thanks for the suggestion bud. Sure that will actually happen one day. Keep posting about it! What the hell would that do? Greed and fear are the only universal motivators of humans. Suggesting companies he doesn't own to do shit won't do shit. Donating his money is virtuous but in the long term won't do shit, because as rich as he is, he's only one man. As a businessman, the most long term good he can do is to treat his own employees fairly and use his influence to encourange more labor propoganda. However, the second is probably not an option because it would alienate his company from its allies, leading to financial ruin for the institution. Realistically, he could also talk to his friends and encourage them to seek better labor practices, which would work to improve the social elite's views on labor, but he's still just one man. He could really only influence close friends like that. Read his annual reports, he could not change the culture of some of the companies he used to own. It's not easy as you think it is. It’s his entire life’s work. His passion. What gets him out of bed in the morning. You expect him to give that up as a 91 year old man? Idiotic These days mental labour is valued far more than physical labour. I'm talking by many many magnitudes. Things like understanding the market and managing huge businesses to the extent that these people have done require attributes like courage, persistence and **hard-work** but in a more mental context, not physically. I think you are underestimating how much work it requires to do what they did, but regardless, the systems we have in place just value their kind of work a LOT more. Thank you! I like when you said born on third. I get that they put in time and effort but for people to act like they did it all themselves is a joke. They have all been given tremendous head starts, it's ridiculous! Hard work is not a virtue if it the purpose for the work is not virtuous. Hard work is not defined by how much support you have from others. Hard work is not defined by the physical or mental strain that it causes. Lol, there are many ways to work hard, just because you could only manage those types of hard work doesn't mean you actually worked harder than these other people. You just sound bitter that you didn't do the right type of hard work. >This bullshit pretense that they out worked anyone is laughable. No one said that, only that they worked hard. Their head start was fundamental and no one really ""deserves"" to be a billionarie since those shouldn't exist to begin with, but they all absolutely did work hard and were very competent (well minus Elon since he's kind of a fraud), otherwise any rich kid would be able to do the same So just got example do you think because you burn more calories working than like a surgeon you work harder even though they have to deal with the mental issues of killing someone if they fail I respect your hustle, am in a trade myself, but if being very successful was predicated on hard-work, well...unfortuntately it's not, that's not the answer but it's part of the recipe and the efforts have to be myopically directed towards end result, be of great societal value, and generate large margins. Typically this will look like something very innovative, novel business model, high sustainability factor and effective operations with the right amount of greed. Alex Spanos is a very good example of a hard worker who became a billionaire. So you've gone on a sort of moralistic diatribe here which is fine as I don't entirely disagree with it, but you still never answered how you define hard work. Also note that you had previously responded to a comment about Buffett alone, who I have generally understood (unlike the other 3) to be a good guy who, by most metrics, did work very hard in his early years, eschewing work/life balance in favor of a 7 day work week and a voracious appetite for knowledge. If you think that only physical labor qualifies as hard work, then you're discounting the labor of an awful lot of people and come off as kind of gatekeeper-ish At least in the case of Warren Buffet, he’s the only one of them I’ve heard acknowledge that he didn’t particularly work hard and just got lucky. Everyone wants to give him credit for being modest when it’s just the truth If you work for somebody, you’re selling your soul, abuse at any job. The military isn’t oppressing you, man. Hell, 90% of the military is office/admin/comm jobs. Sure Warren buffet didn't ""work"" harder but all he did was invest. Anyone can invest. He's literally just the best in the world at it If you don’t think Bezos, Gates, and Buffet didn’t work absurdly long hours in building their businesses, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s completely fair game to hate those guys, but acting like their success is only from their connections is pretty ridiculous. Plenty of people have connections and don’t become billionaires, let alone the richest people in the world. Sure, maybe they don’t do back breaking work, but they did sacrifice and work hard for decades before becoming what they are today. Yes, it’s been widely covered, so you can find other articles, but here’s a few: https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/ https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/06/02/how-bill-gates-helped-derail-the-creation-of-a-peoples-vaccine.html https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/04/bill-gates-vaccines-intellectual-property-covid-patents Keep in mind the first is an opinion piece, but provides some good history and linked sources that’s consistent with other articles. not if they are dishonest about it! Lmao cry There are entertainers and many others worth that much. Doesn’t make them shitty people. What does one have to do with the other? Who proofreads, edits, typesets, prints, publishes, and markets his writing? Edit: I’ve worked in publishing, and King is almost certainly not *employed* by his publisher. The individual responding to me appears to be pretty inflammatory, so I’m not going to engage any further. I wish anyone who made it this far into the thread a lovely evening. Cool, so the worst thing he's done is literally that he wrote A Bad scene in a book? Is that dishonest somehow? His IT book has a child orgy scene it it. Cocaine works wonders. If that's literally the worst thing he's done, do you think that makes him dishonest? It's a horror book about loss of innocence, not an instruction manual. He creates. There's quite a few ""self-made"" multi-hundred millionaires. Back then it was early forays into land and land-adjacent industries, now it's early forays into tech and tech-adjacent industries. Becoming a billionaire requires either accumulation of generational wealth or unethical business practices. Either that or be JK Rowling, I guess (and she's barely a billionaire, if at all). I’ve met quite a few other really successful people and I don’t blame anyone for thinking it’s impossible to honestly grow your net worth to that amount, a lot of them are really shitty people paying employees unlivable wages. It’s unfortunate the system is set up in a way that caters so well to questionably ethical business practices It is not, though it may be in Texas soon because the company’s underground division has been growing pretty rapidly and currently most of the offices are in cold states which means winter haults work for the underground division I guess a loan isn’t nothing, but probably at least 90% of companies that survive the first 5 years got a loan (this is a complete guess by the way) what a paradox Why wouldn’t you believe honest? In an out of context way Best response on the entire thread. \^\^\^\^ When you sell at Amazon you work for Amazon. They let you know that eventually. There is no ""independence"" to be found. They take the lion share of the profit and hand over the risk. Also the FBA use the same warehouse and delievery system and are thus complicit in Amazon working conditions. Screwing FBA is healthy for Bezos is either forced to take less tribute or his minions leave his platform. He can't afford to have them all squeezed out completly. Most of my family are conspiracy nuts so I like to keep up to date on what topics they are going to be ranting about next time I see them. It helps if I've already seen all of their arguments before they even regurgitate them. And browse is all I do, because I've been banned from there for at least three years now. The mod who banned me is now suspended, but his buddies still run the place and will never let me back in. I even made it on their ""persona non grata"" list at one point. Is it a lie about musk though? I’m pretty sure his family did own an emerald mine in South Africa. You know when a doctor hits your knee with that little hammer and it makes you kick. Is the kick your fault, or your doctor's? This! “not robbing people blind or taking advantage of people.” Do you know how much the factory workers are being payed compared to him? It's often becomes a negative sum game, tbh. People who amass extreme wealth often use that wealth to impair other's earning ability. It's generally easier to increase relative status by making sure you lose more than I do, than it is to increase status by trying to win more than me. [deleted] [deleted] Your mistake is thinking the rich actually grow the economy instead of stealing from the rest of us. Read Piketty. There are finite resources Exactly Well, since Rockefeller, the global economy has increased in size in real terms, what, a few hundred-fold, and the average person worldwide has easy access to then-inconceivable technologies, so no, not quite. Nice try though. Your thinking is an obstacle to economic development. That’s a nice straw man you’ve built up. It’d be a shame if a gentle breeze kicked up and blew it over. That's why they call them futures. > usually their kids are grandkids are not poor but have definitely lost a lot of the wealth. >Maybe if by class mobility you only consider from middle class to billionaire, No, by class mobility I mean children earning more than their parents. That has been a diminishing trend for the last half-century. Meanwhile, we have had a higher concentration of the population receiving higher education. So the trend lines are moving in opposite directions, discrediting your comment about education. That is just a lie of the often-repeated propaganda. Decline of children earning more than their parents: [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/09/504989751/u-s-kids-far-less-likely-to-out-earn-their-parents-as-inequality-grows](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/09/504989751/u-s-kids-far-less-likely-to-out-earn-their-parents-as-inequality-grows) Increase of education: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/09/504989751/u-s-kids-far-less-likely-to-out-earn-their-parents-as-inequality-grows) So, we definitively can prove that you are just misinformed and wrong. You swallowed the propaganda bait. Imagine a subreddit about economics where people deny the [known fact](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115000062) that 99% of people die in the social class they were born in. If you look at the statistics, you'll even find evidence that poor people tend to work harder and more creatively for their money than rich people. The idea that luck and inheritance (both in assets and social connections) does not determine the vast majority of outcomes is to deny reality. Yeah not everyone can receive 600000$ of today's money like Bezos indeed Not sure what you’re basing it on that the US is the country you’re most likely to succeed in. If you look at social mobility, all the Scandinavian countries rank the highest, followed by Western Europe, and America ranked 27 in 2020. There’s a lot of aspects of America that makes you less likely to be able to start your own business, like health insurance being tied to your job. Quitting your job to start your own business could be devastating if you get sick. Europe also has a better safety net so people are more likely to take risks if they know they won’t be destitute if they fail. Lmao the USA isn't even in the top 10 countries most friendly to small buisnesses. >Not everyone can start a business, that's true. But most people don't want to because it's way too much work Its because it requires startup resources they don't have. Most people are working hard. Long weeks and multiple jobs just to barely keep a roof over their head with abysmal minimum wage. Hard work has *never* been demonstrated to necessarily = success. Cronyism, however, gets you there every time. Not really. Talking with all my euro buddies, none of them want to move to the US, as they'd rather laugh at the critical lack of public services like healthcare. It's mostly the third world countries that still flock to the US. You are built by the information that you come across through life and you can only express behaviors and ideas based on the information that you possess in your brain at any given time. The information builds up over time throughout your life and your ability to ""work hard"" has to be posited into you and retained or else it is impossible to express because the brain doesn't have access to what ""hard work"" might be. If you never learned to speak Mandarin Chinese then it will be impossible for you to fluently speak Mandarin Chinese. That is because the information to speak Chinese is dependent on your brain having encountered the information to do it in the first place. I haven't failed at everything. Just this year I doubled my pay by creating a bot that applies to jobs for me on linkedin. It's the opposite of not taking blame; I can't take credit for my accomplishments. And I fully accept that. Who the fuck comes up with an idea to apply for jobs with a bot? It literally just came to me. Yea. I don't choose what I act like. Yes, I think that’s established and no one disputes that. But there’s plenty of examples of kids that come into money and don’t work hard and blow it. Maybe we are saying the same thing. Inheriting a couple million dollars when you’re in your 20s or 30s doesn’t mean shit. You’re not automatically going to be a wealthy person. A couple million dollars is nothing compared to people with actual wealth. i’ll shoot for that in my 40s. still gathering knowledge at this stage in my life. rent free It’s a bot This is also very true. I remember listening to a podcast about how some great inventions came out of unsuccessful experiments. The scientist (inventor) saw how the ""unsuccessful"" results could solve a different problem. They saw the opportunity others didn't. So you went with something 100 years ago as a current problem? We’ve done the crime thing over and over. There are more convictions because there is more crime. You can’t fake murders and there are more murders by black men disproportionately to their percentage of population. We should be fixing that instead of excusing it, but our democrats want it this way. It’s their cities where this happens. It’s shameful and disgusting. Hey! Thanks for speaking truth to ignorance. I'd love a source for that wells fargo redlining if you have it! Is it this: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-19/wells-fargo-sued-by-black-borrower-for-refinance-redlining](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-19/wells-fargo-sued-by-black-borrower-for-refinance-redlining) ? The history of black people in the U.S. disproves that you have to be from a rich family in order to become rich. Does being rich make it easier? Yes. But being poor and having literally everything possible against you didn't stop a lot of people from becoming rich. Of course success doesn't simply come from working hard. Every person on this planet; especially the disenfranchised; already understands this. The point is you can't control who your family is or what happened in the past. The only thing I have control over in this scenario is my work ethic. I can either dwell on things I can't control and become upset by then or I can work as hard as I can to actually change my reality. I chose the later. If you work hard enough and you are born in a first world country you can become well off. You have to be very lucky as well though to get rich like these guys, no amount of hard work can guarantee that. Indeed, I'm pretty sure I misread your post and got hot and bothered enough to respond immediately, mb. I wouldn't debate the claim that it's better now than historically. That doesn't negate the idea that we should continuously strive to do even better. Plus there was a solid market for obscure books that people otherwise wouldn’t be able to find. You would say the nazis were smart if they won ww2. Being smart isn’t a virtue, the inventor of the h-bomb wasn’t exactly pleased with himself after he had more time for reflection. But hey he invented an h-bomb so he is smarter Than us so let’s suck his dick about it right? Help please. Been trying to get into quant firms for months (half joking, but also a cry for help) https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2021/9/28/is-income-implicit-in-measures-of-student-ability Whether or not someone has the opportunity to obtain said degree is certainly related to whether or not they might receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in seed funding from their parents. [deleted] [deleted] [deleted] I think it's a backlash against the pull yourself up by your bootstraps mantra that is repeated every time somebody has a crippling problem. They definitely are still exceptionally successful people regardless if they still started out in pretty cushy places. [you right now](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/8eeffaf3-dfbc-450a-b367-99d1cf2d4bf5) >Think broader. Yes, 300k for starting a company isn't a ton. But, being in a family that can just give you 300k? Have you actually given serious thought to what your life would be like in that type of situation? Seriously think for a moment. You've received all the benefits of a life with parents that have no shortage of money. They have over 1/10th of a lifetime worth of excess cash laying around, unused. You get the education, the networking that comes from wealthy parents, and then you get a job with a hedge fund, not a common number-crunching job. Everything up to that point is heavily influenced by the parents' wealth. Then, you're simply given over 10 years of salary, and it's not even a loan. That just means he has very good relationship with his parent's. His original father left when he was a kid, his mother had to work really hard doing min wage job in order live, he didn't even go to any rich boi school, he went to a public school, please do some research. Even after marrying again, she didn't have any special job, so even if we say his new dad was higher end of upper middle class, his wife having no job would really diminish the household income. Putting them at most, upper middle. They probably took it out of thier retirement funds. >At that point, could you really fail in life? You'd have to try. Squander your money, act like a complete idiot and bet it all on stocks, get addicted to drugs...you'd have to really screw up. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from living a upper-middle-class life with no effort. You could go work in your low-intensity, high-pay hedge fund job and never think about money again. In fact, you've never worried about money. Ever. No, please do some research. What his parents gave him was investment to the company, like every other person who invested in it, not just free money to use in anything. And yes you could really fail with that, you just accepted that it isn't a ridiculously huge money for starting a company didn't you? He even warned his parents that his company in most likely case bankrupt itself before they investment. >Yes, he made a company that was successful. But he started from a position where he had already won. Economic failure was something he'd have to work towards. That's not normal, and definitely not ""self-made"". And that's to say nothing of how he couldn't possibly ""earn"" his wealth. At some point he started taking compensation that belonged to someone else. He wasn't personally generating that value for his company, but someone was. And for those many people that were doing that work, they were not paid a fair market value for their labor. Bezos' wealth is not meritless, but it is nowhere near as merited as people like to say, and is stained by legal theft. His status as a billionaire is built by many others, and only minorly by proportion, himself. Like I'm saying, no he didn't won the battle before starting it. 300k (or more accurately,250k) is a above average money for starting a company, but thousands of others have also started from that position, did they all ever end up becoming even millioners? No, I'd be surprised if even 1 percent if them all did, now a chance to have 200 billion? Honestly you are undermining all the risks and effort he's done to get to where he is just because ""well he did have above average investment so majority of his success is thanks to that"". I don't really like him because of his work culture but downplaying his efforts is just wrong. Not sure if being sarcastic or not so... Economics is by all means political. Low effort memes about the done-to-death ""billionaire bad"" agenda that always hates on the same five people isn't; that's just garbage, divisive, unrelated bullshit to generate clicks and further turn society on itself. So many fish puns I want to use.... Why is obsession with fishing considered a passion, but obsession with politics is considered a form of derangement? That is the point. One doesn't have to be an expert at their passion for it to be a passion. You are missing the point. The point isn't anyone who have money will make more, it's you can't make big money by starting with nothing. Steve Jobs didn't come from a poor family. He didn't struggle with money before becoming rich. That and the amount of his dividends alone I've heard is insane. That's what happens when you can become a venture capitalist. For instance: Michael Jordan and Mark Cuban Made an Investment in 2015 That Is Paying Nearly $8 Billion in Dividends https://www.sportscasting.com/michael-jordan-mark-cuban-investment-2015-paying-nearly-8-billion-dividends/ Ehhh, for really tall people just being tall is basically the most important thing. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2013/06/27/nba-draft-is-being-7-feet-tall-the-fastest-way-to-get-rich-in-america/amp/ Nature and Nurture are pretty well accepted causes of how people turn out. Nobody debates that, only which part has a greater degree of effect. But in the end, neither is a choice you made. You’re defined by things out of your control. I'm not even talking about technology. I'm talking about indoor plumbing, water treatment plants, vaccines, medicine, surgery, food safety, toilets, heating and air conditioning, electricity, light bulbs, and other things like that. Stuff that most people here don't even think about, it is taken so much for granted. They had none of this, and a lot of it could mean them dying young over something we'd think would be silly to die from today. So your parents would readily hand you over 500k and you think that's normal for most people? If you consider .5% a lot I guess A lot of people have $500,000 for their kids? How out of touch are you? It’s not about whether it did or did not happen, it’s that for him, there was no risk should he fail. You tell someone to walk a tightrope without a safety harness or net and they won’t even consider it. Take away all that risk and suddenly the idea doesn’t seem so dangerous, huh? Even if it was true, social networking between rich people helps a lot. When you have a back up your risk tolerance is much higher than someone with no back up plan. I’ve had to weigh opportunities, because I would have wound up at a dead end and couch surfing if it had failed. Basically every single study ever done into wealth and sucess has found that a minority of the reason was effort, ideas or talent. A majority of success is based in luck and prior connections. That's not to say billionaires don't work hard. But the idea that anyone can become one if they are smart and work hard is just hilariously false. Actually I would say the folks in here insisting that all you need to become the richest man in the world is talent, hard work, intelligence and good ideas (despite all evidence to the contrary) are the ones closer to children. Seeing as they're the ones hallucinating a just meritorious world where anyone gives a shit. I think it's amazing that someone can be so incredibly naive that they can look at the worlds richest men, see 99% of them came from what is essentially the modern nobility and think ""yeah that's just a coincidence"" Astounding levels of cognitive dissonance And by nothing you mean an upper class background with a support system in place and wealthy connections with a bit of money to make his own business. Not many people have that. The post is regarding “self made” billionaires and you’re defending him haha wdym Because fact is you can’t make a billion dollars without exploiting the lower class and exploiting that classes labor, we’re not just talking 1 billion, we’re talking over 300 billion. No human on this earth regardless of how “hard” you’ve worked or how great you think they are deserves that much money. Obviously he doesn’t have billions of dollars under his mattress. Assets are still assets, arguing semantics here. Regardless of how he has his wealth, fact is he has that wealth. You can’t make billions of dollars without exploitation. Technological advances are always going to happen regardless, doesn’t mean the people behind those advances should be literal Gods among men. Bezos “created” jobs for millions, but that doesn’t mean those people are being compensated fairly. Are their working conditions humane? Not according to many. Or should they just be happy to have a job regardless of what it is and how they’re being treated? Exploitation is exploitation. You can’t just say “he created a ton of jobs” and now it’s ok that he has hundreds of billions of dollars. As to wether he contributed to society is debatable. Should I be praising Bezos cause I get 1 day shipping? Should I be praising the almighty Steve Jobs now that I can watch porn in 1080p? The only reason people defend billionaires is cause they’re so delusional they believe maybe one day they’ll work hard enough to make that much. These people don’t care about you, they’ll kill you in the name of profits. That’s it. The average salary if your’e lucky is $60,000. Elon musk is worth around 250 Billion. Do you really think Elon “deserves” more that what around 4 million peoples combined salary is? No one person needs that much wealth and to try and defend billionaires is pretty sad and embarrassing. ""Elon started with nothing"" Yeah, no mate. Now they will link you the enlightened centrist sub so they can pwn you, in an epic fashion. So we can agree that the number to define success is generally somewhere under $300k I agree. I'm just pointing out this defeatist trend I'm noticing where people seem to think that success means becoming the next Bezos or Musk. And then going ""well I don't have that kind of support so I will never be successful"". It's just a warped expectation of success that leads to unhappiness. I'm not sure what you're talking about, maybe you are misunderstanding my point? In your scenario, both people are successful. Very few people have $300k in savings. 300k will not last very long if you retire. I disagree with the notion that 300k is more than enough. We're talking 300k cash/savings Jeff was rich before starting amazon. He was a SVP at some hedge fund. His family connections were meaningless given how successful he already was. Yes, it is “weird”, in that millions of affluent parents invest in their children’s education and 99.9% of them don’t become ultra-rich. And what I'm trying to make you understand is that people like you and me would not even try to get people to loan us $300K for a small business, because we're relatively risk averse and frankly not intelligent enough to succeed. You can't just talk as if what these people have done isn't supremely exceptional. We're talking 1 in a million type of mindset. Is it weird that a group of people with the worst mental health, financial issues, and social circles who are often not educated and well past schooling age don’t turn into billionaires? No, no it isn’t. Horrible argument. Also most people won’t turn into billionaires in general. There are plenty of examples of billionaires that come from working and middle class families btw. If that loan is their retirement, they still could be. Wouldn't call that small though. But I know parents who would do it. Not to mention the worth of $300k in 1994 is practically double now. So that is like getting a $600k loan from your *middle class* parents. > If you’re parents could just loan you $300k and you consider that a small loan, you aren’t middle class Lol I was raised by a single mom who is a teacher, theoretically she could sell her house that she paid <100k for 400k+ today and loan me that. I would consider my entire childhood on the lower end of middle class. While not Normal in any Magog metro there are a dozen+ towns that are almost every household had momma-Bezos-like wealth Yes not exactly the average American (especially 300k in 1995) but not like he has some crazy advantage nobody else had Both of my parents ended their careers at $60K ten years ago. I think that puts them decidedly at middle class. They just saved money well and they sold their home at the peak of the housing bubble and bought a much smaller home. They've sort of stumbled into flipping like 3 homes/condos over the years for huge profit. They didn't plan on any of the flips, but it just ended up happening and they made like $400K in profit all together from them. So yeah they could afford it. Middle class people can still have a lot of wealth if they manage their money well during their life. Like over $1M in retirement with good social security checks and pensions. Well, it was 50k. What do you have to do with anything I said? I'm talking about middle class retired couples who managed their money well, like Bezos's parents and my own. Pretty sure most people have _at least_ that much if they planning on actually retiring, giving then away of course is harder. Having about $10M is what puts you in the top 1% nowadays in the US. Top 10% is like 1M. If by global standards then pretty much everyone who isn't homeless in the US is top 1%. Ah. The ideas man. “I have an idea for the Netflix of porn! Just code it for me and I’ll give you 10% profits!” You can always tell an american because they always assume the person they're talking to is also an american. Warren Buffett connections were just good enough to get him an entry level position selling securities after graduating with his master's degree Shit that's about as good as my connections, guess I should be a billionaire Confidently incorrect And do you have a source? Who's the connection that helped Jeff bezos turn an online bookstore into Amazon. Who helped Elon turn Tesla into the biggest car company on the planet? Who taught Warren buffet to be the best investor in history? Certain factor of luck is definitely involved, but also persistence, Elon musk for example, went from online reviewing to online banking to rockets and to electric cars, if he had stopped after one of these he would be considerably less rich, also worth noting how much he was willing to put on the line, he nearly bankrupted spacex and himself just trying to get his first rocket to work That's extremely minor compared to the others no? And considering he comes from a broken home, and is an immigrant (which statistically are both huge disadvantages) makes him far more ""self made"" than the other three. What does constitute self made if this doesnt? Thats still nothing for what he built himself. There is nothing to take away from what he did. How did he get this 10 year headstart then? From who? The ""yes"" answers 4 out of 5 of your questions. Please explain how the difference between 0 - 300,000 is a larger number than from 300,000 - 200,000,000,000 in your head. I could kickstart a company with 300k, but not with 3 is my point. I think the point is that there are mechanisms for investing $300k to grow it (I can rent an office, buy some equipment and hire a person or two). There is nothing you can do $3 to get the ball rolling in a similar fashion. The more money you start with the easier it is to grow it because most of the mechanisms that allow you to grow money require a large initial investment. While $300k is a small amount of money to start a company, it is more money than most people will ever have access to in their lives. [deleted] No, they are far from my home and i make more than what they pay, but they definetly pay really well 18 dollars per hour, it's a lot for work that doesnt require any form of qualification or education Yeah, a successful modern day slave driver ""Wages paid to slaves"" You have to believe 16 is a livable wage these days to simp for bezos lol There are many more than this, but I'll give you five. 1. [He baselessly called a guy a pedophile because they guy rightfully told him his tiny submarine idea would not work during a rescue mission.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593) 2. [He allowed dangerous conditions to continue in Tesla plants. With one employee claiming they were told to just ""work around"" other employees who had passed out on the line](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-workers-factory-conditions-elon-musk) 3. [He made several anti-union tweets and statements and anti-unions moves against employees. Resulting in legal action from the National Labor Relations Board](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/business/musk-labor-board.html) 4. [He falsely accused a whistleblower in his company of planning a mass shooting after that whistleblower exposed #2 and #3](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk-tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp?srnd=hyperdrive) 5. [He encouraged his weirdo fans to harass a journalist who covered #4](https://slate.com/business/2018/07/elon-musks-attacks-on-reporter-linette-lopez-need-to-stop.html) Loik up the mistreatment of workers in Tesla's factories Google “Elon Musk Thailand rescue” Because ""the narrative"" tells you to. Don't you dare start thinking for yourself. Wait I’m trying to understand this. - EM’s dad got married to a woman who already had a daughter. - He then raised her daughter. - And later he got the daughter pregnant. Is this what you mean? Everyone knows that you feed emeralds into your floppy drive slot to make code come out. his dad owned half of 1 share in an emerald mine in the 1980s and they act like he was running zales. Yep. Just dunces on internet believing any old meme. Why 99.99 percent of people who get an education go into debt to do so, and most of them did not grow up extremely wealthy with the benefit of private schools, tutors, and the network/name of a well to do family. I think you’ll find that a lot of people these days don’t consider being insanely wealthy a “good thing” Personally I think the tax rate for all personal income should be 100% for every dollar made over like 10 million per year That alone leaves plenty of people capable of being “stupid rich” but prevents people from being “I can control society” levels of rich. And he hates every minute of it. As he himself admitted on the rogan podcast. Yeah, well after it had been established. That’s not nepotism at that point, that’s just plain old investing Source? 20k actually. And that's barely anything to freaked out by, parents pay far more than that much just for college, and those children don't end up as the richest dude in the world. He may or may not have had more money than a lot of africans. There is no clear proof that this mine exists. How does that impact anything though? He is the richest man in the world. Hate him or not unless he started from 100 billions, this is a huge achievement. A school teacher in the US has more money then 99% of South Africans. >In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp Fucking bizarre. It’s common knowledge that the guy was loaded and you should really just Google him. What a weird hill to die on I'm genuinely confused on how you're equating Musk getting into a barfight and his work ethic? Just because the guy didn't start from rock bottom like us doesn't mean he didn't have to work the same or more to get where he is. Please, humble yourself, get some humility like the rest of us. You know what I'm gonna say I'm happy for you. I spent my 20s grinding away at 3 jobs and now that I'm older and in a cheaper area I'm trying to make a career move. That you went from doing min wage for 15 years to 6 figures is inpiring. I mean this just shows you don't know what you're talking about. He got $300k from his parents. His parents on the other hand, weren't rich nor born wealthy, they were working class folks (including his biological father). Also if you think its easy to make $300k to $1 trillion, should I give you a $300k loan? Thats the best possible response to that question :) But people who’ve never been poor cant fathom how big of a difference between 0 and a 1000$ is and how its more than the difference 10,000$ and 15,000$. That's absurd. Receiving startup investments does not negate you from being self made. If you take out a loan to open your business, are you not self made because you got outside funding? Ffs Many would argue that absolutely nobody is self-made, even if given $0. There are many other ways to influence and support a person, and these influences are entirely unavoidable if you interact with other humans at all. So ""self-made"" is clearly an arbitrary line that people draw. You're drawing the line at 300k in capital. Fair. But given the many orders of magnitude of difference between 300k and his current worth, many would indeed call that self-made. How can you possibly not argue against that? No one is given $300K in capital, it's done with an expectation of a return on investment. >How much money would you already hold to feel secure and donate $300k to your family? It was a loan, not a donation. If they believed in him, $300k could've been a lot to them >This is all moot anyways because the argument at hand is that Bezos' achievement isn't proportional to his wealth. There's no doubt that he is talented in his way and certainly hard working at least at some periods in his life. > >You wouldn't say a NBA superstar who makes 10x more than a new prospect to be 10x harder working. At some point, the talent/effort are no longer scale. Not necessarily harder working, but LeBron is absolutely 10x more important to the team than someone making the minimum. At that level, you don't get paid based on how hard you work, you get paid based on how hard you are to replace. If you're broke you have no idea how far 300k is from 200 billion. You’re premise is that billionaires only exist because of luck. What exactly makes you think that? It seems to me that, to say the least, Bill Gates is quite strategic and knew exactly what he was doing. Oh okay, it seems as though you have it all figured out. Are you a millionaire? I am so thankful i'm not this gullible. Let me rephrase. It’s easier to run 20 miles by starting from mile .25 than it is to start from mile 0. The more miles there are, the less relevant the .25 mile advantage becomes. What they said is true but completely irrelevant to the point they were making. People love to get upset and they'll believe anything if it suits them. Look at how many people legitimately believe Musk tried to ""remove from the internet"" that ugly picture of him, he posted it to twitter and then deleted it. So much of the hate around Musk is made up, it's bizarre. If you actually are left wing and hate billionaires because billionaires shouldn't exist then you shouldn't have to mythologise him. That... that's not a source at all. It just sounds like a guest or host on that show was just uncritically repeating a rumor. His father literally lost money on the investment. Look it up. The emerald mine was essentially a hole in the ground/plot of land that he paid $40k for. This is a relatively small investment - just compare it to the average cost of a house in the United States. That’s not what it means to “come from wealth.” If your father made a $40k investment in the 80s, trust me, you would not magically become the richest person in the world today. This is ignoring the fact that Elon had an estranged relationship with his father, and that his father never paid for his school or gave him any money whatsoever. I've posted that a bunch of times. Usually I get downvotes and no reponse. People on this site are just intellectually dishonest, it's all I can say. What a fancy way to say to say you went to college to get a job. Most people do, unless... you didn't get a job to begin with. Nothing was said of having a bigger plan in life, it's just that it's shitty that people must have such amount of debt just to have a ""maybe"" in their life. Because if they can't be as disciplined or lucky as you, they're screwed. You're a point way off the curve, that's good for you, but how about one of your employees who can't do as you do? Screw him/her I guess TIL every non white working person in Africa is actually a slave Thanks for enlightening me! The sanest take I've seen in months and you get downvoted lmao I still don't think it's normal that people take things said at billionaires personally. Show us the proof then. It’s weird how you Musk fanboys never can. >In the mid-1980s, the family profited handsomely from Errol Musk’s purchasing of an emerald mine, after selling their airplane for £80,000 (the equivalent of £320,000 today). “We went to this guy’s prefab and he opened his safe and there was just stacks of money and he paid me out, £80,000, it was a huge amount of money,” Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. Errol Musk was then made another offer: to spend £40,000 on an emerald mine. “I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years,” Errol Musk said. >As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.” >His mother, Maye Musk, was a model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html?amp Why don’t Must fanboys take their nose out of his crack? >The emerald mind story is 100% debunked and has as much truth to it as Pizzagate. Source? Why are multiple accounts saying that Elon went around with Emeralds in his pockets? Where did they come from then? [deleted] Nah, just anything but wikipedia. Because Zambia didn’t have apartheid. What’s wrong with a investment in a emerald mine? Zambia isn’t apartheid From selling off their ownership of the company they started... I just don't see how Jeff Bezos holding onto 10% of Amazon as its valuation skyrockets from speculation is morally wrong or negatively affects me or you. Guess what, even if Jeff Bezos decided to forfeit all of his income and put it directly to the workers, their wages would only rise by a few cents each. But without Bezos, the company doesn't run. Amazons minimum wage is almost triple the US minimum wage. Why is that ""underpaying"" ? Not to mention, Jeff bezos doesn't have 100% power in Amazon. He can't just decide to pay people triple and have no profits, or the shareholders would kick him out No you didn’t miss understand anything actually, I just didn’t describe what I meant by abuses and ethical issues correctly. I typed this up really quickly so I didn’t necessarily proof read all that well. What I meant the government is not going to provide direct relief for world abuses such as environmental issues, world hunger, lack of clean water, energy, things of that nature. Whether that he through aid or developing solutions through government programs. Foreign aid almost never works and when it does “work” the impacts are almost nonexistent. Now that is an entirely different thing than foreign investment however. What these type of regulations would do would prevent corporate abuses like child labor and low wages to atleast keep corporations on a standard. I’m not arguing that they are perfect, they are not and they will be driven by profit. However a corporation is more likely to say “okay fine” to these issues and just carry on. The goal is to incentivize them to make good ethical money that can then grow economies and grow technologies to have solutions to these issues. As for getting the world on the same standards that is an incredibly hard feat. The UN is not something we can rely on for that. Arguably you could do aid packages as some sort, but I mentions how these packages rarely do much so it would really just be like “this is for hunger” wink wink nudge nudge and get the legislation through. Some other type of incentive for countries that do have such regulations like maybe trade barrier with nations that don’t have certain minimum standards. Using the US and European markets as influence. Use profit as a way to drive the world. Corporations want to access new markets and maximize profit. If they want to access new markets, fixing poorer countries up a bit would be in their best interest. So solving issues like limited access to water and food would be beneficial. This is why foreign investment is actually fairly helpful but of course it’s only helpful if the government isn’t corrupt. Which that’s another issue entirely Hah! A lot of r/thathappened in your post, friend. If you're actually old enough to remember those days, then you're old enough to remember when the capitalist engine of America actually worked, and wasn't bogged down in the ridiculous bureaucracy like it is today. Also, my point was that I don't really care what people's views are, as long as they're internally consistent. Nobody on Reddit has managed to keep that together, so far. Everyone that is the most fiery and fierce about anti-capitalism isn't just ""participating in society"" a la the popular meme, but being highly active consumers within it. You don't get to eat your cake and have it too. If you want a communist society, live like it. I don't. I want a capitalist society. And I'm tired of people trying to force me to live in their fantasies. Nice way to let him know that you have no way to respond to anything he said They tend to wear sneakers why are you trying to equate intelligence with charity? I remember the term iPhone Communist. Spreading communist ideas and being anti capitalist from the comfort of the Apple's ecosystem. [deleted] https://imgur.com/gallery/YVJjQM6 I think it's annoying that Bill Gates donates so much money to malaria research that people say that malaria research is compromised. Why is Bill Gates the only person that cares about malaria? Shouldn't the Catholic Church or some governments be funding this? No, just Bill Gates. I don't feel like the real problem here is that Bill Gates donates too much money to malaria research. Bill Gates did more good for the world founding Microsoft than he ever could do through charity, change my mind. When you consider the reach that Microsoft has, not just for itself as a company but what its products empower other companies and individuals to do with it... When you consider the total amount of global economic output that Microsoft has had a hand in creating, that absolutely overshadows the billions of personal wealth Gates has directly contributed for humanity... And the crazier thing is that much of that productivity is unplanned and ""accidental"" on Microsoft's part. They couldn't even imagine how their products would be used to grow humanities collective pie Cause she has been giving away substantial percentages of her money ever since they got divorced She stole Jeff’s money, that’s why. Because many of them are. Amazon workers, to whom I was alluding, are an excellent example of that. Imagine being that delusional The yellow market said they don't need it. And these companies pay taxes on product they sell and the people they employ (payroll tax) and those employed people pay taxes on the money they earn and the products they buy! Who knew! Hey, you are also licking someone’s boot, man. We all gotta lick someone’s boot. Bernie sells his books on Amazon platform (hence contributing to its success) Come on now tell me how it’s different when Bernie does it 👅🥾 [deleted] Lol then chase the politicians. Why are you asking these guys to provide you healthcare? If you lose your job you can get insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Don't act like you know anything about how healthcare works in the US at the tender age of 12. What? Except he hates his dad and went through years of poverty living with his mom. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/06/01/elon-musks-mom-worked-5-jobs-to-raise-3-kids-after-her-divorce.html > Though she had some help from her twin sister Kaye, Maye still recalls the small, daily difficulties. ""I remember crying when one of my kids spilled milk. The saying goes, 'Don't cry over spilled milk.' I cried because I couldn't buy another milk that day,"" she says. ""I was juggling my private nutrition practice, wellness talks, modeling and kids schooling and activities. Those were busy times. Fortunately, we were healthy and my kids were well-behaved and helpful."" The meme makes it seem like he grew up as a ultra rich kid when he didn't. [deleted] His dad made $200k over 5-10 years (in todays money) from his share in the mine. That's hardly some sort of fortune. I don’t have any horse in this race and hold your “shill” callout impulses, but Musk didn’t inherit from his father and in fact had a hard time and worked several jobs at once. People just want to find a superficial connection as if he had it served on a silver platter to become the richest man on earth. Think what you will about his antics but that is just absurd. The part you don't mention is how Elon (and his brother!) only received $28,000 total from their father. Do you get paid to do this? You're really earning your share in this thread. That is false, Elon has gone over this many times. Go look at the sources for that piece, two just mention his father had an emerald mine with no source or quote and the others are for an interview his father made after Musk became successful. Musk and his father have always had issues so his father's claims are dubious. Sure, that is life. People who work hard digging holes and filling them back in for a wage do not deserve billions. The absolute hatered of successful people on this website makes me chuckle considering you losers would be complaining about the blisters on your hands from the manual labor you would be required to do if your life wasn't made so easy by previous generations and people who took risks. If you want to argue this, you would be far better off making this argument about women on the billionaires list. finally someone said it Apparently it was in Zambia. Zambia is not South Africa is it? Okay? Let's shift the field of play completely in the argument. No one earns billions themselves. It is done by exploiting the working class. Do you have any idea how to do math? Because we can do this math. Hint you are insanely wrong. Your comment history is so sad lol, it’s all trump and billionaires’ fault you’re not successful huh Congrats, you can copy and paste from an article from a wildly biased media source. Do you by chance know the operating margin on a mine? The economic viability of a mine? You can go do some research, I wil come back to refute your incorrect answers. Also, your contribution to this response is has made everyone involved in this thread dumber. > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. Operating viability does not inherently equate to value. This is how the venture capital market works. not really. in investing/business circles, the rich are applauded. why do you think rich people shouldn’t be celebrated ? Rofl you don't know what the word means and you are embarrassing yourself Not eveeyone who has had money to start with ended up being top billionaires in the world They absolutely worked hard and are incredibly talented and gifted people but they still got a huge boost from their families. It's very harmful to tell the children of poor people and people's whose families are very destructive of their futures that they can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps because all of these self made billionaires exist. I think a lot of them are admirable in some ways but I've read some of the advice they have for poor people and it just sounds horribly condescending and out of touch, predictably. They don't have a clue how an average person lives little less someone who has real problems. Well, this is of course after he graduated from Princeton (which his parents paid for). But...I'm with you. I'm sure going to an Ivy league school as an 18 year old that your parents are paying for, doesn't give you any advantages over the rest of American society. #selfmade Man, I'm not looking to write up a 20 page formal essay on the matter with graphs and charts and shit, Do you have data on hand to support that it's bullshit and that most billionaires come from poor families? Yeah, exactly. If you did, you'd have written more than a 3 word post. Computer science/engineering is a major at most colleges nationwide. Yet the overwhelming amount of tech startups are coming from only a few places such as SV, NY, and to some degree Austin. Because the connections and investment is in those places. I mean you are sort of arguing that the concept of networking doesn’t exist. Orange Man Bad!!!!!!!!!!! So bad! It was meant more like a thing a couple could do but let's see. Median salary software developer 110k. Taxes bring you to 75k. You invest 30k a year, and now you have 45k. 45k is 13k above the median earning for us citizen, you should be able to find a way to live on that much. Live like a poor person until you're rich. Much easier to do this with dual income. And of course shouldn't aim for 110k cap out pay So how much does your family make sir? I found the upper middle class to be defined as ""$106,827 - $373,894"" total income for a family of 3. I'm not bashing poor people, I'm just trying to highlight how stupid it is to write off having a $150B+ net worth due to a comparatively small investment. There are countless people and companies who have had much more funding (10s and 100s of millions) who end up bankrupt, because they can't execute. As numbers get extremely large they become abstract, so I was trying to use a smaller number that most people could relate to, without assuming someone would have a spare $5-10k lying around to work with (which was going to be my original example, before I figured nearly everyone got a stimulus check). Don't read anymore into than that. I was actually trying to avoid getting a reply of ""oh yeah, like everyone just has $5k sitting around to invest..."" Agreed. I once heard a very rich man say he went sixty days without a paycheck when he started his business. He said it with the expectation that his workers should be willing to do the same. He said it was like a hardship, literally said “I didn’t know how I was going to fix the boat near the end.” How many people wouldn’t be dead ass belly up zero balance savings account after 30 days right now? How many of you “work hard” like well over forty hours a week? Out of touch is out of touch. Can’t blame the person who you are standing on for not wanting to carry you. No one is self made, but there a ton of people who want to use it as an excuse to take more than their fair share. Good point, that's even more impressive. I don’t disagree, its just that some people are over exaggerating 300K$, like thats the price of decent house in my country, is it small money? No. Is it enough money to turn it into 8 figures? Not without high knowledge. Have a good day mate, Godspeed to you! It’s not impossible. Most of all my friends have made huge strides to go from lower class to upper middle class. Think 2 parents making 42k combined full time. That’s where me and my wife is from. Not only that considering we are first generation immigrants and first of our households to go to college from our families we are doing pretty good. I’d wager to say if my parents even had half the English proficiency I have I’d have done way better. Tho I would say my sample size is all first generation south Asians. Almost almost all worked at a gas station at a certain time and some still do. But their kids have all done well despite it. Damn, thats a good ass return, should have changed 10m to 100m I guess, lol Competence comes from experience and most people can only afford to learn that lesson once. The point is not that they weren't competent in their field, it's that they had the opportunity to pursue it because of the safety net. There are many, many, many competent and hard working individuals in this world. They didn't fail to become billionaires because they didn't work hard enough though. They're not billionaires because they didn't have the opportunity to try. TLDR; You have to be hard working to be a billionaire, but hard work alone will not make you a billionaire. [deleted] Maybe these specific 4 haven't described themselves as such, but the culture at large does. And if you acknowledge the difference of starting points, what was the point of you ""bitching"" (as you put it)? He called you a “jackass.” Are your feelings hurt? I’m here for you and Jesus loves you. Right on. Gotta band together against ignorance. There is an assessment that his original inheritance from Fred would be worth $20B today if he left it alone. Do you know how real estate investment works? The goal is to earn $0. People like you think you are smart, but in reality are too dumb to know the difference. If you've got numbers showing relative business size vs how well they do I'd love to see them, it's entirely possible he actually has a bad record for the bigger businesses but that's not what people present it as [deleted] Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 745,528,615 comments, and only 149,962 of them were in alphabetical order. Imagine not being such a biased loser that you can have a conversation and see both sides clearly. Imagine contributing nothing to a conversation They're Democrats? Politicians? Do you think life is supposed to be fair? The sooner someone stops crying that life is ""unfair"" the sooner they outgrow being a child. Everyone has the right to make a better life for their kids. What do you want daddy government to come in and make things ""fair"" by making everyone equally poor? Okay the Epstein thing I did not know. Yeah, I get your point and I’m greatful to be shown another side. I’m 22 and I’ve already started investing a year ago, but the stock market isn’t safe on those terms as well. Without proper knowledge on it, people will tend to lose money. I just used GameStop as a company because I legit enjoy the company so that’s why I’m going forth into it. I’m also investing into etfs but falling into schemes is just plain stupid. It’s 2022, most people should know that you can’t make a quick buck with these schemes. I’m confident in myself to not invest all of money. But again, I think all of us would prefer being rich right now than 60 some years in the future. >Yeah, but you're speaking of the anomalies. Most people stick in the cycle they're born into. The billionaires in this meme are just as much of an anomaly as those that I mentioned. >Also, what's your obsession qirh Hunter Biden? We could do the same with all of Trump's children considering they were born into far more wealth. I was simply trying to illustrate the point that you can have all the advantages in the world an still be a total shitshow from a financial perspective. Hunter Biden was the most obvious one that came to mind. But these guys aren't in the cycle they're born into, the went explosively beyond. Especially Bezos. 300k is like a mortgage, that's hardly silver spoon shit. You give me $300k, I’m parking it in investment funds, continuing to work until I can retire early. I’m not trying to launch a fucking retail startup that would ONLY work at massive scale. Yeah maybe I’ll try to start a search engine at the same time. >those people likely had other advantages. Of course. We all had parents who taught us a good work ethic >Also, I said ""no capital does guarantee poverty"" - meaning if those successful people worked even a little, they would have capital. Nice try at backtracking. That is not what you meant. No I ask people to buy my merch on live streams, everything I sell goes towards meds I need to literally stay alive,if anyone WANTS to donate they are welcome but it's not necessary to stay in my good favor Hopefully my business will grow to the point I won't have to worry about donations or worry about being able to afford my meds. JK Rowling, Michael Jordan, Oprah, Rihanna You literally did the thing you're complaining about... I enjoy the conversation part of the comment section, so if someone mentions something that's new to me, I typically ask them about it and then follow that up with my own research. Thanks anyway, though. [deleted] If your parents own a house, they can take a loan or a second mortgage against it. They don't, they borrow it from something called a bank [deleted] All of them had wealthy parents to fall back on. And in the case of Musk, *incredibly* wealthy parents. Aside from their wealthy parents and all the other wealthy investors willing to bankroll their various ventures due to their parent's connections, sure. There's also the psychological factor. You can bet there's far less stress involved in throwing everything into a business venture when you know mommy and daddy and all their friends will still be there to make sure you're comfortable even if you do fail. [deleted] I think you seem to be making the assumption that built from scratch literally means starting with nothing. It's a figure of speech dude. Compared to their current wealth, yes, they basically started with nothing even considering their parents' net worth when then were young adults. You could say the same if you did something with your life. Regardless of the privileges they did/did not have growing up, I think it should be fairly easy to recognize going from 300k to richest person on the planet takes hard work and a good amount of education and knowledge EDIT: I don’t think any of them claim to be “self-made” as well. You and others arguing over it is a strawman. You sound like a jealous little bitch. Instead of being so worried about their lives, how about you tell us something you’ve accomplished? So you could surely turn $300,000 into $300,000,000,000 since its so easy right? How many people have 300k but don’t become billionaires? You’re way to fixated on the 300k aspect, it’s a totally arbitrary factor in the overall success of Amazon. Quite frankly anyone with a somewhat thoughtful idea can easily secure 300k-1 million in series A funding. Have you never seen the show Shark Tank? There’s like 20 seasons of them just throwing 300k at all sorts of people for all sorts of ideas. If it wasn’t from his parents, he’d have gotten the money from a bank or investment group. The fact you think that 300k initial investment is such a mind-blowing, game changing, privileged thing tells me you know nothing you’re talking about. Right, I think they had a family reunion recently and there was not a single millionaire left. Cycle of wealth, grandpa builds it son maintains it and the grandkids blow it. And what I don't agree with is that the ""self-made"" notion is a myth. They made what they have by themselves, therefore they are self made. No one handed any of them what they have, and nothing has been ""exposed"". True, but we will never know the answer to that unfortunately! And you're right, it is harder, but it's easier in America than almost any other country in the world. And that's because of our economic climate and the fact that we are a capitalist country, but no one likes to talk about that on reddit. And being born in a first world country wouldn't make you self made either, so let's keep some perspective. Having some sort of advantage doesn't mean you weren't a self starter, unless you only count low IQ paraplegic slaves who make it as ""self made"". [deleted] How many millionaires become billionaires? Gotta be better than their donuts. Why would you call them lazy? I didn't say they're lazy. They're busting their ass. But they need to be doing that while finding a way out of working 60 hours at fast food. If you're working 60 hours a week and still broke...you need to look at doing something else. And don't tell me ""it's literally impossible for them"", because people like that are extremely rare. [deleted] 300k is not a Million. Not even almost. Sources? Links? No proof no service. To be fair, he was the biggest investor of Tesla and model wasn’t ready when he joined the team. I don’t want to take away founder’s work, but turning car prototype to real car is hard work. So I consider him as the founder of the Tesla. I still have more to read on PayPal though, so I will not really give comments about it. Whoops replied to the wrong comment. But statement holds. \- Mr . Adult gowp gowp gowp. Again refer to insults, you provide no evidence, you provide nothing to add to the discussion. Please refer evidence where he claims he was self made. You are fucking useless, can't even have a proper discussion. You are hypocrite, a loser, a virus in dumpster, a cum dump, you have no voice here, so gtfo. Bruh, the lengths people are going to to discredit these guys is insane. Life isn't fair dude. The ingredients for creating one of the most successful companies in the world do not simply boil down to intelligence and hard work. Those are just two or many that are needed. Lick that boot [removed] Dont waste your time with a commie like me, keep on suckin' and some day, if you work hard enough, you will be their pet and fullfill your nasty desires Sure, but 300k, close to 600k today, is by no means rich. Not rich. All investments contain risk. Some are more risky than others. Investing in startups, which is what they did with Amazon, is an extremely risky investment. * 20% of small businesses fail in their first year * 30% of small business fail in their second year * 50% of small businesses fail after five years in business * 70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business On average, businesses don't make a profit until 2-3 years in, sometimes longer. So with the numbers above, you can guess that over 50% of investors are losing everything, because the company folds before they get anything back out of it. What business investors (like VCs) do is invest in a lot of business so when they get something like an Amazon it more than covers the losses from all the ones that failed. But Bezos' parents weren't VCs, they were all in on the 1 company. You can say Amazon isn't a small business, which his true now... but it started as a small business, they all do. Bezos was shipping books himself. This was also the .com era. After the bubble in 2000 burst a vast majority of the .com startups went under and investors lost everything. One of the big reasons Amazon made it was that Bezos didn't get caught up in the fancy offices and money getting funneled into all these companies. He made his desk out of a door and some 4x4 pieces of wood. If a monitor stand was needed, they'd just use a phone book. Had he been careless with the money, because it was ""so much"", he would have been out on his ass like everyone else. >Material wealth can only come from one place, which is people doing physical labor with their bodies in the real world Your problem is that this is not true. You said they make money bye overworking and underpaying there employees, how is that true at all any overtime gets paid extra and what are they supposed to do just not have employees because there rich, that’s dumb AF Oh, I didn’t say it was good, I was just pointing out that capitalism trends towards monopoly as the rate of profit falls. Not my idea, I stole it from an old German dude with a beard. I really appreciate the offer! I may take you up on it sometime. Currently, I’m finishing my degree within the next year. I was active in the army for 12 yrs and am just now using the GI bill. Even with the GI bill, I have to take loans because I’m a single father of 2. We scrape by though. Yes I did? I took my capital and invested it into a college degree. Lol the cope Ok, so spaceX, whose falcon9 rocket took over the commercial global launch industry in less than a decade purely by having better technology (huge reusability percentage per rocket, which no other company/national agency globally has come close to replicating yet). That has 150 succesfull launches and is the only way the west has to get humans to space, is ""mostly proof of concept"". Like, please. At least keep the arguments somewhat vaguely true... All starlink sats could crash into the ocean tomorrow and it still wouldnt make a dent on the impact spacex has made on the space industry. Why do people even comment on topics they have no clue about? Tesla has delivered 1,917,500 vehicles. Obviously he mad an improvement in those people’s lives. I’m sorry, but you’re a joke. About Tesla... it is almost impossible to make successful car company, especially in developed world. Electric car company was another game too, it was hard to convince people to switch up, especially due to range anxiety and that it was being new, so it is huge success what Tesla had reached. Starlink is unusual business and it started in 2019, so bashing 3 y.o business because it isn’t ready yet isn’t really right in my eyes. SpaceX successfully completed Nasa contracts, they also minimized dependence on Russian rockets, so that was really good and big step for American security. Also, PayPal was huge hit too. I am not saying that he engineered every rocket and every car, but he is amazing businessmen and created many important industries. I'm pretty sure you are slow. Sure. Kamala Harris, Joy Behar, George Takei, Biden, Obama... ""But they're all liberals!"" I hear you say. Right, that's the point. Just like how the economic elite tend to be all right wing, because mostly having money tends to make you more conservative and right wing, being a socialite (which is different from being sociable as a person) drives your viewpoints sharply to the left. The bullies and tattletales have discovered that the best way to have power over huge groups of people is to tell them that ""it's for their own good"", and people won't even fight them on it. >In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded web software company Zip2 with funds from angel investors.\[20\] They housed the venture at a small rented office in Palo Alto.\[45\] The company developed and marketed an Internet city guide for the newspaper publishing industry, with maps, directions, and yellow pages.\[46\] Musk says that before the company became successful, he could not afford an apartment and instead rented an office and slept on the couch and showered at the YMCA, and shared one computer with his brother. When he and Kimbal could not agree on business decisions, they settled their differences through wrestling.\[47\] According to Musk, ""The website was up during the day and I was coding it at night, seven days a week, all the time.""\[45\] The Musk brothers obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune,\[48\] and persuaded the board of directors to abandon plans for a merger with CitySearch.\[49\] Musk's attempts to become CEO, a position held by its Chairman Rich Sorkin,\[50\] were thwarted by the board.\[51\] Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999,\[52\]\[53\] and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.\[54\]\[55\] Just read the wiki article, and read into him a bit more than what the tabloids say. His parents divorced because his father was such an asshole. Elon said it best himself: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211054942192119808?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1211054942192119808%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1\_&ref\_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.insidehook.com%2Farticle%2Fhistory%2Ferrol-musk-elon-father-myths](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211054942192119808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1211054942192119808%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.insidehook.com%2Farticle%2Fhistory%2Ferrol-musk-elon-father-myths) ​ Here's a better article: [https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-father-myths](https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-father-myths) Agreed [deleted] I'm sure you don't want billions. You couldn't improve that many people lives with that anyway Says the Reddit kid whose obviously wasted money on this app. “Shaoshaounicorn” makes you sound like some weeb who probably moderates a discord server. You’re just pissed bc you can’t fathom the idea that you’re also incapable of creating industry and choose to disguise your frustrations as “rich people steal from us hur dur” [deleted] Of course! This is a more detailed explanation to the meme posted above. I know I was initially triggered due to the Facebook style meme with most likely limited understanding to how these guys actually became what they are today. It’s simplistic. I appreciate what you are saying and I will agree with you. But I also believe Elon has been spoken about as someone who can converse well with engineers, developers and the likes on a level that he truly understands what is being said and can input ideas that are relevant to the thought process. He isn’t some schmuck that took daddy’s money, bought a company and paid a bunch of workers and engineers to create what he has. His input was monumental. I think the likes of Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett suit your side of the argument better. Using inside information and Wall Street to topple rival companies is something Bezos needed for his accomplishments. But it wasn’t mommy and daddy’s money that made it the be all and end all. I believe in Bezos case he created his wealth entirely on fraud and market manipulation. Exploiting tax loop holes and rules laid out by the SEC and DTCC. Most likely working with them to achieve his wealth. But the man still built the home on his own. It was his willingness and motivation to build that home, the permits etc etc were simply walls in the way. Sure the bank gave him a loan to get started… The permits needed to be given. The materials had to be bought. But he still built the home on his own in a sense that you can understand what I am trying to say. I think this debate can easily go both ways. I understand your view well. It’s just a shit over simplified post. Actually wealthy parents don't help because most families generational wealth is gone by the second generation https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/5-huge-lies-generational-wealth-181719865.html Plus the failure rate https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1010/top-6-reasons-new-businesses-fail.aspx Not necessarily, I still have hope and confidence. My father is actually a Billionaire. He started from owning debts at his 40s to owning properties. So, that is my live sample. If he can do it, I can do it. Business runs in our family blood. Also, one does not need to be a billionaire to be happy. Then again everyone POV is different. Ya, that was covered in the article I listed as well, however he did not help him during college at all and only contributed 20k in a so called “angel fund” after his business started to take of and lose risk, by this point he could have gotten the money from normal investors anyway. Nah you're underestimating how little hating them means. All of these men have been rich for all their lives, nothing has happened with that hate for them other than they get richer and the poor get poorer. It's really sad seeing hate tweets and joke posts because that's all the poor can do, joke and whine. Uhhh, yea? I did that in college. Having your own room is a 1st world luxury. Now to be fair I’m born privileged. Definitely not rich, but never worried about food. My father however grew up as a child immigrant with his father as dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant and got me this life. He lived the American dream, he did exactly what I described. I’m in my mid 20s so perhaps it has gotten harder since his time, yet I’d still rather start over in America than almost any other place if everything was stripped from me. The idea tho is that you are going to have to suffer when you are young and grind it out and live in a 3 person shared room eating canned beans and rice everyday, that is exactly what my dad did. Ooo salty buzz words. Keep it up. Your tears only give me power. My condolences Their employees still only take home a fraction of the value they produce. The majority of that value funnels upward. So I’m asking you, would you say no to a 1000% raise, even if it meant that investors would be less wealthy? Just make sure to level your luck stats first You’re probably half right. Let me guess... you're not a billionaire. If you don’t understand compounding interest… I cackled reading this lmao As long as you win you can't lose! Peg it will come back to you! Love Steely Dan There is probably an idiot out there who is about to do this and not know you are joking. Casinos hate when you do this but they legally can't stop you Not how it works. You forget about green. Not really true that it’s 50%. Don’t forget about 0 and 00! It's also less than 50% because of two green numbers. *hits green* 48% chance. Don't forget 0 and 00 You do realize there are two green numbers. That's what the guy said about winning the lottery.He either wins or he doesn't thats 50/50. It isn't 50/50 the Zero in the Board ist Green. So it is more Like 49,9/49,9/0,2. Now that’s just silly, bet double zero every 3rd time and it’s much faster to earn that big money. Yep and if you put in directly on a number, like 16, you get a 35x return. Nope… Popeyes. Dry AF yet oddly satisfying. I think cocaine and hookers is the way to go regardless of the type of biscuit... Thats my boy Our little baby's all growns up. Vegas baby! Will they inspect your car for stockpiles of cash in the border? If not, wash that money Breaking Bad style. [deleted] The definition of income in the US is so broad, you should technically be claiming the value of vegetables you grow in your garden. As a consequence we’re basically all tax cheats whether we know it or not. I wish I knew...I never win enough to claim it The EV is still negative. It’s math. Martingaling is not a winning strategy. Table limits can often be waived, but yeah they won’t be waived for a nobody martingaling for $100 returns. Disclaimer: I am not in finance, this is not financial advice. But do it. Solid advice except he’s 63. **LAND OF THE FREE** This is America don't get pulled over with too much cash, that's for sure. Land of the free, baby! US isnt as bad as other countries. You guys don't know how easy you have it. Don't forget about Russian yachts and mansions. Same shit. Indigenous people have entered the room. It's almost like the country was founded by white male lawyers that owned slaves and the titles have changed over 230 years but not the practical effects! 40% of America doesn't have $400 in their checking account! Considering the U.S. stole actual people to start this nation. Is this not just…par for the course? The scariest words in the English language (please find a safe space if you need it.): Hello, I’m from the Government, I’m here to help. This one I think is actually defensible. The gov has to do something to accounts that are untouched bc people will die without closing all their investments and sometimes next of kin don't know what they had or where it is etc. So there needs to be some kind of timer to check on stuff like that. And you can complain about the losses, but pretty sure they just reimburse whatever was paid in so even if he had taken losses, he would have gotten that original amount back. When the state Hits your eye Like a lost, gaining pie That's escheatment Could hear Stephen Colbert singing this. Al Bundy enters the room Yeah it's wild how Amazon went from a really successful business model and large company to it being the actual backbone of the whole internet and owning so much warehousing space they could be an actual state. It's the law of abandoned property, written into every state's statutes. If you leave a bank account, investment account, etc. and don't access it at all or check in on it for like 10 years, it's deemed abandoned, and the state can claim it. I can understand it in a practical sense, but it seems like there should be a better way to dispose of truly abandoned property. I guarantee most Americans don't realize this even exists. I sure as hell didn't for bank accounts, I only thought physical property could be seized when reported 'abandoned' by third parties, or after death through idiotic abuse of death taxes. This talks about bank accounts. Are brokerage accounts/investment accounts considered different? Are they allowed more time? 😐 not how that works Don't know how I got here, but Happy Cake Day! Yeah, it's the best way to set yourself up in the future and beats most other investments and active managers like 98% of the time. The only way it fails if it the world ends or dramatically changes, in which case, money probably isn't the top worry and parking your money anywhere probably wouldn't have brought a return. I don't think I've ever had an account flagged like that because I do check them regularly but I don't think most people would want to check it as frequently as I do. You may also have to pay off your investment pays dividends. Vanguard just had a big issue with this and there's an ongoing class action suit. [deleted] Yeah, good point. Login once a month or two to be safe. > These are all historical returns and may or may not be an accurate representation of the next 20 years Had to scroll way too far for this. The amount of people who think the market will continue to return an average of 10%+ every year is too damn high. A lot of finance people are forecasting prolonged contraction which makes sense given we live on a finite world with rapidly dwindling resources and an already bled-dry working class. Honestly I'd probably go 40% S&P, 20% Bitcoin, 40% Ethereum Normally I'd agree but over the next 100 years there is the potential for civil unrest and upheaval on a scale that makes WW2 look like a tea party. Could we develop new tech that solves these pressing problems and ushers in a new era of prosperity? Sure. Not really feeling that optimistic, however It’s a good plan. Renting is the norm across much of Europe. Maybe home ownership in the US has just passed its heyday. I don't understand why everyone is so obsessed with doing nothing and living in a place they constantly need to throw money into 😕 I mean I get what people want to believe, but I'm jaded by two assumptions 1 - if you don't take time for travel or leisure now, you're probably not the type of person who's going to do it in retirement 2 - I don't enjoy suburbs or staying in one place. Maybe home ownership works for those who will stick around in one place, but people seriously underestimate the cost and energy of maintaining homes Guess it would be great for people who just want to retire and take care of their homes (ie. My parents, who are clearly bored AF) The housing market is cyclical. Prices will go down eventually. Chill out. It was worth a shot. Disney is trading at $115 a share and pays a dividend quarterly. $115 in a savings account earns almost no interest. $115 in a shoebox earns no interest. Property doesn't have to be a single family home in Queens. The whole point of the ""Millionaire Next Door"" is using normal income levels and better money management to put money to work for you and create compounding scenarios where your money makes money. Just because people don't do it with $500 doesn't mean that it only works on $300K. 300K in 1992 is not worth 2.8 billion today either..... It's easy if you use a tool like Turbo Tax. You literally can Single Sign On login from most broker accounts and they automatically pull in all of your year end tax info and adjust your refund accordingly. If not, just provide the forms to your tax company or advisor and let them handle it. All you need to worry about is if you make a major sell in the market and the eventual taxes that will be due for that calendar year, assuming you have a large gain. IE if you made 100K then you'll want to have 10-15K set aside to cover the taxes in April of the next year. A very bitter Reddit opinion and I don't think 300K makes someone rich, especially depending where you live. 300K gets you half a rundown house in a shitty part of California and buys you a mini mansion in shitty New Mexico. I don't disagree but the world is what is it. I'm not here to argue or change it, nor can I. I'm just here to share my basic knowledge of investing and try to make my own way in life personally and set myself up for success. Yeah, just keep the perspective in mind and try as hard as you can to lower your stress, it's not worth it. I've been investing for maybe 6 years or so now and honestly, it gets so much easier as time goes on. Markets go up, markets go down, but they usually trend up higher and higher over time. The key is following the basic principles. Don't invest what you may need in the near future (under 3 years) and make sure you majority hold assets like Vanguard funds etc. I've made and lost of a lot of money on trendy stocks, once you go through that, you never go back and 5-10-25% drops in the market doesn't even cost me a night of sleep. Exactly. Just let it ride babe. Well you might need to post tweets, do TV interviews, host fancy dinners and network, and take credit for everything that an entire company of people and act like it was your brilliance. But in general you can be sitting down for almost all of that. Yep, my friend that I help guide financially was seeking a financial advisor recently, against my advice. I think he stumbled upon similar articles and this YouTube lecture I sent him. He eventually decided against it lol there just isn't really a reason for it unless you're THAT lazy and can't take some time to learn the basics yourself. Oh were you being sarcastic? I wasn't sure before. I guess it would be spending it. I suppose I'm not saying not to spend it. I'm just saving that maintaining your wealth, the discipline of saving, long term views/thinking of investing, and the luxuries that money afford is what it's all about. It's not like someone out there that's trying to get started is rushing to pay for their cancer treatment that they don't need or quitting their job right away and stopping their cash flow. I just took the context of your comment that someone was eager to spend as in live like a millionaire which I associate with people blowing their cash on dumb shit. Nah it's I hit the jackpot thinking it will sustain them for life. Over spending and material goods will do this to the average person Did you see that in some YouTube video? Being scammed too. Being sued? Why doesn't your company provide/offer therapy, money management counseling, etc. for people like that if they know it's going to happen every time? It would probably be more profitable for the company if the individual who won the lottery stayed on sustaining the company as a client with their investments paying out for them. And they are at a much higher risk of being murdered, as are their family members, even extended family. The con artists must line up for lottery winners. If I won big I wonder if I have the right not to publicize it. That's a fuckton of drugs, or some very expensive drugs! Why not buy it outright if you win like $100 mil take home? Get out of here with your stupid opinions. Nobody cares. Lol 🤣 I love how on one hand people criticize the government for wasting tons of money on the military, giving contracts to people who have connections, subsidizing cancer shit like sugar, and generally agree that it's extraordinarily wasteful - but on the other hand complain that we don't throw enough money into this fire. Very interesting stuff. I would argue most people that are poor are so busy surviving and getting early health issues they never get to the point of thinking of a loan Are you dumb? 300,000 is not a years income at a start up salary.. it's not even 3 years. In fact I would say it takes most people a lifetime to have 300k in the bank. I make good money and I can't save 30k a year let alone 300k \> Getting that boost just shaves off a year or three. Fairly sure you are wrong there advantage compounds and it isnt just about the money. A boost isnt just the initial capital, its also many other factors - for example who gets to have internships in the US apart from rich people as poor people cant afford to work for free, its being free from having to make a living to save up. Having access to other rich people to seek funding from (look at Elizabeth Holmes for example of how it works) etc Just having the freedom to chase goals without having to worry about a roof over your head or how will you afford medical insurance etc is huge. For every 1 person that got there compltely on their own there are dozens and dozens who got there based on family wealth/connections etc. Trump would be richer if he did nothing and put his inheritence in a savings account. Still became a multi millionaire from Daddy's money. George W Bush got straight C's in college, became president because of daddy's money and connections... Rich people are not special, theyre often very mediocre. Difference is they can literally profit indefinitely from money they never worked for, and get a lifetime of opportunities and legal immunities we couldnt dream of. If any of these parasites startups had failed, they'd still have been multi millionaires working in upper management at some hedge fund, bank or w/e His parents chipped in some, and 19 other people added up with his parents to about a mil. 2 years later they did another VC drive. At the time he got the money from his parents VC was really starting to dump a ton of dollars into tech. > These people took huuuuge gambles that could have cost them everything Yup, if Amazon had failed in infancy Jeff Bezos would have had to once again don his hard hat, grab his bagged lunch and go crawling back to his former working stiff job as a...senior Vice President of a New York hedge fund. It doesn't. That person is a fucking moron. Individuals are the system. If everyone took their advice it would be systemic, wouldn't it? Isn't it? You're talking ""global"", so let us check out the propertty prices in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. [The average price for a 1-3 bedroom residential property is currently KES 14.4 million (US$140,666)](https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Africa/Kenya/Price-History). Genius... you got my point. lol when your strongest argument is a generic insult... I don't need to tell you you're the dumbest person in this thread, you already know. You cannot have freedom and equal outcomes simultaneously. And trying to force equal outcomes will end up exposing the problems with that conceit. World is more fair now than it ever has been. If you're dedicated to learning and changing your life completely you will 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps'. It just requires a lot more from you than someone born with a golden spoon. Truth is most people arent motivated to ever work that hard and its understandable. It's not something everyone can do but it wasnt made to be either, it's made to be enough for the hidden gems to float to the surface and that's about it. [deleted] Aren't we products of nature, living within nature? I've never understood the naturalism argument, since everything around us, even things we consider man-made, are natural. It's not like natural is inherently good and unnatural is inherently bad. The natural world exists on a spectrum, and the way it unfolds can be considered either good or bad from a subjective point of view. So basically what I'm saying is if our actions change how evolution results, isn't that still natural? But there are always people who do better. Whether they are stronger, smarter, more social, less social, more far-sighted, more spontaneous, more creative, etc. There was social darwinism in the USSR, in China and Cambodia. You cannot escape it. > i got mine fuck you mindset is the trait thats out of the norm and bad for the groups prosperity. Its also fringe, and will stay fringe. It’s so fringe it’s basically the motto of an entire generation lol If you take an exceedingly broad definition to change the world then sure your comment makes sense. Otherwise, no. Not at all. then fight against the greatest unfairness of all... government regulation. That is the key that makes it so big business stay big and poor people stay poor. It used to be really easy and simple to start a business... now? not so much. How do you get money? 80% of US multi millionaires did not start out multi-millionaires. There's always an exception to the rule. They said ""more likely"", not ""guaranteed"". Check lottery winners eventual financial outcomes. Successful parents teach their kids: * That obtaining specialized skills and knowledge in fields that are marketable to businesses are how you get good jobs. * Investing your money regularly in established companies over many years is how you become wealthy. Trump, the guy who started with a $1M loan and became president of the most powerful country in the world? The guy who has been under fire for years now with nothing sticking? Like I hate the guy, but he’s definitely succeeding. Idgaf if he’s in debt. He’s not on the street or destitute. >But most people could turn that money into a lot more money. No they couldn't. This is demonstrably false. Most people go broke. Most families go broke. Hey real talk: how much did your parents give you, and how much do you have now? Is it 10x? 100x? 1000x? I’ve been working on it a while and I’m at break even. I understand your frustration with trust fund kids who squander their opportunity and get by easy, but it seems like your real problem is with social institutions like, as you said, universities that enable this. Yes but it’s effective for SOME. Not every kid flourishes when millions are spent on them. Not every rich parent teaches their kids how to run a business. Just because you know how to work hard and excel doesn’t mean you have the patience to break it down to a child. But SOME rich parents do succeed. And those kids go on to do well. As someone who has benefitted greatly from rich parents paying me to teach their kids, I don’t think it’s about merit at all. I still make a difference to every kid I teach. It is almost always the parent’s fault that the kid is not performing, but the parents are often absent or busy with their own lives, or simply lack the basic skills to teach effectively. Most parents across all levels have this issue. Rich parents can afford to hire people like me to smooth it over a bit. I agree with some of your points, they’re fair but i think you’re wrong if you say the mega billionaires became that way without putting in a ton of hard word along with everything else. I think that would be patently false. I think we’re talking about two different things - to take what you start with and turn it into something else DOES take hard work but yes it’s also possible to just coast by on your wealth. Not comparing AWS to all schools, I'm comparing it to a single middle school teacher And whatever took it's place would then become critical infrastructure They did. It's called azure. It's owned by Microsoft. Microsoft didn't keep it competitive and Amazon did. That's why Amazon is #1 and azure is #2 What do you think regulation will fix here? ? We're not talking about that, we're talking about AWS being more important than a middle school teacher. At any rate, you don't want government involved in technology, they simply don't have the speed to keep up. I work at a public utility, we're slow as shit to change anything. And honestly we're faster than our peers are. The fact that the government didn’t think of it and Bezos did Nationalized companies are notoriously inefficient. When a country has too many SOEs (state owned enterprises) it eventually starts to strain because of the massive inefficiencies. The SOEs have no incentive to change or do anything but the bare minimum because they know they are protected from any kind of competion by the government. I would not assume that a nationalized industry can pull off something like Amazon. To give you a sense of scale, nearly a third of the entire Internet runs on AWS. It's truly massive. Amazon could shut down their e-commerce today, and still be viable as a company. That's why when Jeff bezos left, they replaced him with the former head of AWS. When someone mentions ""cloud"" and they're not talking about water vapour, there's a 50% chance they're talking about AWS. AWS is why Amazon is a trillion dollar company. Amazon Web Services. Basically it's software infrastructure as a service. So if you have a website but you need somewhere to host it, you can host it in AWS. Maybe your database is too slow, well you can put that in AWS as well. Need to scale up? You can set rules so that it grows under pre-set rules. > Then it should be nationalized. Imagine if in the 1910's Amazon existed and owned 40% of every road in America. I for one don't want to be subject to a single corporation deciding to build infrastructure to suit their own benefit and not the benefit of my community. Ah yes *just unlawfully appropriate their property!* Who needs rule of law when we have your gigantic brain arbitrarily punishing people for existing? That's not true at all. You can be a billionaire by exploiting or by not exploiting. When you get down to it, Bezos created a thing of value that did not exist before. Amazon is an infrastructure company first and foremost and he revolutionized that from delivering physical goods to delivering digital goods. That alone is worth billions. And who should be the ones to decide how much is enough? Oh I think you make too much money and have some. We should take it and give it to people we think deserve it. Sets a dangerous path to go down. Hey I don't think you need that corvette, so instead you get a Honda civic much more practical and we will take the corvette money and give to those with less. Oh you have a good job and worked hard and want a 4 bedroom house with a nice yard? Nah you only need a 2 bedroom apartment etc Who decides how much money is too much? Who decides what to do with said money/ assets after stealing them ? > I worry about the fact that you're running defense for a faceless psychopath for free. If you didn't make shit up (like exactly that) you wouldn't be seeing push back. Make shit up, get shit on. Pretty simple. >Keep in mind that it's not a zero sum game here. Resources are finite so everything is zero sum. Saying an economy is not zero sum is a complete moron economists take that no one bothers to argue against because other morons support it confidently. Again, resources are limited. When you use resources, I don't get to use them too. You buy a car and I can't buy the same car. You buy land and I can't buy the same land. All economies are zero sum. Your argument is that teachers teach people who may go on to benefit society. Then you also need to extend that logic to include people who are affected by amazon who may go on to benefit society. Many startups probably owe it to AWS to let them build and scale at speeds that would be impossible if they had to buy/configure/manage physical servers. Also even in the time saved going to a store, you have to look at the literal masses of people that's affecting. Someone might save 15 minutes because they could buy batteries online. But when you have millions of people buying things, that number quickly scales. https://landingcube.com/amazon-statistics/ 1.6 million packages per day. Even if you assume that each purchase saves people only FIVE minutes out of their day, that means amazon is collectively ""saving"" 15 YEARS of people's time EVERY DAY. How valuable is 15 years worth of time? How do you even begin to put a price tag on that? > And a teacher teaches hundreds of students, some of which will start businesses that will employ local people and contribute to the local economy. Cool. How many of those businesses are needed to outweigh 1 bezos? How many of those students actually grow up to be somebody? So it cost 121k jobs but Amazon employs over 1M people in the US alone... Seems a net positive, no? That's an interesting point, please let us know. If you don't understand competition and agility, you shouldn't waste your time or money in business. and how many suffered crippling injuries due to the working conditions. and how many will retire with chronic pains and issues due to working conditions, offloading negative externalities onto society. but no, let's ignore those things as long as a libertarian can throw a big number of jobs in your face those things don't matter Do you mean bought their company for money?Or gave them a platform to expand their business and reach more people and increase revenue? Or all these DTC companies? Or that they’ll literally help people start their own partner distribution service? Or are you talking about Kmart? Good well executed ideas put people out of business all the time. They just need to pay taxes. How many jobs did they create? (Logistics and delivery), startups can now afford to start their business without large capital that would normally be needed for attaining hardware to run their application and if they can grow faster they can hire faster too. There’s more than one side.. > ""amazon contributes more to society than ~~teachers~~"" one teacher OP is comparing Bezos's impact (creation of Amazon) to the impact of one teacher. It's a numbers game, and there's really no way to look at it where Bezos was not an extremely influential person, hate him or not. The services Amazon (including AWS) provides are unfathomably valuable, especially when compared to any single individual Amazon logistics capabilities is responsible for getting food to millions of people during the pandemic when there were local food shortages. They were the source of PPE for companies like mine that couldn't get access to masks, face shields, hand sanitizer etc., anywhere else. Ya, we've all heard that employees have had to piss in bottles, and that's bad, but Amazon as a company benefits the greater humanity beyond our wildest imagination just 20 years ago,. He’s talking about bezos, not his employeesz say what you will but Bezos is more important, or more importantly, more rare, than a teacher. You know that companies like Amazon drive wages up right? And I’m assuming you’re referring to DC workers with your “livable wage” comment. How much do you think their SE’s make? ""I know Master whips us sometimes, but he provides so many of us slaves with food and housing! We should be thankful he's so generous."" Depends on the teacher. Some teachers are like Yoda. Feel the force. I agree that teachers are valuable, needed, and earn more than they make. But it is not the same as building these types of companies. The point is that one teacher is not ""creating a functioning class of people"" At best, they are teaching ~200 students a year out of hundreds of millions of students that year. It's a numbers game, and Amazon has billions of people that use and rely on its services. AWS has revolutionized cloud computing. If AWS ceased to exist today, it would cripple most of the internet until a workaround was implemented, which would probably take days if not weeks/months for most people to recover. Source: I'm a software engineer. AWS had an outage that fucked pretty much everything for a few hours Yeah, critical thinking is hard and requires looking at things from multiple perspectives. You’re excused. > They're one in the same. The ultra-wealthy uses those assets to leverage loans, and those loans are liquid enough to fund whatever they want. Billions of dollars that could instead be taxed and used to fund desperately needed social programs like public transit and housing. You literally didn't read what they posted. I'll say it again for them: Having assets in a wealth generating enterprise is the opposite of hoarding it. There is no ""hoarding"" going on. Or these greedy hoarders can pay people a livable wage and they can pay taxes and live their lives and tax the top to pay their share to society. Yeah $15 an hour for 20 hours a week if that. They are scamming the average worker, choking out small businesses and tax payers are footing the bill. > They pay $15/hour for entry level positions where is that? I randomly looked up ""amazon warehouse jobs in detroit"" and it popped out 18.95 an hour Meanwhile, billionaires became billionaires because they used the billions they didn’t have before they became billionaires to pay billions of people to do the billionaire-making work for them. > His earning absolutely negatively impact my job teaching. By centralizing wealth in a few people who avoid taxes, that leaves less funding for schools and thus less salary for teachers. Not only that, but wealthy people can also use their money in ways to influence government, to siphon resources away from things that don't make them money (schools) into things that do make them money (oil subsidies). You avoid taxes. I avoid taxes. We all avoid taxes. There is literally nothing wrong with tax avoidance. You should always avoid taxes where possible. That's literally why tax credits exist. Whether I or a hundred 'you's avoid the taxes is irrelevant. But hes not paid by taxes, hes not ""taking"" anything from your cut. How much tax money is spent on the military budget, a trillion or so? Imagine what a trillion dollars, or just a few billion even, could do for teachers, healthcare, and others who are paid by the state? Unless its a private school of course then its slightly different. Again Im not defending the guy, but its two different things and not really comparable. I get what you mean though, and it is a shame that a lot of people break their backs holding up society while the 1% just sit back and relax, but hey thats a flaw with the system (loppyists and being paid off to influence society) and not *his* fault (technically) for being like that, as its been like that way before he was even born. Go build your own Twitter if your so jealous This is just a crazy way to look at it. You don't need to do it all yourself. He's the one who got the idea, started the company, grew it up, and was the driving force to push it where it is today. That is very hard. If it was that easy why can't all the Amazon engineers all become billionaires by starting their own firms. The good ones get paid like 500k a year. That should be enough capital to start a company and grow into to billions if it was so easy. >You think Bezos did that all himself? He was the only one who built the infrastructure? He was the only one who coded the entire website? He was the only one who maintained AWS? He was the only one who built the warehouses? He was the only one who delivered packages? He hire people, organize, and directed all of that. And that itself is more valuable than whatever a single delivery person, janitor, warehouse packer, software engineer could do. That's the harsh truth. They are? That’s news to me. I'm not really disagreeing with what you mean, just pointing out that you said nobody. And saying nobody misses the point, or loses it to someone who disagrees with you and says ""oh look this person is successful without any help."" Why is that an injustice? Just because someone has something more? If Bezos, Amazon and all of that wealth never existed would that mean that somehow the person without money to start off would somehow be better off? Why? If you could argue that through some plausible scenario the non-existence of Bezos, Amazon and all of that wealth would mean that all people that start off without money would be better off economically. Then maybe you would have a point. But, I think instead it appears that what you are really trying to express is just your own sense of self interest. You didn't start off with a lot of money as most people tend to do, myself, included and you wish there was a system that gave you the same money that Bezos started off with. Or do you mean it would ONLY be justice if both you and Bezos started off with nothing! **[Dot-com bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble)** >The dot-com bubble, also known as the dot-com boom, the tech bubble, and the Internet bubble, was a stock market bubble caused by excessive speculation of Internet-related companies in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Composite stock market index rose 400%, only to fall 78% from its peak by October 2002, giving up all its gains during the bubble. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Good for them Soooo does that mean bezos WAS special? Since his company didn't implode? That’s all it takes? Exploiting employees? Hmm it’s crazy that thousands of other businesses that exploit employees aren’t worth over a trillion dollars yet. Every enlightened liberal tells me that’s all it takes! Only if you're a moron who believes in the labor theory of value. There is only 1 way to become a billionaire, and it's to own as asset that appreciates. You buy something for an amount, and someone later thinks that's worth more, that's literally it. Zero exploitation required. Contracts go both ways Amazon pays money (and it's not even the worst paying job out there), the employee follows a set of predetermined guidelines he is aware of when signing. If you apply to amazon, that's because you accept these guidelines and think they are worth the pay you het in return. If you don't like them, you can not apply. It is you own choice to apply and accept the job. And if you realise you don't like the job, you can just leave, even after the first shift. You are not firced into servitude in any way, it's your own choice to do that and you can drop out freely at any moment. It is therefore nit exploitation Now, why don't they pay more? Because it is unskilled work that doesn't require any competency and you as an employee don't bring any value whatsoever compared to what the next guy might bring. If you think you are underpaid, they'll just say: ""fine, we don't need you, there's a mile long line ready to take your job at that price"" Please tell me where in there di you see ""exploitation"" Yep Seems pretty unreasonable If this were really the case, everyone would be multibillionaire But we arent, so the x2 every year cannot be achieved Even elon has said ‘luck is the best superpower’ [deleted] Oh cool, anecdotal evidence with zero proof. You sure showed those dummies. I was posting for anyone who’d think you didn’t get the joke What I mean is the public perception. Bitcoin jokes don’t land with the general public when it’s in a bull run, but they do when the price has gone down by a large percentage. Historically, at least. This shitty line is so fucking tired ⬇️ And a spare bedroom for a roommate. A “mortgage helper” About 3 martinis ago. If you just ignore the fact of systematic exploitation of the third world under a capitalist global economic system, then sure. Just enfore the law that was shaped to accommodate that system. That'll help. Lol, okay. I can guarantee you started off better than 98% of humans, but you did it yourself. There is a finite amount of wealth in a sense. That is why there’s inflation. That is why money has value, because if it was infinite it’d be worthless. >Due to not needing to work for bills A was able to take a lot of unpaid internships and landed a good job right out of college. My issue right now. My folks always helped out with basic shit (food, shelter,clothes) but everything I wanted to spend I had to earn myself. So I would work menial jobs during summer, basically sacrificing my only free time during college (I'm in a EU country and our college has been almost like highs school for the past 15-20 years, a lot of small and annoying responsibilites all the time). So now I'm fresh outta college with a masters degree, will to work and a decent amount of knowledge. But no one wants to hire me because I don't have 1-2 years of experience in the field (and thats for absolute ""entry"" level jobs that pay slightly above median income for my city and slightly under mean income). Meanwhile, some of my friends took their sweet time with college, had parents that covered more expenses, got lucky with a student job during college (basically unpaid or even paid internships) and simply continued to work for the same company after graduation. The fact that they could afford to go through a 2-3 month waiting period during the recruiting process or could start working on an unpaid position was the first step I didn't get to take. Getting your foot in the door is the hardest park, and this is where generational wealth/connections helps the most. Precisely Wow so I’m fucking lucky with my high school drop out family but my life is kinda like both I’m just now starting college one my cousin ruined it by doing 8 years college for art mom asked more liked begged like your not thinking of college are you like no I’ll just party now I’m older have a kid did get a house from my parents well renting so basically cheap af now going back to school to do better give my family a better life at one time 20 an hour seemed very far off when only getting like 12 but now it’s gotten harder bills kids car you know life gotta say you ever make ramen with cheetoes fuck it if I learned it in jail How did anything I say make it sound like it's a bad thing? I'm simply defining what generational wealth means... Are you taking issue with my tone around people who get money from their parents to buy a house? I don't necessarily hold anything against them for that; after all, my parents helped pay for some of my college, as I already stated. I was simply surprised that enough families have enough money lying around that they're able to just gift it for a house down payment. At this point my life I simply can't imagine having that much money, sadly... I want to have that much money, but it looks more and more unobtainable as life goes on. >You make it sound like it's a bad thing. This is the same effect when you point out privilege. When did privilege become an insult? Recognizing something as an advantage isn't saying it's bad. Edit: to be clear, I'm wondering why you are responding that way. As the comment you replied to didn't make it sound bad *at all*. The comment you replied to wasn't making it sound bad, they benefitted from it themselves. However I've definitely seen it many times on Reddit. Maybe it's just a difference in how we've seen the term used. I've generally seen it use in relation to property ownership. That's part of the reason why minorities, and specifically black families, have remained economically behind white families. After the civil war, black people who were given property often promptly had it seized back by white southerners. Then, nearly a century later, redlining was still a widespread policy that prevented black families from owning homes in valuable neighborhoods. That's a ton of potential wealth that was taken from those families. In my opinion, this is the best argument for reparations. This is how I've always seen generational wealth described. Wealth passed from generation to generation. Now I am *extremely* curious as to your definition. Is it just the same thing but an arbitrary line of how much wealth? That's exactly it. The problem, right now, is that it's becoming much harder for the middle class to pass on wealth. Home ownership is more difficult/expensive. The cost of living is rising, so people can't save as much. Most importantly, pay has stagnated since the 1990s, so if someone holds the exact same job as a their parent did 20-30 years ago, they're making far less. It's a nightmare. If it goes unaddressed, we can expect fewer people to have children, because they simply can't afford it. Generational wealth is a *great* thing. We should foster an economic system that makes it more easily obtainable for more families. It's not necessarily something people plan specifically to obtain; it's simply a byproduct of being relatively stable and having wise investments over your lifetime. Probably the easiest way to get it is by purchasing a house, which has long been part of the definition of the amorphous concept of the ""American Dream"". Even though that's been a pretty ill-defined term over the decades, homeownership is usually a tenant of it. Also, if you're activly planning for retirement, you're probably setting up generational wealth if you have kids. The idea is to save money for the long term, invest it so it balloons in value over the decades, and then cash in so you can live comfortably without working. Ideally, you've saved more than you'll ever need, and can pass that on. Few set a goal of spending every last cent before they die. He isn't saying it was unethical for his parents to help. Just that he had help. The point is that most people don't have parents who are in the financial situation to put money toward their children's business ventures. If you have money to contribute to your child's seed capital, you're already better off than 70% of American Families. Exactly this. All those stately homes in England aren't owned by the national trust because familial wealth is ready to maintain. As you say, it isn't. I don't know that generational wealth and social mobility as are easily separated as you're claiming. What's the definition of a ""wealthy family""? Does ""losing it"" mean you're destitute, living a middle class lifestyle, or does it mean you've gone from 10 figure net worth to a measly 8? I'm betting it's much closer to the latter than the former. That article doesn't really quantify any of its claims. It states that companies don't stay in the family, but not that the family isn't still wealthy. It doesn't define edges for what qualifies as ""self-made"". I would never agree that zuckerberg or bezos were self made. They were born into the 1% and made it to the .0001%. Jay-Z, however, is pretty inarguably a self-made billionaire. You could make the claim that Musk has ""lost his wealth"" if he is worth 50 billion in 10 years, because he's lost over 70% of it, but he'd still be obscenely and unimaginably wealthy. I definitely am not convinced. [deleted] So which part of this suggests that generational wealth is a myth, exactly? What is mythical about it? You just gave him a source for a claim *made in comment you're responding to."" Did you think it was a dunk to restate something he already said? > A staggering 70 percent of wealthy families lose their wealth by the next generation, with 90 percent losing it the generation after that. And much more staggering, *more* than 70 percent of non-wealthy families don't become wealthy the next generation, and *more* than 90 percent don't even the generation after that! Inherited wealth isn't a guarantee of success, not remotely, but it makes it a whole lot fucking easier. >the early 1940s and late 1970s, there was a hefty estate tax, that took 80% of any amount over $60,000. This included real estate, stocks and any other form of property. [This is very wrong](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/ninetyestate.pdf). The first tax bracket above a $60,000 estate was 3%, and the highest tax bracket (above $10 million) was 77%. [deleted] Most millionaires are not first generation immigrants owning their own business. Not sure where you got that statistic, but a claim like that needs sourced. That’s a misrepresentation of the data. Immigrants are *4x more likely to become millionaires.* that doesn’t mean most millionaires are immigrants. Or are older americans with a 401k and own a home. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-richest-people-are-self-made-says-new-report.html. There's a link in the article to the academic report. I got it from “millionaire next door.” And the follow up book “next millionaire next door”. I also work with a doctors asset management and we have never seen multigenerational wealth. In fact, the wealthier the household is. The more junk like huge houses, and cars they buy. The wealthiest doctors are non Americans. And they do it by making less money. There are reasons and theories, but I am typing on a iPhone, so I’ll leave it at that. Exactly, I couldn't care less if people are self-made billionaires, if it is build on the blood of others, they are pieces of shit. And as it stands, you simply can not become a billionaire without treating other like shit and depriving society of its resources. No man is worth that much more than the lowest strata of society. I don’t know if that is completely true. I would have to look and see if it is accurate. You don't know your worth, that's the point, you don't, you're delusional. If you were actually able to turn hundreds of thousands into hundreds of millions, you'd already fucking do it, mr I already run a successful business. What, this successful business of yours has yet to turn a 6 digits profit in order for you to get to your hundreds of millions dollars transformation mumbo jumbo? Oh no.. So yes, Bezos is indeed a fucking intellectual prodigy compared to you. “Yeah man I totally could’ve been the next lebron, I was on my high school basketball team” I agree with you. You need a blend of hard work and luck. You can have perfect genes to play basketball but never get close to a court, then they would never be a professional basketball player. Also, if your work hard but have bad genes, same results. But I believe that luck favors the hard workers. So always lean towards hard work. He is rich because he invested everything into Amazon for decades before turning a profit. And the world rewarded him by recognizing that they preferred Amazon to almost any other retailer. If you think the only difference between Amazon and other companies is the pay of WAREHOUSE employees, you’re delusional. Amazon employees are paid above average. There is the koby Bryant, or LeBron James who make so much money that it doesn’t matter how much they spend, They just keep making money. But that is very rare. That’s just a guess though, who knows if his parents would throw the same amount at him again for his next project? $300 000K and that was just from his parents, he was given even more by others. Sure, he wasn't frivolous, but he had opportunities and connections way above & beyond what the average person has access to. Don't be stupid about it. We're not debating the ""how"" to make a billion here homislice. We're talking about the kinds of head starts billionaires have had. In Bezoz' case, pretty much enough to start a franchise. He got his capital from family too, not investors who will hunt you down. > If they *paid* what they FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot* Its not that Small business owners don't want to help people. Its that they believe letting the government do it doesn't work. Nobody's pro poor starving people but you need to prove your specific plan actually works to help them. Sure it would be great if government was well meaning and efficient but its often not. Government intervention can fail to make things better and often makes things much worse. You know having real life butterflies flying around your stomach when you meet someone you feel a lovely feeling with is also impossible, right? You know a wolf can't ACTUALLY wear sheep's clothing, right? I genuinely don't know if you are atypical or just being willfully daft but if you are the former, then here's an explanation: these are sayings. They're not meant to be taken literally and often are literally impossible. However, they're common enough that everyone knows what they mean. In this case, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps means to do something without help from others or to accomplish something by one's own hard work. If they werent born, they werent people. So there are exactly 0 people that haven't been born >Just existing is profound luck. lmao disagree. true but not in the way you think. things are a mix of deterministic and probabilistic as far as science is concerned. Sure, but people routinely *treat* effort as deterministic. That's the point being made. But it’s not really close to it all. It's funny how easily the people who promote the value that immigrants bring to the US in the form of their labor and diversity will discount the value of these very same immigrants' opinions the second they profess how great of a country the US has been for them. Or maybe Mikey wants to drive his nice car off a bridge. Personally? I'd probably take the train to Mikey's girlfriend's place and let her blow me while he's stuck in traffic. Hey man, I'm rocking the 1991 honda civic. No power steering but it has AC! great post right here. A great example of false dichotomy fallacy. There are not two options. It is not ""capitalism or no capitalism."" America does not have a free market and never has, government regulations are required in every industry. Because if we didn't have building codes, people would still be dying in city fires. If we didn't have car regulations, we'd have people dying in low-speed collisions. If we didn't have a government spending billions to bomb hospitals overseas, the weapons manufacturers wouldn't exist. It all works together, the argument is about how much. Capitalism vs socialism, etc. is a false dichotomy. Mixed economies run every single western 1st world country, and they can be adjusted/changed Fascism They’ll name some sort of slavery where you own nothing and all your productive activity is given to the state where they only I’ve back a pittance and the rest goes to friends propping them up. >capitalism works. works for you maybe. and works to destroy the planet and the people. He’ll do the “we never tried true communism yet” grift lol What system did the other commenter's mother leave? Now imagine a system where she didn't have to make massive sacrifices AND her future generations were still cared for. Crazy I know Don't see you losing your shit when the fed literally printed 4 TRILLION DOLLARS to artificially pump up the stock market. But yeah his gramma and her kids having adequate housing and comfort is a pipe dream. How hard one has to miss the point to say “hyuk hyuk why didn’t the government just print her millions of dollars” is an impressive amount of missing the point. I don't care about their opinion. I care about their ignorance. If a person literally reduces the world into false dichotomies, they are an ugly person who has no desire to learn. You can believe whatever you want; if your beliefs are that only 2 beliefs exist, though... That's really fucking ignorant. Its okay if its true Yes. Yes they are. Largely banks. Remember that a Big part of the reason Why there is no Nice place that isnt capitalist is because the capitalist countries have done Everything in their power to destroy and rob these countries before they got any good ideas about creating a society that works for the many instead of the few rich and powerful. There are as many capitalist countries as there are socialist countries. Can you name a country that is purely capitalist? >hard work and I would rather go and work, lose everything and be able to say i died trying then to sit and expect it given to me. No you wouldn't. You're coping because you don't have another option. I believe life is hard work because we've been conditioned to think it has to be. In reality there is more than enough for everybody to live a fulfilling, dignified life working way less hours than we do today. Most of the value we create with our hard work is sucked away by a few elites, meaning we as individuals see no returns on it at all. Capitalism is about using capital to grow capital and inherently unsustainable on a longer scale. [deleted] Interstate Highway system is pretty good. So's the Federally-maintained Internet infrastructure, as is the Federally-maintained power infrastructure, unless you like ERCOT and losing power whenever it is too cold or too hot thanks to lack of environmental hardening. As is the F-35, and Nuclear Energy, and systems so people who are in poverty don't starve... 300k to 200 billion, is a very big difference dide Arnold Schwarzenegger's father was the German Nazi Gustav Schwarzenegger (1907-1972) nicknamed Terminator Most are not 'millionaires"" they just own property that is inflated in value. [deleted] The first round of funding is by far the hardest round, and when you lose the most equity. Theres a reason that the wealthiest people all had family and friends pay for their funding, be it Bezos, Zuckerberg, or others. That first 300k being flipped into billions is more likely than you realize. It preserves your equity while providing a massive development acceleration over possible competitors. No, you cant. Im not sure how you think loans work, but 1) you typically need collateral for a loan of that size, and 2) you have to pay loans back which start ups dont have the ability to do. You arent starting a restaurant. Theres a reason that 99.9% of start ups use equity lending. I really dont get why you feel like you need to pretend to understand something that you clearly arent experienced in. 99.9% of people's moms are on the board of an influential company in the field they want to break into? People who make 60k or less. 52k is the average wage in America. It’s mostly just funny that people try to use it as a means to discredit or minimize their success. If it weren’t the family donation this image would just have something else like “made over 250k a year at DE Shaw.” Also, we don’t know anything about the nature of their investment. I’ve had friends and family ask to be included in business ventures and investments and I either say no, because I don’t want the headache, or begrudgingly say yes and regret it. Are you dirt poor? If not, idk if I can trust or respect anybody that isn’t completely destitute. Okay but clearly most people wouldn’t see it like that considering basically all of the large scale western retailers just up and died. Letting Amazon tear their rotting carcass to pieces and take over a large chunk of their market share. There evidently were a large number of people who considered Bezos’s idea pissing away money. Jeff Bezos told all his friends and family that invested that he thought there was ""a 70% chance that Amazon would go bankrupt"" and they'd never see their money back. But yeah, these were just middle-class regular joes with emptying their decade of retirement money saved up with that sales pitch, totally dude. Hindsight is always 20/20 That might be what people recommend, but is that feasible nowadays? I've seen plenty of ""recommended"" stuff that's completely unreasonable. In plenty of areas in the US, 50k is a paycheck-to-paycheck wage. Paycheck-to-paycheck and saving 5% of your salary don't really mesh. I've seen his house on Tahoe from afar. It's a fancy spot. he got that money to invest from mail order company iirc So you're saying that I have about five years to go before I can have the leading role in Terminator 2? That's inspiration to get your fucking ass to the gym...sorry I mean choppa...and get a mean pump in [deleted] Arnold was a bodybuilding champion at age 20, but the sport didn’t pay the money it does today. So he was working construction even as a world champion body builder. Yeah, I'm just saying it's inaccurate to say that he came to America poor. He also had a lot support right away from fellow bodybuilders and a fair bit of luck / being in the right place at the right time, starting his bricklaying business right after a major earthquake for example. He came to the US with $30,000. Not nothing but wasn’t a millionaire by any means yet Yep, that came afterwards. What did people do... But technically he's closer to a broke person than a billionaire. It's about half a billion dollars closer than me about half a billion closer than having a million bucks is at least it's not even remotely close to being a billionaire. People just don't realize how much a billion is. it would take over 17 years for someone to make 550 million making a dollar a second around the clock. Much closer that I will ever be. (Optimist) LOL Brutal joke. Haven't laughed this hard at a burn. what do you mean love child? ...slow clap. Outstanding! 🤣🤣🤣 Nice.... Well sort of. It takes 2 to tango. Even if the tango partner was the maid, his child was dual-made. Fkn lol damn that's good I think what Arnold said is that no one is really “self-made.” It’s antithetical to human culture. But that doesn’t mean he or anyone else didn’t work extremely hard. Getting help doesn’t make your achievements less valuable, I think that’s a crappy and toxic mentality. he said he wasn't self made because he got lucky and found friends that fed him and helped him when he had nothing. it's semantic but hes just saying everyone has help and we shouldn't disregard the value of other people's contributions just because your contribution may have had better results. hes still the greatest but where would he be if he didn't have enough calories to even build muscle? Arnold's point is that he's not self-made in body building. because people helped him. You can work hard and still get help. you should watch his speech in which he says he isn't. He had a ton of help, and that help was important. Everybody helped him. His Friends, his buddies, his family. His teachers, his trainers etc. He himself does not claim to be self made in politics, body building or acting. It's a part of his speech that he gives when he's a guest at college graduations. This isn't true though. Think you missed the point. When the person getting lucky is like everyone else, who got helped along with systemic institutions, social programs, pre-existing infrastructure, friends, family, connections, etc. Even people like Arnold admit they weren't self made. He's grateful for sure, and he understands that nobody is self-made. Hard work has very little to do with financial success. It's a component, but frankly one of the least important ones. And pretty sure people hate Elon because he's a worker-abusing, anti-union billionaire trust fund baby parasite that runs his mouth against basic progressive causes. That's not pushing the body to its limit, that's surpassing its limit through artificial means which could potentially give you cancer and then all that hard work goes down the drain Because then you have to go through chemo. The risks far outweigh the benefits but I guess we can play roulette with this. He said ""I'll be doing back"" Beautiful. Bro. Best comment in a long while. Love you. Not really how going AWOL works, esp if you don't want to get caught I’ll give him credit the second Amazon workers get fair treatment. See you never! bruh, 99% of people being told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps haven't been lent 30k by their parents let alone 300k You are high af if you don’t think 300k is a lot to start an online bookstore 300K is way more than enough money to set up a website and a server, wait for an order to come through and drop-ship it. The largest expense there would've been his food budget while sitting at his computer setting up all the orders. Hell, I can start an online business with 1K if I really wanted to. And no, I don't want to nor ever will because I don't have that kind of patience. And 300K in 1994 equates to about 600K today. I give him credit for creating an empire worth billions, but it's not like his seed money was something to scoff at. Honestly, there's no point arguing with the hive mind. People outside this small corner of the internet - or shit, anyone who runs a business sees & agrees that 300k is not a large loan to start a business with, and to turn it into what it is today is beyond extraordinary. Yeah lol opening up a restaurant or a nail salon can cost $300k. Millions of Americans start businesses with loans that big, but how many become billionaires? They got lucky every step of the way, but they also had excellent vision and worked their asses off. It takes both. You could give these people 3 mil and they’d be broke in 24 months. it's unfair on all the people who don't have parents willing to do that. why should birth lottery decide our lives more than it has to? this is fixable by setting a better baseline safety net ask any great tight rope walker how they got where they are today, every single one had a safety net for a vast majority of their training. yet we expect people to become great at other things without a safety net. missing the point entirely. Changing the subject does make your argument more Relevant. What they did after with nice big push is not the point of this article. Slightly harder to become a millionaire/billionaire when you have to start off flipping burgers and spending a lot of your money each month just surviving. Pretending that beginner capital isn't a key factor in your likelihood of success is idiotic. How many people do you know can drop everything in their lives, quit their jobs, and devote it all to their ""dream"" because they aren't worried about bills? Just do a modicum of research my dude. Read the Jeremy Arnold response and any of his articles on the subject: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Elon-Musks-family-got-their-wealth-from-apartheid-emerald-mining?share=1 Maybe look more into the [facts](https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-apartheid-emerald-mine-myth-debunked/) than the rumors that keep being spread around. Do you have source for those quotes? ""elon musk trouble closing safe"" didn't give me much So it's a fuckload easier to springboard out and take risks when you're playing with a million dollars money with zero strings attached, and your fallback is a fucking walstreet broker career after you went to fucking princeton with zero debt. jesus fucking christ it's like you people are purposefully obtuse. Don't really know what you are arguing; these men can't be self-made (thus perpetuating the myth of self-made men) while also having the credit to their ""achievements"" (really the work of people they exploit) from other people. Having large investments and connections from family gives someone a large leg-up on success that others don't get. While this isn't a bad thing on its surface, this worship of individuals who continue to do harm to the environment and to other human beings is problematic and should be dispelled when it can be. The investment definitely helped though. Perhaps lots of people have great ideas but not the initial capital R/whoosh. There are literally millions of people smarter than bill gates. Billions who work harder than he does or ever did. Gates invented nothing. Everything he is came from mommy and daddys connections and money. ""Super genius""? Fucking. LoL. No. Gates was and is a member of the lucky sperm club. Nothing more. >basically a supergenius that was too smart for Harvard What drugs are you on, because I want some. Bill was just a guy with zero qualms about getting his hands dirty from being a ruthless son-of-a-bitch, much like Steve Jobs. He wasn't some code savant or business god, he was just a cutthroat businessman who made smart moves. Imagine if everyone had rich powerful parents though. How many people is the world sleeping on? He's also manipulated alcohol content legislation to raise the cost of entry into the industry, so that's nice There was never any money in selling books though. Amazon didn't start turning a profit until AWS launched Just slaughter a buncha natives and raize their villages, it’s cool bro Protip: Then don't. Nah fair just missed me on it lol You gotta use the /s mate even if you think it's obvious. I also learned this the hard way. Is Cancer and AIDs still a thing? What about the War on Drugs/Terror? Homelessness? Hungry Children? Battered Women? Abused animals? Rich people sink billions every year into those causes and yet they are still a major problem. If throwing money doesnt work, why are you praising a guy for throwing money? > It’s almost like the issues you’re talking about don’t have direct solutions It’s almost like the issues we’re talking about don’t get direct solutions. example: The solution to the housing problem isn't to pay landlords the high-ass rents they are charging. it's to build housing, lots and lots of high density housing. That absolutely could happen with resources from those billions, that absolutely will never happen cause it will hurt landlords by dropping rents. so if I rob you and send it to poorer people its ok then? False equivalency. A billionaires dirt is way dirtier than regular people. You don't become a billionaire without exploiting or destroying several thousand people. Whether you taking over their business, destroying them in the stock market because you have a team of researchers, or destorying their bodies working in your factories for shit wage. No such thing as an ethical billionaire. Yea but OC was implying they didn’t “You can either be pretty honest like Warren Buffet or a monster pos like Jeff Bezos. Sadly it is more likly for an evil man like Bezos to become a billionaire than the likes of Warren Buffet.” It’s literally publicly available information. There are absolutely people who think all it takes is hard work. I worked with a ton of them, when I was in manufacturing. Most hard right leaning people make the assumption that all you have to do to succeed is work hard. They just ""don't feel like putting in that much work"". Most successful people I know am have failed way more than others. They just keep at it. Luck isn’t much of factor. Round IS a shape! You’re just a bootlicker with all your logic and facts. /s He works a 177 billion times harder than me. I worked for Saudi Aramco, Exxon, and Halliburton. Sorry. Does not apply here. And was Senior managment at all of them. I never implied legality defines ethics. My feelings aren't hurt. As I said, I find it funny how simply acting in your own interest is being cold blooded and ruthless. Nothing Bezos or Buffet has ever done measures up to that description. But that doesn't matter, because those words have just become synonymous with extreme wealth and success to most people. No further analysis needed. Sometimes great performers don’t make great managers… You're welcome! https://youtu.be/79DijItQXMM I'm also glad you have such confidence in the idea. I believe in it too. He could use his voice to encourage more workplace democracy. It's not that difficult. Like how he speaks out about other stuff. He could so make a conscious choice to share his share with his workers, and only take 2 shares of the profit like a proper pirate captain. Nothing happens over night. As a 91 year old man? Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? Lmao yes I do expect him to give it up. Dude doesn't use and doesn't need his money. Give it up. No I’m not, I worked hard as an engineer in Oil field. I’m not twisting this, you are. Pretending like these 4 weren’t born on third and had every fucking opportunity given to them is laughable. They had that from the get, resources that the common American can only dream of. And by the measure of an American Soldier and Oil worker, these are lazy fucks. In America it's a 40 hour 9-5. How is it defined, then? Whether or not you succeed? If you don't succeed, clearly you aren't working hard enough? No, Im very successful, Im retired at 42. One mother and 5 siblings. Joined the army at 17 to support my family. Made my retirement by sacrificing and hard work in Saudi Arabia to North Dakota. These fucks didn’t work hard. They had INCREDIBLE advantages, and are terrible examples of men and leadership in our society. We shouldn’t be holding them up. We should be understanding how so few hoarded so much resources while the rest of us make our own way. I dispute that they actually worked hard. I don’t agree, that by modern measures these guys define a hard working person. Nope. Naw a Surgeon is a pretty good example of crazy boards residency and education. Of which none of these parasites have ever come close to doing. Lots of calories burnt getting this done. I have two medical Doctors in my family. I concur that’s a hard work job. A bakers son from Stockton, damn. Now that’s a guy who made it. Well check out the comments. Most of these boot lickers still say Buffet “worked hard”. Even after he said “Not Really.” himself? Your a moron, Buffet literally says he didn’t work hard. Another fucking boot licker. https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-key-difference-success.html I dont cry from making true statements. No, they are shitty people. If you saw a man at a table, and his table was piled with more food than he could ever eat, and he was sitting, watching people arpund him starve, and that man refused to share out the food he had hoarded... No one would argue that man is a piece of shit. But for some reason when it's money, suddenly its okay to be a hoarding piece of shit. How to say ""I don't know what a capitalist is"" without actually using those words. The capitalist publishing industry which *employs* King by giving him an advance is the answer, btw. unless your saying king owns harpercollins... in which case he would be self publishing? I’ve done cocaine before, I never had that urge 😅 Notch from Minecraft and George Lucas are also self-made billionaires. Yeah what I'm saying is probably 99% of people who want to start a company can't get a loan. How? [deleted] It was in Zambia and around when Musk became an adult already; the family was rich but not super wealthy. Labor in the mine was also likely terribly treated but not under apartheid conditions. all I'm saying is that the user will keep posting if people keep upvoting https://i.imgur.com/KrwA19h.jpeg *** ^(I am a bot! Visit) [^(r/InfinityBots)](https://reddit.com/r/InfinityBots) ^(to send your feedback!) Warren buffet annual salary is 100,000 most of his wealth comes from selling/buying stocks. > It's often becomes a negative sum game, tbh. no? The GDP has pretty consistently increased by 2% per year every year since the industrial revolution. Even the *deeply* flawed parts of our society are still considerably better off than they were at almost any time in human history. You wanna see what regression *actually* looks like? Just look at medieval Europe. Wars, famine, and even religious persecution can almost entirely be traced to the Malthusian Trap. A ""negative sum game"" means a *lot* of people are starving. Nope its not finite. What do you think inflation is? Money isn't zero sum and you're talking out of your ass. hahaha you're such a dickhead. Resources on earth may be finite but our resource extraction is not ""complete,"" so it's not correct to treat the global economy as some kind of closed system. Even if it was, you'd only be right if economies simply shuttled around a fixed number of goods that had some god-given cosmic intrinsic value that could be written down in a real number of dollars... but that's not what we're doing here. Value itself is not zero sum because it has no fixed intrinsic reality, but fluctuates based on a host of different factors. Currency is just a plastic tool for roughly representing that even more plastic value ascribed to things. Tbh it's hard to see what you're on about. Capitalism is better criticized for holding it's \*non\* -zero-sum nature as a core tenet; it depends for its life on the possibility of eternal growth. no interest in even trying to reason or debate these idiots That's not what Picketty says, at least in his first book (I haven't gotten to Idealogy yet). His thesis is that when the rate of return on capital is larger than the rate of return on labor wealth inequality results. He even says that wealth inequality in and of itself isn't a necessarily bad thing, it's that when it grows to big to be economically or socially sustainable that trouble occurs. ...doesn't make the economy a zero sum game. Irrelevant Yeah I hate to be the one to shatter your weird fantasy. But the fact one guy had a lot of money did not in fact cause the exponential growth of the world economy. By that logic Mansa Musa should’ve put us into the space age. Congrats, you've just made a Historical Fallacy! Because something has occured one way does not indicate that it necessarily must occur that way. Which is more likely? A: the massive economic expansion of the last couple of centuries resulted from individuals amassing personal wealth. Or B: the massive economic expansion of the last couple of centuries enabled individuals to amass personal wealth. See, that's a trick question. The existence of billionaires during this growth period does not on its own suggest either. All it indicates is that they are not mutually exclusive, both can exist simultaneously. When someone says something like ""billionaires impede growth,"" Rockefeller is not a counter example. He could actually be used as an example of restricting comparatively greater growth without him. You can certainly make arguments against that, but just pointing out the existence of Rockefeller and modern technology is not an actual rebuttal. It'll definitely convince some people, but with rhetoric not reason. Wow you showed me.....your ignorance Hey an insult! How original and demonstrative of your thinking [deleted] Speculation is not imagination, is this supposed to be a gotcha comment? \*or, darn text to speech! Sometimes things move in one direction, sometimes the other. That it is shrinking doesn’t mean it isn’t still the best system. You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I don’t know man. Measuring their (wealth edit: class) when they die may not be a good indication, as plenty of people go from middle class back to technically poor in their old age. If you look at mobility in general, it hasn’t really changed much the last 50 years, according to that huge Harvard/Berkeley study a few years back. Some rich people are even richer, but since the “cake” is far bigger still, everybody wins. Most immigrants now are actually upper middle class Chinese, south East Asians and Indians. You are obviously projecting your world view on everyone else. I somewhat agree with you honestly, but I think your opinion excludes willpower and agency. I think your syllogism is partially true, occasionally, at best. [deleted] To be fair, you don’t know if you do. Nobody does. A couple million of dollars = you are way better off then the average person. Ergo you are wealthy based on statistics. Its also easier to get richer if you know what to do with your couple of millions of dollars that you have. Happy to hear that, good luck. Cheers to capitalism I don't think rent will ever be free. Unless your on welfare and government assistance My favorite failed invention that turned into something else is peanut butter. Man was trying to make glue and made peanut butter by accident. Lol But there are also more stressors placed on black men, which inevitably lead to more crime. It would be extremely reductionist to think otherwise. Having options and various prospects available, understandably act as a deterrent from criminal acts, and as black Americans have historically been systematically denied options, resulting in significantly less options than white people and other minorities, there is understandably more crime. That’s how you fix the problem. We have BEEN flooding black populated areas with law enforcement for decades but that obviously hasn’t been working. Unless you have some magical suggestion for how to fix this? And tf do you mean by “excusing this”? Black people get more time for the same crimes as their white counterparts. And if you want to talk about how run down blue states are, you’ll also have to bring up that the states that rank the lowest in education, quality of life, etc, are majority red states. Edit: and the comment you’re responding to stated that red lining is still happening today, so these problems you state happened a long time ago, still persist. based But it’s not 100 years ago. Civil Rights Act of 1964. And things didn’t just change like the flip of a switch. Generational wealth matters, and that’s what the OP’s post demonstrates. Bill Gates was born in 1955, so his parents (and the parents of everyone listed on the post), will have made much of their money during segregation/apartheid. POC parents didn’t have those same opportunities. The man who stalked and shot Treyvon Martin to death wasn’t convicted, and Treyvon Martin was literally just an unarmed kid. More convictions of poor people and PoC don’t imply more crime. It just implies they had worse lawyers, and potentially a biased jury [removed] https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/ny-state-of-politics/2021/03/18/report-finds-racial-disparities-in-marijuana-arrests Which party do police unions typically support? Which party (barely) supports BLM? And yeh you're right. Neoliberalism will not get us out of this mess. It's just slapping a bandaid on the wound. But telling those suffering to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps sure as shit won't do anything. Also u wanna talk about how Wells Fargo, the 4th largest bank, STILL continues to racially discriminate? ""t you have to be from a rich family in order to become rich.""Didn't say that. This post is about the mega-billionaires like Musk/Bezos etc.... of which how many are black? The richest black person has like 1/10th the wealth of the 5 richest white person. Anyway... there were free/wealthy black people even *during* slavery, and there's a whole continent of Africa that has plenty of wealth. The existence of black rich people does not mean that it's not astronomically more difficult to become rich when your parents were/are oppressed. ​ >""Does being rich make it easier? Yes"" That's the only point I was making, not that becoming wealthy from being not-wealthy is *impossible.* You can immigrate to a 1st world country You can want better without telling other people that their views are silly, especially when your view comes off as condescending, ungrounded and “silly “ That’s quite a reach. That’s like saying anyone that has ever invested in Amazon, either personally or through their 401k would be a Nazi Supporter. As well as anyone who currently uses Amazon or is a Prime member would be an extremist SS Nazi fanatic. Network. The degree and skills can only get you so far. Please for your sake you just gotta reach out to people that have any kind of connection to you. Go onto LinkedIn and search for XYZ investment banking company + the school you went to. Itll show you all the people working there that also graduated from your school. Youll still only have maybe about a 5-20% response rate and an even smaller chance of making an actual connection. But fuck you gotta meet people to get your foot in the door. You’re missing the other privilege, connections. Big American energy. There are other countries where higher education is accessible my guy. My friend graduated from Harvard and still needed his parent's help landing their first job... Implying ""its on them"" is such an easy copout argument when you willfully ignore there are significant economical barriers to the ""higher paying"" educational ""options"" such as being a Lawyer that your argument doesn't really hold up. Not everyone wants to face that burden financially nor possess the other various environmental factors to be able to pursue it in the first place. My argument still stands. What is ""Big Money?"" $1 million? $1 billion? There can't be a cutoff point because the more money you have the more money you make. If you started from nothing and made $500,000, getting to a million is now significantly easier than it was when you started. From there 5 million is easier, 10 million, 20, etc. I mean yeah, becoming a billionaire is next to impossible, so it makes sense that most of them had some kind of help along the way, but it's not a requirement. Look at Oprah or Howard Schultz. Oprah is pretty much as self made as it gets. But honestly who cares? The rhetoric of this thread is poisonous. What does it do other than stop people from trying to improve their own situation? What is the end goal here? It's still insanely possible to improve your situation enough to be semi wealthy and live a comfortable life. You don't have to be one of the most successful business people in all of human history for that to be true. >Drawing on Centers for Disease Control data, Sports Illustrated‘s Pablo Torre estimated that no more than 70 American men are between the ages of 20 and 40 and at least 7 feet tall....it’s a staggering 17% for someone 7 feet or taller So 12 people... It seems like being 7' tall leaves you at a pretty high risk for being super awkward and unstable, I guess that's the other 83% of them. I think I'd rather be short with a longer lifespan and the ability to walk through doorways and ride in airplanes than hope to be 1 of 12 who is both tall and coordinated. [deleted] More things doesn't mean more value or comfort or happiness. It can help, but that's it. Also we've had rudimentary plumbing and heating and cooling for potentially thousands of years...let alone candles lmao Also death rates being so obscenely high in the past have more to do with war, pandemics, infant care, etc. Ie if you live past 25 and left the military you weren't still 50x more likely to die at 30 then today, you were likely good then, just as now. One thing I will give you no matter what is dental care. Holy shit not even that long ago people just lived with crippling pain with no cure in sight. In the US, about 20% of households have 500k net worth or more. I recommend you use that safety harness if you're gonna continue with the gymnastics [deleted] Yup that's one of the reasons going to an ivy league school is so useful. Sure the education is good, but it's the people you become friends with that's more important. [removed] Ok but the same could be said for the majority of people in 1st world countries. No but it excellently illustrates that to become a billionaire (excluding inheritance) you do necessarily have to work hard. Sure part of it is luck, but you can be the luckiest son of a bitch alive, not work at all, and still be a poor bum. Gotta bust your ass to make it, doesn't mean that everyone who does will. I gave multiple examples of people that had none of what you stated before becoming billionaires. There are even better examples in another comment I left with people who were much more poor and even homeless originally. There are studies that say all kinds of things, that doesn’t mean anyone can’t become a billionaire. I'm defending reality against aggressive ignorance lmao You sound like you need to stop crying about other people and work on yourself [deleted] Ask yourself, where are the native Indians? That didn't answer my question. Those people take ""if you're not with me you're against me"" to the extremes and then take any questioning or minor sympathy to other opinions as a personal attack. Honestly, I feel bad for all the members of that sub, must be a miserable existence. $300k is a minimum to maintain a modest lifestyle into retirement. So success would be higher IMO. $300k is a minimum to maintain a modest lifestyle into retirement. So success would be higher IMO. Depends on age You got it backwards. Step father at a major publicly traded company and grandfather privvy to high level national defense info made him successful on wall street. I guess it's one of those things then. We're both right, just that we're talking about different aspects. Bezos had the drive. But he wouldn't have been able to do it all if he was a homeless fella with no family. He wouldn't have been able to do it if his family didn't have money to throw. Just last week, I had to use the services of a start up that's now a unicorn when I remembered that I had the exact same idea about 15 years ago back in college. I had the biz plan worked it out with a friend and of us knew it could work, but neither of us had the money nor the contacts to get started. We were both in a mediocre college and had parents struggling to make ends meet. Would we have hit it big? No idea. Just saying that money makes things easier. Not saying Bezos isn't uniquely brilliant Ummm, they clearly do understand that... Unfortunately, most Americans don’t save nearly enough for retirement. This is what people aren’t getting; growing up in a family structure to fall back on, parents that can support themselves and you, is a huge luxury. It allows you to take larger risks because you have a safety net, and it allows you take more educated risks because you grew up with a good example. If your mom has to sell her house to loan you that money, she can’t loan you that money my man So what did you do with your parents $300k loan? Having $300k in retirement and being in a position to loan $300k are two separate positions to be in. Bezos parents were hardly middle class at the time of giving him the loan. Lol, that may have been how pornhub started? Conservatives exist all around the world. The hint is your disdain for the common person and your insulting belief that ""talent"" sets the wealthy apart and makes them better than everyone else. Did your dad own an investment firm though? r/selfawarewolves I mean Bill and Warrens are in the graphic. “The connection” as if it is one person. You clearly don’t understand what they mean by “connections” That's mostly fair I think. I think normal folks woukd have busted before they got that far, just not the resources and pockets. Even with the prior success. Lol, yeah poor elon the son of millionare immigrants. Lolol >That's extremely minor compared to the others no? Not sure why we’re comparing. >And considering he comes from a broken home, and is an immigrant (which statistically are both huge disadvantages) makes him far more ""self made"" than the other three. He came from a “broken home” where he grew up wealthy and then immigrated to Canada. >What does constitute self made if this doesnt? Someone who doesn’t grow up wealthy and with their father investing in their business. Its also pretty hard to make a mine profitable, theres lots of mines that go belly up due to hidden fees and a bunch of other stuff, even if your given a mine theres no grantee its going to turn a profit > Thats still nothing for what he built himself. If he didn’t have it, it’s likely he’s nothing close to how successful he is. So it’s very significant. >There is nothing to take away from what he did. I’m not sure why you’re viewing it as trying to “take away” something. From his family Buffet started his business with a $25 pinball machine You could buy a used shovel and start digging a hole for money. My point is the people green lighting and filtering through proposals were his parents. > Started Amazon with $300,000 … from his parents If you think it’s equally as hard to get a $300,000 loan as a brand new businessman from an impartial bank as it is your parents, you’re kidding yourself. That isn't a livable wage at all. Also, consider that most employees are only allowed to work part time and any fte are treated to insane expectations. This isn't the win you think it is. If it weren't for the minimum wage or societal pressures, he would pay his workers pennies. Very cool guy. Yep, again, wages where you can only afford housing and food [deleted] Lol is this why people dislike Musk? Weakest arguments I’ve ever seen Grow up dude > rightfully told him his tiny submarine idea would not work during a rescue mission. There is more to that story then that, but he shouldnt have called him a pedo regardless. That article for point 5 is weird. They keep calling him a stalker, deranged, obsessive... but I've been in similarly stupid twitter/reddit arguments before. Were they smart or a good use of my time? Nah. Was I an obsessive deranged stalker? I sure hope not. And now he controls twitter! Great Unions are no good Mistreatment?? Ummm quit. (Oh they don’t want to). Tesla's ratings on [Glassdoor.com](https://Glassdoor.com) must be terrible. Lets go look that up... So he called a guy ""pedo"" in a fit of pique. I mean, it is not good, but it isn't really that big of a deal. While e.g. the Koch brothers fossil fuel empire are doing everything they can to stop the combat against global warming. I am not saying that there is no good reasons to hate Musk. But your reason is not a good reason. That’s what I took it as Even if he owned a whole mine…how does that give Elon Musk the intelligence and know how to create Zip2? It just doesn’t correlate. >99.99 percent of people who get an education go into debt to do so Source? There’s no nobility in poverty. [deleted] you think its okay to steal peoples money? His father invested 28k to Musk and his brother.. which is admittedly a lot of money but at the same time that’s basically helping with the downpayment on a house Local purchasing power. Only thing that matters with money. No one in San Francisco goes ""thank God I make 6 dollars an hour, that's more than everyone in Algeria! I'm rich!"". Local purchasing power. Go back to Facebook lmfao. What happened to natural selection. [deleted] > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. [deleted] [deleted] Sure he worked. But did he work hard enough to justify an average salary of $6,250,000,000 since he turned 18? Is that even possible? No, obviously not. Basically diminishing marginal utility Well, You generally have to pay back loans on a fairly strict time table and only get large loans if you can actually convince the banks that you'll be able to pay it back. Inherited money is usually gifted with no/minimal strings attached. You can't just walk down to the bank on your 18th birthday and get a small loan of 300k dollars to start an entire business with no history. Every single wealthy person has gotten ""seed capitol"". By your idea every one is self made. I would fall into that first group. He’s certainly an incredibly savvy and successful businessman. He deserves a ton of credit for that. But he didn’t do it himself. Because that money is not coming from yourself That’s fair. Given was probably not the right word. Then almost everyone is broke. Because everything is luck. The universe is luck. How many future rich people will die in car wrecks tomorrow? How many possible future rich people are children that will die from cancer this year? Not being facetious. No, but if I had 300k it would be very easy to become one in a few months-1 year. Gullible? It's absolutely true. You'd have to be exceedingly lucky but it can happen. If the first quarter a mile is a pit of lava, it matters a lot more. And to compare the first million to the last... well, even you're not stupid enough to pretend to be thar bad faith. both sides are so far up their own asses they cant see they are basically doing the same thing, The right says the left shouldn't be allowed to push their message in movies and tv shows, mean while the left says the right shouldn't be allowed to posts their message on twitter. they've basically both gone so far to the extremes that they have practically switched sides. well any luck on finding a source for the whole blood diamond emerald mine? I’m assuming you don’t understand how the history of colonialism shapes nations either huh? > Errol Musk said, according to Business Insider. I wonder why don’t you link original Business Insider article referenced there? https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 “Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in **Zambia** — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it” So he didn’t get any money from apartheid. What country was it in, and what country does this picture say it was in? It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-birthday-ceo-tesla-b1874017.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) Because I respect success, and when I am at work I often think ""What would Elon do?,"" and do that. It's led to some huge wins. From Wikiperida: > Aware that it would be easier to enter the United States from Canada, Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother. While awaiting the documentation, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months; *this allowed him to avoid mandatory service in the South African military*. Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989, and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber-mill. Cited source on Wikipedia for this information is ""Vance, Ashlee (2015). Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers. ISBN 978-0-06-230123-9."" The [SADF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Defence_Force) were still engaged in [""The South African Border War""](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Border_War) when Musk would have been conscripted, and the conflict escalated tensions within the country: > White South African society lived in almost complete ignorance about the scale of the war and the SADF’s strategies. Most conscripts said little about what they experienced. This was partly because they had to sign the Official Secrets Act upon joining. It was also the result of the “willed ignorance” of most white South Africans and the draconian censorship laws of the time. > In the mid-1980s, anti-apartheid resistance within South Africa intensified and SADF soldiers were deployed domestically. Suddenly, young white men were being called on to police fellow citizens by patrolling the racially defined borders between segregated communities. The “Border War” had come home. > The unsustainable nature of the morally and economically bankrupt apartheid system became increasingly evident, even to apartheid’s leaders who initiated discussions with the then banned African National Congress (ANC) during this time. Cited source is ""https://theconversation.com/the-lingering-unspoken-pain-of-white-youth-who-fought-for-apartheid-46218"" Did you do the math or are you just making a statement? [deleted] Communism is when no iPhone You do realise that the Internet had all the same functionality before AWS right? People and enterprises just had to run their own servers and have their own infrastructure. I love Amazon but some of the stories have shaken my love for them. TIL Amazon == Society There are other places to shop. If you want to have principles, that's great, but at least attempt to stick to them and don't excuse it away by saying it's impossible to do because of ""the way things are"". You have options, they might just not be as easy... it's almost like these companies have provided goods and services that make life better/cheaper for people and there is some kind of value in that. Amazing... I'm pretty sure Richard Stallman isn't going to start using Windows or macOS just because that's what was available at his local Best Buy or slightly less annoying to use. I once saw an interview with him that would read webpages by using curl and redirecting the output to his email to avoid trackers and stuff. That's annoying as hell, but he sticks to his ideals. I agree that the personal computer has had a dramatic positive impact on the world and wealth of millions of people, one could argue things would have been better of Microsoft operated differently. Microsoft used anti-competitive behaviors to stifle innovation and snuff out some great companies that had good ideas that would have been useful to the industry as a whole to help in move forward. While you can ague that having one company do it all, and thus having an industry standard for documents with something like .doc, it makes it difficult or impassive for any new players to enter the market and for real progress to happen. At best, you can hope someone gets enough traction for Microsoft to rip them off. Microsoft's dominance in the browser space held the web back for a long time, because IE didn't use web standards. I don't disagree that the personal computer, and computers in general have done more for the world than his charity, but I'm also not going to say he was a saint as a CEO. He was pretty ruthless in his youth. I'm glad we've got to see his second act. He's mellowed out a lot. Yeah. She's a billionaire and reddit likes her. I was just answering the question, not trying to say anything more than that. She’s not given enough though. And she’s still a billionaire/millionaire so she’s a piece of shit in my eyes. A lot of abuse in amazon warehouses was still happening while she was still married with bezos. There’s blood on her hands and giving away money doesn’t fix that. No, she played a hugely pivotal role in the success of amazon through her work at the company. If you agree at all with the concept that jeff deserves the money he has, then she deserves what she got out of the divorce, too. She had just as much impact on the company as jeff did. [deleted] The lottery exists, so faithful, not delusional. Both examples you listed are taxes the *consumer* or *individual* pays... neither of those taxes are paid by the employer. Bernie life in your mind rent free that much? Lol I haven’t thought of Bernie in years brother. Good shot at a “gotcha” though. [deleted] Bro what are you even attempting to say in the first part of that comment lol. If you want to support US space development, fund NASA. Y’all get so upset when people don’t like musky you just start spitting out random shit lol. https://www.forbes.com/sites/debgordon/2021/10/13/50-of-americans-now-carry-medical-debt-a-new-chronic-condition-for-millions/ Seems likes it's a problem across the country. Ik this is an economics sub but try looking at the situation with some empathy >if you lose your job >you can get insurance through the Affordable Care Act And how are we going to pay for that insurance, Ben? Sell our houses to fucking Aquaman? Don't you delete your comments and ignore your 18 year old daughter? Omg Elon musk never lived in poverty 😂 words no longer have any meaning I swear. So you’re buying his revisionist history then lol That's right, here's the primary source: https://web.archive.org/web/20211122143742/https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2 Academics say it, because in an academic setting it is better to cite a primary source rather than a secondary source or an aggregator. This is Reddit though. Not a school essay or a peer-reviewed paper. I guess you heard teachers say ""don't cite Wikipedia"" but never bothered to learn why. Wikipedia says not to use Wikipedia as a primary source. Boomers said that 20 years ago Lmao Need help moving those goal posts? The rich love to mythologize about their tough upbringings. I’m not that much of a mark, though. No, that was an investment from one of their step fathers. “Everyone who disagrees with me is a shill” SNORE You are scum. buddy sucking off billionaires. You know you’re not one of them right? Lol Nobody deserves billions. Sexist scum. Oprah Winfrey was born dirt poor in Mississippi. Now that’s a self-made wealthy person. Zambia is in South Africa, but is not in the country of South Africa. Like if Egypt changed their name to North Africa, Morocco would still be in North Africa even if they weren't in the country of North Africa. I’m going to say, ‘ish’ to that. Below, by other commenters, are arguments that many billionaires have produced products of immense value which have raised the living standards dramatically. I would contend that in some cases, that’s a net positive for the total population. But have working class people and even middle class professionals been exploited? Totally. 100%. I think we have some unfortunate and subpar legal protections for workers in most countries. That definitely makes it easier to exploit workers or at least makes the minimum standard inherently exploitative or unfair. However, exploiting workers doesn’t make you a billionaire; it’s not like cheat codes and you still have to earn it. Give a man a few million and the current legal framework, and the odds of him becoming a billionaire aren’t good at all. Whatever we may say about billionaires, I struggle to think of one who hasn’t earned it (and as far as I know, nobody has yet been given a billion by inheritance or other circumstances). All these computer billionaires invented things of immense value. Gates: Windows. Bezos: physical and computer infrastructure systems. The list goes on and on. I'm sure they exploited people, but it's not a principal reason they are rich. They are rich principally because they made a thing of value https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/billionaire-news/elon-musk-just-ended-john-d-rockefellers-80-year-reign-as-the-richest-person-in-history/?amp=1 going to delete that comment now or? He’s literally the richest person there has ever been. Todays billionaires make the Rockefeller’s look poor by comparison, and they hardly even participate in philanthropy while the ‘Robber barons’ built half the country. You’re mathematically wrong, but sure keep sucking emerald boys little dickie for no reason. So butthurt you went through my comment history? Clearly I am now on the road to success because I’m currently living rent-free in your head. I’ll be sure put the money I save on rent in a savings account. > your contribution to this response is has made everyone involved in this thread dumber “Is has,” huh? You has outed ourself as a dipshit. Can I just ask, genuinely, why are you so invested in defending Elon Musk? Like, regardless of which side is true -- either he started off rich or he started off poor, he's rich af now. It makes sense why people would dislike him for being a billionaire given the state of the world (regardless of how he started out). But to vehemently defend him in multiple comment chains is kinda really weird. Keep moving those goalposts. The claim being responded to was: >For example Elon's parents did not ""own"" an emarld mine nothing to do with apartheid. Also Zambia didn't do away with Apartheid until the 90's. Your own source says the Musks held ownership in the 80's. So maybe move those goal posts further out Serious question though: why do you defend these greedy pigs so much? Do you oink or are you misled? For starters, being rich is lame. investing and business circles contain some of the most vile and violently immoral people alive so I don’t place too much stock in anyone or anything they applaud. personally. >in investing/business circles, the rich are applauded. Most millionaires know that it takes a lot of help and luck to become so wealthy. It's only the small fish and wannabe rich that always applaud and defend the rich for their hard work. >why do you think rich people shouldn’t be celebrated ? That's not how this works. Not other's job to prove a negative. You provide why you believe they should be praised. Applauded? You seem to confuse that with recognized. [deleted] Because they are the product of a confluence of circumstances that cannot be knowingly replicated. All claims are bullshit until proven otherwise. It's called ""skepticism"". Try it some time. Did I say ""most billionaires come from poor families""? No, I didn't that's called learning how to fucking read. Try it some time. Am I? 🤔 [deleted] People can fuck up playing a stacked deck, sure but its better to have one than not. To get to that point of wealth means there are a great number of barriers need to be passed (especially ethical ones, which is why most people say those who attain such wealth had to step on a great many toes to get where they are). Like that ""comparatively small investment"" is only a small part of their success and one would argue the connections in part due to their families status also plays a role in their success. The money helps but its not hard to see that many ""self made"" success isn't only on them but a multitude of other things. Just not a fan of this dumb fucking worship of these ""self made"" men. Or just learn from others. Books, mentors, courses, on and on. Or even a low-cost, low-overhead “training“ business. I used to sell a lot online- dirt cheap. Dropping more money than you have into a business idea without laying the groundwork is simply inviting failure. I completely agree, but most of reddit apparently just likes to downplay any effort made if they did receive help in the beginning, which doesn't make sense to me. I agree that it gives you more chances and I don't think that's a bad thing, but apparently a great part of reddit does The point was Reddit, generally speaking likes to denounce all billionaires as evil people and give the impression that successful people are only success due to luck and privilege. Obviously I am not speaking on every commenter but it’s definitive general sentiment I get from it, but if they were given that same privilege as those in the picture they would almost undoubtedly fail miserably. It’s an instance of Reddit complaining and not recognizing and absurd amount of ingenuity, time, effort, and series of correct and intelligent decision making it takes to become those people. It wouldn’t be worth $20b but doing some scratch pad math on the estate it’s actually obvious to see it would be worth more if he had just put it in an index and not fucked with it. Interesting how I never heard about that before now. Depreciating assets and 1031 exchanges for life. Leave behind a large tax bill with a huge fortune 6 in his core businesses Getting warmer…. Yes they do. And that's a problem. He talked about it in a PBS Newshour video. It's easy to find but I particularly enjoy [this breakdown](https://youtu.be/79ExQWKb2vA) of it People definitely lose money in the stock market, but if you just stick to ETFs, diversify across different asset classes, and keep a long time horizon (so you don't freak out and sell with the market drops) you will likely do fine. It's when people try and time the market, stock pick their whole portfolio, go all-in on one ""sure thing"", get into day trading, or overdo it on leveraged positions when they don't know what they are doing, that they get into trouble and lose a bunch of money (and lock in those losses). You'd think most people should know better than to get caught up in various schemes by now, but they still get caught, and they will continue to get caught, just as they have for thousands of years. There is never a shortage of people trying to make a quick buck, or people willing to exploit that. One could see the whole Gamestop thing that way. Someone wanted to do a short squeeze, but didn't have enough on their own, so they basically crowdsourced it via Reddit. The day after that big crash I saw a lot of comments from people who said they lost all the money they had saved for school and were completely fucked. They were the ones left holding the bag and used by those who wanted to do the squeeze. It was clear as day to me, but if I brought it up people would just tell me off and say I was dumb. Warren Buffett has a quote that goes something like, ""only a fool risks what he has and needs for something he doesn't have and doesn't need."" While I'd prefer to have $10M right now, I don't need $10M right now... hell, even if I got it, I don't think my life would dramatically change. I likely keep my same house, same car, etc. Hell, I might even keep working for a while just for something to do (but of course the feeling about work changes when you know you don't need it). >Of course. We all had parents who taught us a good work ethic Hmmm yea more than that. That is what I meant, no capital = poverty, that's fucking basic knowledge. Any level of working means capital, which can still mean poverty, but no capital always means poverty. [deleted] A) Not a billionaire, at least in GB and depending who you ask, but that's a nitpick B) Some excerpts from Wikipedia about her parents and her life: >Pete's company became part of Rolls-Royce, and he worked his way into management as a chartered engineer. Anne later worked as a science technician. Neither Anne nor Pete attended university. >Rowling sought government assistance and got it (for years) >Her old school friend, Sean Harris, loaned her £600 ($900), which allowed her to move to a flat in Leith,[101] where she finished Philosopher's Stone. >In the summer of 1995, a friend gave her money that allowed her to go off benefits and enrol full-time in college. >Rowling was awarded a writer's grant by the Scottish Arts Council[k] to support her childcare costs and finances before Philosopher's Stone's publication, and to aid in writing the sequel Seems like she had quite a bit of support. Government assistance, her sister letting her live with her, well off parents, several large financial loans from friends, an early inheritance, and more. Sure it wasn't socially the best, but she has all the financial support she could want C) Most of her money comes off the back of amusement parks funded by casinos and Blackstone. I suppose that's better than the literal company town that is Disney. D) completely off topic, but there's a Wikipedia article on the house she lived in from the ages 9-18. I don't know why and it seems weird to me That was a very good pull though, had me worried for a sec Zzzz Because parents remortgaging their homes so that little Sammy can try their hand at a business that, statistically, is unlikely to exist after ten years - *thus making it more likely than not that they'll lose that home* - is a totally sensible thing that any loving family would be willing to do. Jesus fucking Christ, you people are out of your damn minds! [deleted] Because parents remortgaging their homes so that little Sammy can try their hand at a business that, statistically, is unlikely to exist after ten years - *thus making it more likely than not that they'll lose that home* - is a totally sensible thing that any loving family would be willing to do. Jesus fucking Christ, you people are out of your damn minds! If the *median* is $266K then that means, once you account for the money they need to live on for that retirement, only a very small proportion of retirees would have enough to give their kid $300K for a business venture. Think it through. Lmao no they don’t. You should Google median versus average. Literally junior high school level math. They did not have wealthy parents. Not poor, to be sure, but not wealthy. Again, except for Buffett, of whom I know nothing. They are including their stock gains as income, that isn't how it works. Those are unrealized gains. If you start taxes those, or start taxing capital gains at a higher rate, you're not just sucking money from billionaires, that will hurt every single person with a 401K or any type of retirement account... these are normal people. >about half of all Americans don’t own any stock, including in retirement accounts This is a huge problem. Instead of getting upset at the people who understand how assets work, why not do something to help educate and provide easy ways for these people to start investing? They are fighting the wrong problem here. I know plenty of religious people who give 10% to the church come hell or high water. Let's say instead they put that into some kind of investment. Even if someone was was at the poverty line (this is below minimum wage), they would end up with $716k after 40 years (age 20-60) if we use the average return of the S&P. This assumes they never make any more or get any raises. That's a pretty healthy nest egg vs the $0 they likely have. The biggest gains of course come at the end, years 30-40 grow the account by $460k. All of this is with only putting in $54k of actual money. If you go 18-65, 47 years, they would end up with $1.4M. They will likely be working all that time anyway, might as well retire a millionaire. https://www.calculator.net/investment-calculator.html?ctype=endamount&ctargetamountv=1000000&cstartingprinciplev=0&cyearsv=47&cinterestratev=10&ccompound=monthly&ccontributeamountv=113.25&cadditionat1=end&ciadditionat1=monthly&printit=0&x=93&y=25 Oh look. more fucking goal post moving. ""this cake is totally made from scratch and I learned how to bake it on my own\*""(my parents hired a personal home chef to teach me and then they had that chef measure out all the ingredients 10000x, oh and they also hooked me up with all their friends who made sure to make my business successful) LOL fuck off. Sure, but this was a response saying it was built from nothing. It wasn't from nothing, it was from generational wealth. This is where a lot of their arguments about them not being competent falls apart. You give anyone 1 million and tell them to turn it into 50 million. Most, if not all, will fail. The people complaining about others getting head-starts in life or certain privileges are the ones who will constantly fail and not excel because they believe they cannot achieve their goals without being lucky at birth - which is an unchangeable thing. The amount of stories you hear about people winning lotteries and losing it all within a year indicates that it requires some sort of competence to not only to grow your money, but to maintain it. Not many are envious of some random person winning the lottery, however, people are extremely envious of the ones who are competent and hardworking - because it shines a light on how they are not excelling in life. To cope, they discredit their success. They were born into wealth, they got lucky family, etc. I’m also not saying they weren’t lucky, but to act like it’s all luck and that you’d be able to do the same given their advantages is preposterous And being a complete asshole who treats others like shit and not paying your taxes Found the bootlicker. You can tell the youngin's that were fetuses when Amazon was starting. This was during the dot com bubble and mfers were giving out money left and right to try to hit on some internet shit. Investing in online businesses was like the crypto/nft of the 90s. But what you're missing still is that the 300k Bezos got was NOT DEBT, it was a gift. There's a HUGE difference between having $300,000 in start-up capital that's yours free and clear with no obligation to make payments or accrue interest, and a bank loan where you need to make immediate monthly payments and interest is adding up. Many new businesses fail because they just aren't able to make payments to service outstanding loan debt, whereas Bezos could start his business without those worries. That's an enormous factor and I think you're greatly overlooking its importance. Yup. Cornelius Vanderbilt built his wealth. His son doubled it and that was it. [deleted] Yeah man starting with a few million means your self made. Smh. Idk man im pretty progressive and have a solid living and im young. To think i did it all by myself or just with hard work would be a farce. Happenstance and luck have just as much to do with it. For some people who are born rich it makes it that much easier. I was born broke and had to be that much smarter to make things happen. I also couldn't just blow my money on every little thing that popped into my head. Was there luck involved in my success? Absolutely and there still is. You guys are just ignorant. I also still don't think I've made it. But id venture to say my business and portfolio is better than most people I come across. Some people on my field didn't succeed. Because of nothing else other than bad luck. Try again Jimmy. But that’s not what these people above did… they had a few legs up in the race. Connected with industry, capital, influence, etc… they weren’t self made or had to pitch ‘ideas’. I would be interested to see how many examples of multi billionaires were created at a young age in the way you describe. [deleted] Learn to use Google you lazy jackass He is a founder the company wasn’t even 12 months old when he bought 85% of it and didn’t even have a ready design for a single car made Was literally a paper company before he came onboard No it doesn't. Not if you believe context matters. You stated something that is completely parallel to what the person you responded to said. I rather doubt it was a wrong comment, but so be it. Shouldn't that be an indication to you that you should correct yourself? Not just double down and try and challenge a point that the person you are talking to did not make? “Uhh I replied to the wrong thing and didn’t read what I’m replying to but my point made addressing it stands!” Back to the circus with you Again man, you don't understand the simple concept that we can't understand you when you have a cock in your mouth 😫😫😫 Amazing argument! Imagine my shock when a retarded commie can’t even spell “guillotine.” Graduate high school. Get help. I’m rooting for you. The average home in Seattle today is nearly 1 million dollars. So if you were to adjust the value of their previous home (which was above the average price of a home back then), their house would be worth about 1.4 million today. That's on the rich end of the spectrum. > All investments contain risk. Some are more risky than others. The purely economic definition of risk excludes the type of risk that working class people experience. So using it to claim that billionaires take on more risk than workers, is begging the question. I understand that not all businesses make a profit and some even lose money. And I understand that starting a business is hard work. But most people work hard. Without a favorable relationship to power, high-quality education, and existing reserves of capital, your odds of success plummet. Capital accumulation favors the existing aristocracy in the same way that a casino favors the house. That was understood by the aristocrats who instituted capitalism, when feudalism was collapsing. It was designed that way. Except it is. You paid $300k for college? Geez, that’s rough I give literally 0 shits about the new deal nor did I claim it was all handed to him growing up lmfao I don’t understand why y’all are so obsessed with musk that you let yourself believe he’s actually produced anything for the average person Jeff bezos might be a piece of shit, but he *delivered* a service that actually does benefit everyone Good luck with that starlink and Tesla waitlist though, I’m sure you’ll get it at *some* point in the next 10 years How does *commercial space launch* impact the average person? What has effectively been improved by space x beyond millionaires now having another thing to throw money at? I mean technically that's still not millions of lives Wow 2 million teslas since *2008* what a performance! lmfao Three of those people are literally politicians, whose job is to myopically cling to their beliefs, and that's no different on the right than it is on the left. I can't speak to the other two, since I don't know much about Tekei, and this is the first time I've ever heard of Joy Behar. Can you elaborate a bit on them? Some examples of conservative people like the ""left wing"" ones you mentioned here: Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan... Also, Biden is barely left of center. Where I live, he would be considered a conservative. You all post the same “Inside Hook” article that no one gives a shit about, and while Elon is a known liar, even *that* article says they were rich. > However, Errol’s involvement in a lucrative mining operation and Elon having to pull himself up by his bootstraps are not mutually exclusive. As Vance wrote in his book Elon Musk, “The family owned one of the biggest houses in Pretoria thanks to the success of Errol’s engineering business,” a business that included “large projects such as office buildings, retail complexes, residential subdivisions, and an air force base.” Elon even admitted his father is “brilliant at engineering” despite being an overall “terrible human being.” And in an interview with Errol from 2018, British tabloid Mail on Sunday wrote, “Musk senior was a millionaire before the age of 30.” Moreover, that Wiki entry disproves literally nothing from that article. Where’s an actual source? Of course, that is just selection bias towards another extreme. If you won the lottery would you try to grow that money exponentially or would you simply relax and retire? Improve peoples lives? Kid the top 3 wealthiest people in your country have more wealth than the bottom 50% of your entire population. If you think it’s a success that 3 people have the same as 175 MILLION people then you have no clue what improving peoples lives means. ShaoShao is Chinese :) Also this reads like temper tantrum “hnnng you’re such a weeb with a discord and an accurate assessment of US corporate tax structure. Hmmm I stan Elon so much I’ve devoted my entire personality to him, sweaty.” Workers are being paid a fair salary. They aren't working for free. Good points my friend. I'm so triggered you got me No worries mate. Try to not get your info off biased social media memes Well of course, they didn't found the company. If they are dissatisfied with it, they could always leave. Maybe even make a company themselves. Beauty of free market. And no I wouldn't say no to it, no reason I see to do so. I still don't see how this has anything do with your original comment tho. Save before attempting and it's risk free Just quit on your first win. Profit Just take the Luck feat. Only problem is you have to use the luck point before the outcome of the original roll is determined, but you still get to choose which roll you take. Remember that one really annoying elf from the Mournhold expansion of Morrowind? Be him. Less than half, there is 0 too Well no he needs the 300000. Invest in him and he will be. Jeez its not rocket science. 60% of the time it works everytime Disclaimer: this is not financial advice… but like for real. Send it. I actually did this exact thing and made a bit of cash. But everytime I would lose id bet a bit extra next time. I was probably just lucky cause I tried it in vegas and lost money lmao The real way to win doing this is to go in with a MASSIVE amount of money already and start relatively small, increasing the bet amount each time you lose a bet proportionally in such a way a win next bet recoups prior losses and leaves you ahead. Statistically your bound to come out ahead so long as you don' t run out of capital before getting lucky once. Example A walk in with 100 grand bet 1000 to start. Lose 1000, double bet to 2000 lose again, double bet to 4000, lose again, double bet to 8000, lose again, double bet to 16000 , win 1 roll win 16k - 15 k lost = 1k profit. Only way you lose is if you run out of money first. 100% chance they are a WSB mod He was joking, thanks I will buy $300,000 of lottery tickets instead of Vegas. I will save a lot on airplane tickets. $100 on even/odd $100 on red/black. $200 every game because 50/50 + 50/50 = 100/100!! Gamblers hate this one trick (max bet prevents this system from working after so many losses.) Casinos hate it when you do this one stupid trick. Click through 36 ads to find out. Make billions using this one weird trick casinos don't want you to know! [removed] Why would casinos hate this lol They don’t and they can Yep. But that’s an specific inside bet. Not putting it “on red” Shit I was hoping for tea and biscuits. I need an American English translator. OC seven hours from now: https://youtu.be/DKf70Nx9YFk if your a us citizen, foreign banks have special requirements to report to the irs and if they don't the bank risks being sanctioned/cut out of the swift system. As in the government is free to do whatever the fuck they want to you. But elon is buying Twitter so you can type all sorts of stupid shit, that's real freedom baby. LAND OF THE FEE. Free speech means you have the right to say ""no"" before they steal your shit. They're coming for your brain next. *Restrictions Apply To be fair, we are free. And much more freedom than most countries. There's no such thing as full freedom. Only way that happens is if you're okay with murder, rape, theft etc having zero repercussions. But even though we do have more freedom than most countries, we still have less than our major allies do and there's very little we're better at than any of those major allies Freedom isn’t free. No, it cost a hefty fuckin fee Free land* I’m learning. This isn’t how it works in most first world countries I can see why crypto appeals to US residents >see this literal toilet over here? you're better than that! stop complaining!!! Can someone clue me in? I'm dense And the article posted above said it just takes 3 years of inactivity in Delaware. What the actual FUCK?! You mean I have to be even more paranoid and check my accounts even more frequently to make sure they register a login and the state hasn’t stolen my fucking money? Has it been challenged in court? Seems like an unreasonable seizure to me. You can even claim it too. But you claim the value of the property when they took it; you don’t get the appreciation from a stock. This law was passed to prevent time travelers from becoming rich Feels kinda obvious that those laws should say ""X years AFTER THE OWNER'S DEATH"", but I guess that's why I'm not a lawmaker. I feel they should at least wait till you’re dead first… It seems like a wild west rule somehow. Can't they contact the owner to see if he really doesn't want that money? So that Futurama episode was a lie. They do that here,but you can claim it back..What would happen with abandoned bank accounts and share portfolios increasing in value to the point that the liabilities to unknown entities would be crippling to the companies and institutions.Only the government is allowed to have trillions in unfunded liabilities. They are lucky that somebody didn’t take the property over as within the laws of adverse possession. Which is currently legal in many states including California Probably best to directly ask any broker etc that you have accounts with what the applicable rules are, it'd suck to become aware of this issue and then get screwed anyway because you didn't find the correct advice online Just do periodic buys. Like $500 in an etf every quarter. Which is a recommended strategy anyway. Can u enlighten me then? Yup sucks Fair enough. I'd expect the gains in the S&P to make up for complete losses in the others over that period of time, probably a few times over. I have some money in crypto and I think it's interesting, just not where I feel comfortable making big bets. I guess I'd just say not to conflate average prosperity and the stock market. Sadly, stock exchanges don't make life better for the median American. I don't see any more potential upheaval in the next few decades than has existed since its founding. I see less chance they will continue to include any companies that would fail or be negatively Impacted by civil unrest. Still, I understand your concerns. Renting is kind of a necessity, houses are too expensive to take a mortgage on, thus you're often stuck renting a place (for more then your mortgage would be. . .) Houses are bought up by ""investors"" en masse, to hoard and then just rent out to people. A part of the housing crisis is artificial, and people are not choosing to rent, they are forced to. Except the US is not Europe, it is far richer, far less population dense, and far larger. i.e. home ownership We also weren't controlled by kings or religions for ten thousand years either where people are used to paying lords for the right to fucking sleep somewhere on the planet they were born. Renting is only the norm because houses are to expensive and because banks refuses to lend money to people even if their monthly bank payment would be 30% or more lower than their current rent. Not to mention renting being a horrible economic decision since it ends up more expensive than buying and leaves you with nothing. Sadly it is not a choice for most people with huge international investors buying up the housing market and forcing people to rent or be homeless Or maybe, rent seeking behavior should be met with the boot and the hammer, and be left as nothing but a footnote in the annals of history. We'd have to throw out the whole renting lawbook and start again where I live for that to be even remotely viable. Rent goes up every year, you're subject to 3-monthly inspections, you aren't often allowed pets (and having one makes it exponentially harder to find a house), you can barely even hang something on the wall let alone make any modifications to the house, which you wouldn't want to do anyway because long term contracts don't exist and you can get kicked out of the house at the whim of the landlord. As long as houses are seen as a vehicle for profit rather than a human right, the renting class is going to continue to get royally fucked over. I live in Europe you fuck, not everyone on the internet is American. And where I'm from, no, we have a massive culture of home ownership because of British colonisation Problem with rent is it goes up. You buy a house today your mortgage + tax is like the same as your rent. But in 5 years it's still that, and if you rent your rent is now $500 higher. Maintenence costs are massively overblown. > if you don't take time for travel or leisure now join us on earth Thank you, is there somewhere you recommend going for information? It seems like there's so much information out there but not exactly what I'm looking for. If I want to invest in something like S&P for 20+ years, where can I find all I need to know? Oh my risk tolerance is not very high! I don’t go nuts on trendy stocks. A slower burn but less vulnerability. All in all good advice though :) How do I hire all those brilliant people? step 1) get out of debt step 2) park 75% of what you have left in a 50 year or longer annuity step 3) set you and family up in modest properties within the means of your remaining 25% step 4) get a monthly stipend from the annuity step 5) enjoy your life All of this boat-buying, private plane-riding, living like you're Diddy shit is what will get a jackpot winner broke faster than they can see it coming. It was some YouTube video I watched on why lotto winners go broke and these were they reasons they listed iirc Honestly if I ever hit the jackpot with Powerball or anything similar, I’m 100% taking the annuity, I’d much rather be comfortable for the rest of my life than being super rich for a little bit. There's a lot of stupid stuff like someone saying to their buddy 15 years prior, ""Hey, if either one of us wins the lottery, let's split it 50/50"", and then when one of them actually wins, it gets brought to court as a verbal contract. Or there are buy-ins between coworkers or friends where they chip in $10 every Friday and buy x amount of lotto tickets, and the one Friday that Ted doesn't chip in, they win the Mega Millions and he feels he's owed a share. I guess peoples shitty families and friends sue them for dumb shit when they find out about the money Rich people have access to expensive drugs that regular people have never heard of. Like Slood. Let’s get real. They throw money around like crazy and throw parties and fly on vacations spending 10s of thousands of dollars a night. [deleted] Sure about that? Multimillionaire? Try billionaire. Still, I bet I could give most people in the world 50x that and they couldn’t turn it into anything remotely close to Amazon. I’m not saying he’s self made - I think we’re all a product of our genetics, upbringing and circumstances. It’s not just about the money, a great deal went into it, including what was probably an obsessive work ethic. I'm sure Jews in the 1930s felt like they were a part of the system. Sometimes systems exclude individuals. That's the whole point. It's why people want systemic change. To include more people in the system. But this is a non sequitur. It's not what you said or why you said it “If everyone were nicer than they are the world would be a better place” Well yeah duh, but that doesn’t help us cause they aren’t haha, valid. Global wealth - major American or European city. That doesn't help when their wealth is dependent on them living in the higher cost of living countries. If they moved to Nairobi it's not likely they'd be making the same income they do where they can't afford a home... Ima be real honest with you Chief— that’s way fucking higher than I expected. Nairobi is like living in a Tulsa type American city. Is it though? Seems to me the insult is just the cherry on top of that sentence Nobody mentioned equal outcomes until you - many school districts mandate [Harrison Bergeron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron) for the reading lists for a reason. What people want is equal *opportunity*, the ability to succeed or fuck up on our own merits. That's what we fundamentally don't have. It isn't about forcing equal outcomes. It's about giving everyone a ticket to compete. The top think they are the best and most of them rightfully so. But how long will they hold their seat when 8 billion people actually have a shot at their throne? Rather than the 1% that do now. Nobody is talking about equal outcomes. A person that is born into poverty does not have the same freedom as one birn into wealth. What people want is equal opportunity, which is something we are far, far away from having. >You cannot have freedom and equal outcomes simultaneously Well why the fuck not? No doubt the world is more fair than ever. We still have a long way to go. There are still large percentages of the world in extreme poverty. As you say you can lift yourself up with hardwork but some people are incapable. Which is fair. But, as you say, with a golden spoon it's takes a lot less effort than if you're struggling pay check to pay check. It takes an exceptional person to become a self made billionaire. I mean self-made as in truly starting from nothing. Nothing like the picture of the original post. Becoming a self made millionaire is much much easier than becoming self made billionaire. Don't get me wrong still very hard but easier than becoming a billionaire. The reality is most people can only lift themselves up one level of wealth. If you're starting from extreme poverty good luck to you. > If you're dedicated to learning and changing your life completely you will 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps'. Whoa an unironic bootstraps reference in 2022. This must be akin to what seeing the Loch Ness Monster feels like, a legit fucking dinosaur in the flesh... That view is subjective. To the people promoting eugenics it was a noble and desirable goal. I would also argue that it's a totally natural way to select genomes, since we are products of nature, living within nature, that are bound by the rules of nature. It's also morally reprehensible, of course, but that's just my subjective opinion. Try this: A whole fuckton of people tried artificial selection hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago and it got us crops and livestock and pets and pretty much shaped our entire civilization. Dumbass. The guy you're thinking of was obsessed with natural selection and social darwinism, which appears to be what you're defending by implication? > Well somebody tried artificial selection about eighty years ago Artificial selection is selective breeding. I'm not aware of any major selective breeding programs 80 years ago. or just inherit tons of startup cash and connections form their parents. Change is when an action causes a reaction with a result that is different from the starting situation. Every action we take causes change. Every time you buy something off Amazon, or start your car, or flush your toilet, you're changing the world. At least a little bit. It's literally just cause and effect. If you don't have access to capital that doesn't really matter, so it's a bigger problem. Demonstrate it then. You are missing the point. Not only is there a bare minimum of money needed to run a business, there's also the matter of contacts. Which in my experience they matter more. And if we're talking about me specifically yes, I'm doing better than my parents. But that's because I made sure to hang out in places (like a very specific college) that I knew would give me contacts. Also I'm not from the US so that helps too. My frustration is definitely with social institutions and the mismatch between optimizing resource allocation to the greatest long term value and optimizing resource allocation to the greatest short term value. We're a shadow of the society we could be from a progress and growth standpoint, and it's unfortunate that so many can't understand that underserved populations are inherently undercapitalized assets that are going to waste. It's a harshly pragmatic way to look at humanity, but it's also an honest reflection of it. We're wasting a lot of potential each year that goes by as we collectively ignore the delta between where we are and where we could be with a mere modicum of foresight. I wasn't talking about billionaires, or hard work in general, even though there are billionaires who didn't earn their keep. Plenty of dynasties out there. Totally unaware that webservices were invented by bezos. Someone should tell Microsoft and oracle that they're infringing on his patent. [deleted] Yea as much as I absolutely loathe Bezos, the better analogy would be comparing starting Amazon with inventing the concept and systems of school. Right, so like I said, if Amazon never existed then Azure or something else would've filled the space. If it's critical infrastructure it needs to be regulated and not at the whims of a for profit company I agree, I’m not in favour of governments either, just in favour of utilities being nationalized instead of used to profit off of working people. When you have a monopoly, you effectively give people two options, either don’t use that service, or use it and pay the tax to this corporation. At least if it’s nationalized the people you’re paying a tax to are supposed to be working in your own interests, whereas a company has zero interested beyond keeping you as a customer. That’s a reason why it isn’t, not a reason why it couldn’t be. So do websites like Youtube and Reddit run off AWS? Thanks. So is that why there's all these ""data centers"" popping up all over the bay area in California? Jesus, the amount of gremlins crawling out of the woodwork spouting opinions that AWS needs to be nationalized is horrifying. An idea is not worth billions. An idea is worth nothing. Should we continue to pay a percentage to the guy who invented the shovel? Or rather his heirs? Sure the idea saved billions if not trillions of dollars in inefficiencies. But why should bezos and the shareholders receive that wealth instead of those savings being passed onto everybody? What about the guy who invented the excavator? The excavator has saved trillions of dollars by now over the cost of using shovels and picks. But these are just ideas, and without labour to create them they are worth nothing. Lmao, what a blatant false comparison. Their are ways I could explain excess to you but if you can’t understand why someone having billions of dollars is a bad thing I don’t know if it’s worth it. There is a massive difference between a corvette and someone who owns 6 homes in 6 different countries, with a fleet of cars that would make a corvette look budget at each location. >And who should be the ones to decide how much is enough Uh, so we do this thing called ""democracy"" where we set rules for how society and civilization work. For instance, did you know that in 1952, the top marginal income tax rate was 92% for anything over $300,000? We collectively, as a society, determined that for each million you made after what was an inflation adjusted 3 million dollars, you could keep $80,000. Admittedly in the age of huge tech companies where the gains are through equity rather than income, the methodology needs to be adjusted, but if you can't fathom how something like this is possible, I recommend you spend some time with both books on history and civics. > Hey I don't think you need that corvette, so instead you get a Honda civic much more practical and we will take the corvette money and give to those with less. You are definitely looking at this the wrong way. With Jeff Bezos net worth of $177.5 Billion (reportedly), the government could force *HIM* to buy corvettes for *US* (nearly 3 million Americans, at least)! Instead of your Honda Civic, you could upgrade to a corvette! lol what. We've seen the biggest accumulation of human wealth and in history and massive GDP increases in pretty much every nation since WWII due to liberal capitalism and you're saying everything is a zero sum game? What. I'd agree if we lived in a closed system. We absolutely do not live in a closed system though, once earth is depleted capitalism will find a way to mine asteroids and other planets. The 1800s called, they want their economic theory back This is an incredibly simple and foolish take on things. The only thing that is finite is time. I like this thought experiment, but if we want to get that deep into it then we might as well look at every single negative and positive thing that happens when someone buys something online. Extra packaging/dunnage. Fuel for delivery. Increased cost of goods to mitigate fulfillment. High cost of returns and waste for sellers. Like others said in this thread, if this is a zero sum game the saving of 15 minutes is just spent elsewhere. We lived without amazon and I'm pretty sure without Jeff Bezos someone better or worse would have just filled that same space. Online sales and delivery was a thing before Amazon already. No. Just because someone is employed doesn't make the job they have good. It's possible to make a job that traps a worker rather than letting them thrive. A career is good, a job is not always good. Over-simplified for sure but I hope you see the point I mean to make. These days, not all jobs are good. Many are quite bad when they don't need to be. Yup. Woo hoo! Bezos created tens of thousands of terrible dead end jobs with horrific working conditions! That surely justifies him stealing the wealth from those people and hoarding more than he could spend in a thousand lifetimes! No one is forced to work at amazon At AWS? Probably not many. They just have to carry a laptop around and maybe pen and paper if they like to take notes the old school way. I’ve heard sitting is the new smoking but I’m sure they can request a standup desk. If you’re referring to the DC workers then you’d have to ask the same question of every DC (FedEx, UPS, Ontrac, etc) and dear God don’t get me started on the trades. No more home repairs for you! Can’t risk my knees getting into your crawl space to fix your plumbing. Please name a blue collar job which doesn't have issues with the physical results of the working conditions. I'll wait. [deleted] Yes this really alters the statement. Building an organization in which you employ people working in bad conditions for a less than livable wage is more important to society than educating people. The world and society existed just fine without Amazon. The same CANNOT be said for education. If I'm to extrapolate this line of thinking, you're probably fine with Amazon not paying taxes while simultaneously slashing the education budget/teacher's wages. People like you existing scare me bro. Truly. [deleted] Get rid of teachers, see how long society lasts. Get rid of Amazon, we'll keep going. Might be rocky, but people will be able to read and build something to replace it. So, what you're saying is: the teachers who produced Jeff Bezos are more valuable to society than he'll ever be. bro deadass, i swear redditors think amazon became a trillion dollar company because of their warehouses and 2 day shipping They pay more taxes than you do Then why aren't they taking better opportunities? Amazon absolutely engages in racketeering and lobbying. In fact, Amazon's growth to this point can be traced to how many times they have influenced the government. When they move to a new city, the cities bid on how low their taxes will go to encourage jobs. When they expand AWS to control 40% of the internet, their lobbies prevent any trust-busting action. They encourage congress to continually defend the IRS so that it's impossible to track their tax evasion. When it comes to the corporate politics, are they going to support local candidates who support unions? Absolutely not. Will they support candidates who will rightfully enforce capital gains tax? Not a chance. They will support whoever gives them the most buck, which also tends to be the same politicians slashing public education. I mean seriously, Bezos himself bought the Washington Post just to use as his own personal propaganda machine. If we built a more equitable society, we wouldn't have some of my students going home hungry and living with 8 people in an apartment. The existence of ultra-wealthy is sustained by how much money they extract from poor communities, and Amazon should absolutely be at fault for how they stand against it at every turn, just like every other tech giant. While your licking boots try out his balls. Oops too late. But is it 5 million times more important? No, of course not. No sane person would believe that Bezos' contributed 5 million times more value than his median employee. Was his decisions important? Yeah. Did he work hard? Of course. I'd even say he deserves to be ""rich"". But the numbers just do not reflect an equal distribution. Statistically it's close enough to ""nobody"" that I'm comfortable saying it. Outliers don't kill the argument at all unless the reader is illiterate. That's what it means to look at statistics. People win the lottery by finding the ticket on the ground too but nobody uses that as an argument that the lottery is a good game. And it's even better if we broaden it outside raw wealth and include other biases. Who is a billionaire and literally started with nothing? Thank you for saying that better than I could! I mean it would only be justice if people received equal opportunity and from there progressed according to their ability. Right now opportunity is not equal. It doesn't have to be from zero. A reasonable takeaway from the OP is that starting from something lets people make more. That's great. The problem is that people are pretending those advantages don't exist, that they aren't part of a persistent bias, and that there's no need to improve the system. As someone else already put it better than me. “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Correlation and causation. It's not like the company was turning a profit, but speculators didn't completely abandon ship. Was that because of his leadership? Not what I said and I’m not a liberal You buy an asset for an amount - millions of people labor to increase its value - you sell that to someone later for the increased price. middle step a bit necessary Tell me, is it exploitative for a lord to tax the serfs 30% of what they produce? You talking about Bezos? Sure, he is an extraordinary individual, no doubt about that, but he clearly had a very supportive environment that allowed him to get such a level of education and the very necessary and quite generous amount of starting capital. I have worked with start-ups and activities related to their capital structure. It is not that simple. Few get anywhere near 300k unless they are already established and have proven their worth or are offshoots of larger firms, and any money they get comes with a lot of strings attached to it because the investors, other than a few (quite unprofitable in my experience) VC firms, usually have a very clear vision and what they want from the start-up. It's not at all about allowing the founders to develop their vision or whatever. It's usually about exclusively taking the profitable in their opinion part of the founders' concept and selling it or absorbing it into their own operations. But I digress, my point was about how it's not really easy to accumulate the initial 300k, you need to be very smart and get some very exclusive, and 99% of the time very expensive, education. But turning that 300k into millions is pretty easy unless you are very stupid. Billions tho is a different thing completely. I'm sure that will be appreciated Gotcha. Sounds like you're filling your bags while the gettings good, huh? [deleted] Does it suck.... to suck? Great answer. You have my virtual award! The third world was exploited by European empire building. That is not capitalism. Capitalism is everyone has the right to accept or refuse a trade. The US has tried to create this system world wide since WW2. It has worked, and poverty world wide is at its lowest level in human history. But I wasn't referring to economic systems. I was referring to the Rule of Law. That is, the Law is applied equally to all members of society, including the elite. It almost doesn't matter what the law is, just so long as it is applied equally. As a middle class American, I definitely started off better than 98% of humans. There is a finite number of resources at any given time, no question. But wealth can be, and must be, created constantly. The wealth that can be created may be created fast or slow, but there is no practical upper bound upon it. Yo some point of punctuation would be appreciated Is this a novelty account? Are novelty accounts still a thing? [deleted] You know I’m surprised we don’t reply with in general tone or sarcastic tone before we reply you can say one thing and ppl will be like calm down dude chill just cause they interpret it wrong It's the tone of your message. > Put this in contrast to somebody who's on the hook for absolutely all of their education expenses, and whose parents rented all of their life. There's no capital flowing to the younger generation, making it much harder for them rise into economic prosperity. Why include this part at all? Other than to show that generational wealth is unfair and bad. And yeah your tone regarding the help from your parents. Every parent should help their kids and there is nothing wrong with that. Most times you hear about generational wealth on Reddit you hear about people trying to do away with it- I’ve seen people suggest all your money should be taken and taxed after your death Because the only reason people bring up generational wealth is to show it's ""unfair"" and ""not right"". When it is supposed to be that way, every parents should want their own kid to be better than them and would try their best so that the kids live a better life than them. Nobody ever bring up generational wealth to mean ""that's a good thing"". It should be celebrated that a parent manage to make their kids life better instead of framing it as a privilege. As someone brought up in Asia this is such a weird thing to see. Over here, being able to leave stuff for your kids and making sure your kids get a leg up is celebrated and is something that everyone is happy to see. Over here on reddit it's something to be ashamed about lol. Edit: The same people framing that parents giving their children a safety net and helping them out as something that is privileged and unfair while they want a country to give their citizens a safety net and helping their citizen out is hilarious. It's the same thing except that a parents responsibility is to their children while a country's responsibility is to their citizen. Yes, I agree with all of this, except maybe respirations. We don't penalize the descendants for the crimes of their parents in this country. But... I'm seeing more and more arguments for funding the poor in ways that encourages them to have hope and be entrepreneurial. Decoupling healthcare from employment would bea good start. Our social safety net of welfare is wildly successful (average recipient is in it 2 years and 4 months and only once in their life) but Republicans want to kill it and Democrats want to expand on it. Anyway, I think we need to look at these issues in a way that party politics can't. I think there's real solutions available. It really is amazing how many of them miss this. I don't hate Bezos because his parents could afford that. I don't hate any of these people strictly because their parents had money. I've got friends who's parents are rich. That's not problem. But even when we explain the problem to them, they just go right back to saying it anyways, because that would mean the people and system they worship isn't what they always thought it was. Billion is a next level achievement for next-next-next level achievers. I don't think there's enough data to determine patterns at that level. >Jay-Z, however, is pretty inarguably a self-made billionaire. Dr Dre is also at that level, I think. Anyway, think this through. Wealth is probably $3 million because you can retire comfortably there and your wealth will build wealth provided you're a little disciplined about spending. Just to avoid quibbling and to make math easier, we'll start with $10,000,000. That was raised by someone who owns a business. They're most likely an immigrant who lives frugally and their business has something to do with the ""3 D's"": dirty, difficult, or dangerous. They want their kids to have a ""better"" life and make sure those kids get good college educations for jobs that pay well, probably medical, legal, or engineering. Those are great jobs with good incomes, but they top out around $200,000 and taxes being them down to *only* $150,000-ish. Dad subsidizes them and pays for the grandkids to go to private school. The link to frugality is weakening as those who benefit from the wealth don't understand what it takes to make it. Dad dies he had 3 kids and each gets $3 million and the grandkids split the last million in their trusts. $3 million means they can retire, but they have good jobs and they're used to a higher, subsidized standard of living so they draw from that $3 million: upgrade the house, car, and vacations. And those parents subsidize the grandkids. By time these parents pass, their wealth is down to $1 million. They each have 2 kids. None of the grandkids are millionaires. You'd think the grandkids would be ok. Sure, they aren't millionaires, but they still have hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? But they grew up spending and that's all they know. This generation finishes in debt. There's nothing left to have down to the next generation. This is the typical cycle described by financial planners and in the book The Millionaire Next Door. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/generational-wealth%3A-why-do-70-of-families-lose-their-wealth-in-the-2nd-generation-2018-10?amp https://www.fastcompany.com/90372281/5-lies-youve-been-told-about-generational-wealth https://money.com/rich-families-lose-wealth/ The greatest and definitely not at all extremely prejudiced film “Idiocracy”. The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley The actual answer. Being a millionaire isnt hard. Being a multimillionaire is. People in this thread comparing millionaires to hundred billionaires as if its the same are lost and confused. That's probably true now. I'll have to look for current data. A report based on self reported data and locked behind a paywall for their ""very high net worth and ultra high net worth"" clients. A non-objective source based on questionable data that can't even be scrutinized. Real quality source there. Great article. I’ll save it. The middle class family that accumulates a million dollars over the course of a lifetime like in *Millionaire Next Door* isn't ""generational wealth."" As different as their lifestyle is from someone making minimum wage with a shitty car, they're just as far from someone like the billionaires in the post. You don't lose a billion dollars by buying huge houses and cars. Gates has made his life's work giving away his money, and he's still one of the richest people in the world. Lol if anyone is delusional here it's you bud. You're telling me, some stranger on the internet, that you have a better handle on my personal value than I do myself? You clearly don't know how businesses work, so let me break it down for you. If I make $300k in pure profits, which would be amazing for many businesses, do you really think I can just go and withdraw ma money down at the bank and use it to kickstart some grand idea? Or do you think that money might just possibly have other obligations, such as other employees, expansion, all that other expensive shit? Why do you think I made an explicit point to say **$300k NO STRINGS ATTACHED**. If my mommy or daddy were filthy fucking rich enough to just toss me 300grand, you can fucking believe I could turn it into a healthy profit, magnitudes larger than the seed. People do it EVERY GODDAMN DAY. It's not even close to impossible as you have built it in your head. Now, will I ever get Bezos rich, who had the timing, wealth, and power to monopolize the system early and control all vital operations in-house? To run competitors out of business and buy out or take over non-competing enterprise partners? I don't know that I hate people enough to do what he did. I'll agree that Bezos is a fucking intellectual prodigy compared with you, but compared with the average man he is the same. Also just a man, albeit a filthy fucking rich one. Your issue is you’re thinking **now**. In the 90s, it would have been WAY easier to make a successful website. Think about it. Making a competitor to Amazon now? Impossible. Making the first Amazon, a novel product? Much much easier. That’s not to say it’s easy, but it would have been significantly easier. The reality is the idea of a web store to buy books virtually was novel, but not impossible to think up. You could have given just about anyone 300k with that idea in 1994 and they would be where Amazon is today. It’s just that Amazon did it first. Assuming, of course, you make logical business decisions. Nah man I'm white 😆🎂☀️ So it is okay to deny basic dignity to employees just because you pay them a little bit more than the other companies? Who the fuck is delusional between us? You don't own people just because you pay them a salary. So what if he invested everything in decades? So what if they are the biggest retailer in the world? How is any of that related to how they treat their employees? It should be the other way around, doesn't it? If your company is earning billions in profit, surely you can afford MORE warehouse employees so that people can go to the bathroom instead of peeing in bottles. Surely Amazon can afford to let these employees go to shelter in place a lot earlier, instead of [risking their lives for work](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59641784). I didn't say rich people got money and didn't need to work hard for their wealth. If you actually read my fucking post, you will know that I said the opposite. My issue is about exploitation. And you address none that you fucking delusional Bezos dick rider. Who are you talking about here? I wasn’t talking about a specific person. Just the difference between someone getting a 200k windfall and blowing it vs having an actual safety net to fail and fail again. [deleted] He wasn’t “given” money, people researched his idea and invested, expecting a return on that investment. Bezos literally worked for near a decade on Wall Street, before starting Amazon at 30. At that point, he used his experience and the skills he acquired over the years, to create Amazon. Let's not forget that he was a super talented Comp. Sci major from Princeton. After working a year on that idea, he pitched it to a private investor network (including his parents) and got those money you are talking about. Also, wtf kind of tech investors do you know who hunt you down lmao, unless you get some shady mob money. >it would be great if government was well meaning and efficient but its often not. and often that is the case because the big capitalists who have much more power than one person should ever have are lobbying and using their welath and influence to keep the gov. as puppets. By that logic, if billionaires aren’t rich, they aren’t billionaires. So exactly 0 billionaires are not rich. What is? Dude I’m so jealous.. The person I responded to is the one who seemed to be claiming there was an alternative to capitalism *entirely* so I don't know why your comment is in reply to me. Fascism is a political ideology, not an economic system. Reddit told me that capitalism and fascism are the same thing though Fascism is capitalism in decline. Capitalism requires an image of meritocracy to function. ""America is the best because x"". ""Bezos is rich because he worked hard."" All founded on the idea to mislead the public into believing they can have a better life, but only if they deserve it based on arbitrary factors. When those arbitrary factors aren't sustainable, they turn to race and hypernationalism. That's what we have now. Yes, he already said Capitalism. I’m open to hearing alternatives. This only exists in your imagination. You are lazy. [deleted] Sorry I forgot the ""s"" in options. lol …you just turned the person into a false dichotomy. This shit is *rich* If you care about ignorance, you should probably shut the fuck up Edit: Ok so dude above responed with more trash and rage blocked me so I guess I'll respond here.. Do you think your 12 yr old style of put downs actually makes people feel bad? You come across as a lonely bitch with nothing better to do than troll places with your antiwork memes and waifu shit You don’t need banks to start a business, if your business idea is good enough. Seems real convenient to be able to have opinions that have no evidence behind them. Just claim that we would all have better lives if we got rid of capitalism when there's not a single real world example of a country that has successfully done that and given a better quality of life than most European countries. I understand and agree with the idea that the US specifically has a lot of problems, but the US having issues doesn't mean we shouldn't follow the real world examples of European capitalist countries that provide a much more reliable path to a better country. Bullshit. Soviet Union and the whole Eastern Bloc fell because the central economy planning by politbyro was so bad. Tech was at least decade behind free world, citizens were locked in their country if they liked it or not. It was horribly inefficient system that created so much infrastructure debt that we are still paying it off 3 decades later. We're now getting into definitions. The other person was saying we need to get rid of capitalism. If you're talking about European countries that have a more socialized government, that's still a capitalist country. You could argue it's a hybrid of socialism and capitalism or whatever, but I don't think it would qualify as a non capitalist system. I support moving the US to a more European style system. I don't support getting rid of capitalism. ...avoids responsibility... lol. i think i smell the problem. Not growing capital is also not sustainable. ^(then) You're ignoring all of the other benefits of growing up in a wealthy family. Access to high quality education, having ample free time to use improving oneself, not needing to work right out of childhood to help the family, having a support system if his ideas or plans don't work out. The $300,000 was probably a very small amount of wealth that he enjoyed growing up. The dude was privileged as fuck. And you're simping for him even though he doesn't know you exist and wouldn't give a shit about you if he did. Same is true for most billionaires, except their property is stock instead of real estate. If you think a million dollars is a lot of money, you have a basic misunderstanding of economics. >That first 300k being flipped into billions is more likely than you realize. Fucking hell i'm leaving it here lmao How many case of nepotism actually turn out successful. And do you really believe that that one chance to pitch his idea to IBM made Microsoft what it was . Hell I would be more inclined to agree if you were using the fact that he lied to IBM sold them something that wasn't his to begin with took their money and purchased windows from a programmer for 50k . And beyond all of that had almost anyone else been in his situation it would not have turned out the same. Yeah and those people if they have any financial smarts about themselves could come up with 300k pretty easily most of them if they been at their job for any period of time have a 401k a home with equity and lines of credit . But these same avg people you talk about don't becausevthey are horrible money manager that live out side Financial means. Which goes back to my point given the same 300k the avg person couldn't accomplish what Jeff bezos, Elon musk ,Bill gates and buffet have . There is far more involved in being successful than having access to money [deleted] It’s true that 50k isn’t what it used to be, but even so if 5% makes or breaks you, then you’re doing something terribly wrong. That’s correct, now back to work on the time machine. A finnish millionare and political figure likes to give financial advice to people and said the same thing. He had a boat shop and decided to join a race to sail around the world and as he did it, he then sold his sailboat for 1m€. Essentially he had to sail around the globe for his first million, and that includes a lot of life threatening risks. He now says he wouldnt recommend it. He also had a company washing carpets in st. Petersburg (or moscow, cant remember), which was at first a solo operation with buckets and brushes but got a bit bigger after that. That was a good laugh Man, those hosts are fucking stupid. I was like Arnold, why aren't these guys laughing? They're all serious ""Roight Roight, so eh... how does one go about making da second m'llion foist Ahnald?"" I think this is a quite good example for this quote: ""Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."" That's ~$250k adjusted for inflation, and that was by the time he was 21, sheesh Ever heard of compounding interest? It's way way way easier to make a billion when you already have half a billion. At a relatively modest 4% return you have your billion in 18 years. > what do you mean love child? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger#Divorce self + maid You can go even further than that. There are those who work hard, but don't receive the help they need, and don't succeed because of that. You entitled to your opinion, although it's hard to understand the denial. Right, so you don’t believe self made people exist at all. That’s fine I’m not arguing with you, but based on your definition a self made person can’t exist. I side with you on this one Hard work has very little to do with financial success. What a stupid post. Well we know why you aren't successful. Cancer is the least of a steroid user's worries. You are an absolute idiot and have zero idea what you're talking about, tubby. “Come with me if you want to lift” I think it was a play he was doing, a period piece on classical music. They wanted him to play Mozart but he insisted ""I'll be Bach"" NOW you can create an online business for cheap. Thanks in large part to companies like a Amazon! It was a pretty large loan in 1994... Millions? There are only 330 million people in the US. Do you think one in every 330 people is taking out a $300,000 loan to start a business? Lotta bootlicking in these comments. His dad was a half owner of the mine. ""In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia."" Elon denies the idea that his father had a share in the emerald mine but it happened. Errol paid 40k for a stake in the mine. Good source bro. ""Teslarati is a California-based multi-platform media company and a leading publisher of news on Tesla, SpaceX, and ventures affiliated with Elon Musk. Our coverage of the electric vehicle and the new-age space industry embodies our relationship between the human desire for exploration and engineering and the technologies that both arise from and enable it.Teslarati offers a wide range of premium media products and compelling content across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, with direct consumer impact."" [https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-sells-the-family-emeralds-in-new-york-2018-2](https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-sells-the-family-emeralds-in-new-york-2018-2) [https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2](https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-musks-family-came-to-own-an-emerald-mine-2018-2) https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a16681/elon-musk-interview-1212/ I misspoke, it was Errol Musk that said that in an interview. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-tells-bi-about-the-familys-casual-attitude-to-wealth-2018-2 Everybody can’t be born poor. You think he wouldn’t have figured it out without his learns 300k? He worked like everyone else and got a good job, made connections, he would have figured it out. It was his idea that made him billions, not seed capital. So get a good job and work on your business on the side! Fuck, what do you expect people to do? Purposefully work at Chipotle? Fuck! Ah, so you don't really know anything. Okay. This is a rediculous exaggeration. You are clearly blinded by hatred of Bill. I suggest you focus on yourself rather than hating on others. He actually was a code savant, and since he was a child he has read a ton of books. Estimated 50 books per year. and was working days nights and weekends on starting his business in his 20s. But he himself has admitted that the fact that having gone to a high end private school where he had access to one the very few computers at the time was a big luck factor in turning his personality into a success story. Bill Gates is really smart and hard working, and so are a ton of people. It's the pairing of that with the coming from money that created his opportunity. Countless millions. Lol Owning a market place where sellers had to pay YOU to participate is a huge marketing scheme. And if they don’t have exclusive Amazon deals then guess who won’t give a fuck to help you when Chinese counterfeiters hock your wares for cheap…. And guess who uses all the data hoarding of being a marketplace owner to see what’s popular and hock cheap versions of your product and call it “Amazon Basics” until your bled dry….. AWS makes a lot of money, but don’t discount their owning a marketplace as not making a profit. They make a huge profit and put local businesses EVERYWHERE out of business all with a single cudgel’s . > Amazon didn't start turning a profit Because they put all their profits back into expanding the company so they have a stranglehold on e-commerce, not because they weren't generating revenue. That’s because Amazon reinvested every penny they got. That’s why they had zero profit for years. Amazon could have been profitable long before AWS. Only they probably wouldn’t have become the juggernaut they are today Yes, let us all know when your symptoms abate. I mean HIV/AIDS has come a long fucking way. It used to be a death sentence and now most people can live normal lives taking a single pill a day. Not a full cure but pretty fucking remarkable where we've come. Cancer is a bit of a different animal as it encompasses a lot of different shit. maybe because curing cancer and AIDs is more complicated than you think… Imagine thinking that the fact that people still abuse women and animals is proof that billionaires don't contribute to charity lmao All of those problems will always exist. Money can’t eliminate them. You're saying that unless you solve a problem, completely and permanently, there's no point in trying to address it? Now you're sounding like Musk and Bezos :P If not throwing money works, why are you shaming a guy for not throwing money? Its not landlords, it’s people not wanting new developments in their towns/cities voting against high density housing. Beyond that, rent is, to a strong degree, a function of the value of the property. Blame the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates artificially low for that. People severely underestimate how strong the power of the federal reserve is with situations like this. Ah, so none. Gotcha. What about the value these billionaires provide? Everybody hating on Bezos but who put him there? He came up with a solution to a problem and got paid well for it. That’s good business. And just to be clear, turning $300,000 into $200 billion is no fucking joke. Most of you can’t figure out how to turn $10 into $100. i’m googling it and i can’t find it. what are you referring to? Never mind working hard usually goes hand in hand with a good idea, or business savviness, or the smarts to create something people want. But hey, if you keep digging ditches 12 hours a day there's no reason you can't be the next Bill Gates 🙄 Apparently giving credit where it’s due is boot licking dependent on the bank account of who is the credit is going to. You don’t get paid for working hard. I’m always surprised when people don’t understand such an evident fact. You get paid based on providing value to society. If you got paid for working hard, I’d work really hard on smoking weed and golfing. And trying to defend endless greed is called bootlicking, but you know words don't mean anything anymore Sure. In fact - some of the greatest programmers (Ken Thompson, Richard Stallman etc) would have made terrible manager. Some of my best managers never really moved up the ladder either. They ran their teams well, shipped on schedule and under budget, took care of their team members. But they never really took off. You really do need a killer instinct to get ahead of the pack. The old adage 'nice guys finish last' is absolutely true. Yes, he could definetly speak out against it, but it would cost influence. Look at it this way, if he spoke out against every problem in the world, his opinion would become irrelevant because he would look like just another SJW. If he holds his opinion for problems that really matter, people will trust his judgement because they know he only speaks about very important issues. He also has to time it, like you would in a conversation. If there was a major strikebreaking event being talked about, his concerns would be noticed by a lot more people because of the relevance. I think that profit sharing would be an awesome step towards economic equality, but if I were him, I'd wait until the timing was right. It’s not about him using the money. He would lose what he loves to do. Why the fuck should he do that? You ready to give up what you love to do to help other people? No I don’t think so. It’s amazing that these people are so adamant that becoming a billionaire is possible through hard work, even if it is “mental” hard work. You’re 100% right. These people were born on third, given every advantage possible, and profited off the exploitation of laborers. *That’s* how they became billionaires. No amount of hard work will make the average person a billionaire That’s a great point, I always figured MSDOS just wrote itself anyway Did you read even a little about him before you ran your mouth? Tell me how you're full of shit, without telling me you're full of shit. Edit-unless you're actually being honest. In which case, I apologize. Salty We live in a capitalist society in America. So, unless you’re saying that capitalism is evil, I don’t see the issue. [deleted] Notch is my favorite example of how money doesn’t mean happiness (excluding not having enough money to take care of your basic needs) He had it all, the la mansion, the party scene, and he had a good level of fame where he could go out in public still. Yet very shortly after he sold the game and became a billionaire he became extremely depressed, my guess is due to lack of fulfillment. Money can solve problems but it can manufacture long term happiness (sorry I know this had nothing to do with the thread) All people who caught generation-level lightning in a bottle. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Minecraft were all cultural cornerstones. It’s true that it can be really hard to get a loan. My dad was able to do it by working on the oil fields for a few years before he went to college and he built his credit with the money he made from that. Sometimes the beginning of starting a business starts with you doing something else to gain capital and build credit It was in Zambia and around when Musk became an adult already; the family was rich but not super wealthy. Labor in the mine was also likely terribly treated but not under apartheid conditions. This! Yeah so most of his wealth is from doing no work, he makes money by having money. Always interesting the way ""it's not a zero-sum game"" gets used as if that somehow just explains away gluts and shortages. And the fact that you think we could in theory print infinite money should tell you something really important about the nature of money. The earth is finite. Money is based and backed by things of this finite earth. It is not infinite, and inflation means there’s more money around but each unit is worth less. What does inflation create? Is money a resource, does it hold any actual value? Surely inflation is a sign of how it is zero sum, not of how it isn't. Because if everybody makes more money then essentially nobody is making more money, because inflation evens it out. Obviously this is simplifying things somewhat - in terms of resources it's not necessarily zero sum, but in terms of money surely it is? Money is zero sum when the system around it has benefits to those with larger quantities. Ask yourself, who does inflation hurt? Then look at where a lot of covid relief funds went. Yeah, that's pretty fair lol Right, which is where we re right now. Go on, argue that the wealth inequality we have right now is fine. See how that goes. But it does mean that people hoarding a disproportionate amount means others get less. Thinking otherwise simply shows a lack of understanding the staggering wealth inequality in the world today, especially globally. Billionaires at the magnitude we see today have wild effects on the economy, and they choose to treat their laborers poorly and stomp out unions. The fact is, claiming billionaires aren't a problem bc ""it's not a zero sum game"" doesn't encapsulate any of the problems that they cause. That doesn't even touch on the impact they have through lobbying power. How? If everyone would start making a million dollars a day (which is pretty unrealistic), then prices would rise. Inevitably there will be people who cannot afford to buy the product (and in this economy we are talking about things like houses, etc.) Notice I was replying to someone who specifically said the existence of billionaires inhibits actual economic growth. That’s *quite* an assertion given that the existence of billionaires has coincided with an entirely unprecedented period of global economic growth. The point isn’t logically irreconcilable with that fact, but it’s *very* far from a “simple truth”. Do you dispute that? Read what I am responding to. The person says it’s a simple fact that billionaires impede economic growth, and that is certainly not a simple fact. Even if they had no effect on growth the person is wrong. You would expect, for what they want to be *obviously* true, that the emergence of billionaires would cripple growth rates. It’s a straw man because you made your own argument and then argued against that instead of making a relevant point. These aren’t “sometimes” though? These are consistent trend lines moving in the same direction for what is coming closer to a century. This signals a real, fundamental, problem. How can someone generationally get ahead if people's wealth decreases dramatically at the end of their life? Wake up. The system is fracturing before our eyes. Yes there are more opportunities in the US than some Asian countries. I wouldn't exactly brag about a country being better to it's citizens than China. Willpower emerges from algorithms that process within the brain. Where else could it emerge from? Thin air? We are particle systems that traverse throughout spacetime and things happen because the particles are forced around by the universe, but our brains think that these particles interactions are a life. Our brains make all of this up by being islands that observe the overall particle system moving around them. Choice doesn’t make sense though. Information has to come from somewhere. Either it comes in as input from your brain or it emerges out of another source, which still makes it deterministic. Totally random, where information emerges from absolutely nowhere, could be possible, but even then a choice would be rendered randomly and not with any sense of free agency. Ya duh. I’m saying you’re not guaranteed to turn that money into anything. And certainly starting with 300k and becoming a billionaire is not going to happen. >But there are also more stressors placed on black men, which inevitably lead to more crime. It would be extremely reductionist to think otherwise. This is literally my stance, his stance was its not actually happening. >We have BEEN flooding black populated areas with law enforcement for decades but that obviously hasn’t been working In areas where its been flooded, its absolutely helped. And once again, when you talk to the actual people they want MORE police. I can say from my families experience, thats 100% the truth. Everyone deserves to live in peace. Not just rich suburbs. That's 60 years ago. Generational wealth isn't irrelevant, but the wealthiest demographic group nowadays in the US are Asians, who did not benefit from significant generational wealth. Clearly it's not the critical factor you're making it out to be. You mentioned the Tulsa race massacres from 1920 and somehow that’s not 100 years ago? Lol he hid behind a corner and jumped the guy that was 'stalking' him instead of just walking home. He wanted a fight and he got one. Him and Michael brown are the main reasons everyone started doubting BLM. When you're THAT detached from reality people stop trusting you. Yikes, I want things to be better so we must acknowledge the problem. You refuse to acknowledge the tragic state so it continues. But call people racists who clearly aren’t it just makes you look worse >Which party (barely) supports BLM? Im confused, do we think BLM the organization is good now? Or are not all understanding how it is the epitome of what we're talking about. As the system once again exploited us for gain to keep black folk down. >Also u wanna talk about how Wells Fargo, the 4th largest bank, STILL continues to racially discriminate? >Which party do police unions typically support? Im confused, every police chief in every big city is supported by democrats. What is the point you're trying to make? This should be fixed, the democrats are in charge, why are they not? You of course, know the answer. You’re so naive I feel it's a reasonable risk to run, but I thank you for the advice. Go suck elite dick idc How do you network? Do you pretend to be friends with them and use them as an asset or do you just bluntly tell them “let’s tell other people we’re awesome” or do you just play 20 questions and extract information from them? Yeah, I’ve been trying this, but I definitely could be more ambitious Ah! That’s where I went wrong Not really. These firms only care if you are exceptionally, exceptionally smart. Well considering this was in the context of an American billionaire who studied in the US, I think it’s a fair paper to reference. That being said, family income and access to education is correlated across the globe, not just in the US. Tbh I think reading my comment as some sort of American Exceptionalism notion because it references US standardized testing is pretty bad faith. Says a lot about his social skills, if he didn’t manage to make any connections there. I never said otherwise ? I just said you are missing the point that it is highly unlikely for a poor to become a millionaire or billionaire. The poorer you are the harder it is to make money. I never said you couldn't improve your situation if you are poor nor that it is impossible for a poor to make it ? The problem ""self-made"" millionaire/billionaire is it only take into account those who didn't receive inheritance (so around 80%) but doesn't take into account those whose had support from their family (be it with large amounts of money or simple financial stability outside their project). There's a huge difference between the lower class and middle class, having to support and help your family and not the other way around is one of them. I can only find a small number of people that actually started from nothing like the exemples you gave. (again we're talking about those who became really rich not those who improved their situations, that's two very different things) I would argue we have a lot more leisure now though technology, so we don't need servants. I have a machine or technology that does my dishes, washes my clothes, keeps my home at a constant temperature, delivers clean water, heats up food, etc. There are also services that I have access to that make life easy... Amazon delivering almost anything in a day, I can call a car to be driven around at a moment's notice, I can have prepared food delivered to my home, this list goes on forever. Yes, we have to work for money, but that one act has replaced nearly everything else that people had to work hard for in the past. People have the ability to work hard at one thing, instead of working hard at all the things. >More things doesn't mean more value or comfort or happiness. It can help, but that's it. I didn't talk about ""things"", everything I said was infrastructure or requires infrastructure.... or just general knowledge that was gained over the years through research and science. Assets are not equivalent to a 500k check… You fundamentally didn't understand risk management as evidenced by your replies. The tightrope analogy is great. In which scenario are you more likely to cross a tight rope to the other side? A. The tightrope is 1m above the ground. B. The tightrope is 100m above the ground. The answer is pretty obvious. Well the wealth of a ""self-made"" billionaire family plays the role of the ground at 1m. You simply forget to account in your risk assessment the personal and family wealth of these individuals which changes everything. How am I wrong though? You didn’t address anything I said. This reply has nothing to do with the comment you replied to. I recommend you find a different sub if the basic concept of a safety net constitutes ""gymnastics"" to you. Maybe something like /r/funny would be more your speed. It's who you know, not how well you know them. Any advantage helps, any disadvantage hurts, but an introduction is worth gold when it's that vs being one among billions of faceless others. > Elon is so much more talented, intelligent, innovative Hahaha. Got me a good laugh. The guy is stupid and untalented. He only gets his idea from stealing other people ideas. > and valuable to the world than you are that a comparison isn’t even feasible. Wow this is fucking disgusting to say to someone. Go take a hike and a look in a mirror because you're being a gaping asshole right now. All in all, you fundamentally didn't understand what the guy you were replying was saying. You don't understand risk management which is ironic given the sub you are posting in. If Elon’s family couldn’t provide a backup he could’ve never gone to college and never dropped out to start zip2 , how many people get the opportunity to make “good choices”? Ah yes anecdotal examples, a classic form of statistical analysis often done in economics. Standing up for billionaires who don’t give a single shit about you, the fact that you can’t recognize how ridiculous that is makes me hopeless for our world. Keep defending your daddies and maybe one day they’ll give you a million dollars. “Defending reality” haha you can’t be serious. Great observation. I’m sure that same attitude will one day resonate with the masses and we can all just look the other way for the sake of these great hard working billionaires. That was my answer, if you can’t understand something that basic and outrageous it makes perfect sense as to why you’re attempting to defend billionaires. It’s not that hard to understand why one person doesn’t deserve that much money but as I’ve said to many, keep enjoying the taste of boot down your throat. >Those people take ""if you're not with me you're against me"" to the extremes Because the topics discussed are usually things like racism/ fascism where taking a neutral position is just siding with the oppressor. If you dont condem fascism you are a fascist. Having a nuanced opinion is very different to just saying ""both sides bad"" and seeking compromise on topics where there is no middleground. 300k in 1990 ? We are not talking about 300k in 2022 here. These are completely orthogonal to a career on wall st. Last I checked only connections in these hedge funds, not in other unrelated organizations, are helpful in getting into these hedge funds. To say that those connections are useful is like the same as saying your father has a high level position in national defense, and that helps you get into somewhere like citadel. Citadel and other companies don't care. If you ever interviewed at one of these places you'd know. This type of info should not be on your resume in the first place. And your father would have no connections in the company to make referrals. It's completely irrelevant. John Paul DeJoria - founder of Paul Mitchell systems and billionaire - grew up in foster care and was homeless twice before making it. Billionaire Harold hamm was raised by sharecroppers and had to pick cotton from a young age. Howard Schulz founder of Starbucks grew up dirt poor. So did Larry Ellison founder of Oracle. Oprah Winfrey was raised by a single mother in Mississippi. I could go on but I think you get the point that this isn’t as uncommon as you are making it out to be. Especially from the first one who was literally homeless and raised in foster care. Google says average amount saved for retirement is 98k, not sure how true that is > If your mom has to sell her house to loan you that money That's a funny assumption considering she hasn't lived in it for nearly 2 years and is currently looking to purchase a second home on the east coast. It's crazy what a paid off mortgage and pension can afford a single person who was responsible with their money. Could just remortgage it. No need to sell. No but literally any random kid from Lexington, MA, Summit NJ, Darien, CT, Chevy Chase, MD, Malibu, CA, Mercer Island WI, Highland Park, TX, Palo Alto, CA, Winnetka IL could have had 300k I never said anything about $300K in retirement... I even stated ""over $1M in retirement"", which I think was easily achievable for any middle class baby boomer couple. What do you know that I don't? I looked into this years ago since a similar conversation came up on reddit. His natural father left the family when Bezos was young. His mother worked odd jobs and was a secretary for a while. As a single mom, she couldn't afford a telephone at one point. His mom married his step father, who was an immigrant to the USA. He got his engineering degree in the USA and worked as an engineer for Exxon. You think they were not middle class? That's one well paying salaried job and the other is hardly any income. That' sounds like the very definition of middle to me. They certainly were not rich by American standards. You talked like having money and connections were the reason why Jeff Bezos got rich. I just wanted to criticize that. Certainly it is near impossible to become that rich without some money and connections from the start, and many rich people were simply given the wealth from their family, but having money and connections doesn't make you rich. It's like having to have fingers to perform neurosurgery, but having fingers doesn't make you a neurosurgeon. I said talent, but it could be anything else, something that they had that others didn't. People aren't the same, and certainly being rich doesn't signify that you are a better person but having hundreds of billions of dollars requires a little more than what you said. And by talent up there I meant talent for gaining wealth, not just general greatness. That talent could be the ability to lie and scam people, or the ability to not feel sympathy and make decisions purely for profit. It's only talent in the context of becoming rich, and it could very well be a negative thing. In that context saying ""talent which most of you don't"" would mean that most people live with their conscience intact, unlike Bezos. I don't mean anything specific. Every other guy graduating from finance owns an ""investment firm"" You clearly don't have any source that they actually had connections? Not like he ever saw any of those millions. A 30k investment from a father he had a poor relationship with, in a company he only owned 7% of. He had to take student loans to pay for school.. Does he have to start literally from scratch minecrafting his way up the tech tree for it to be considered self made? How so? He was also the son of a congressman! You don't think that opened doors for him that other people who have not gotten through? [deleted] Yeah, and successfully so. Being successful doesn’t mean you’re a good person, it just means that you accomplish what you set out to he do. He set out to make money, and that he did. He did so in a frankly disgusting way, but not in an unsuccessful way. I don’t really see what we’re disagreeing about? ""I have necessities"" ""I must be a slave"" lol downplay slavery all you want, but you will never experience even 1% of the pain that the enslaved lived so much privilege lmfao So if you live in an expensive city you're expected to just move? How? No such thing as an unskilled job. That's just a term used by douche bags like you to make someone else's work sound less important. Fuckin scum sniffer Yes. These are all examples of shitty antisocial behavior, so people don’t like that he acts that way. Guy is brilliant and is a net positive force, but he can be pretty shitty at times. Yeah, man, getting your rabid fans to harass a journalist who exposed your shitty actions is no big deal. These people are just haters! /s Honestly, if you think organized harassment isn't such a bad thing, I think you need your perspective adjusted. He answered a question- very well, I might add. You grow up [deleted] Accusing someone of being a pedophile with no evidence because they hurt your feelings is an asshole move and 100% a reason to hate someone. I’d forgive him if he apologized but he never did that. But if you want more reasons: he pushed for the re-opening of businesses back when COVID was at its worst, he manipulates the stock market with his tweets and he’s anti-union True, the only actual reason to not like Musk is because he's just an asshole piece of shit, but dude's really pushing technology and humanity forward, especially in comparison to other billionaires... No, they aren’t aware. Because they’re ignorant and clueless. Absolutely I do… and musk and several other billionaires still pull in personal revenue that has nothing to do with their net worth that must be accounted for in taxes. Cut the loopholes and tax 100% over an absurd amount of personal income and use that to pay for social services. I see zero downsides to this. Tell me why it’s not a good idea. Do you have a source? You’ll die mad. Sure, I’ll just believe Elon talking about how hard he worked for his money. No conflict of interest there. I grew up in an area full of millionaires and worked plenty of jobs with their kids cleaning toilets and washing dishes. They were hard working. The difference is while they got loans co-signed, jobs set up and bills paid by their parents later in life the other people I worked with had none of those advantages. This is the dumbest, most simplistic counter-argument one can make. “But he worked jobs!”. Wow dude, that’s crazy. I wonder how many of his coworkers in the boiler room flew around the continent on their private plane. You didn’t Google anything, did you >It's luck and timing as much as anytime man, right place at the right time. I'll never say anyone can do it because I've seen so many that deserve it more than me never get it unfortunately. I really respect the honesty. Way too many folks out there saying ""You just need passion and hard work X1000"" as though single moms in Africa ain't bustin their ass to survive. It sounds like we're in very similar boats. I hopped between a lot of different jobs: customer service, military, construction, farming, and now teaching. Teaching overseas has an expiration date so I'm thinking ahead by picking up some programming skills. I'm not expecting to make 6 figures a year, but thankfully I also don't need millions to retire overseas either. His salary for years has been $1. His money has come from producing extremely successful companies which then grant him stocks based entirely off of ensuring that companies success. Yes he does deserve that. Ka boom I feel like it is not perfect, but yes. In a sense. It wasn't inherited. Even this dumb meme calls it ""seed capital."" Now I'm not saying Bezos is ""self made."" But are you honestly suggesting that anyone who receives startup funding is NOT self made? Because that's a pretty narrow definition of being self made that I don't think most people use... When did I EVER say that anyone who has received seed capitol is self made? Try and keep up. I'm questioning the idea that receiving seed capitol negates someone from being self made. Those are two extremely different things. So someone who got 300 bucks from their parents is automatically disqualified from ever being a self made millionaire right? Let me print my own money so I can become truly self made I mean ya, most of the country is broke The difference between luck and foresight is planning. People who don’t see the connections all around them or the strings that can be plucked to manipulate their futures see nothing but chaos (luck/bad luck) I see, and how much do you currently have in your savings? Then why not do the same with the $20 in your savings account now? Turn $20 into $500. Then go from there I just wanna point out - you are the guy. The guy that people sell worthless junk to, and tell them that it'll appreciate in value rapidly and they'll be able to resell it later for a profit. Its you. You're the guy that makes other people rich. For someone who slings the S word around so casually, you’d think you’d learn the difference between magma and lava…… pit of lava….. yikes I like how you put it No, you're entirely missing the point, there never was an emerald mine So the mine was in Zambia, which was colonised by the British, who had already abolished slavery by the time they colonised Zambia (as by the neo-colonial period, they began to colonise more land in part *because* they no longer had a great way to exploit slaves) as well as outlawing slavery in the region. Apartheid did not occur in Zambia, either. Britain wanted to invade Africa to take its resources, and one of the principal political excuses they used was, in fact, that they would outlaw and end slavery, where under the African kingdoms and chiefs it was allowed. I think you’d be the one speculating. **[South African Defence Force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Defence_Force)** >The South African Defence Force (SADF) comprised the South African armed forces from 1957 until 1994. Shortly before the state reconstituted itself as a republic in 1961, the former Union Defence Force was officially succeeded by the SADF, which was established by the Defence Act (No. 44) of 1957. The SADF, in turn, was superseded by the South African National Defence Force in 1994. **[South African Border War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Border_War)** >The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angola from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990. It was fought between the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), an armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). The South African Border War resulted in some of the largest battles on the African continent since World War II and was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) [deleted] Okay. That's fair. I apologize for coming on so hard. It's just so infuriating when I see this plague spreading across the Internet of the viewpoint that life is supposed to be sunshine and rainbows no matter what. It's not. Life sucks and is gonna be unfair to everyone. Is that right? No. But whining about it does nothing. You just gotta work with the hand you're dealt. My insurance at my current job fucking SUCKS. But the pay is good and the people I work with are FANTASTIC. So right now, I'm weighing the benefits of being relatively young and healthy vs. a positive work environment, which is something that's exceedingly rare these days. It's all about compromise and balance. Nobody has *everything*. And being jealous of the people that have more than you is unproductive and sad. I could be pissed that as good as I am at gaming, there's a 10 year old Asian kid that can kick my ass blindfolded and demand that all games cater to my skill level and ability, or I can enjoy the games I DO play at the level I can play them at, and not worry that I'm never gonna be ""the best"". The ""tall poppy syndrome"" is tiring. Bruh. Don’t stop muh linear logic, it’s been so easy to follow this far! How could you add reason to this??? It’s like somehow the fact that Amazon is useful negates the fact that Amazon is an anticompetitive conglomerate that destroys competing businesses through nefarious, but legal, loopholes and bribery. A good and bad thing don’t cancel each other out. If I murder someone tomorrow the fact that I donated a million dollars to a charitable cause just yesterday doesn’t make the murder any less murderous. Ridiculous. What about the warehouse staff that have to piss in bottles for dollars an hour and stay when there’s natural disasters? Who gives a fuck about your white collar friends working at evil corp. Yes, those are exactly the people that OP talks about. There is absolutely no way for you to know what other group of employees OP might mean when it comes to Amazon so good on you for pointing this out. Nah it was response to being called a bootlik. My point was we all have to bootlik for someone. You chose politicians, I chose people who actually get things done. I watch these people get things done without having to vote for them. You on the other hand keep going to voting booth thinking ‘this time it will be different’. Insurance through the ACA is subsidized. Based on household income, you would likely also qualify for Medicaid, which would provide FREE or low cost coverage. Hope you’re learning a bit here for future discussions, buddy. I have a script that deletes my comments automatically at a certain period. TechBro life is nice. Not being able to afford a second bottle of milk sounds like poverty to me. The revisionist theory is the ""Emerald Mine"" story which has never been corroborated despite many attempts. Errol Musk is a massive bluffer who's estranged from his children. Everyone who knew Elon Musk corroborates how poor he was as a young adult studying in University in Canada, struggling for necessities. I think Elon Musk is a flawed character but i'm not going to rely on these bogus stories to denigrate him. Go rot in antiwork doreen You’re wrong friend. Just accept there are remarkable people in this world that worked for their wealth and take the L This is straight from his mom. You quoted Wikipedia. Hmm who should we believe? >businessinsider lol, might as well be medium.com [deleted] I made over 200k in GME just last year. Will my children be Elon Musk now? Who knows how much the mine is worth or how much emerald was even produced. Saying I own a business could mean I own a massive tech company or I run a local convenience store. I feel like you’re making some generalizations here without knowing the full story (I don’t know the full story either) Regardless whether you believe the commenter is scum or not, use more words than just insulting him. Sure, I just don't believe that people who are successfuly should be hated by default. But if that is how you want to live your life, enjoy it. There are 328 women on the Forbes billionaires list. Less than 100 of them can even claim to be significantly involved in the creation of their wealth. Of those 70%+ are from wealthy families. So should we denegrate all of these women? Oh, I was just memeing. But people keep repeating that argument even though it has beeng debunked already. Or at least it seems like it. https://i.imgur.com/I87YqWy.jpg explain how this centralization of wealth in a tiny percent of the population is beneficial to anyone but the people hoarding wealth. The average standard of living is going down because wages don’t keep up with inflation, and it’s the wealthy who are responsible. You don’t even have to be a billionaire to not deserve your wealth when it comes from exploitation. With the exception of bill gates, they hired people who invented those things and made bank of of their work. Benzos didnt actually design anything techy, he just owns a fucking company dude. His big idea was selling books cheaply online, and then spinning that idea into selling everything. Exploitation is literally the only way to be a billionaire. It’s absolutely the principal qualification for being a billionaire. You compared a dragon hoarding gold to Musk. So the shit link you just posted doesn't address anything. People act like these vast fortunes are just huge piles of cash sitting around doing nothing. I honestly shouldn't even take time to respond to shit that is as bad faith as this. It is amazing. I often times forget that the median intelligence is still retarded. I only spent 30 seconds but that was enough to get a sense of your whole life story. Hope it gets better It's all billionaire fault! Let's rob them and divide their wealth to usssssss I am adamant about defending the ability to accumulate wealth. With out the ability to accumulate vast amounts of wealth the quality of life would be significantly reduced globally. > Can I just ask, genuinely, why are you so invested in defending Elon Musk? It's more about watching people on Reddit spread absolute gossip garbage as factual truth with complete conviction, and other people lapping it up because this person is confident and I heard this before it must be true. Zero critical thinking skills or independent research involved. He copy pasted same article eveywhere so i corrected him. You can look at his post hostory and see that he believes Elon’s family operated an emerald mine in apartheid south africa. > nothing to do with apartheid. Also Zambia didn’t do away with Apartheid until the 90’s. Your own source says the Musks held ownership in the 80’s. So maybe move those goal posts further out Zambia never had a apartheid to start with. What the hell are you talkin about? > Serious question though: why do you defend these greedy pigs so much? Do you oink or are you misled? I defend the truth against idiots like you. Wy do you hate them so much? Are you that greedy and jealous of people who do better than you? Lol.. Sure. The rich hate being rich because they're so lame and they know it! I'd take lame for even an extra few hundred a month. being poor is lame not from what i’ve seen. it’s normally the small fish that say “being rich is impossible and if you’re rich, you just got lucky “ i can give you hand out after hand out and it will still take a ton of sacrifice, luck and discomfort for you to be in the upper 5%, let alone 1%. becoming a billionaire is definitely an achievement. building a hospital in a poor country is a greater achievement, but that doesn’t mean that creating generational wealth that will change the trajectory of your family’s lineage for the next 200 years isn’t also remarkable. you have to be broke >All claims are bullshit until proven otherwise. While I agree with that in theory, In practice unless you're an expert on the matter with lots of data on hand, it's not worth the time investment to collect data snippets that I've seen scattered across different sites over decades for a reddit post to prove a trend that I've seen. I'll just leave it at ""Live on Earth for a few more decades and you'll start picking up the pattern on your own"". The specific numbers may or may not be accurate but the idea of luck being a major factor holds true. but if you can't acknowledge that most billionaires have a tremendous starting advantage in their lives without me dedicating hours of my time to the discussion than you're not worth having the discussion with to start with, Acknowledging that is the starting point of the discussion, like acknowledging that the sky is blue, I shouldn't need to write a research paper proving the sky is blue in order to have a discussion on astronomy. (Unless you're going to complain 'oh it's not actually blue, it's just the way light refracts through the atmosphere and it's colourless/black blahblahblah.' You seem like the type to try and nitpick that and miss the entire point.) No, median means 50th percentile earning. 50% of software dev make more than that, 50% of software dev make less. It's like saying median IQ is 100. Bell curve. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/mobile/software-developers.htm That one of our government websites citing the 110k. Well, come here then. >People can fuck up playing a stacked deck, sure but its better to have one than not. A vast majority fail, despite the deck being stacked in their favor. Others succeed despite everything being stacked against them. At the end of the day, what you do with what you have seems far more important than what you have. >one would argue the connections in part due to their families status also plays a role in their success. How great was the status of all these families? I never heard the name ""Bezos"" before Amazon. Musk was from Africa, no one knew who he was before PayPal. Buffett was working since he would walk. One could argue I have been well connected. My former step-mother was a C-suite executive. In college I got the VIP tour of the place she was at, behind all the high security areas and meeting with all the other execs. Once I graduated, she had me talk to one of her lead guys on the phone, then sent my resume over to her people (she was their bosses, bosses, boss type thing). I never even got a call back. So much for connections. I posted my resume online like everyone else, interviewed, and got hired at a place where I had 0 connection, and have been there ever since. Sure, being in a room full of successful people makes you much more likely to make the right connections, but it's not a guarantee. And I don't think these guys were all that well connected growing up, other than maybe Gates. But even in that situation, you still need to be competent and social enough to make something happen... along with having a bit of luck. >The money helps but its not hard to see that many ""self made"" success isn't only on them but a multitude of other things. No one exists in a bubble, everyone gets help along the way. Eminem grew up in a shit environment and started with nothing, but with Dr Dre he wouldn't be anything today. It's easy to explain away anyone's hard work when you dismiss it all as soon as someone lends them a helping hand. And while they got help, they also helped a lot of others. There are a lot of additional millionaires and billionaires because of Gates, Musk, Bezos, and Buffett. It's not like they single handedly took it all for themselves any no one else rose with them, or made something based on the platforms they created. >Just not a fan of this dumb fucking worship of these ""self made"" men. I don't agree with the worship either, but I also don't agree with the blind hatred. They are people. They have done some good, they have done some bad... just as we all have. To completely dismiss the good and to only focus on the bad is just as silly as worship. People are complicated and things aren't so black and white. Wouldn't one argue experience is the best teacher and if someone is given multiple chances because of former failures they are better equip at handling a similar situation in the future. Like hard work is necessary for these ventures but you have people basically just saying poor people are just ""lazy"" and that is why they are poor when even you agree that the safety net grants people more chances. Oh God, not a place that doesn't continuously worship the tiny percentage of people who control more and actively lobby against the benefit of the rest of the populace! Imagine going out of your way to denounce a place where for ONCE these people are actually criticized, unlike the all the other facets of media. Won't someone PLEEEEASE think of the billionaires! Fred Trump and Marty Levenson bid for a government contract during the 1980’s and had to give a full accounting of their real estate portfolios. They were both worth the same, about $400M. Fast forward to 2015, the Levenson empire is worth $22B. The Trump empire is not. It is amazing how people who know nothing say alot. [deleted] Apparently you don’t believe that people can move their way out of poverty with hard work? What other advantages do you think we had? Thanks,you should check my merch out. I'm also just starting on a comic book which I will be working on live on here.. Deadmanwalkingtees.com 1) You just completed ignored his mention of Michael Jordan. 2) I hate to break it to you, but government assistance and measly help from friends isn’t eh same level of support that the guys in the post had. You asked for billionaires without the level of support the guys in the post had, not for billionaires without any support at all. 3) “*Had* me worried for a sec” What? Lmfao. You say “Had” like you successfully refuted his point. You never touched on MJ or Rihanna. And frankly, your argument concerning Rowling is dogshit. Can’t believe retards in this thread are acting like 300k is some insane amount of money to invest This is r/economics not r/antiwork probably hard for dog walkers like you to understand where 300k might come from >Imagine borrowing 300k from your family and telling them you would most likely lose all their money Well for starters, if you want your friends and family to invest in your business idea, you should probably be a lot more confident in your idea than that. Gates - Father was an attorney who was a sitting president of multiple state bar associations. Mother sat on the board of multiple mega corporations. Bezos - Grandfather was one of the largest landowners in Texas. Both parents contributed almost 300k to his startup. Musk - Father was a property developer, consultant and owned a fucking emerald mine in South Africa. Were they all mega 0.00001% rich? No. But all of these people came from families that would be considered the low end of the upper class on only their worst days. Learn how to use google. [deleted] I understand the analogy you’re making, but it is a huge underestimate of the work Elon, Bezos, Warren, and Gates have done. Not trying to be a shill or a “Musk Stan” or whatever the fuck people call it. Yes, they got education for free. Yes, they had contacts with successful businessmen. Yes, they all were born into rich families. Does that invalidate their work? No. It doesn’t. Give anyone a fucking harvard/princeton education, and those contacts, and the contacts that those kind of parents brings and give them a million dollars with guaranteed amazing fallback careers and fuck yes anyone can make 50 million. Stop ignoring 95% of their advantages. Economic incels would be the appropriate term here. Yeah that’s what I thought. Fucking loser, back to mommies basement for you :) I’ll lick boots all day over being a self loathing little pest like you 😂 Dude I get what you’re trying to say but it’s really not that big of a deal / any type of game changing factor at all. Once again you’re way to focused on that 300k to try to create some kind of story about how he had some outsized advantage. Go on Hulu and watch an episode of shark tank, there’s literally 250+ episodes of them just throwing 300k or more at people left and right. Also he started Amazon during this thing called “the dot com boom” where investors were literally salivating to throw money at anyone with a moderately convincing internet company concept. If you don’t understand how business funding or seed money works, I’m not sure what you’re doing here trying to spout off about it. Yes, getting a loan from a bank would mean you have debt that could be subject to interest. However the majority of start up businesses like Amazon receive their funding from investors. That money doesn’t come with debt, it’s “gifted” to you just like a loan from your parents (only difference is you give the investors equity in your company). If your business fails, that money vanishes and there’s no debt or interest or anything you’re responsible for. Anyone can think of a convincing business concept and pitch it to investors, if it’s any good chances are you can easily get well over 300k investment - which literally becomes your money. No debt. No interest, just money given to you to grow your business. So once again, if you aren’t aware of how seed money works I’m not sure what you’re doing here So I should be able to just buy $1000 with my $10,000 that I currently have? Money can't do shit on its own. Someone has to do something in order for it to do anything. The point is, people need to stop saying ""oh if I did it I'd be self made, but they aren't"" because a lot of people have advantages that they conveniently don't consider ""advantages"" like being born into a half decent family in a first world country. The 9 year old kid working the sand mines in Africa would look at a 9 year old American in 3rd grade, and would consider him having as much an advantage as you look at someone with a million dollar loan to start. So, are they only ""self made lololol"" to *you*? Would you consider yourself ""self made"" if you started a business now with a 20k bank loan? What are you even trying to argue? Your entire post is just incoherent contradictions of the initial point you tired and failed to make I know it might be challenging for someone like you (people who self identify as progressive tend to be slower than most) but just because someone’s path to success was subjectively more challenging than others, doesn’t invalid the success of others who had unique advantages (or what losers like you call “privilege”) The “success” you made up to talk about on the internet supposedly came from luck and happenstance - literally the exact same scenario as any of the four people in the OP. For every Elon, gates, bezos, etc. there’s a million people with similar circumstances, harder circumstances, and easier circumstances who all failed at achieving what they accomplished. Really not that complicated buddy What about the Snapchat founders or even Larry page and Sergey Brin, the Google guys? Was any of them born into wealthy families or had access to a bunch of funding? [deleted] I don’t know what you smoke, but 300k in 1994 would be around 580k today. You are pulling the 800k out your ass. No Proof, no service. Show me the light, since you guys are so fucking enlighten please show me where the big bad billionaire hurt your feelings. You can list whatever fact or thing in the face of them, they will always find a way to be on the side of discrediting successful people or call you a billionaire simp because they can’t come to grips that they aren’t where they want in life because of things they’ve done that are in their control. Either lower your aspirations or aim at better goals in life. Its just constant parroting of this rich = bad nonsense over and over because and I don’t see any other reason besides it being rooted in envy. Back to the zoo you go, back into your cage. guwp guwp guwp, Watch out for the fake non binary he-she- /hipster/hippie over here. Do you get paid in bananas as well? Should I call the zookeeper and tell them you escaped your cage once again? Fuck it Oh you're a grammar nazi too, suits you Tankies provide me with so much laughter. The rate of increase in Seattle has also increased significantly greater than the rest of the market due to demand from high compensation tech workforce that didn’t exist back then. It’s a different real estate market now than it was then. The prices are not really comparable. It’s like saying someone who owned $100 in apple stock in 99 actually had $62400 because that’s what reflects the current prices. It was a different asset back then so it’s not a valid comparison. Using inflation to assess the current buying power of a previous price is valid. >The purely economic definition of risk excludes the type of risk that working class people experience. I have no idea what this means. >So using it to claim that billionaires take on more risk than workers, is begging the question. That's not even what we're talking about, at least not what I'm talking about. This is about the risk taken by those who invested in these people. That risk was taken on by people who weren't billionaires, and given to people who had even less at the time. >Without a favorable relationship to power Huh? Do you think Kanye West had power when he started out? Go watch his documentary on Netflix, he didn't. He earned the power and influence he has now. >high-quality education If you have an internet connection you have access to more high quality education than anyone who has ever existed. If you choose to use it or not is up to you. >existing reserves of capital There are plenty of places to get funding. Just like education, funding is now easier to get than at any time in human history, specifically in the US. Do you have more excuses? I'm not telling you that you need to go out and be a billionaire. I'm not a billionaire and never will be; I'm not willing to work that hard. But I'm happy there are people out there who are willing dedicate their life to make these online stores, warehouses, logistics networks, rockets, cars, operating systems, data centers, etc. These are all difficult and complex things that we all get to use and benefit from to make our lives easier. And I know, I know, there are thousands of people who work at these companies to make these things happen, but none of that happens without someone taking the risk of starting that company and doing the hard work, to get it from nothing to even just a few employees, and then more. >Capital accumulation favors the existing aristocracy in the same way that a casino favors the house. All the people in the original post are 1st generation billionaires. 80-90% of millionaires didn't inherit their wealth. There were 500 new billionaires last year. There were also 1 million new millionaires just in the US last year. If what you were saying was true this wouldn't be happening and we'd see names like Rockafeller and Carnegie at the top of the Forbes list still. All this whining about rich people doesn't do anything to improve your life, I'm not sure what the point of it all is. It's not like if they have less you'll have more. Personally, I like knowing the chance is there move up with no real ceiling and I can choose how far I'm willing to pursue that or at what speed. And if I'm not willing to do it, I'm glad others are, because it makes my life a hell of a lot easier. But it isn't and it is incredibly simple to prove that it isn't. If someone were to give you a famous painting from Van Gogh you would become very wealthy very quickly. However a while ago that same painting, that no additional work had been done on, would make you much less wealthy. How can physical labor be the only source of value if something can change value without work being done? > What did you do with your seed capitol of “nothing?” Oh. I see. You were doing a really dumb ""gotcha"" question. Well, you got me. I haven't had a 300k idea yet. I see teslas all over the place. Do you deny there aren’t 100,000s of thousands of them on the road? The factory in Austin is like the largest in the world and will produce 1 million cars a year. And for the first time ever my dad can get high speed internet at his rural home with starlink. And SpaceX launches satellites into orbit. Literally all these companies produce real value. Seems like you're both obsessed with Musk Are you expecting me to write an essay here about how space related technologies and cheaper satellites are utilized in modern civilization? But in any case. How is that related to your ""proof of concept"" comment exactly? If something is proven to work reliably as its supposed to while also surpassing all competition then its not a ""proof of concept"" anymore. Thats not how that term works in english. Sorry. >How does commercial space launch impact the average person? * SpaceX launched dozens of telecommunication satellites for other companies with millions if not billions of customers, including phone, television and internet services, for example for Intelsat, Iridium, Thaicom, Spacecom, Orbcomm, Inmarsat, SES, Eutelsat, EchoStar etc. Potentially billions of people use and benefit from such services. * SpaceX launched GPS satellites, many people use navigation during their everyday lives, and it's also an important national security asset. * SpaceX launched hundreds of cubesats for a wide variety of customers, including universities, governments, amateur radio organizations, companies, etc and their uses are ranging from earth observation, communications, tracking, IoT applications to weather and wildlife monitoring. All of this benefits the average person. For example here is a payload list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_launches_in_January%E2%80%93June_2022#SpXTransporter3 * SpaceX launched dozens of cargo and crew missions for NASA to the ISS enabling them to do science experiments. You can read about the benefits in these links: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/ https://spinoff.nasa.gov/ * SpaceX also launched multiple NRO, Air Force and Space Force satellites, ensuring national security for 330 million citizens. * Apart from ISS missions SpaceX launched other science missions for NASA, NOAA and other organizations, for example Jason-3, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite space telescope or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission. From farmers to everyday people everybody can benefit from the insights such satellites and missions can provide in weather forecasts, to name one practical example. * In addition to the obvious fact that Starlink provides internet access to customers it also improves cloud services, for example Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure has special contracts with SpaceX, or we can mention that airlines are offering onboard WIFI with the help of the constellation. * The impact of the introduction of Starlink internet connectivity also increases competition between other satellite internet and cable internet providers, expecially in areas where previously millions of customers were forced to use services of companies that had a local monopoly. This means not only Starlink customers will have improved internet services due to competitive market forces. * You could even argue that employing 12 thousand employees and indirectly providing business to about 100 thousand employees at suppliers and partners. CC: hey /u/programmer3 I did the essay for you. Also people in this thread: /u/stichtom /u/Over_Car3203 /u/Mineotopia Yes it is is. “Millions” means anything higher than one million up until one billion. Good try tho. Yes. You’re correct. I was refuting what you said that he’s improved millions of lives. You’re either : A. Jealous Or B. Completely ignorant of economics If you believe building a car company is easy you are an absolute bellend. Seek therapy Okay. That's fair. You make good points. And yes, political talking heads, especially those on the right, make a living riling up their base with fire and brimstone. The difference is, and what infuriates me more than anything else, is the side, smug, sniveling Dolores Umbridge-style smuggery that so many on the left use when they make their points, as if they just know better than the rest of us, what's good for us uneducated proles, often while engaging in the exact same hypocrisy that they claim the right is doing. Chief example, environmentalism. An unequivocally good goal, and anyone who has a brain in their head should want to move away from fossil fuels and protect our planet. But so often, the messaging in the media is that if blaming the ""gas guzzling, coal rolling rednecks"" in their big trucks that are polluting the atmosphere. They decry meat eating, and excessive consumption as being bad for the environment. However, while they're doing that, they're also flying around the country in their private jets, traveling in a private motorcade of SUVs, performing at speaking engagements that cost 4-6 figures per seat, and live a life of luxury that most of us can only dream of. This may be a uniquely American problem, I'd be willing to agree to that hypothesis, as a lot of politicians in particular who get praised on here are most often Eastern European ones that do manage to live within fairly modest means, use public transit, etc. However, I take issue with the nonsensical claim that Biden is a conservative in any sense. First, we're not comparing European politics to American ones here, so that's an apples and bananas comparison to begin with, and secondly, the only areas in which Europe can hold itself further left than America are in socialized healthcare and private gun ownership, really. >and Elon is a known liar And you trust his father, a bona fide piece of shit, with his claims of overflowing cash with a minor stake in a Zambian emerald mine? And regardless, it's also very well known that he left for Canada with almost nothing and had to support himself when going to school and starting his businesses. This story was also corroborated by his mother, who divorced Errol Musk when the Musk kids were very young. And to combine with that, apparently Errol claimed he made around 400k over his lifetime with that supposed share, which frankly is not a lot of money when starting a business. And that's not even to say whether Elon would accept this hypothetical money anyway, seeing as his dad was estranged with his family. [https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r](https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r) [https://moguldom.com/278102/fact-check-did-elon-musk-inherit-apartheid-money-from-his-south-african-father/](https://moguldom.com/278102/fact-check-did-elon-musk-inherit-apartheid-money-from-his-south-african-father/) Yea totally. Like I said billions of dollars wouldn't really help that many people anyway. It wouldn't set your family up for life and everyone you know or anything. So you call me a weeb first and when I say something back I’m the child? Also lol okay buddy the corporate tax line sealed the deal that you’re just jealous. Also how am I a stan? Bc I think you’re just as much of a loser as Jeff and Elon are ass wipes. The only difference b/w you and them is at least they create jobs and industry instead of jealously bitching on Reddit they helped your 'self made' millionaire friends become millionaires I try, just rough sometimes. I am aware there is a lot of bs around so I'm mostly able to filter everything. This time I failed:(. Sowwy Of course? Of course they founded the company, so of course they’re entitled to 90% of every employee’s labor value in perpetuity? Why are you ok with that? Saved scumming is life's greatest hack. Everyone should be doing it. Get a load of these fuckin' rocket surgerists will ya? How dumb do they sound, eh? Or if you hit the “max bet” before winning it back Except it’s not 50/50 red/black. Always the chance of green 0 or 00 Casinos are a big scam mate. They not only rely on luck but also they made their games so that the chance of winning is so small that the only thing that makes you lose more money is pyramid schemes. $50 on odd and $50 on even is the way to go. I’ve been playing for an hour now and won every round! Until the max bet stops you in your tracks. Better wins double their money almost every time Yeah. You said if you put it on red then it will only be doubled. So if you want to maximize what you can win on one play on roulette then you can put your bet on a singular number. American biscuit is kind of like an English scone. > if your a *you're *Learn the difference [here](https://www.wattpad.com/66707294-grammar-guide-there-they%27re-their-you%27re-your-to).* *** ^(Greetings, I am a language corrector bot. To make me ignore further mistakes from you in the future, reply `!optout` to this comment.) What is Elon Musk supposed to do about government taking peoples property in your opinion? Provide your solution he could implement. Or are you just seething about him buying a company during a conversation that is completely unrelated Unless it’s about him or showing a pic of himself bald and blocks you like a little 12 year old maybe it was fake idk chubbyemu YouTube pretty good channel emia means presence in blood Midlife crisis I guess No you can't we've already got a ministry of truth in the works so don't worry. In this situation we'll all lose together. Nope, they don't have to notify you. They'll be sorely disappointed. Who the fuck said America was a first world country? [deleted] Also, they're not required to notify you they're about to do it or have done it already. And I live in Delaware fuck me Plus they take a percentage to give it back to you. In Texas it’s like 3% I'd imagine so. It's a very old legal concept. I'm sure there are cases where people get it overturned, but the concept itself exists and is codified everywhere. Oh yeah, I forgot about that part. Good thing to mention! [deleted] >complete losses in the others lol I will live in my car or the street before i rent. I will watch the world burn before I support that system. Theres also the fact of old af european buildings. Id much rather not be on the hook to repair 500 year old masonry. Public safety nets and services and transit makes it unnecessary to own a single family house. And it makes thosesingle family housesi cheaper because its over all much more expensive than simply renting within a city >Except the US is not Europe, it is far richer Median wealth in Europe: $92k Median wealth in US: $79k ​ Median wealth rank: (2) Belgium (5) Denmark (6) Switzerland (7) Netherlands (8) France (9) UK (12) Italy (13) Norway (14) Spain (15) Ireland (17) Austria (18) Sweden (23) US [https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-wealth-report.html](https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-wealth-report.html) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072951/wealth-per-adult-europe-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072951/wealth-per-adult-europe-by-country/) ​ ​ >far less population dense Population density of Europe: 34 per sq km Population density of US: 36 per sq km [https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-population/](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-population/) [https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/) Huh? The housing crisis has nothing to do with banks not lending to people. You ever applied for a mortgage? The bank will lend you an amount that will surely result in foreclosure in a heartbeat. In fact, in a rapidly accelerating housing market like we have rn it’s in banks benefit to foreclose on people if they can. The housing crisis is being caused by zoning laws and regulations and increased cost of construction materials that make it impossible for home supply to meet demand, by large corporations and foreign investors buying up properties as investments, and by two years of aggressive spending by the government leaving a certain sector of people With more disposable cash than they expected to have. If you got a plan why are you wasting your time with me? [deleted] OPs posted about four American so there was an assumption made. No need to be a spaz about it. Besides, we were also once a British colony. Tell that to anyone who's taxes just went up 300% in 3 years due to raising home prices (cough, looking at you Texas) Google, YouTube, etc are your friends. I don't mean that sarcastically. Check out YouTube lectures on long term investing strategies and google basics of investing, strategies, etc. Of course, I'm sure you got it! [deleted] Well known Reddit comment on what to do if you win the lottery from /u/blakeclass https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/whats_the_happiest_5word_sentence_you_could_hear/chb4yin/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3 > So, what the hell DO you do if you are unlucky enough to win the lottery? This is the absolutely most important thing you can do right away: NOTHING. Yes. Nothing. DO NOT DECLARE YOURSELF THE WINNER yet. Do NOT tell anyone. The urge is going to be nearly irresistible. Resist it. Trust me. / 1. IMMEDIATELY retain an attorney. Get a partner from a larger, NATIONAL firm. Don't let them pawn off junior partners or associates on you. They might try, all law firms might, but insist instead that your lead be a partner who has been with the firm for awhile. Do NOT use your local attorney. Yes, I mean your long-standing family attorney who did your mother's will. Do not use the guy who fought your dry-cleaner bill. Do not use the guy you have trusted your entire life because of his long and faithful service to your family. In fact, do not use any firm that has any connection to family or friends or community. TRUST me. This is bad. You want someone who has never heard of you, any of your friends, or any member of your family. Go the the closest big city and walk into one of the national firms asking for one of the ""Trust and Estates"" partners you have previously looked up on http://www.martindale.com from one of the largest 50 firms in the United States which has an office near you. You can look up attornies by practice area and firm on Martindale. / 2. Decide to take the lump sum. Most lotteries pay a really pathetic rate for the annuity. It usually hovers around 4.5% annual return or less, depending. It doesn't take much to do better than this, and if you have the money already in cash, rather than leaving it in the hands of the state, you can pull from the capital whenever you like. If you take the annuity you won't have access to that cash. That could be good. It could be bad. It's probably bad unless you have a very addictive personality. If you need an allowance managed by the state, it is because you didn't listen to point #1 above. Why not let the state just handle it for you and give you your allowance? Many state lotteries pay you your ""allowence"" (the annuity option) by buying U.S. treasury instruments and running the interest payments through their bureaucracy before sending it to you along with a hunk of the principal every month. You will not be beating inflation by much, if at all. There is no reason you couldn't do this yourself, if a low single-digit return is acceptable to you. You aren't going to get even remotely the amount of the actual jackpot. Take our old friend Mr. Whittaker. Using Whittaker is a good model both because of the reminder of his ignominious decline, and the fact that his winning ticket was one of the larger ones on record. If his situation looks less than stellar to you, you might have a better perspective on how ""large"" your winnings aren't. Whittaker's ""jackpot"" was $315 million. He selected the lump-sum cash up-front option, which knocked off $145 million (or 46% of the total) leaving him with $170 million. That was then subject to withholding for taxes of $56 million (33%) leaving him with $114 million. In general, you should expect to get about half of the original jackpot if you elect a lump sum (maybe better, it depends). After that, you should expect to lose around 33% of your already pruned figure to state and federal taxes. (Your mileage may vary, particularly if you live in a state with aggressive taxation schemes). / 3. Decide right now, how much you plan to give to family and friends. This really shouldn't be more than 20% or so. Figure it out right now. Pick your number. Tell your lawyer. That's it. Don't change it. 20% of $114 million is $22.8 million. That leaves you with $91.2 million. DO NOT CONSULT WITH FAMILY when deciding how much to give to family. You are going to get advice that is badly tainted by conflict of interest, and if other family members find out that Aunt Flo was consulted and they weren't you will never hear the end of it. Neither will Aunt Flo. This might later form the basis for an allegation that Aunt Flo unduly influenced you and a lawsuit might magically appear on this basis. No, I'm not kidding. I know of one circumstance (related to a business windfall, not a lottery) where the plaintiffs WON this case. Do NOT give anyone cash. Ever. Period. Just don't. Do not buy them houses. Do not buy them cars. Tell your attorney that you want to provide for your family, and that you want to set up a series of trusts for them that will total 20% of your after tax winnings. Tell him you want the trust empowered to fund higher education, some help (not a total) purchase of their first home, some provision for weddings and the like, whatever. Do NOT put yourself in the position of handing out cash. Once you do, if you stop, you will be accused of being a heartless bastard (or bitch). Trust me. It won't go well. It will be easy to lose perspective. It is now the duty of your friends, family, relatives, hangers-on and their inner circle to skew your perspective, and they take this job quite seriously. Setting up a trust, a managed fund for your family that is in the double digit millions is AMAZINGLY generous. You need never have trouble sleeping because you didn't lend Uncle Jerry $20,000 in small denomination unmarked bills to start his chain of deep-fried peanut butter pancake restaurants. (""Deep'n 'nutter Restaurants"") Your attorney will have a number of good ideas how to parse this wealth out without turning your siblings/spouse/children/grandchildren/cousins/waitresses into the latest Paris Hilton. Continued due to character Limit. Yup just live like normal and that jackpot will be what you need. People always want more. Me I'm in a decent sized studio and had a roommate move in. Had too much space and no need to fill it with crap Great advice except don't buy an annuity - it's a very bad investment designed to make the people who sell them rich. Put it in the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund and ignore market ups and downs. Annuity? Nah just invest that shit into a diversified portfolio of assets from stocks to bonds to real estate to crypto to metals to everything. Diversity protects wealth. Maybe stick like 5% in an annuity if you really want something extremely safe. I never understood the hate of youtube there is so much info if you find the right people to watch The first one is just plain stupid but in the second case I actually kinda feel for Ted And that works? “You used MY birthday as your number. !! I deserve half!!” Or “I bought a lottery ticket with you once last year… you cut me out this time! You owe me half!!” I slood my pants last weekend. Are you sure that’s what it’s called? Or that’s the correct spelling? Google isn’t yielding any results in terms of a drug named slood Wtf is 'slood'? 😂 I think you miss the point here. They aren't arguing on 300k being a big or small number to start a business, they arguing on getting the 300k as being a simple or hard first step to start a business. The thing is, most people can't invest 300k by themselves, because it's already a capital that would take a lifetime to secure before investing it. And you're comment saying how little 300k is for seed funding just emphasize this point. Yeah you really are just an ignorant fuck xD I tried to out it in a way that you would understand stand since you literally said ""having rich parents only shaves off a year or three. Which is clearly not the case. They should just kill people like you in highschool. I guess reddit would be a lot less interesting without dumb assholes that assume they know everything Try to tell me I need a better education because you cannot grasp how difficult it is for an average person to come up with 300k.. you realize how fucking dumb you look right now? Is there a reason you are defending shit humans that have billions in expendable income that they made off of exploiting underpaid workers? Oh most definitely, building a company that size with the reach that it has and the impact that it has isn't a common thing by any means. The fact he did a double bachelors at Princeton in 4 years for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science alone says he's really not like the significantly majority of us. How is that non sequitur. It’s pretty clear they mean every individual makes the same complaints yet are unwilling to make the sacrifices themselves and their excuse is they can’t do it alone... if that’s everyone’s reason they’re all blowing smoke out their asses. It is sequitur, my point was; the people who scream for ""change"" are the least willing to change. Everyone wants ""systemic change"", but not if that means they have to sacrifice anything. So don't bother trying then. ... You obviously don't understand how wealth works, once you have capital, it is not dependent. That was the entire point of the post... How Jeff was ""self made"" with $300k in his pocket. Oh... my bad, apparently I do need to tell you. ""**YOU ARE THE DUMBEST PERSON IN THIS THREAD**""... like you must be 2 standard deviations below average, to not work that out. Even dumber than that guy who was blaming a woman who has been dead for nearly a decade for all his problems. People don't have equal abilities. There is a genetic basis to a lot of different human traits. Whether it is physical attractiveness, athletic prowess, general intelligence, tolerance of pain, or propensity to mental illness, these feed into a person's future outcomes. People don't make equally good choices. People are free to waste time or use time wisely. One group will have, generally, a more favorable outcome. Well that’s certainly one way to look at things, yikes. This reads like an answer in an intro to philosophy 101 class lol That has nothing to do with it. They’re talking about morality of artificial vs natural selection in humans, not how artificial selection helps provide humans food There are plenty of people who've lost everything backing a family member's business venture. There are plenty of examples of frittered away fortunes. There are plenty of examples of once proud families moving down the social ladder (see Vanderbilts,. for example). Having opportunities and capitalizing on them are two different things. That's not what most people refer to changing the world. Not even close. You know that though and you're just being obtuse. You can work to acquire some capital then just use it to start a business. The biggest barrier that makes it so you need a massive amount of capital is the government [Pick your source.](https://www.google.com/search?q=Approximately+90+percent+have+lost+their+wealth+by+the+third+generation&rlz=1C1FKPE_enUS982US982&oq=Approximately+90+percent+have+lost+their+wealth+by+the+third+generation&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60.700j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) Admit you were wrong now. I had my own business. My parents have contributed money to my education. Why am I not billionaire??? It so easy!! Parents who teach their children to be successful are not a simple thing to replicate, especially at scale. The value kind of upbringing that leads to success is priceless, but it's rare because it's hard and often prohibitive to do. Even private tutors, the cost of which I'm sure would be astronomical, probably wouldn't be able to match the value of being mentored by a parent who has ""made it"" and knows the game inside and out (even if ""the game"" is being a very successful engineer by knowing your field better than others). If these tutors knew as much about how to be successful as very successful people, they probably wouldn't be tutoring -- no offense to tutors. So again, I understand your frustration, but I'm not hearing any viable solutions. The engineers that built the website are making a hell of a lot more than the factory workers going paycheck to paycheck. I agree with you overall, but the points being made need work I mean... Yeah maybe. I'm not sure I understand your point though. Even then, there are a lot of circumstances that made Amazon as a company uniquely suited to establish AWS as the powerhouse it is. Something would have come along without them, but it would probably be very different to what AWS is today. Yes but what regulation. I don't think people are worried that it's not regulated Unfortunately, in this case we're better off with Amazon than the government. I'd love nothing more than to turn AWS into government infrastructure in theory, but in practice, it'll turn into every other government utility. Underfunded and crumbling because instead of money going into a company that will improve the product, the money goes right into some senator's pockets, or into defense black budgets to keep funding pointless wars which also make random senators rich. At least Amazon is profit driven enough that the competition keeps the platform better/faster than Azure and GCP. Because Bezos hasn’t put the company up for sale [deleted] Could be. That stuff tends to be relatively secretive, companies don't like disclosing where exactly their data centers are. It's not just the bay area. They're all over the place. They're slightly less secretive about it in the bay area because they want to attract the talent to build/manage those servers. But you could be driving out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and see a giant nondescript industrial building, it's probably either a slaughterhouse or a data center. My friend allow me to introduce you to intellectual property. Smart people use their heads to create things of value. Society recognizes this value and rewards them. This thing of value could be ideas like Amazon (actually a collection of ideas) or a new fuel source or really any thing that is of value to the world. Welcome to the modern world where ideas and your brain count for a lot. ""I can't actually argue my point so I'm going to be vaguely insulting and dismissive instead"" stop posting So basically you think you are entitled to him giving you free stuff just because he is successful? Once the government or mob rule decides they can decide what you need or don't and can take it to redistribute we are screwed. Taxes should be a flat tax of EVERYONE paying the same. If someone is super successful and if they did it legally they should be entitled to it. Even if they are useless people like the Kardashian's or movie stars or billionaires. They earned it and let them buy what they want. Why do you or I deserve what they have? Yes everything is a zero sum game. We do live in a closed system right now. We might not in the future but for now we absolutely do. Wealth increases are relative and do not disprove zero sum. GDP is absolutely meaningless. > We absolutely do not live in a closed system though, once earth is depleted capitalism will find a way to mine asteroids and other planets. You make it sound so simple lol. Money is the value of resource and time. Time is finite like you said. Yup, still zero sum. Modern economic theory is about to lead to the 3rd crash of your life. Great measuring stick you have. Bezos creating amazon is why we're talking about his value to society. If someone else, Fred, created a different company that essentially became what amazon is today, then I'd say that Fred was extremely valuable to society. I certainly believe there was a fair amount of luck and ""right time right place"" points in Amazon's founding that made it what it is today, but the bottom line is that Bezos created the company that is Amazon, so I've gotta attribute the impact to society to him. Yeah, it's hard to measure the net sum of pros and cons. I'm not gonna pretend to know their net impact on society. Buuuut one point, fuel for delivery would almost certainly be a net improvement when using Amazon, since Amazon trucks make the fuel efficiency per item much higher than people getting in their own cars to get their things at a store. (And those stores still need to get their items to their physical locations). There’s more to Amazon than the warehouses. Hell Amazon shopping is even a fraction of the revenue AWS generates, which employs a literal army of white collar software engineers. Far from a Bezos fan boy but Amazon jobs aren’t just “dead end forklift drivers”. I guess no human should be able to eat either considering all your fucking food came from a warehouse. I never said Amazon is more important than education, but Bezos is absolutely more important/rare/special than a single teacher. > Building an organization in which you employ people working in bad conditions for a less than livable wage If amazon does literally anything other than employing people working in bad conditions, then your argument is dishonest and you know it. > is more important to society than educating people. Now you're replying to things that haven't been said. Nobody said amazon is better than ""educating people"". > Bezos does some coding in a garage and builds a multi-trillion dollar corporation. I taught middle school for 3 years and I'm still 10 years of saving away from buying a home. Which do you think is a more valuable service? 1 Bezos has brought infinitely more use to society than 1 teacher. Not, ""amazon has brought infinitely more use to society than educating people"". It's honestly pretty funny that you're extolling the value of education while making such a clumsy argument. You're right, it's scary that people like you can vote. Sounds pretty livable to me SE = Software Engineer? Can confirm, I had an offer for 277k, where 270k was cash the for the first year. It's insane Why are you people in this thread purposefully misinterpreting the argument? The conversation is about ONE teacher versus ONE bezos. It's not Amazon vs The Concept of Education. what a dumb take. get rid of a teacher, a supply teacher will take over. within a week, a new teacher will be reinstated for the rest of the semester. You know that's not true. And you know that's not what I mean, or what anyone else would believe. Sure, if Jeff Bezos's only reason for creating Amazon was because a teacher inspired him to, then that teacher had a great influence on the world. But Jeff Bezos would still have more value, because he was the one who actually did it. That's the thing, ANYONE could have created amazon, or any company for that matter. Any company is just an idea until someone actually does something and executes the idea well. No that's not what he's saying. None of the teachers of Bezos made Amazon. And if your implication is that they made Bezos what he is, then that's also wrong, because there's only one Amazon. You'd expect that set of teachers to be consistently churning out world geniuses if that was true. I pay more of my paycheck percentage than they do. I paid more taxes than Trump a couple years ago though. I know that for a fact 😂 What opportunities? Unions have been busted, hopefully some are returning. Jobs require personality tests, years experience for basic jobs, they tell you one thing for hours then whoops, your hours are cut. Rent goes up every year, food, gas. Some places require college degrees when it isn’t needed. You can work at big box store A, B or C where they all pay the similar and all have the same tactics. The same company with billionaires, who will never be able to spend that money even if they tried, can’t pay full time wages? Bull > But is it 5 million times more important? What metric are you using to quantify how important someone is to a company? Besides your compensation of course. > But the numbers just do not reflect an equal distribution. Equal distribution? What? Statistically no one is a billionaire then lol Literally started with 0? Or very little? I don't think Kanye or Jay Z started with much. From a quick Google of billionaires it doesn't seem like jack Dorsey started with a lot of help(could be wrong). Haven't gone through the biographies of every billionaire yet though, those were just 3 quick ones I think that it does, in fact, require some leadership talent to successfully navigate the bust as a dot-com company. That said, I don't know why speculators didn't abandon ship, or why Amazon didn't implode. What else would it be? Luck? Good idea? Brilliant engineering? Other than luck, I'm sure many other companies in the dot-com bust had great ideas and great engineers. Amazon is the one that made it. Why, indeed? >millions of people labor to increase its value Not how markets work And they are paid fir their efforts Not much? Sure, they have no responsibility in the company, they're not risking anything of their own, and basic workers, such as amazon warehouse workers value added is next to none, since thzy can just be replaced without hurting they system a bit Not enough? There are laws preventing that, and the salary is at market price, so an agreement between the least a company wants to pay and the most an employee wants to be paid So the salary settles at what the work is worth (in case of warehouse work, not much) you clearly didnt read what i said, or didnt care to understand it but let's see: in medieval times, lords would expect a % on production from their people, and the duty of defending the city / country if needed during a war. In exchange, the lord would offer military protection (needed at the time, wandering outside definite urban spaces was dangerous back then), the right to use their land (the lord owned the land, not the farmer), the right to live within the walls of the city. Both get something out of the agreement. And if the lord's power was aquired legally (which, by the standard of the times, it was: accorded by the king as a reward for value, wether to the king, the country or to war for example, and passed down hereditarily, which was standard at the time), this contract has no reason to be invalid, or unfair, or exploitative. This, would be in theory. In practice, since the farmer had effectively no rights to back out at any point from the agreement, had no power in debating terms of the agreement, and the lord had all the rights to make the terms to his advantage. So most of the times, the advantages were clearly skewed towards the lord, that was effectively exploiting them. The difference with today, and this is where your argument doesnt make sense anymore, is that both parties have the right and the power to back out from an exploitative deal, and to sue the opposing party if they feel wronged. The salaries are not determined by the humor of the lord, or CEO. instead there are laws, rules, and the market that reach the ""correct"" price for a job you must recognise that ultimately, a job that requires no skill will pay less, and that doesnt mean that it's exploitation or whatever As much as your warning I guarantee Dollar cost average BTC all the time Those that refused to trade had their governments overgrown by the CIA. The third world continues to be exploited today by the US and other countries. Capitalism offers the choice between offer yourself to the machine or die Yeah this ain’t school sooo nope gfy No just never decided to make a name or anything barely use Reddit Pretty sure they are talking not just paying the minimum but more like the full 20% to avoid PMI. Just having that safety net from your parents in case you fail is the biggest help. If I were to fail it doesn't mean I go running to mom and dad for my free room and start all over. It means being homeless to me. That makes it so I couldn't take risks such as bezos starting a company (even though the odds of me having that success is near zero). Luckily I chose military to get myself in a good position but that cost me 9 years to get to where a upper middleclass kid gets to at 18 years old. Which is $7-10K that their kid now has for other things. Compared to the value of the house, that's not much, but it's a lot when it comes to budgeting for most people. That would be literally life-changing money for me right now; I'm currently job hunting and unemployed. That's a necessary comparison to make in order to illiterate the power of generational wealth... It's not negative at all. What's negative is that more families can't pass on wealth to their children. Historically, cutting off groups from obtaining generational wealth has been a tool of oppression. Read up on how former slaves were denied property after the South lost the Civil War, and red lining policies in mid-20th-century US cities. ""taken and taxed"" sends redundant unless they're simply saying it should be taxed. Which I don't see as evidence of doing away with generational wealth. First, you admit then that it wasn't anything in that person's comment that made you make the statement? I just want to be clear we're discussing a related but different point now. Second, you're oversimplfying a much bigger issue. It's not simply generational wealth folks have issue with. It's exorbitant wealth and an ever increasing wealth gap that's been developing. Generational wealth has been used to protect assets from taxation, but beyond that folks are more upset at money continually pooling into smaller and smaller concentrations. Fewer individuals are collecting a larger percentage of worldwide wealth and it's a continuing trend that is, I would hope you could easily see, not sustainable without crushing the other 99% as it were. Youre cherry picking a very small issue thats part of a much bigger problem. Extreme wealth is an issue and as an offshoot of that, generational wealth from there would be an issue. If someone has a problem with a particular incident of generational wealth, I can guarantee its surrounded by a lot of evidence of abuse or exorbitant wealth. No one is getting upset at making your kid's life better. They're upset at dynasties. Remunerations for slavery, then? >We don't penalize the descendants for the crimes of their parents in this country. But... Except when the 'crime' of the parents is being Black. It's quite clear that the children of those dispossessed Black parents have been penalized, in comparison to the children of the whites who stole from them. Receiving stolen goods is a crime, but I honestly don't know whether it makes a difference in law of you receive them from a bloke down the pub, or from your parents' estate. Same thing happens in Australia, where a government can make an official apology for a past attempt at genocide and, at the same time, proudly insist that no compensation will be forthcoming. Hell, I'd happily see the title for my house taken away from the bank and given to the local land council. I could make my mortgage payments to them! I'd even be happy to see compensation paid for out of tax revenue. My taxes get used for a lot of things I don't care for, helping me sleep better at night would be a big improvement. >We don't penalize the descendants for the crimes of their parents in this country. Are you not from America? I don't know how to interpret this. Statistics don't back up your claim in any fashion unless you believe it's literally in their DNA I guess. Like, either it's them or a cultural pressure that affects the statistics. If you don't believe it's our culture, you must believe it's them? [deleted] It's a good story that sells books. I'll even grant that a majority of the grandkids won't maintain that wealth. But those grandkids are an orders of magnitude more likely to have their grandfather's wealth than a kid from any less endowed background. 80% failure means 20% success, and that's way better odds than anyone else can get. 3 kids, 6 grandkids. 80% failure means there's still just as many ultra wealth people in that family. You're just making up stories to support your own view. You don't have any evidence to support what you're saying. And quite frankly, while $10 million is more than most people will make in a lifetime, it is still so far removed from *actually* wealthy people, that you might as well be a shit-farming peasant if that's what you make. [deleted] Agreed. The guy making minimum wage with a $1000 car as his only asset is closer to a millionaire than a millionaire is to Jeff Bezos. Lamo, From the perspective of the US upper middle class. You can download it for free, or you can simply Google it and get the full pdf as the first result... Yes if you have 300k in what you call ""pure profits"", which would be net profits, that is indeed your money. You moron. You absolute imbecile. You can do whatever the fuck you want with that money, you could stick it up your ass if you wanted to, you've already paid off your employees and all the other expenses. That's what NET PROFITS means, it's the money you get AFTER you pay off everything. Moron. Stop pretending you run a business when you haven't even filed a tax return in your life, you fucking basement dweller. > but compared with the average man he is the same Thinking Bezos and all these dudes are completely average is the biggest copium I might have ever read. This just straight up proves you don't know what you're talking about. Though I'm not arguing that *you* couldn't have done it, I don't know you. But maybe you underestimate how lacking the average person is as well as how intelligent these guys are. That said, obviously there are dudes as smart or way smarter than Bezos who don't make it big. Even Bezos himself recognizes this. Supposedly he originally majored in physics and was like ""nah fuck this"" and switched to CS+EE because he just felt inadequate compared to top students in that realm. Also, there are many, many more people who receive $300k (or more) in capital and either absolutely fail, break even, make a little more, or just become decently successful. Hell, have you ever watched a Gordon Ramsay show? It's fucking hilarious how stupid some people are. These people borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars from their children and/or parents and throw it away to warm up frozen food. Dude, YOU brought up workers pay as the reason amazon was successful. You said he’s only rich “because he exploited people.”Don’t pretend like it’s a red herring. Also, that article offers no proof that the reason for the deaths was because of a delay in sheltering. It sounds like a group went to the wrong location: ""I was just getting in the building and they started screaming, ""Shelter in place!'"" said David Kosiak, 26, who has worked at the facility for three months. ""We were in the bathrooms. That's where they sent us."" ""It sounded like a train came through the building. The ceiling tiles came flying down. It was very loud. They made us shelter in place until we left - it was at least two-and-a-half hours in there,"" Mr Kosiak said. Amazon said following a tornado warning company procedure was for all employees to be ""notified and directed to move to a designated and marked shelter in place location"". The majority of the team had taken shelter at ""the primary designated location"", the firm said, but a small group had taken shelter in a part of the building that was hit by the tornado. ""This is where most of the tragic loss of life occurred,"" Amazon said. Bezos, my bad. But it can be applied to any of these scenarios where people are like “well their parents would have just given them another $xxx k > had opportunities and connections way above & beyond what the average person has access to Venture capital in 1994 was a very different time than the free flowing money, low interest rate environment today. It was all about LBOs. What Bezos was able to do that most tech start-ups are not, is keep ownership because he was able to get substantial start-up funds from family and friends and not VC firms that would have given far more draconian terms. Being a former hedge funder certainly helped Bezos navigate initial funding rounds. If there was such an abundance of speculative investors he wouldn't need his parents/ grandparents right? Yes, that is entirely true. How does a poor billionaire even work in your mind? > By that logic, if billionaires aren’t rich, they aren’t billionaires. Yes, that's accurate. Someone with 1 billion Tanzanian shillings will have a little over 400,000 USD, and when people refer to ""billionaires,"" that is typically a semantic shorthand for American billionaires, or people whose wealth can be approximated in the billions of American dollars. So, someone with a billion Tanzanian shillings might literally be a ""billionaire,"" by a literal definition of someone having a billion units of one currency, but will not be a billionaire by another, more culturally informed definition. > So exactly 0 billionaires are not rich. Once again, this is premised upon the definition of billionaires in question. The original counterargument to your statement about people not having ever been born is more of a metaphysical dispute, whereas this is purely a semantic one. Indeed. did reddit tell you that or do you just lack critical thinking skills? Capitalism is fascist through economic selection and it’s basically all the same rhetoric. The superior people deserve all the wealth and should rule the inferior poor people. Excellent post. [deleted] Partially… and people think voting for more taxes will fix government misallocation of funds. Yea..you dont. If you would know what communism is you would appreciate your current freedom assuming you live in the us. Capitalism does not include sending money to the state. So you want... less? government oversight? Is this a libertarian argument? Reddit moment. something inbetween capitalism and socialism. like a social market economy or similar things European countries have already but slightly more towards the socialist side. did you think I was a tankie who thinks Stalin did nothing wrong ? the different between left leabing people and capitalists is that a lot of us admit that our system has failed in the past and are open to change while capitalists hold onto the toxic status quo. For sure meritocracy is real and billionaires worked hard and poor people are lazy. All of em. The American dream is real and attainable as long as you work hard creating capital for someone else. Why does it work in other countries? Why do we work more and have lower standards of living and less job security etc.? Mmhmm Calling someone an idiot is an insult, not a dichotomy lmao Yes yes you do. Capital is required every time. There’s plenty of evidence of western countries destabilizing socialist countries, what Are you on about? And European countries have a High standard of Living yes, but They’re still dependent on the exploitation of the global South. You mean the European nations that have benefitted from centuries of imperialism? I’m not a “communist” but anyone would be a fool to put europe on some sort of moral pedestal. Right too many variables only an AI could ever central plan properly and even then everyone would have to get real cool about a lot of things real quick. Too many data points for central planning to work. It sure seems like any country that isn't a communist utopia is disqualified from being socialist, but capitalist systems can be highly socialized and yet are capitalism without qualification. The truth is, as others have stated, those are both theoretical systems. Capitalism and socialism are two theoretical ideals. In reality neither one exists, but we speak as if one does, because we are enormously biased in favor of one. What problem? How is it related to what I said? Why not? I don’t know how most redditors grew up, but 300k might as well be millions to me. “300k is nothing, bro!” What the fuck? I’m not simping, just cause I am stating an opinion that happens to defend a billionaire doesn’t mean I am simping. I couldn’t care less if dude dies. I just want to correct ur perception. 300k to 200B is 666,000x difference. 100k to 100 million is only 100x difference. There’s plenty of people who are come from upper middle class, why are they all not billionaires? [deleted] A million dollars in liquid assets is a lot of fuckin money lol. Are you stupid? Sorry if you dont like the facts of it, but the true ""self made"" billionaires do not reach the levels of wealth that the privileged guys do even after selling multiple businesses. Take someone like Mark Cuban, who didnt start off in wealth or with a free first round of funding, and compare his wealth to the top guys. Having free venture funding lets you sell more shares for far more down the line. Ive sold my own start up, ive worked closely with venture firms. Anyone who brushes off a 300k investment hasnt started a tech company or operated a start up. Nepotism doesn't have to be a guaranteed route to success for most of the successful people to owe their success to nepotism. How are they living outside their means that costs more than a house, a 401k, and multiple lines of credit? We already covered the fact that we don’t know the motives behind the parents investment. Now the mere existence of the money is what you’re going to cling to? My only narrative is that people clearly enjoy minimizing the accomplishments of successful people which you’ve already demonstrated very well. Yeah he was already doing pretty good by the time he got here lol it's not uncommon for young successful athlete to have this kind of money wow. just 18 years? Whoa. Because there are countless variables that would have caused Arnold to never become successful. Without all the help and the lot of luck that he had you'd have never known his name regardless of how hard he tried. There are countless far harder working, smarter, better people than Arnold out there that will never be given a chance and will never reach his level of fame and success. Just how it is, which is the point. They objectively do not exist. Everyone is a product of help from families, established systems, social programs, existing infrastructure, inherited wealth, luck, friends, society, etc etc. If hard work equated to financial success then construction workers who work 10 hours a day would be billionaires. You can't be stupid enough to believe hard work is what makes a person rich. It's about connections, market demand for skills, luck, capital ownership, etc. Don't worry, I'll just post your comment over on r/confidentlyIncorrect Also I am extremely wealthy. But I work a lot less than most people and I work far less hard than I did back when I was in the military. Hell, this year isn't even half way over and I've made $250,000 in profits just from a couple homes I own. No work even went into that. That's not even including my income from being a software engineer.... How though? If they end up with cancer they have to undergo chemo which causes Cell death and thus muscle atrophy. Yes you can use artificial steroids but it should be closely monitored by a health professional. there's a difference between that method and use is use of anabolic injections. They both carry risks but antibiotic injections have a much higher potential of causing irreversible damage. The use of anabolic steroids increases the DNA damage in body builders blood lymphocytes. Arnold just dodged the bullet Is with potential cancer causing mutations due to this DNA damage. I do admire the fact that he admitted it but only well after he stopped using. All I'm saying is even the people who appear to truly put in the hard work and come from the streets Aren't always honest about their methods. This needs to be a shirt!! Edit: [It is.](https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/23681929-come-with-me-if-you-want-to-lift?feed_sku=23681929D1V&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=%5BG%5D+%5BG.USA%5D+%5BL.ENG%5D+%5BGEN%5D+%5BC.TShirts%5D+%5BSSC%5D&utm_id=notset&utm_content=come+with+me+if+you+want+to+lift&ar_clx=yes&ar_channel=google&ar_campaign=71700000088748521&ar_adgroup=58700007503484722&ar_ad=PRODUCT_GROUP&ar_strategy=search&gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=CjwKCAjwsJ6TBhAIEiwAfl4TWB0EltQbFMG7cma9JAYPh4gmGA2R_AHPnbcIHGp0F7MRZ2S5Fu99rxoC3k8QAvD_BwE) Wouldn't even qualify as a medium-sized business loan. For reference, he could walk into a number of banks and get the exact amount of money. It's barely more than you would take out to open an upscale restaurant... You can hate the dude, but those billions are probably the truest ""self made"" of just about anyone. Boy do I have news for you....every single business you've set foot in that isn't a big box / chain? Yeah, they started with a business loan. Most much larger than 300k. Shit dude, every single private doctors office in this country requires 3/4th of a mil minimum to start... Yeah I do. There’s a lot more small businesses out there than you’d think. Hell, just think about every HGTV watching wannabe flipper that takes out loans of that amount. Imagine pointing out the fact that a business loan of 300k is still within the small business category, and exceptionally common in the US for some fucking mother breather to come along and call you a boot licker. Every private Drs office you've been in required 500k minimum to get started chief. Anyone who says that they just need someone to give them 300k and they too will become rich has never seen what happens to pro athletes after they retire. Bro, if you don’t want to entertain the possibility you may have absorbed some biased journalism, I can’t help you, but if you’re open just read: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism?s=r Edit: And I’m not saying that his dad didn’t have a stake in a small emerald mine, but the reality is a lot less glamorous than “Dad owned an emerald mine in apartheid SA”. It’s disingenuous in the meme to imply this was some sort of source of his success. ""The details of the mine stem from stories published on Business Insider South Africa from journalist Phillip de Wet that rely on Errol Musk’s personal account."" ""Other than that first-hand account, there’s not much to be found to corroborate this story."" One article that when you really read in to the details, sound absolutely ridiculous. ""I'll buy your plane for 80k, and you know what... give me half of that back and you can have a share in this mine!!""Also, I really doubt an establishment like Tiffany's would buy an emerald from a teenager... Those do sound like wonderful stories though... “He didn’t own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt. I couldn’t even afford a 2nd PC at Zip2, so programmed at night & website only worked during day. Where is this bs coming from?” -Elon Musk via Twitter 2019 No. He wouldn't have. Yea...tell that to someone living in the ghetto. Apparently more than you. I think about it a lot. How many little kids starve to death that hold the key to curing a disease or something. It’s sad I mean that's great and all but the company was still losing money with those business practices. Your comment is weak as fuck boy Yeah and that was done by doctors doing the work; not a rich guy throwing money in other rich people's pockets. Because rich people arent funding it like they say they are😂😂😂 thanks for playing No, thats you misinterpreting my point to fit your narrative. And to solve a problem, you would have to solve it permanently or else its still a problem; just postponed for someone else to ""fix"". Address it, but if you arent fixing it; dont tout that you are. Lol what? That makes no sense. Im shaming a guy for throwing money into his own pockets and then parading like he is helping people. [removed] What value? Incredible pollution? Horrible working conditions? https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/06/23/warren-buffett-donates-another-41-billion-and-resigns-from-gates-foundation/amp/ He also does not donate capital, he donates shares of Berkshire-Hathaway. But 177 billion times more valuable, smart, strong, or x isn’t self evident when there’s only 7 billion people on earth. You sound like a fun golf partner. What part of my statement was a defence of endless greed? Oh I agree you have to have a killer instinct case in point Michael Jordan or Steve Jobs… but you do not need to stab people in the back… stone cold killers look you right in your eyes when they beat you. I mean sound like being a billionaire is such a hard life... you mean people might be mean to him? Damn. That's rough. Good thing he's not a starving kid in another nation If he really needs to hire someone as a personal pr person to teach him how to take an ad out in NYT or do an interview or even post on social media im sure he can find *someone* who can figure it out for him... what's he even *do* again? And I doubt he'll loose that much influence. After all, he's got folks like you who will rush to defend him from random internet weirdos... and you're not even on the payroll. After all, how much is your hour worth? How much time have you already spend reading my BS and replying. That's basically free PR work you gave him. And he didnt even have to be under real threat. Yeah sure, he'll ""lose"" influence... suuuuuure... I'll believe it when I see it. Oh is he not able to invest with the millions of dollars he'd still have left after donating 99% of his wealth? Explain to me how he can't do what he loves without billions of dollars. And if what he loves to do in life is hoard wealth then maybe he should seek therapy. See also; Alex Spanos. He was average. Unless you call a son of a baker as ""privilege"". No the guy he bought it from did…. are you thinking Gates made DOS? You don’t know this story? Oh damn, man I was being serious. Stockton is rough already. Sounds like he actually started from scratch? Maybe I should read more and then I’ll hate him? Is that what your saying? Thats the taste of the boots youre licking. Holy shit. Its like you just understood the words ive been saying to you. Roses are red. The sky is blue. Unchecked capitalism is evil. How to admit you didnt read what was written without actually using those words. Also... moving goalposts and shit. I dont play with cheaters. Blocked. That is an oversimplification of what Warren does. He is constantly evaluating data from various businesses he is invested in. It’s pretty boring and time consuming. Also the guy lives a relatively modest lifestyle compared to the extravagance of Bezos and other Wall Street assholes. He is far from being the problem. What does gluts and shortages have to do with if money is zero sum? Currently the issue of shortages is supply chains. Bruh, you’ve heard of the Wealth of Nations right? Mercantilism is the idea that the economy is zero sum, but that ideas been dead for over two centuries now. Earth's resources are nowhere near being depleted, and as soon as the first company starts mining in space, your entire argument goes out the window. Yes money is in fact a resource and is a currency used to trade for someone's labor/product. This is r/economy. And you're asking me how the economy is not a zero sum game. Are you doing a bit? Just trying to get some laughs? So you don’t think locking away trillions of dollars to be completely unusable to the world doesn’t inhibit economic growth. Are you actually arguing that preventing the movement of unimaginable amounts of money won’t have a negative impact on the economy. Money mobility, have you heard of it. I did read the comment you're responding to. That poster didn't make any arguments at all, just made a bald assertion. I take issue with that as well. But now you're making more bad arguments against it. Obviously billionaires impeding growth is not a simple fact. If you were to demonstrate that billionaires at the very worst have no impact on the greater economy and/or the standard of living for people at large, that would disprove that ""simple fact."" But you didn't do that. You just said if THIS, then THAT. You actually have to prove the THIS part of the equation. Then you go a step further and straw-man them. ""You would expect [...] that the emergence of billionaires would cripple growth rates."" They never said that. I certainly didn't assume that's what they meant either. You pulled that wholly out of your own mind without justification. Interpreting someone else's statements in the least favorable light possible is arguing in bad faith. Both of you need to actually do the leg work of proving the basic facts. Provide some relevant research. Show some data. Actually support a claim. [deleted] Anything, anything so that people can bury their head in the sand. ""Don't look up,"" I guess. It depends how it’s measured. Old people don’t have much in the way of income, so they technically move to a lower “class”. A lot of the statistics regarding this stuff doesn’t make sense when you poke at it. More to do with population shifts. Europes population is basically decreasing In most of its counties and is only sustainable through immigration. Sort of where the US is trending. Whereas Asia is skyrocketing in population numbers or at least was for the past few decades and their educated/professional class went up drastically. greater percentage of course is going to be Asian and Indian origin when that region accounts for over 50% of the worlds population Schizo Are you saying you're agent Smith? LoL you say that. But you underestimate the power of planning and patience. How exactly has high police presence solved any of these problems? Convictions just more people in jail, they don’t rid any of the stressors which actually push people towards crime, instead they tend to do the opposite and exacerbate those stressors. They’re part of the problem. Just do a google scholar search. The research has all been done. Spoiler, past inequities still have ripple effects today. Oh it still is. And I don’t think it’s right to compare the histories of different minority groups, when their situations are completely different. Although a lot of Asians, like black Americans, don’t have the privilege of generational wealth, they still have a slew of other “accommodations” ( for lack of a better word) that black Americans don’t, which makes the attainment of wealth easier in comparison. Like for example the reason why a lot of South and East Asian-Americans seem to be very inclined to lucrative sectors such as engineering and IT, is because those same skills are highly valued in their nations of origin, which makes financial stability easier when they migrate to the US since they already have a foundation to build off of. Which is totally different from the situation w black Americans. But it’s still a significant example. The success of ethnic, racial, and cultural enclaves more often than not have a huge affect on the futures of the demographics which occupy them. That’s the whole point of generational wealth. Like the reason the Italians were for the most part successful in America, was because they were able to consolidate generational wealth through the development of businesses and what-not, many of which first appeared in Italian towns and neighborhoods. For example, Bank of America, which was originally meant to help Italian families in San Francisco. Similar to the Chinese. Could you provide a source for your claims on Trayvon Martin, because I think you have your story heavily flawed? And Black Lives Matter is not a new movement. It’s a new organization, but Black people have been rioting against police violence for decades and decades now. Assuming what you said is true, which it probably isn’t completely, because one of the two people there is dead, then I have a question for you: if you were a kid being stalked by a guy with a gun, would you try to hide behind a corner? Would you defend yourself if you felt in danger? Or would you just walk home, so now the man stalking you knows where you live? All these “stand your ground” laws and “a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun” mentalities don’t mean shit if it’s okay for someone to stalk and shoot an unarmed kid out of “self defense.” Seriously, talk about lack of credibility… Furthermore, the guy who stalked and shot him didn’t seem that injured. And even if he was seriously injured, by an unarmed kid, when he had a gun, maybe he shouldn’t have been stalking him? Either this was a first degree murder, without a conviction, or it was a homicide, without a conviction. Either way, someone was killed, and there was no conviction. That was my original point. Yeah, man. I bet if we took your comments vs. mine, most people would say I came off looking worse not the dog-whistling turd who's not smart enough (or more likely, just mean) to understand structural inequality. I wholeheartedly apologize for not conforming to your world view that when the Civil Rights Act passed every conservative dipshit said 'Well, I'm not racist anymore!"" and that the only people to blame for the shit -sandwich they're force-fed is black people. Maybe if you ever put in a real day's work, you'd learn compassion but I'm sure it's harder to grow those skills with the comfy life you were raised in. Soft hands don't make strong people. How does BLM promote the system? And yes, BLM ""is good now"" and always was. Wanna address the Wells Fargo thing or not? And you're right. Police Unions do vote Democrat and spend a lot of money influencing their policy. My bad. It's another reason why we need to look at some more progressive rather than the neoliberal representatives we have now who are most interested in protecting capital My parents did it. You’re welcome No thanks, but good luck to you in your life internet stranger “Hey! My name is xyz. I saw you come up on my LinkedIn feed as someone who also went to xyz university and you happened to also be in a role I would like to learn more about. Would you be available to speak at some point this coming week? I would love to hear about your experiences as I consider the path for my own future.” You’d be amazed how many people out there are willing to help you if you 1.) ask for their help 2.) respect their time 3.) say thank you Don't buy that bullshit, it's totally possible to land a job at a quant firm without either of those things. They're looking for brains and drive. Demonstrate both of those and you'll land a job. I mean, that's how this conversation always goes. ""Starting out with 300k isn't that much of an advantage. Anyone can achieve that. Just go to a good school, get a good job and save."" ""Really? If you look at the statistics of people from good schools, average salaries are only like 90-100k."" ""Well you also need to have the right major."" ""Okay, well that brings up the average to 130k."" ""Well then they just don't have the right social skills."" It becomes a long game of moving goal posts. You literally go to the most prestigious school in the world, get a STEM major, and be a well-connected socially outgoing person. The problem is most people are not literally perfect. It's hard to reach the top of your STEM class while being well-connected and it's really fucking easy to just have rich well-connected parents. [deleted] I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that it's easier to succeed with a support system your whole life. All I'm saying is what is gained by pointing it out? All you're doing is discouraging those who haven't made it and diminishing the accomplishments of people who have, whom you know very little about. It's just a pointless loop of negativity. If you want to advocate for society being better at supporting the poorest to even out the odds, that's one thing, this is another. [deleted] I know, I didn't care enough to answer you seriously. You know he graduated college right? He dropped out of either a PHD or master’s in material science at Stanford I forget which one. Speaking in absolutes like you have been always means you are incorrect. Just because something is harder for the average person does not mean it is impossible. It takes luck, smarts and hard work. Even one of the people in this meme, Elon, didn’t get funding for his first company from anyone until they had already successfully monetized the company. The funding was not from some connection they knew through their moderately well of dad. It was from a venture capital firm. If it makes you feel better that it’s not your fault you are not a success go ahead and believe it but like I said it’s a self limiting belief. Also luck is not exclusive to the rich. Most successful people didn’t get lucky their first time either. I am serious, are you? Thanks for continuing to scream into the void. I'm convinced that people who don't recognize your meaning at this point are just willfully ignorant. You keep acting like wall street doesn't hire for insider info. 98k Vs 600k for Bezos... That’s sadly quite accurate, and that’s not nearly enough. And of course that means many have even less than that. It won’t be a paid off mortgage if she’s buying another home. Unless she’s buying in cash, which I hope not. Are they paying you? Lol why do you feel the need to defend them so badly if they’re doing that well? Point still stands. You have “over $1m in retirement” you shouldn’t be loaning out $300k. At best let’s assume that’s 1/5 of your parents retirement money, that’s not an amount you gamble with. Please look again. By the time Jeff was starting amazon, Mike Bezos was in managment at Exxon. Jeff's extended family on his mother's side was well off and in very powerful positions. (His grandfather was in a high up federal defense position early on.) Edit: Also show me a middle class family that can afford to give their child the inflation adjusted equivalent of 300k 1994 dollars. Edit: Not to mention the fact that if I had a Step-dad at a major publicly traded company and a grandfather privvy to top secret defense info, I would probably be working on wall street too. Nobody cares about your sad excuses. It's clear you also lack a great deal of talent. I really want to understand the compulsion to protect the privileged from any criticism. Bet he did. > A 30k investment from a father he had a poor relationship with The relationship doesn’t change the impact of cash. >in a company he only owned 7% of. He had to take student loans to pay for school.. Having that company is the springboard for everything else he did. >Does he have to start literally from scratch minecrafting his way up the tech tree for it to be considered self made? No, he would just need to not have been raised wealthy and then have a father invest $30,000 in his company. I’m sure you’ll agree those pretty firmly go against the idea of “self made” Ah I see you’re referring to Bezos filtering through the proposals for his business, not the person filtering through the proposals for the loan he received. In that case, the risk (or lack thereof) is still an important factor. If you have a 300,000 loan from your parents, and other already rich friends willing to give you more capital, you can afford to accept riskier proposals. At that point you can essentially sling shit against a wall until you happen to make the Mona Lisa, at which point you sell it for a huge profit. That doesn’t necessarily make you a good businessman, it just makes you lucky. If Bezos started from nothing, didn’t use loans from related parties, and still built a multi billion dollar empire? Then yea that would be mindblowingly impressive. But he started halfway up the ladder. Not sure what's privileged about not wanting most of America to live in poverty. Kind of gross you can't see a better future for people. Sounds like you wanna blow him How so? Do you know how many different jobs I’ve had in my life? I’ve lived in three different states, and I’m 43. No college education. Getting a job isn’t difficult. Please enlighten me how I’m disconnected from reality. It was a swear word, not a real accusation. Nobody thought the guy was a pedo. Not really. All of the amazing technology he's known for was bought by him during later stages of development and then marketed by him. He has some impact on what direction technology moves in, however it's not by pushing it but by steering it in whathever direction he fancies. [deleted] Why isnt it a good idea? Because who are you to take other peoples money? [He left the program within days to build an internet startup with his brother. They started Zip2, a city guide software for newspapers, with $28,000 in seed money from their father.](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-net-worth-2017-10#he-left-the-program-within-days-to-build-an-internet-startup-with-his-brother-they-started-zip2-a-city-guide-software-for-newspapers-with-28000-in-seed-money-from-their-father-8) You should look at a career in a cinema because you're a natural talent when it comes to projecting. You sound pretty heated bud. Keep projecting tho as long as it gives your life meaning. If you're going to believe one of the two between Elon and Errol, I'd go with the dude who didn't [have a child with his stepdaughter who he raised since she was 4 years old](https://www.businessinsider.co.za/errol-musk-has-a-baby-with-his-stepdaughter-2018-3). There's plenty of factual reasons to hate Elon, but the emerald mine story isn't one of them. I'm just so tired of seeing people I'd normally agree with parrot lies, especially when there's plenty enough truth out there to justify your position. I am aware of how his net worth has actually accrued. That isn't the point. He hasn't produced successful companies so much as he's created gambling instruments that people have been very taken in by. Elon's worth is absolutely not due to the actual real world production of his companies. > It wasn't inherited. Even this dumb meme calls it ""seed capital."" 'Seed capital' is a generic term that can include many things like but not limited to inherited money... My comments were also meant more in general than just referring to Bezos specifically. >But are you honestly suggesting that anyone who receives startup funding is NOT self made? Because that's a pretty narrow definition of being self made that I don't think most people use... It is my belief that if you receive hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars to start a business you are not self made. I think that's fairly reasonable and the definition that most people use. Nobody will ever be truly 100% 'self made' by every possible interpretation, even billionaires rely on others via employees, and normal people rely on parents just to keep them alive into adulthood, etc. However, I generally interpret 'self made' as having to use money that you yourself earn... Hence, 'Self'. What do you want to call it? Startup investments? Every rich kid calls the handouts an investment. Lol Are your parents yourself? Luck can't be planned for, it can't be bought or foreseen or forecasted. That's why it's called luck. Most people have very little. You have no clue how much 300k is to MOST Americans, do you? Not OP but if I had 300k in start up capital I’d use about 1/3 of it outfitting a work van with all my gear and tools. About another 1/8 on licensing fees and insurance bonds. Then the rest would be the safety net to quit my current job and grow my own business. That doesn’t happen with my savings because I have to play it safe with that money for retirement and such. While I mostly agree with your point, there is an important ""gap"" here - these things are not linear. People always talk about how expensive it is to be poor, and that is very much the truth. To make your money grow you have to be able to start from a point where you don't have to spend all your energy just making it last long enough that you can survive. Lol, you can start a business with 300k. What are you doing with $20? Lol I haven't bought anything online in a year and a half. You are much more of a consumer than me, guaranteed. A. So you have no actual reply to my point? B. ""Scientists use the term magma for molten rock that is underground and lava for molten rock that breaks through the Earth's surface."" https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-difference-between-magma-and-lava#:~:text=Scientists%20use%20the%20term%20magma,breaks%20through%20the%20Earth's%20surface. The pit would be open? Right? Thus lava? I mean if the pit is underground you can just walk over it? that was kind of my point, my statement has as much evidence as the initial rumor making it just as credible, which is to say hardly at all. did find where I saw my information tho, seems like it was from [Lotuseaters.com](https://Lotuseaters.com), and it was during one of their live streams. but I heard it second hand from another youtuber who clipped it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q4M0-CUx2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q4M0-CUx2g) starts at roughly 22:55 “On the eve of independence in 1964, 2 percent of Zambia's 3.5 million people were white, but they controlled everything in a system resembling apartheid. In the lucrative copper mines, blacks were barred from management jobs, and had separate toilets and changing facilities.” That’s fresh off of google so what do you mean there was no apartheid in Zambia? Not to mention that the British had occupied its African territories in this area as early as 1888. You honestly believe there was a remotely even playing field for the native people and the colonizers? I think it’s not only safe to assume but it’s be foolish to act like there was any semblance of actual equality in the area. Obviously the musk family wasn’t involved in this. But the capitalistic opportunity that these men(and many others) had over not only this part of Africa but most of the world is 100% unethical, generational wealth, blood money. So... Sifting from multiple sources we get: > ""Other than that first-hand account, there’s not much to be found to corroborate this story. But the counterpoint to the obvious fact that the Musks were well off financially, especially considering their status as a white family in apartheid South Africa, is that Elon, his siblings and Maye had to free themselves from Errol’s abusive relationship. As Maya Kosoff wrote of Maye’s recent memoir, Errol was *“was physically, financially and emotionally manipulative and abusive.” When Maye extricated herself from the marriage, she remembers eating peanut butter sandwiches and bean soup, not coasting on riches from an emerald mine.*"" - https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-father-myths And: > ""His relationship choices often led to additional problems, and caused estrangement with his children who resented his actions. Despite their estrangement, Errol remained in support of his children’s talent. Although not providing money to Elon himself, Errol financed Elon and Kimbal’s first software company, Zip2. The company flourished although the relationship between Errol and his children remained rocky."" - https://techiegamers.com/errol-musk-net-worth/ And: > ""He didn’t own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt. I couldn’t even afford a 2nd PC at Zip2, so programmed at night & website only worked during day. Where is this bs coming from?"" - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211054942192119808? Although there in no absolutely conclusive evidence, correlation between the three articles above seem to indicate that the estrangement from his father happened at the time when he left SA to go to Canada, cutting him off from any financial support in the same way as what happened to his mother. Elon *did* confirm that his first start-up (Zip2) received around $20k from his father, but that was not initial funding. > Global Link Information Network was founded in 1995 by brothers Elon and Kimbal Musk and Greg Kouri in Palo Alto, California with money raised from a small group of angel investors,[8][9][10] plus US$6,000 from Kouri. In Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk, it is claimed that the Musks' father, Errol Musk, provided them with US$28,000 during this time,[6]: Ch.4  but Elon Musk later denied this. He later clarified that his dad provided around 10% of US$200,000 as part of a later funding round. Initially, Global Link provided local businesses with an Internet presence by linking their services to searchers and providing directions.  Elon Musk combined a free Navteq database with a Palo Alto business database to create the first system. In 1996, Global Link received US$3 million in investments from Mohr Davidow Ventures and officially changed its name to Zip2. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2 [deleted] Not every state has expanded medicaid, my guy. What language is the script? Why does it miss so many? Edit: Also, if your daughter needs someone to talk to while you're on reddit, I'd be happy to talk to her. lol I guarantee it never went down like that. The whole family are psychopaths going all the way down the bloodline, extremely rich too. ​ >""I was juggling my private nutrition practice, wellness talks, modeling and kids schooling and activities. Modelling, giving wellness talks and owning a private nutrition practice while not being able to afford milk? Tell me you understand that that doesn't add up. You realise it doesn't add up right? You realise that the family was wealthy for generations and probably dont understand what poverty is so would easily mistake what they went through for poverty when in actual fact it was probably a slim few months. It actually sounds like she didnt have time to buy milk rather than not being able to afford it, thats what the family is like, masters at twisting words. Keep simping. I’m sure he’ll give you that attention you want Keep simping for billionaires. I’m sure they’ll pay you the attention daddy didn’t. Musk is never going to give you the attention you crave Ok Boomer About biographical information? I could understand not trusting opinion pieces but biographical info is pretty straightforward. Edits like that rarely last more than a few days. that said... Technically it's true, you shouldn't use wikipedia as a primary source for something like a school paper, but you can use the sources wikipedia links at the bottom of the subject page. You…truly don’t understand how Wikipedia works? *goalpost shifts further* That’s some Trump level logic I used more words elsewhere. He’s bootlicking scum praising a man for hoarding more money than anyone else in history. That’s not a positive attribute. No one believes your strawman. That’s just how you make yourself feel better. The centralisation of wealth (worsening inequality) is not beneficial. An extremely large proportion of that has been the result of low-interest rates and extreme quantitative easing inflating the value of assets plenty of rich people already held. That’s not a direct effect of billionaires just existing. Whether or not some have lobbied exceptionally well to influence already corrupted legislatures and executives, sure, that’s possible and even probable in some cases. The average standard of living has gone down in some areas and up in others. It depends on what country you’re in, your life stage, and your finances. America has been hit hard across the board though. But I didn’t say that billionaires do or don’t deserve, that comes down a long discussion about the ultimate distribution and redistribution of wealth for the benefit of all with minimal expense to an individuals rights. I only said that being a billionaire is earned currently, not simply given, unlike multi-millionaire status. Simply having the privileged starts that most billionaires have had is not sufficient to become a billionaire (and may not be necessary, although in practical terms it seems like it might be necessary). This is a crazy way to look at it. If Bezos didn't do anything at all why can't everyone with 300k turn themselves into a millionaire? Bezos is a really really really smart guy. He has a bachelor's in engineering from Princeton and after he graduated he worked for DE Shaw which was quantitative hedge fund. In other words, it traded on the stock market using mathematical algorithms. DE Shaw was started by a Columbia math/CS professor who is known to hire only smart people into the company. You're downplaying Bezos as just another dude who hired people to do stuff. In reality he's an exceptionally intelligent guy. So you won’t read the link? It is literally proof that you are wrong but I guess that would mean accepting objective reality which we both know you’re not very good at. He’s hoarding more money than Rockefeller, and more than Smaug. So you’re argument is that Elon is actually secretly doing humanitarian aide but he’s just such a good person he doesn’t brag about it on Twitter like everything else he does. That’s rich. Willfully staying ignorant when your claims are proven incorrect is one way of continuing to reinforce your objectively untrue perception of reality I guess. Try not to get too triggered, all I pointed out is that you’re a hypocrite who literally doesn’t care about facts. Sure bud. >I defend the truth against idiots like you. Also u ""“Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in Zambia — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it”So he didn’t get any money from apartheid."" Which according to your own source is false... The cognitive dissonance is strange. Idiotic line of questioning. I hate them because I loathe the corporate serfdom this nation finds itself in . If their wealth didn't have real world implications I wouldn't care. Hell the only time I hear about this dunce is when I scroll popular for the most part. The real question is why DON'T you hate these leeches ? What value does an ownership class bring to the masses? Is the false prospect of one day being in said class really enough for people to happily exist in a broken system? ​ I'm being genuine with this question I really want to better understand. I've been doing research on propaganda and the state of modern American politics for an elective class so this is fascinating to me. ​ edit: he deleted his account... interesting Not sure what point you’re trying to make here. An extra few hundred is not even close to what I’m talking about. For different reasons, sure. We should all strive to be neither of those things. You seem pleasant. Nah, pretty much everyone in the 50+ million region knows that it also takes a lot of luck. It's the sons of the millionaires who always claim how hard they work and how selfmade they are. ""Exploiting tons of other people is an achievement!"" -Local idiot /u/carnellmusic [deleted] >that doesn’t mean that creating generational wealth that will change the trajectory of your family’s lineage for the next 200 years isn’t also remarkable. Remarkable does not mean worthy of applause. Osama bin Laden was also quite remarkable. [deleted] [deleted] >One could argue I have been well connected. My former step-mother was a C-suite executive. In college I got the VIP tour of the place she was at, behind all the high security areas and meeting with all the other execs. Once I graduated, she had me talk to one of her lead guys on the phone, then sent my resume over to her people (she was their bosses, bosses, boss type thing). I never even got a call back. So much for connections. I posted my resume online like everyone else, interviewed, and got hired at a place where I had 0 connection, and have been there ever since. I'm sorry your anecdote didn't work for you but come on now, you have to understand internal references are more likely to help than not, sure it isn't a guarantee but nepotism is common place in this world even in the lands of the non rich. >It's easy to explain away anyone's hard work when you dismiss it all as soon as someone lends them a helping hand. because luck has such a big fucking part of it. Many people work hard their whole lives for jack shit. Then having people basically selling their success story as solely selfmade is insulting. Remember where you came from. >I don't agree with the worship either, but I also don't agree with the blind hatred. They are people. They have done some good, they have done some bad... just as we all have. To completely dismiss the good and to only focus on the bad is just as silly as worship. People are complicated and things aren't so black and white. Sure they may be people but are you going to ignore all the pain and harm they did to gather their wealth? That is why people have this ""hatred"" of the rich. Especially when these people treat their lower staff as non humans, just mere cogs that are disposable. Trying to bring back archaic systems for the sake of profits. I think that the statement ""poor people are just lazy"" is just as foolish and reductionist as the statement ""anyone could have made that money if they had those same starting conditions"". Just how there is people that no matter how hard they work they won't break out of poverty, there is people that even given a large amount of chances won't make it to the level of the people in the original post. Lol yes just because I don’t think they are inherently evil people obviously means that I must worship all of them. What kind of shoes do you wear to make that kind of leap Of course it does silly. It simply means that the business can’t pay its debts. It's possible, but only with certain advantages. I don't know which advantages they had, but they clearly had some over the people around them. They edited in the other two names after my response. Thousands of dollars from friends, parents who worked for rolls Royce, years of government assistance, free housing when she got divorced, and half of her inheritance in her early 30s aren't significant financial assistance... How again? In what way is that less assistance than Bill Gates having family connections? Is that somehow less assistance than Elon Musk just growing up rich, not getting any of that assistance? >You never touched on MJ or Rihanna Again, see point one, they only said Rowling >And frankly, your argument concerning Rowling is dogshit. And frankly, your ""rebuttal"" was skunk shit. Reddit is full of children. 300k was a lot to me when I was 14 also [deleted] Learn to use Google better. Bezos worked at McDonald's in high school. His mother was 17 at the time of Bezos birth. His grandfather did have a 25,000 acre ranch, but that did not accrue to Bezos. Bezos had to buy it later. $300k is well within the means of upper middle class families. Musk- got $20,000 from daddy. That is like a good used car. That is it. Gates was upper middle class, but not rich The reason you are concerned with these things is that you want to justify taking their money now that they have earned it. You are trying to engender jealousy, and lack of reasoning, saying these folks somehow cheated. You fail to mention that all of these people are in the top 0.1% intellectually. Gates got a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT. Bezos graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. It wasn't their parents money that got them ahead, it was their parents genetic bequest. >You can place unrealized gains in tax brackets. huh? Yes. Yes it fucking does. They didn't build shit from nothing. They had every god damn advantage and leveraged it to reap hundreds of billions from the rest of us. They're bloated, disgusting pigs sitting on a pile of food so god damn big they can never consume it all, and they demand MORE. Fuck them. It takes three generations to destroy wealth and it happens to most wealthy families. This statistic alone disproves your salty viewpoint. I knew plenty of rich kids growing up. Absolutely none of them have achieved anything above a regular middle class lifestyle. I even grew up with a close relative of a billionaire, nothing special at all. Are they basically garunteed to never be destitute? Yes, but unless they put in the work they're never going to mimic their relative's success. I'm not ignoring their advantages. This is an immutable difference everyone will have that shouldn't dictate how you aim towards your goals and aspirations. You are on the internet and have the advantage that many in the world do not have. Unlimited information that half of the world doesn't have. You can figure out and learn whatever you wish for. I assume you have the advantage of not starving as well, especially if you're commenting on reddit. And also have access to a PC or phone. People are constantly discrediting and blaming others but rarely look at their own advantages. The point is, this comparison and discredit game will never end, you can go down the whole chain. Give someone who has it worse than you all the advantages you have access to, like a phone, food, and internet, and there will be many who will be more successful. And thats fine Simply not true and obviously so. Oh look at you. You think if you lick their assholes hard enough one day you'll be one of them. no boy, you'll never be one of them. >Go on Hulu and watch an episode of shark tank, there’s literally 250+ episodes of them just throwing 300k or more at people left and right. Right, but the sharks who provide that money also take a share of equity in the company. Do you really think Bezos would be in the same place he's in now if he had to give someone else a 40% stake in Amazon at the outset to get that $300k? Most business owners have to give up something (debt, interest, collateral, equity, etc.) in order to get operating capital to start out with; many businesses fail in the first year or two because they aren't yet operating at a profit and they still need to service this debt. Anybody who gets a sizeable sum for free to start a business with no strings attached is at a decided advantage in the marketplace during that difficult first couple of years. 20k vs 1 million is a huge difference. Are you mad? Seems like your mad. It will be ok. If you turn off fox you will be happier I promise. What's crazy is people that live in poverty like yourself would rather stay there than fix a system that enables rich people to get rich and broke to become more broke. Why do you think that is? Personally i think it stems from public education. You guys never did well did you? You were the kid clowning the teacher, trying to seem cool but where are you now? Just another angry conservative living in destitute conditions idolizing billionaires with the notion that one day you can be one too. Hahhhahaha it's funny and sad at the same time. Smh Just keep tugging on the bootstraps. L o L I’m not sure… but they don’t have the wealth of the men featured in this picture… Moving those goal posts. You’ll never be one of them, they will not see your comment defending them and give you money. Best you can hope for is to subsidize their losses with a tax payer bailout The light is so blinding that if you need someone to show you, you’re already a lost cause. Not all adults are grown up, you are evidence I go by he/him, the fuck are you talking about 🤣 It’s all they’re good for. > If someone were to give you a famous painting from Van Gogh you would become very wealthy very quickly. However a while ago that same painting, that no additional work had been done on, would make you much less wealthy. > How can physical labor be the only source of value if something can change value without work being done? Without that initial artistic labor, where would the painting come from? I can have the GPT-3 neural network [make me a unique painting right now](https://openai.com/dall-e-2/). The price would be cents or nothing, no matter how good it is. Likewise, a copy of a Van Gogh painting is worth nothing, because no labor was required to produce it. The labor-value is tied up in the original. People demand a price for goods because somebody had to sacrifice their time to make it. They demand payment for that time. If a product is produced entirely by machines, or an open-source piece of software, who is demanding payment in that arrangement? Who represents the variable capital? I'm talking about material wealth, not price. Material wealth is what exists in the real world. A painting is a painting. The value is not changing when you resell it, because no additional labor is going into it. Price, on the other hand, is chaotic and involves all kinds of of irrational nonsense like sign value and money laundering. But even currency only has value because it can be exchanged for goods and services. Real things. Both of those require labor. There are two valid perspectives on value. They depend on what your goals are when analyzing the economy. If your goal is profit or GDP growth, as it is with mainstream economists, then there really is no reason why value shouldn't be the same as price. However, that definition runs into all kinds of problems with something like an NFT, which has illusory value at best, but economists are forced to treat it like it has real value simply because there is a speculative asset bubble. Over 500k people ordered starlink and only 150k have been delivered lmfao Tesla delivered only 300k teslas *all last year* I couldn’t care less about him other than the weird idolatry he gets when any other business person with such low rates of delivery would get shut down No, I’m asking you to point out how his satellites have actually impacted the average person so far? 80% died, almost nobody has gotten star link and last I checked they weren’t being used by governments or other network providers That’s my point For me it says ""several million things or people. Starlink has positively impacted less than 1% of Americans lol and teslas have always been a mess when it comes to ordering/delivery. The biggest impact he’s had, is how his drama impacts markets I very much agree with you when it comes to environmentalism, although I do think that one of the best things an individual can do is to stop eating meat, although I also object to it on a purely ethical level.. In addition to blaming ""gas guzzling, coal rolling rednecks"" whilst flying around in private jets, they don't do much when it comes to massive oil and gas companies. Encouraging every day people to give up shit is something that needs to be done, and overconsumption is a problem, but before those issues become the main thing driving climate change, we need to deal the people who are doing the most polluting, like large companies. I think it's a bit of a problem in Canada (where I live) and maybe in Australia as well, but it is definitely the worst in US, obviously excluding non-democratic countries. I suppose it depends on how one defines conservative. In Canada, he would probably be a member of the Conservative Party, since they are similar to the American Democratic Party. Canada is much more left wing, at least when it comes to issues like LGBT rights and abortion, and healthcare isn't even a question, so the Republican Party would be pretty far right here, probably close to the People's Party. The Democrats would be centre at best, probably closer to the right. I guess it's kind of dumb to evaluate American politics through a Canadian lens. Liberal and Conservative mean different things here, some of the more central American politicians would end up being labeled differently. Haha, holy shit. Just look at your fucking “sources,” man. Moguldom.com? For real? Come on. Billions of dollars wouldn’t help people? What are you smoking? Shouldn’t more billionaires be a good thing? Wouldn’t having more billionaires increase quality of life? I just meant it read like a temper tantrum, like a hysterical string of whatever the fuck you thought of- it wasn’t;t a dig at your age (that you obviously feel insecure of). Also, I don’t get jealous over oligarchs that pay more in anti union consulting than it would cost to just pay living wages and are found guilty of harboring such a racist workplace that one person was awarded over $100 million (yes another judge lowered it but god damn that’s a lot of racism). I also don’t laud them as heroes for strong arming sweet tax deals from local municipalities for projects that won’t even pay the workers they would be hiring from that community decently and don’t even bring in the employees they said we would. You’re just advocating for US oligarchs and trying to line up to defend them. Just cucking yourself for capital bc it;s not like you own any, lmao. They helped themselves by getting a job that pays them. It was an equal transaction, you get paid for the services you offer. They aren't entitled to it, they get it because the workers are willing to be ok with that, since they think get enough back from it. If they aren't fine with that they could, like I said, quit. It's not rocket science. >Why are you ok with that? Because I support free market. If the employees want to work for them for the money they are offering, wich is already pretty high, they can decide if they want to do so Or not. You can’t afford not to this OP. But we don't get to start over Statistically very improbable, as long as you have a large enough seed fund and start with a low base bet your pretty much guaranteed to win. If you play roulette depending on house rules you have about a 47% chance of winning. That's almost the equivalent odds of a coin flip. Flip enough coins and your statistically very likely to get heads eventually. Casinos make money off games like roulette by rigging the odds in their favor slightly by adding more winning spaces for the casino. That and they rely on people making irrational emotionally directed decisions, oftentimes expending their entire seed capital In 1 to 4 spins. At this low a participation rate the casino's stacked odds lead to them making more money then they payout on average netting a tidy profit from less intelligent individuals. In the long run though as long as you allocate your funds correctly you have the edge over the casino. The reason more people don't do this all the time is it requires you to keep track of allot of numbers and to have a significant sum of starting capital to start with. Just put 100 on green too. Now I cant lose. SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! you don’t say Except when you get that green and feel totally gutted haha I didn’t say put it on red. I responded to someone saying putting it on red would net them millions and corrected them that it would only double it. Aye, that’s a fair comparison. Our good biscuits are like the top crust on a really good pie, but our rough biscuits are more like a scone. I dunno, but 45 billion goes a long way. He could do many things instead of this bullshit. and they wonder why the terrorists hate us... The definition of a first world country you privileged fuck Honestly.. what reality do you live in? Saying that America isn’t a first world country makes you sound like a stupid child who has no concept of the world around them, only what he reads online by other sweaty kids. Go to any of the other 150+ countries that aren’t considered first world and reassess. Or just stay there. If you live here you sure don’t deserve it. Ungrateful idiot. Say you’re privileged without saying you’re privileged Mostly Americans who have never been to another country. Hehe Nice what? why? https://youtu.be/MQEwJdhfddk It probably comes from the fact that in the past the borders changed a lot and/or people left behind for good their property when they moved so there had to be a way to posses property if a persons never returns to it. Yeah it sounds like one of those things that can technically happen to a few unfortunate people in one state or something but isn't a realistic concern for most people. Still, better safe than sorry worst case scenario lol If the renting system didn't exist, it would really fuck shit up. You want college kids to be forced to buy a house in a college town? What about young people starting their careers who may want to relocate, you want them forced to invest in a house? What about people who prefer renting because it's cheaper and a hell of a lot less work? median wealth =/= country wealth You realize California is like 3rd of all countries on earth for GDP right? Population density the way you are using it is a misleading average. The US density is vastly disproportional - We have many, many centralized large urban areas and then hundreds and hundreds of miles of rural land. The entire middle of our country is empty space lol It's 14 miles to the next town where I live, and in between is just forest. Plenty of real estate is to be had in the US. # And don't forget, we're still comparing ONE country to a CONTINENT Renting is bullshit. Sorry Europe. Not everyone in this sub is an American, Christ buddy, there are housing problems the world over and they're different in different places New Salad but the problem is more or less the same in most of the world, renting is difficult long term Edit: uhh, New Zealand. That’s a new typo >we were also once a British colony The US being an ex British colony and Ireland being an ex British colony are not remotely the same thing lmao Where I live that would still be less than the rent has gone up in three years. It's like half actually, on a starter home. At least you have property taxes lol. Our house prices went up 300% and nobody is paying tax on the gains, so now nobody can afford a house nor can the country afford to maintain basic infrastructure :) > Shut your fucking mouth. Do not tell a single person what has happened. SO much this!! (hahahahaha when I read the first half of this line I thought I had somehow angered the hive and was prepared for a roasting - but you were just saying ""don't tell nobody"" which is INCREDIBLY smart) Can we get a 0.5a where you explain how to find a large law firm and how to get them to actually take your call? “Big fancy law firm near me” isn’t a very productive google search [deleted] Why no prior connections? Step one: don't tell anyone. Got it. Step two: call a stranger and tell them. Got it. 0) Shut your fucking mouth. Do not tell a single person what has happened. Nah, tell them but tell them you won a lot less than you really did. Too many things will give away you have some money - better to go with a smaller figure. You also have like a month to cash the ticket in. So do all this shit before you do. You got a roommate…..in a studio apartment? I’m curious how that arrangement is setup. a little harder to find good people these days without dislikes ""click out of one, two is binding..."" Yeah, just check out ThatWasEpic. That channel is awesome, hours of entertainment. I love YouTube but like Reddit it’s full of misinformation [deleted] You don’t fix systemic problems with individual action. That’s why they’re systemic. Them doing that does t change anything tho? You fundamentally seem to not grasp the difference between two very separate questions: Would you give up a large portion of your money if it meant helping another person or maybe a few people? Most would answer “no” to this question. vs Would you give up a large portion of your money as part of a larger binding societal agreement that helped the majority of the people on the planet? I think most people would answer “yes” to this question. Acting like those are the same question is either disingenuous or you’re just a moron. No, we should always try to make the world better. But we need to look at it from a systemic angle rather than an individual one. That means changing laws, societal trends, and economic systems, not just giving advice. No, you are way dumber than me. It's the only way to look at things if you want to understand how the world works and how people who mean well can do horrible things. When did philosophical studies become a punchline? >They’re talking about morality of artificial vs natural selection in humans They're talking about *genocide*, and we all know it because of the given time frame. But instead of using the word ""genocide"", which is accurate for the context, they use the word ""artificial selection"" because that makes a witty connection with the previous comment. It's a dumbass point since humans are constantly ""artificially selecting"" each other. Just the act of gathering in groups in the first place affects our odds of survival and reproduction- there's practically no action that a group of humans could take to affect themselves or their environment that couldn't be considered ""artificial selection"". But besides that. Reducing the entire concept of artificial selection- which was not only foundational to our civilization, but which we continue to practice, all over the place, to the ongoing benefit of our entire species- to ""hurr durr Hitler"" is something that a dumbass does. You don't have to defend them. Appeal to bandwagon fallacy and arguing bad faith. >You can work to acquire some capital then just use it to start a business. Yeah, just get a small loan of a million dollars. There's a reason all these billionaires come from rich or well connected families. How's that even related? We are talking about single individuals receiving money and having upscale contacts to make a business. Specifically billionaires like in the picture. Not families over time, anyone could prove anything by picking something completely different from the subject at hand Because you were already poor lol You're significantly overestimating the influence of the parents. The trust fund kids I knew that were the children of people that ""made it"" couldn't have found the success of their parents on a map, and generally festered in their shortcoming against their legacy. The people I've known that were the most outstanding examples of success were often the ones that came from meager backgrounds and were first generation success stories. The biggest problem I've seen is that all too often the people that *really* know their stuff are sitting in the room with people who inherited their status through nepotism, and the people who inherited their place are so far behind the Dunning-Kreuger curve they can't even see just how much more brilliant the self-made individuals are. It's incredibly inefficient and why I turned down creating a role for myself doing whatever I wanted at the multi-billion dollar company I was at. Wasn't interested in spending my life at the whims of myopic folk who inherited their status and wealth. By the time you carve out a role above absolutely everyone else you're at retirement age and wasted away the years of your personal life climbing past the systematic inefficiencies. > I'm not hearing any viable solutions. Standardized testing of underprivileged populations across childhood development cycles and putting the best and brightest into groups that give adequate resources to grow into their potential. There's tons of examples of exactly that working very well, but typically on smaller local levels (like NYC elite school system), and scaling the same system out internationally would be very smart of a country to do. Imagine an immigration policy where the brightest kids worldwide could naturalize with their families. What would that investment yield in a matter of a generation or so? The library of Alexandria used to pay the brightest people across the Mediterranean to come study, and as a result became **the** epicenter of knowledge and advancement for centuries until the admission process became nepotistic under the Roman empire and the quality and reputation of the school faltered. The failure in the US to throw the net not only internationally, but even on a broad national basis is wildly obtuse, as is the odd fetishizing of dynasty I've seen a lot of, a concept that falls apart after correcting for survivorship bias. Dynasties are almost always a terrible idea and an extremely poor way of selecting for expected success. Again, not a reason why it couldn’t be, rather a reason why it isn’t. There are actually plenty of fairly valid arguments for why is couldn’t be, but none of yours are. In other words maybe, if I wanted to not support Amazon completely, I'd have to stop using like 2/3 of the internet? Is it easy to obtain information; which sites use AWS? I disagree entirely with the concept of IP. Again, should we still be paying the guy who created the shovel? Tell me how it isn’t a false comparison and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you. > Money is the value of resource and time. That's not how that works, that's not how any of that works lol You're just repeating words you've heard and vaguely understand but you're not getting the theory behind them. And those software engineers are exploited as well. Just because a job pays well doesn’t mean it isn’t exploitation. If 1000 engineers build and run AWS, what entitles the shareholders of Amazon to take most of that wealth? Because they provided capital they are entitled to the fruits of the workers labour? The next person to win a Nobel Peace prize will be someone who had a teacher and never worked for Jeff. Care to wager? How about the next president? Next astronaut? Next millionaire? Next doctor? I'll take any of these wagers. The majority of people working for Amazon are people who have a poor education due to defunding education. Whatchu talking about, *you people*? And you think nothing would replace Amazon? Or that Amazon replaced nothing? Holy shit, i bet your teachers fucking *loved you*. Sorry, just using your logic of ascribing value to individuals in society. But they made Bezos. I love how Bezos gets to be in a vacuum, as if his intellect was imacculately conceived from the aether, yet is still able to somehow be more valuable to society based on all the efforts of others... But the person who taught him? Nahhhhhhhhhhh. They have nothing to do with Bezos' success. THANK YOU They pay more taxes in one year than you do in your whole life even if you lived to a 1000 Bezos' Amazon salary is around $80k/year. He isn't hording profits. His wealth is in ownership of Amazon, the value of which has been driven up by investors. He can't spend that without selling off ownership. And if education is needed for better jobs isn't Amazon offering free education a good thing? Compensation is the only metric that matters? The only thing anyone can ever add to a company is value...the company's job is to determine that value and pay the worker less than that to make profit. Considering the median Amazon employee is living paycheck to paycheck now with rising cost of living, it's not hard to see Bezos is worth 5 million times more than each, if not more. Equal distribution doesn't mean everyone gets paid the same. I'm saying the proportions of compensation to total labor is absurd. Making decisions to run a company is more valuable to company growth, for sure. But at this point the gap is comically absurd. That's not how statistics works. They exist. The impact of wealth inequality can be measured across the entire economic system. What I'm dismissing as an outlier is the false narrative of meritocracy. As the OP says, that factor is negligible in the system. It’s how Amazon worked and works. Bottle pissing included in the valuation. I shudder at the effects an increase in bathroom breaks/length for employees would have on my portfolio. How else is that value created? Speculation? That’s not real value. In fact your whole concept of value is based around money, which, outside of speculation has no real value. [deleted] I’ll address your first comment last. You’re wrongly assuming that I think this is exploitation just because it’s a low paying job. I don’t, even doctors are exploited. You say that the power isn’t skewed in the direction of the employer, and yet it absolutely is. This is why unions are a thing, and about laws. Without these, the individual has basically no power; without these, we would still have a 6 day work week, child labour, all because of the imbalance of power the employer has. You say that people have a choice of their employer, and thus it is not exploitative, but this is false. They have a choice, but nearly every option available is exploitative in the same ways. So if I have 10 available jobs in my town, and all of them are going to exploit me for my labour, do I have a choice to not be exploited? Am I not being forced into an exploitative circumstance? The salaries are absolutely determined by the humour of the owner. Now there is a minimum wage(which was necessary because employers have so much power), and there is a market for jobs, so if the owner sets the wages too low, he will not gain any employees. But this does not mean that he needs to pay a fair wage. He simply needs to pay a competitive wage. And while collective bargaining can hand some power back to the employee, it’s ignorant to assume employers don’t have the same power. If they all agree to pay the minimum wage, then the employees have no option but to take the minimum wage job. And all the employers don’t even need a formal agreement to do this, they are simply motivated to pay the lowest wage to get the most profit. So, the worker has very little power outside of collective bargaining, while employers by default are all collectively paying as little as possible. Why are you so interested in supporting a society that intentionally gives as much power as possible to the most privileged people? Even if you are on the upper end of the wage spectrum, as long as you are on the wage spectrum you are a worker and you are being exploited. Unless you own a business and exploit workers yourself, you are receiving the shit end of the stick; if you’re a doctor, you just worked really hard to get the least shitty stick(that’s still a shit stick). Ygmi That is incorrect. Free market capitalism allows you to make a trade, or not, at your discretion. There are plenty of people who live ""off grid"", though they still voluntarily trade with others. But again, that is beside the point. Prosperity **will** happen if the Rule of Law is present. Capitalism results when the Rule of Law is in place, because the government is not allowed to arbitrarily take the property of individuals. Well, people wanna hear your story but the harder you make it to listen the less they will listen 🤷🏼 And punctuation lol [deleted] Poorly worded it was early- separate points that I’ve heard (full seizure, or taxed heavily) > Youre cherry picking a very small issue thats part of a much bigger problem. Extreme wealth is an issue and as an offshoot of that, generational wealth from there would be an issue. > > If someone has a problem with a particular incident of generational wealth, I can guarantee its surrounded by a lot of evidence of abuse or exorbitant wealth. > > No one is getting upset at making your kid's life better. They're upset at dynasties. Why? If I can provide for my kids and they manage to provide more to their kids until our family is a dynasty it's something to be proud of. What's wrong with that? That's the fundamental difference in our thinking. You are saying there's a problem with dynasties, I don't. If possible I would like for my kids to be able to have a dynasty too, which is why I put them in the best school and also give them the best opportunity to succeed. Hey, great for you! Also, I'm feeling underpaid. My grandparents grew up in poverty and were able to pay for my parents college. Social mobility used to be a thing. I think it's harder now. But I don't think we need to worry about the 20%. 80% of those families will still lose their wealth, it'll just take longer. The Millionaire Next Door Theres a lot of stupid people who dont understand macroeconomics, or basic math unfortunately. Obviously this is a US centric answer. Its hard enough to convince people that being a multimillionaire is a vastly different concept than a millionaire, or that 300k in free finding is a big help. If theyre out of touch with that, imagine how difficult it is to convince them that having an semiaverage US income makes them wealthier than 99% of the rest of the world. Hrm, when I was trying to download from WealthX I kept ending up at the client login page. Thanks, I'll give it a look. Yeah, it's about what I expected. OP here is complaining about Bezos getting a 300k family loan to start his $177 billion. That report defines self made as inheriting 7% or less. So inherit $2 million, but reach ""Ultra Wealthy,"" you're self made by that metric. When people talk about starting on third base and thinking you hit a home run, that's what they're talking about. Lol this is great. Do you know what happens to companies whose owners pocket all of the profits? Are you joking or just trolling, or maybe still in school? Net profits means you've paid employees salaries already, true. Guessing you've never heard of the term ""profit sharing""? It's clear by now you have never owned a business, but have you possibly ever owned a stock? Ever received a dividend? Do you know where that comes from? Why don't those guys just ""stick it up their ass if they want to""? After all, it's all the money after they *paid off everything*, as in *paid off their debts*, as in *they are now at zero*. If you thrash your earnings, your company stagnates at best, it dies at worst. You really shouldn't argue with people about shit you have no knowledge or experience with, as it's very obvious to anyone who does. **Edit: and I like how you breezed past the other points made in my response to you, just to throw around some playground insults and confuse net profits at a company for net profits at your lemonade stand.** >Thinking Bezos and all these dudes are completely average is the biggest copium I might have ever read. This just straight up proves you don't know what you're talking about. Though I'm not arguing that you couldn't have done it, I don't know you. **But maybe you underestimate how lacking the average person is as well as how intelligent these guys are.** After the conversation I just had with experentia it has reminded me that you are absolutely right, I am definitely overestimating the average person's intelligence. People are definitely stupid enough to blow through $300k. Most definitely the average person, but while that is the case I'd still stand to bet the proportion of people who could build a great success from Bezos' same circumstances is pretty large. Again, maybe not the monstrosity he has created, and again I don't know that I could follow through with the soul-crushing business maneuvers that let him reach the heights he has. In their process of getting rich Musk hurt automakers, Gates hurt IBM, Bezos hurt all the small businesses both selling for and against his side, pushing them out and replacing with Amazon-chain products. Not that they don't have plenty of faults too. >Dude, YOU brought up workers pay as the reason amazon was successful. I never made a comment about worker's pay until you did. My original point was about exploitation, and you brought up worker's pay as if that makes it all okay now. Do you think just because they are being paid, they are no longer exploited? WTF? Just because you pay someone more than the minimum DOES NOT entitle you to treat people without dignity. You seem to think that just because Amazon pays them a little bit more, Amazon is now entitled to do whatever the fuck they want to their employees. >It sounds like a group went to the wrong location. Exactly. Why are they working in the first place at all? Amazon is in the business of coordinating the logistics of literal billion dollars worth of items around the world, and their employees have no idea where to go in an emergency? That's small group in that went to the wrong location why were they there in the first place that they could not go to the primary shelter? The management had no idea AT ALL that inclement weather is approaching? But to you this is alright, right? Because they are well paid. SMH [deleted] They’re from Zimbabwe I mean it's a trope at this point. A person will describe why socialism will be so scary, and then perfectly describe our current conditions under capitalism. Pretty sure you are talking about authoritarianism. Just like people calling the current system of capitalism as fascist when it's actually just an oligarchy. Know your systems mate. Don't get it twisted those are negative traits the system can fall in. That is why though that it's important to set up your social system to work with your economic one. Which is why true monarchy doesn't work with capitalism for instance. Replace ""state"" with ""employer"" and you have perfectly described capitalism. What the fuck you think taxes are? [deleted] That is what I was advocating for as well. Specifically I said I’d like to increase the social safety net. Capitalism has room to provide the tax revenue to fund social programs. You are correct except the last 3 words. [deleted] No country allows you to work a normal job and secure your children are well off. Capital is required. Banks are not. If you said the US has done fucked up things in Latin America especially to countries with more leftist governments, I would completely agree with you. That in no way proves that we’d be better off in a non capitalist system. Countries like Japan and South Korea have been successful under capitalism without being European. You could attribute the differences in quality of life to democracy vs dictatorship instead of capitalism vs communism, but they’ve generally been linked together in history. Socialism isn’t when government does things despite what US right wingers say. I feel like a lot of people in the US are “socialist” when they don’t even really support truly socialist policies and just want universal health care and some reasonable regulations on corporate overreach, but the right wingers say every goddamn thing is “socialist” so people said if all of those things are socialist than I’m a socialist. For the purpose of a civil discussion on Reddit, I would generally boil the definitions down to capitalism is an economy where the means of production are privately run while socialism is an economy where the means of production are socially run. As far as I’m aware, all of the countries I’m defining as capitalist have their economies set up as over 85% privately controlled. From my perspective, it seems very reasonable to call those countries capitalist regardless of how much of a social safety net they have or if some specific small sectors of their economies are socially controlled since the vast majority of their economies are privately ran. It’s not that much in America. Good luck even getting a starting home that cheap. And it was 300000 in the past, they dont even understand inflation. They’re not billionaires for all the reasons that the previous commenter pointed out, that you conveniently ignored you ignorant halfwit. Because they weren't trained to exploit people in apartheid like he was? How is that even a question? And yes you are simping for him. I think that only points out how irreproducible it is to get to the absurd level of wealth these people were able to concentrate. You can go from there to different conclusions BUT we should all agree the reason bezos could return an investment 666k fold was not that he ""worked really hard"" or ""provides more value than a school teacher"" or any of those reasons that try to explain why amazon is so awesome it shouldn't be taxed.. We aren't talking about personal liquid assets to live off of. We're talking about assets to create a business. $1 million is not a lot of money with which to invest in infrastructure and employees. $1 million is especially not a lot of money to create an empire with. $1 million in liquid assets for a single person to buy hookers and blow is a lot of money. $1 million in assets for a business looking to establish itself is barely anything. So why hasn't Mark Cuban turned the first 300k into hundreds of billions lmao OK that makes zero sense ? And you brought 2 points I refuted both . A the avg person does have the ability to come up with 300k. And b the avg person won't because they over extend and they are constantly living beyond their means . Make my point once again given the same opportunity the avg person couldn't accomplish what these men have. and their success has much more to do with them personally . Their drive determination ambition and intelligence. Than the fact that they had help from family . How it's pretty easy .the avg person buys out of their want not their need . Such as a house that mortgage payment is 50% of their net income making payment of luxury items such as car and credit card that they used to purchase throw away consumables such as clothes or electronics things that once bought lose their value forever and one day will end up in a landfill. [deleted] Yeah that’s what I just said. Thank you for demonstrating that you understand. A bodybuilder is more likely to die of a heart attack or organ failure than anything else. A steroid user isn't any more likely to get cancer than anyone else. Nah cancer is the least of the problems steroids can give you, the entire hormonal imbalance, and the huge, huge cycles of grams of the stuff people take are far far more likely to kill you before cancer can get to you. Why do you think they start dying young, their hearts failing and the body overly taxed. Hahaha there are no original thoughts left What are you talking about? You're really arguing that *every* single small business started with a business loan?? See my comment from elsewhere in the thread: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/small-business-statistics Less than 15% of small businesses loans are over $50,000. There were about 5.6 million loans. That means only 840,000 people are getting loans over $50,000. Assuming a somewhat natural distribution, it's seems incredibly unlikely that more than a few thousand people get loans around $300,000. There being a lot of small businesses doesn't mean a lot of people are getting $300,000 loans. not in 1994 they weren't. 300k is just the amount he got from his parents. And yeah, you are still a bootlicker. That's not the argument. It's WAY more likely to be successful when you can devote all your time and worry towards a business or a venture, instead of doing it on the side because you have to pay bills. Pro athletes aren't even in the conversation. It’s almost like pro athletes are dumber than the average person. And the ones that aren’t tend to incest wisely and do quite well It's literally from interviews Musk has done a decade ago. And Errol Musk stated that he sold a plane for 80k and the buyer offered a stake in an emerald mine for half of the 80, and he said yes. Errol Musk then stated he received emeralds for ""The next 6 years"" Very interesting that Musk has been open about the emerald mine but only recently started to refute the rumors and statements....Really makes you think. his father directly said in an interview that he owned a stake in the mine. Google “how do I make money online”. Udemy has full stack courses for 13 dollars. There are literally no barriers to education anymore. Yes, it’s a hard climb, but it’s not like it was when there was real systemic racism in higher academia. You don’t need academia anymore. This mentality is so counterproductive, people should be inspired that an idea can make them rich, not assuming it was only because a few rich dickheads weren’t impoverished at birth. I'm sorry, sir, I don't have anything to help you It is very sad, both for the lives wasted and for those they could have helped. Imo, there's no greater value than human capital. That is to say, human beings are the most valuable resource we have, both from a moral point of view, and from a practical one. The fact that we don't invest more into our own species is both a moral atrocity as well as deeply shortsighted. However, I think we've entered an era where this is being realized and addressed more and more, so I'm optimistic for that part of the future. Also, on that note, I think even middle class people in wealthy societies are not developed to anywhere near their full potential. Well, that’s the scheme. What startup could afford to have so much losses early on? It was part of the plan. First you have to put the competition out of business, then you can ruin everything. Edit: to add, they legitimately found a weakness in the current model. But instead of exploiting it to improve the marketplace for all the consumers as capitalism likes to preach, the exploited it and created a de facto monopoly to shit on everyone. It’s like someone finding a bug in apple software and instead of reporting it they used it to hack everyone. >Your comment is weak as fuck, boy Better than your grammar game apparently. Thank god for all the wonderful doctors who did all that work for free on the lab equipment and supplies that materialized out of thin fucking air. [deleted] Where does the funding for medical research and study come from? Some of that comes from rich guys, no? are you trolling or are you being serious? if you’re being serious, i hope you realize that the real problem with cancer and AIDs is a lack of talent, not so much a lack of funds. So for instance, Buffett has sent a few billion of his money to the Gates Foundation, which spends most of its money reducing malaria rates. Is your point that because malaria still exists, we shouldn't give Buffett credit for those donations? If not, then what exactly is your point? “No that’s you misinterpreting my point” And then you immediately said something supporting that point lol. No one used the word solve except you bud; you’re also complaining about him not answering the question when you didn’t answer my question: what’s your billion dollar idea to solve the housing problem through private funding? And if you want to talk about putting words in people’s mouth, you claimed I’m praising Buffett for giving money to those charities when I simply said that you using a metric of “is the problem solved” for things like homelessness is unreasonable. So you have no disposable income at all? You’ve never spent money on snacks or entertainment in the past year? Because if you have, that money could’ve gone to people worse off than you. Instead you just sit on your ass and whine about people who have created tens of thousands of jobs and wildly popular goods and services. Not to mention, every person in this image has donated more to charity than you’ll ever make in your life. Why don’t you help someone else instead of complaining? Or are Cheetos and video games more valuable to you than helping the homeless or a starving child in Africa? Well the only way they make money is buy providing value. How many products does Amazon offer? Yeah pollution, but that’s driven human consumption. The company is filling a need. 8 billion needy people on this earth. Horrible working conditions? It’s not slavery… people complain about work conditions regardless of the job. Intentional negative nature of Amazon jobs… please enlighten me. That company employs many many people. While they may bitch about the working conditions I’m sure they are happy to get a paycheck. [deleted] stock can be liquidated. shocker right? Yes. He provided that much more value than you if you’ve only done enough for society to earn $1 in your entire life. Value is not linearly proportional to the population. Seriously, read a book. And get a job. You might even make $5 or $10. Not being bitter at anyone who built cool shit that a lot of people like because they have more money than me is actually a good quality in a golf partner. > Nothing Bezos or Buffet has ever done measures up to [being cold-blooded or ruthless]. They have very much indeed done a lot of things that can be considered cold-blooded or ruthless. My time was spent well, I gained insight into just how ignorant the average person is of how the world works. Its easy to forget people like you exist when I don't associate or interact with you, even though I used to be just as naive. You have the capacity to understand it, but I doubt you have the drive. Please prove me wrong and read ""Who rules america"" or ""Tragedy and hope 101,"" you will learn so much. Yup, and Leonardo DiCaprio should start acting in low budget indie films. Like what kind of argument is this? I keep seeing this “hoard wealth” term. What the fuck does that mean? The man has earned his wealth over the course of his life. What does he owe you or anyone else? This is what poor people with poor money management say. Nope didn’t know that, thanks! I see where you’re coming from. I do think it’s likely though that these people did, in fact, work harder than you at some point in their life. I think the issue here is that if you worked harder than them with the level of skill they have in their field—you still couldn’t touch them because they were so far ahead at the start. But these people have also traded everything for that money. Pieces of them that aren’t easy to get back. Personally, I’m happy I’m not them. But I *would* like enough money to never have to work again so I could just be with my family. I don't know anything about Stockton. I just read his autobiography a long time ago and it was inspiring. Sorry, I guess I expected anyone asking questions to be adversarial in this particular thread. Edit- I think he'd be disappointed in his son/family for moving the team away from the city population that supported them in the lean years. Lol so you hating the system= rich people are shitty people. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 [deleted] The fact that billionaires exist is a problem, billionaires can only exist off the backs of exploitation If money is indeed infinite, why is it possible that there is such a vast imbalance in the distribution of it? > Currently the issue of shortages is supply chains. Could you give some examples of what you mean by this? Long before humans started depleting the entire planet of key components. There are almost 8 billion of us, we were closer to 1 billion people a couple hundred years ago. Think about what that could mean for your outdated assertion. The Colorado river no longer reaches the ocean. It’s being used up by industry and agriculture. We are running out of basic resources, nevermind space mining for various elements for high tech luxuries. You are completely detached from reality if that’s what you think. You’re right, it’s “locked away”. Elon’s wealth isn’t in his partial ownership of a company that has for the first time made self-driving and efficient electric cars widely available. Instead, it’s hidden as stacks of hundreds in a vault below his wine cellar. I am critiquing the assertion that it’s a “simple” fact. I emphasized “obviously” and you’re still missing the point. The original claim is utterly ridiculous, and that’s what I’m attacking. You seem to like your logic, so let me put it like this: the set of simple facts is a strict subset of the set of facts. You can thus prove that something is not in the set of simple facts without at the same time proving it’s not in the set of facts, and yet you seem to also want me to prove it’s not in the set of facts, at the risk of being accused to fail to make my point, which I hope this demonstrates is fallacious. And yes, for the OPs claim to be true, which is that it’s a *simple* fact, you would need to not see a massive correlation between the emergence of billionaires and the massive increase in global wealth. Maybe we’d all be *even* richer if there had never been billionaires, but then that’s not *simply* true. I was talking about wealth inequality and you were rambling about firebombings then gun control. There is no argument to respond to. You're the one fabricating your own reality. You're a machine. Get over it. I am saying that brains are processors and they generate your reality. Everything about it is processed information. Any desires to do anything are the output of a process that runs in your brain and you don't actually have control over any of it, as any attempt to control your own behaviors is generated by your brain itself. I don’t even know if we disagree or what you’re trying to say. I think this post is ridiculous, trying to talk shit on Bezos for having 300 K to play with and now he’s a billionaire. I know many people he started with nothing and now on businesses and are millionaires. When you start working at 16, 17, 18, and put in 40 hours a week or more, anyone can become wealthy. I mean look what happens when you remove police. Crime skyrockets. We just watched all last summer what happens when you remove police. BLM did more to get more funding to police than I think any actual pro police effort from the right ever could You speak like someone who doesn’t have to live in one of these places you should probably stop. My family deserves to have protection, shame on you for trying to take that away from our communities. Do you want to make comparisons between the Chinese and black communities? >yeah, man. I bet if we took your comments vs. mine, most people would say I came off looking worse not the dog-whistling turd who's not smart enough (or more likely, just mean) to understand structural inequality. Yes I would agree they would. >Maybe if you ever put in a real day's work, you'd learn compassion but I'm sure it's harder to grow those skills with the comfy life you were raised in. Soft hands don't make strong people. Well thats a really racist comment, are you calling non white people lazy? yikes. Yeah obviously some people can do it, but you make it sound like anybody can do it and it’s easy. Plus you are leaving behind your people you grew up with and the culture you grew up in. And contributing to brain drain as well. It’s not as easy as you are making it out to be This is exactly the way to do it. I know someone who took this route with goddam *Jeff Bezos* and got a quick phone chat with him a few days later. I've noticed that many young, fresh out of college adults are way too shy about cold-calling and asking for help/advice. Find someone who's passionate about the same things you're passionate about, and reach out and ask for advice on how to get to a point where you can pursue your passion. Respect their time, respect their advice, don't respond with a bunch of ""*yeah but I can't because...*,"" ask for advice on overcoming obstacles. Worst case scenario, they give you advice that's clearly trash, but now you have someone in the industry who knows your name and your passion. I’m. Mostly joking, but networking is a very important skill and one I’m currently cultivating. [deleted] [deleted] It's not negativity, it's reality, knowing what you're getting into, understanding the risks and the odds you are facing will prevent you from making devastating choices under the impression that you have all your chances. If someone is discouraged by it that mean they didn't had what it take to succeed to begin with. Also there's nothing diminishing for the people who made it, on the contrary it recognize the efforts of those who made it from nothing. Not everyone is at the whim of employers and landlords. There are a lot of people who are self-employed, the barrier for that has dropped dramatically. There are also a lot of people who own their own home. All these options are available, it's just a question of if people are working toward them or not or if they want them. Everything is a trade off. Over the long-term, renting may cost more and requires a steady income... but it's less responsibility in terms of maintenance and care. It also eliminates the unknown expenses (finding out you need a new roof, a flood, etc). Having a job with an employer is generally steady and you don't need to worry about the job or company when you're off shift. If you are self-employed it's all on you. If you don't get clients, if you get sick, if the job doesn't get done... it's all on you and some people don't want that added stress. Every situation has its pros and cons. To treat one picture of the ideal as the goal for everyone isn't really accurate. As long as people aren't being prevented from self-employment or being prevented from home ownership then people have the option to work toward those things if they want them. That doesn't mean it will all happen in 12 months from deciding you want it. Right which is why I didn't say absolutes, I said a minority of success is hardwork and smarts, because it is. A majority of success is connections and luck. For billionaires that majority is even more extreme. Good talk, clown. I'm sorry, I guess you went through the hiring process there to know personally then? What a weird thing to assume. They hire PhDs and math olympiads, not pampered kids with well connected dads. Those guys are starting their own companies, not grinding on wall st. And many have even more. Damn. Statistics. Listen man you can grasp at how ever many straws you want, the comment wasn't ""if you parents can responsibly loan you 300k, you aren't middle class"". It was >If you’re parents could just loan you $300k and you consider that a small loan, you aren’t middle class Which is objectively false, my mom is sitting on a 400k+ home she does not live in, and does not rent for profit. She could in theory sell this house tomorrow and loan me the money without her quality of life changing at all. This isn't an argument. I think it is an amount you gamble with when the gamble is being made on a startup for your son who graduated with a 4.2 GPA in engineering and computer science from Princeton and who spent the most recent 3 years of his life working on mathematical models for a hedge fund. [deleted] > You can alemays tell a conservaive because insults make up 99 percent of their arguments. Hey looks like you're a conservative Most likely he is privileged and by criticizing them you are criticizing him. Any criticism? I just feel cumpulsed to correct lies and misinformation, which is prevalent Because some have no greater hatred than for those who are more privileged than them. Most money he ever got from his dad was a 30k investment in Zip2 which Elon owned only 7% of, so no he didn't. The Relationship with a father has a huge effect on a person and to ignore that is very disingenuous. But think how many people have access to a free 30k and wealthy parents and better conditions than him in every way but would never come close to becoming the richest person in the world. At some point you need to get some perspective, he didn't start with literally zero advantages, but he had disadvantages too. And compared to pretty much any other billionaire he should be considered self made. Nah man, just calling out your lazy response. Well, go ahead and list the ""amazing technology"" and exactly how he ""bought"" them in the later stage of development. You can do it! elons money has special powers. only it can solve all the societal problems like poverty and hunger Because resources are finite. There isn’t enough to give everyone a base standard of living while also having multi-billionaires in the same society. What we do have, is more than enough for give everyone a base standard of living, allow capitalism to exist to increase that standard of living to crazy rich millionaire status if that’s what you choose, and have enough to be charitable on the world stage. We just wouldn’t have multi-billionaires anymore. Again… the only downside to this is the “principle of the matter” I don’t care about the principle… I care a lot more about ending homelessness, poverty and giving everyone healthcare than I do about billionaires becoming multi-billionaires. I highly question the logic and humanity of anyone that thinks the richest getting richer while the poorest going without is a good thing. Seems to be fake news > In Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk, it is claimed that the Musks' father, Errol Musk, provided them with US$28,000 during this time,[6]: Ch.4  but Elon Musk later denied this.[8] He later clarified that his dad provided around 10% of US$200,000 as part of a later funding round.[11] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2 That was really forced. You’re…not great at this. It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Fully cached AMP pages (like the one you shared), are [especially problematic](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.businessinsider.co.za/errol-musk-has-a-baby-with-his-stepdaughter-2018-3](https://www.businessinsider.co.za/errol-musk-has-a-baby-with-his-stepdaughter-2018-3)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/) So no proof of your claims then. Got it. If you were aware of how it was accrued then you would have tried to pull that misleading BS unless, of course, you were trying to be misleading to support your point. SpaceX, Zip2, Tesla, PayPal. Those are the ones I can think of from top of my mind, maybe remove Zip2 and you still have 3 famous companies that were and are important to American industries. You're clearly not following. I replied to someone saying receiving investments or seed capitol means someone is self made. I questioned this, as someone building their business from the ground up trying hard to interest investors wouldn't be considered self made by them, which is ridiculous. At no point did I ever say start-up money inherently makes someone self made. Nor did I say Bezos was self made. Yes Poker is a game of luck, unless you know how to count cards. Like I said, if your mind has a greater capacity to calculate probabilities and make connections, your perception won’t see nearly as much chance and patterns will be clearer to you. If that’s not true for you, I’m not sure what to tell you beside yes, the good things that happen to you are just good luck since they are unplanned. I can guess. A lot? How much do you think 300,000 looks to a billionaire? Pretty sure it’s relative Apply the same logic to any amount of money. It doesn't matter. If you can turn x into y so easily, then why doesn't everyone who has x turn it into y? Maybe because that's not the way any of that works. A. Oh boy, do I really have to explain this? A pit by definition is IN the ground (underground) and lava has to break free from the surface and flow freely. It’s literally in the definition you provided. On top of that, There’s no such thing as a lava pit, unless you count video games. Just google it. Maybe play less Minecraft/Mario? B. Your point about comparing the 1st million to the last….. last what? What 1st million are you talking about? You’re clinging to a point that makes sense in your mind but you have no way to communicate it properly. There still wasn’t actually Apartheid in Zambia, that only occurred in South Africa. The structural organisation of it was hence missing. It is one thing for social dynamics to *resemble* those of apartheid, it is another for apartheid to be formally institutionalised. You are right, however, that we are not to pretend as though whites didn’t have a massive advantage in many regions of Africa, on account of their empires at some point controlling the land and distributing the spoils to non-africans or non-blacks. However, there was no slavery here, and you seemed earlier in the thread to be implying slavery, which is why I responded in the first place. Musk’s family, regrettably, simply started in a much more opportune position due to their background, as any enterprising white person in Africa would have. Sanders doesn’t keep the man down, The Party does when it gets full control. If you were in 1930s Soviet Union, you’d be a Party member and kissing Stalins ass cheeks on a daily basis. For now, you keep going to the voting booth and electing a Dear Leader, hoping he or she will change things this time. I don’t submit to Musk. I will call him out when he does something I don’t like. Can you afford to do that to Dear Leader? Simple java script. Miss so many, what? > lol I guarantee it never went down like that. The whole family are psychopaths going all the way down the bloodline, extremely rich too. Maye Musk is a psychopath based on... what exactly? > Modelling, giving wellness talks and owning a private nutrition practice while not being able to afford milk? Tell me you understand that that doesn't add up. How much do you think low end models (for a woman who already 3 kids make)? How much do think giving talks about wellness pays? A private nutrition practice literally just means she tries to convince other people to pay for her advice, she could've earned jack shit from it. And with that she has to pay for 3 kids by herself. If she's rich why is she even working 3 jobs? > You realise that the family was wealthy for generations and probably dont understand what poverty is so would easily mistake You realize that the mom's family background is completely different from the dad's, right? > what they went through for poverty when in actual fact it was probably a slim few months Or you can read the article and realize the situation lasted for years and in two different continents. > It actually sounds like she didnt have time to buy milk rather than not being able to afford it, thats what the family is like, masters at twisting words. ... she cried because she didn't have time to buy milk? Talk about psychopathic, lol. Kid, if the entire family is psychopathic, then maybe the dad was a psychopath who lies about how rich and important he was and in fact he was a completely insignificant speck, ever considered that? But nah, you only believe things that already agree with your world view, and everything else is a lie. I hope one day you grow up and realize how dumb that is. TIL it’s simping to dispel misinformation. If I start calling you a criminal and someone comes out and says you aren’t one, are they simping for you? Why the hell do you think anyone needs Musk's attention? He's not celebrity that you chase for likes, in fact people hate him because he uses social media for fun (trolling). Many people admire him for his engineering skills, desire to execute long term goals ASAP, and his deep insight in mostly any tech topic. The rest are jumping the bandwagon (both liking him and hating him) because it's cool in their community but have zero insight what and why he actually does. Maybe you should spend some time reading the non-Elon topics in /r/economy. The average Redditor seems to believe that turning a million into a billion is practically a foregone conclusion, that billionaires are idiots (rather than exceptionally astute business people), and business owners do virtually no work, while the employees shoulder 110% of the burden. Reality is that the vast majority of people are simply not capable of building a business. They *could* be capable but that requires years of skill-building, and they're not willing to do that. And I know that first-hand: I'm an employer and despite offering my employees training, books, courses, etc., they simply don't take advantage of it. They don't want to be wage-slaves but are unwilling to spend the time increasing their value, and honestly, in the next round of hiring, I'm going to pass right over people like them. Basically, if you show up with no talent, no drive to get more talent, and can't even be arsed to work on drive, then yea, you're not going to see a lot of economic mobility in life. The money is the easy part. I can drop $150 on books and have access to information written by the top minds in any given field. But to study a book might take 20-30 hours. And then to test the material takes a lot more time and effort. People like these billionaires (and multi-millionaires) do things like that. That's why they interest me and many others. Stay mad, I'm sure that communist utopia will spring up any day now! haha holy fuck you’re all over this thread talking about elon And hating successful people will never bring you personal success Good one. Maybe come up with an actual source like an adult then. Edit: lmao the kid blocked me. Also, since he posted the comment and then blocked me: He’s used that same line about 14 times over the 2 months of his account life. Come up with something new buddy 😂 Business insider is a tabloid and not a serious news publisher, they make stuff up without any proof. Also Elon has said himself that it’s a complete fabrication. You don't think its weird that this supposed emerald mine didn't even have a name? Public records? News articles? Jewelry industry mentions? Legitimate news sources veify information. BI just published the word of Erol Musk from a phone interview. Knowing Elon I wouldn't be one bit surprised if his dad bullshits just as much. It depends on the edit as well as the article. Obvious vandalism is usually addressed pretty quickly, but plausible-but-unsourced conclusions can remain on articles for a long time. On the article side of things, it depends mostly on how much traffic it gets - Elon's article is pretty well-sourced, whereas by contrast, System of a Down guitarist Daron Malakian's Wikipedia article has pretty long stretches with no citations. And...? Do they back this up? I got this far down the thread only for it to end without a conclusion! What goalposts? I haven’t made any claims smart guy. It’s really not, you are just a moron. Also, your TDS is showing. Nobody here even mentioned Trump. Reddit moment Lol keep crying little baby No, this is what you are advocating for. You are advocating for class envy. That or even worse you aer advocating for my political billionaires are okay and the other sides billionaires aren't. Which that I would argue is exponentially worse than the class envy push. Exploiting people more than other multimillionaires isn’t ‘earning it’ though. It’s only possible to probable that they lobbied to oversee the largest wealth transfer from the working class to the ruling class of all time during the pandemic? Give me a fucking break. I didn’t say he wasn’t a smart guy? Are you illiterate? I said he didn’t invent shit. He owned a company that paid people to, because the people with the skills to actually do it did not have the capital and he did. Plenty of things you are crediting to his company, happened because he took the value from another worker with more skills. That is his actual skill. Hoarding capital and using it to exploit other people. You are blind if you don’t think that’s how all billionaires work. Yes I read it. It discusses Rockefeller and Musk. Of which neither is a dragon. You do not know what the word horde means. You are either a bad faith party or an idiot. Based on your line of logic it is reasonable to assume you are both. Ignorant to what exactly? The opinions of a website that looks like it was created in 1998 in microsoft paint? None of you have any idea how equity wealth works, how value is created, or I dare say what the word wealth even means. Go back to your freshman philosophy class and come back when you have at least graduated from university. “Rent free” “sure bud” Lets see how many more lonely depressed redditor phrases you can hit Lol whatever libtard!!!! > Also u > ““Elon Musk’s family once owned an emerald mine in Zambia — here’s the fascinating story of how they came to own it” > > So he didn’t get any money from apartheid.” > > > > Which according to your own source is false… The cognitive dissonance is strange. Do you seriosuly don’t know that Zambia and South Africa are two different states? Lmao. Its quite funny how Americans don’t know geography 😂😂 So I won't be lame? How rich does someone need to be before it's lame? Why would you strive to not be rich lmao that may be true but from what i’ve seen, it’s the people who have sworn of being rich that think it’s impossible. >Making a successful business only happens through exploitation! -Useful tool /u/U-Cranium Stay stupid. what are you talking about? i never said that’s what rich people do. i just said something people would say is “morally right” projecting. Well it's a strange field where you enter at 62k average then in maybe 2 years you can jump to 100k+ easily. As long as you are smart, you should plan to end your career making 200k+ easily. That's just the kind of field it is. Living off 45k is not borderline poverty lol. That's how most of our citizens live. Also that assumes you do nothing with your technical skills besides your job. It's really not too difficult to start a business bringing in a lot of money. For example I know some guys running a cheat client for old school runescape, they're making 9k a month split some way between 3 guys. There's your 30k/year right there >I'm sorry your anecdote didn't work for you but come on now, you have to understand internal references are more likely to help than not, sure it isn't a guarantee but nepotism is common place in this world even in the lands of the non rich. Sure, most people get their jobs because they know someone, but like you mention, that isn't exclusive to the rich. Plus, rich people know non-rich people and can help them get a leg up. >because luck has such a big fucking part of it. Many people work hard their whole lives for jack shit. Then having people basically selling their success story as solely selfmade is insulting. Remember where you came from. I've seen a ton of people highlight there is an element of luck, but that doesn't dismiss the work they did. If they hadn't done the work before and after that moment of luck, it would have passed them by. >Sure they may be people but are you going to ignore all the pain and harm they did to gather their wealth? You're making it sound like these guys are in the streets slaughtering people. It's a bit dramatic. It would be reductionist but at the same time those who do have a large amount of chances are far less likely to end up homeless and penniless. At the end of the day. There are many advantages those who are born with connections and wealth have over us plebs. The decks are stacked in either way and yes people can play their hand poorly if they have a stack deck but its far easier to play with a stack deck than not. [deleted] Hard work and good decision making are not what I would consider advantages. But that is the major difference between those who did well and those who did not. I know it doesn’t fit your narrative To be fair some neighborhood kids were simply not very smart and that will limit their potential. Yes. Because they could afford to lose that money. Because they had a lot of money. What part of, ""the *vast* majority of Americans don't have access to that kind of advantage"", is difficult for you to grasp here? No. The point is that all of these people were born near the top of the ladder, and the privileged situations they were gifted played a substantial role in their success. It wasn't the sole reason for their success, but it was a primary driving factor. The reason I am concerned with all of this is that boomer bootlickers like yourself for some reason think the people who need defending are these mega wealthy oligarchs who control our lawmakers and have spent the last 50 years union busting and pocketing every cent of the profits while the middle and lower class suffer for it. We've been in an exponentially worsening debt and wage crisis for 20+ years, and in that same span the executive to average joe pay ratio has increased \~1000%. And you think it's the billionaires that need defending. It's madness. [deleted] Bro people willingly pay amazon and microsoft… “Reaped from us”… something tells me you dont have any money to reap lol Just like the original post, you’re still making a strawman argument! Even Musk, Buffet, Gates, and Bezos don’t believe they are self-made men; they’ve never claimed to be it in the first place! Privileges come in many shapes and forms, and ultimately the privilege of “being born into rich families” isn’t what made them successful. Sure, without a doubt there is a correlation between the two — but think of the hundreds of thousands of children born into rich, maybe even top 1% families. How are they all not billionaires? Ultimately, outside of the privileges they had been born into, they had to put an incredible amount of effort to turn their money into billions. Their work shouldn’t be invalidated. I don’t think you, or even ME could have accomplished what they have done with their money. Call them whatever you want, but if they’re pigs you have to admit they are smart ones. Strange how with the world having billions and billions of poor people, none of them have managed to become jeff bezos. It was only the fucking rich kid that did that. Edit: it happens to ""most"" ""rich"" families. horse shit. complete and total fucking horse shit. Oooo look at you completely ignoring the fucking point. you're some serious r/whoosh material. And they’ll never spend a millisecond of their lives thinking about you, yet you spend hours and hours of your life obsessing about them. Pretty pathetic when you think about it, no? I’ll bet $1000 right now you’ve never had an intimate relationship in your life. Let me guess, that’s why you’re such an angry little man? What woman/man would ever find a little fuck like you attractive 😂 Taking a share of equity out of a company doesn’t do anything pressure wise to a business owner, if anything it makes it easier because now you have partners and all their skills, connections, etc. When receiving an investment, it’s the investors who assume the risk. You have no legal obligation to reimburse them if your business fails, nor do you have to cut them routine checks as a result of accepting their money. Wether you accept money from family or investors, you have a mandate to do your best to run a successful business. Honestly, I’d feel less pressure taking money from investors than family because if you fail you never have to see those investors again but it could literally ruin your family life. I’ll agree that taking a traditional loan from a bank is different and that would make your path to success more difficult and stressful. With that said, the majority of business like Amazon and tech companies get their funding through VC investors, not banks. Right, to you and me. People working for a dollar a day would say starting with 20k might as well be a million, or 10 million. Whole lotta projection there buddy, in fact now that I’ve read your message I can safely assume your idea of success is holding down a job at Walmart for more than a week 😂 And of course rich people have more advantage, it’s called life. I’m not sure what’s so perplexing about that concept? The funniest thing about you is you have to assume that I’m a Fox News watcher / conservative to feel like you have some kind of argument - I had you pegged from the second you commented, just another self loathing little pest. It’s okay buddy, maybe try reading some books or something to expand your vocabulary and have a better chance at winning exchanges like these 😂 Again no evidence, no service. Not everyone gets paid in bananas like you do, so my hats off to you . Hope you have a good day bro, idk why we fighting. Best of luck. That's a lot of words that doesn't even come close to addressing my point. Ok so they are delivering 100s of thousands of cars, during majors supply chain shortages and ramping up and delivering starlinks. So you are admitting both of these companies are delivering and creating value for people. How many cars would they need to produce for you to shut up about it? How about an exact number? >Tesla delivered only 300k teslas all last year False. ""In 2021, we produced 930,422 vehicles and delivered 936,222 vehicles."" Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000095017022000796/tsla-20211231.htm Yet you keep responding... He's wealthy beyond reason, which is why he wasn't ""shut down"". In a game of dollars, wealth is success. Subjective measurements of delivery probably not matter as much as we may want them to. It's not worth feeling such contempt for someone, let alone someone we don't know. I don't say that in passive aggressive jest or accusation (Lord knows internet text can be full of that). I'm just genuinely recommending you try not caring. You have no clue what you are talking about, it's actually embarrassing bruh. Again, you are expecting me to write an essay here about how space related technologies and cheaper satellites are utilized in modern civilization. I wont. And even if we follow your logic and assume that all the hundreds of billions of $ that are poured into space industries all over the world, and the millions of people that work on them, do not impact the average person at all. The ""proof of concept"" thing you commented would still make zero sense. And finally, as I wrote before. All starlink satellites could crash into the ocean tomorrow and it still wouldnt make a dent on the impact spacex has made on the space industry. SpaceX's main products are its launch vehicles. Starlink is just an experimental venture of the company that utilizes the fact that they have such cheap launch vehicles. Which are obviously going to be even cheaper when they use them for themselves. Now if you are getting all your info from headlines and have zero actuall interest in the space field, I can see how you might think that spacex = starlink. But thats not the case. You can hate/love, care/not care about Musk at all. But thats irrelevant to spacex's accomplishments. Hating the boss of the company doesnt invalidate how far the employees of that company as a whole have pushed the field they work on. I am convinced people with a custom snu on reddit are complete idiots, idiot You're probably just trolling. But I give you the benefit of the doubt. The thing is, you got some things right, but you are completely missing the point here. The ""80% died"" figure is right - if you only consider a single launch out of 46. Overall they worked fine so far. There was a single launch that had problems with a strong solar wind expanding the earth's athmosphere causing 80% to deorbit in their first orbit. This is just one example for all the things you say where you probably only read the heading and are therefore completely wrong. You don't have to love Musk. But please critisize him for the things he really did and not these stupid things that aren't true at all. It makes you look dumb. >80% died, almost nobody has gotten star link and last I checked they weren’t being used by governments or other network providers You honestly believe 80% of the 2100 launched satellites doesn't work or you are just randomly throwing around numbers? Do you expect SpaceX to be so incompetent technically or financially? Starlink has more than 250,000 subscribers, these are pretty much those people and communities that didn't have access to a reasonable service and now they are willing to pay $99 monthly to use Starlink. https://spacenews.com/starlink-reaches-250000-subscribers-as-it-targets-aviation-and-other-markets/ You claim Starlink isn't being used by governments, but in fact the Air Force is testing it on aircraft and using on their bases, and the Ukrainian government received 5000 terminals. https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/air-force-testing-starlink-internet-on-aircraft/ https://www.ramstein.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2787344/starlink-increases-comm-capabilities-at-rab/ https://www.space.com/spacex-usaid-starlink-terminals-ukraine You claim network providers aren't using Starlink, while it takes a few seconds to find examples for that: https://spacenews.com/spacexs-starlink-broadband-to-be-available-in-japans-remote-areas-next-year/ Not to mentione several airlines contracting with SpaceX for Starlink internet: https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2022-04-22/spacex-signs-first-aircraft-operator-starlink-satcom https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hawaiian-airlines-starlink-internet-scn/index.html https://simpleflying.com/delta-air-lines-starlink-test/ Oxford dictionary- the numbers from a million to a billion. You have made no argument. It’s obvious you are emotional. We can’t all be rich like Elon, sorry to break it to you. Maybe if you can attract billions of people’s dollars you can also be rich like him. In the meantime, you can continue to cry. Your article literally quotes Errol Musk as it's only source, which is directly contradicted by both Musk brothers and their mother. So I really don't think you're doing major journalism here, pretending that some South African boomer's statements about his wealth are gospel. And did you even look at the other article? My god you have selective vision. Please, go whine some more about how the devil Elon supposedly took easy street to become one of the richest men to ever live. “Oligarchs.” Then you’re an oligarch of the world. Bet you feel better about yourself typing on your devices made with slave labor with all of your other unethically obtained possessions. You’re just as crappy as them so quite with the moral posturing. Also how am I insecure of my age? What a weird head ass thing to say No man, you don't get it. Expand your mind bro. If you bake bread, did you really 'make' that bread or was it the yeast and flour farmers who made it? All you did was exchange your hard earned money for the products and services, toiled over the dough with your bare hands, spent your time letting it rise and then used even more money on the gas to heat your oven so you could bake it. Like, what did you even do? Exactly. Labor isn’t voluntary. Are you 13 years old, a really misinformed adult, or are you deliberately gaslighting me? I laughed way harder at your comment than I should’ve lol Oh you got it wrong. I'm just sharing some details I found to show how unlucky this is. Imagine that people who work for pyramid scheme companies have a money loss rate of about 99.99% and casinos players have a loss rate of about 99.96%. So 99.96% of players lose. That's a big L And I said you could put it on a number to net them millions. He asked the UN for a plan to end world hunger last year or maybe 2020 but either way they never got back to him. If the UN can’t figure out a plan to spend upwards of 1T to fix world hunger I’m not sure you understand how small 45B is in contrast to the problems most people bemoan. Housing development on the scale needed in the US to fix the inventory shortage easily would clean through the 45B and we’d have tonnes of legal fighting to do to undo the generations of NIMBYism and then there’s the folks that keep wanting to impose rent restrictions and such which would make the spend on that front all but disappear. You don’t spend 45B on liabilities, you spend it on assets. The old outdated one or the definition that is in common use today? Or maybe they’re trapped in poverty in parts of the country that barely meet first world living standards and are tired of paternalistic asshats telling them how to feel about their own lived experience when they wouldn’t willfully spend a day in their neighborhood. ... The only people who say things like ""America is a third world country"" (or ""American isn't a first world country"") are, ironically, usually people who have zero knowledge of the wider world around them. ​ Lol r/economy displaying the equivalent economics knowledge of r/antiwork or r/latestagecapitalism because fuck you that's why Listen, I am not advocating the total elimination of rental units. What I am saying as that most people rent, and they rent because they don't really have a choice if they want housing. On top of that rent prices are arbitrary, they simply set prices as high as they can. Rental properties collude with each other and they even have shared formulas and algorithms that determine the maximum amount of money they can squeeze from everyone. This is what happens when landlords have a monopoly on housing. On top of that they reinvest all that money they leech off the working class to buy up more housing driving up the cost of houses, reducing market availability and thus driving up farther the cost of rent. It's a feedback loop that only ends badly for everyone, except landlords. Rental properties have their place, but when a majority of low income people are renting they are investing in other peoples futures not their own, ensuring they will remain poor forever, and have nothing to leave their children. I am going to add, the reason i will not support the system is that it has to start somewhere. Enough people need to stop renting that it forces landlords to reduce rent or sell property. There is a personal budget tool, that, determines cost of living and income and helps plan for retirement. I make 40k a year, about 30k take home, in order for me to make a small car payment, afford all basic necessities like fuel, clothes, food and insurance, and save money for retirement. I cannot spend more than $8,000 A YEAR on housing/rent and utilities. That means an apartment that runs $350-$400 a month. Take that in my area a studio apartment starts at $800, after utilities, renters insurance and whatever else, I am looking at about $1100 a month on housing. That is almost half my take-home pay. I will never ever do that, that is money that I need to invest in my future. ??? This comment thread is specifically about the housing situation in the US as opposed to Europe [deleted] [deleted] I know. We won our separation. You guys, well, still a work in progress. Why this matters at all to home ownership vs renting you’ve yet to explain. Used to be home ownership was a goal for average people. Now that may not be attainable so rental-culture may replace it. History aside, doesn’t seem too different to me. Have to live somewhere. Based on zero knowledge I’d probably start with a search for prestigious law firms in NYC or something and start tacking on buzzwords like estate attorney, inheritance law firm, trust funds etc. and spend a week reading up/making sure it isn’t a scammy, slimy, no name law firm Those buzzwords are probably completely irrelevant but would likely set you on the correct path to finding what you’re looking for [deleted] Hire an attorney and have them set up a private trust. The trust is the recipient of the winnings and you stay anonymous. In NYC half of the 1 bedroom apartments are just studios with temporary walls to create a like 8x 10 bedroom or 2 True but I've kept to a small circle and go from them, I also have the other ""side"" as subs and work off them as well. It's not hard to do but most won't do it. Most of what I watch is hard to find now but I was subbed way before youtubes BS It's not as bad as reddit Kys I said if *every individual* did it... What did you think a system is comprised of? Is it buildings? ""The **MAN**""? It does, it sets an example. Do you own a fridge? If so, you probably used more electricity last year than [3.3 billion people](https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/05/22/my-old-refrigerator-used-more-electricity-than-33-billion-people/?sh=18e27ddb77d5). You can't scream that others should give up their wealth, while holding onto your own, it is hypocritical, and hence no one will listen to you. > Would you give up a large portion of your money as part of a larger binding societal agreement that helped the majority of the people on the planet? There is such an agreement, it is called a tithe. This is a Christian practice of giving up 10% of your wealth to help the needy, (but I suppose this is Reddit so Christian = bad). Are you genuinely arguing that you think people with more money than you should give up some wealth for the benefit of society, while you should not? Also are you, without any sense of irony, doing that from a $1k smartphone, which costs more than a lot of people in developing nations make in a year? Actually you fundamentally seem to not grasp the basic concept of this. ... Then do it... I'm not you're Mum, do it or don't do it. I don't care. Just stop whinging about it, if you are not doing it. k Champ, whatever helps you sleep at night. ***Kisses***. Lol you wrote something that sounded kinda like you put thought into it... ***L O S E R*** [deleted] Neither of those apply, sorry. Changing the world is society level changes. You know this and you're being obtuse. If everyone could do it there would be more than 774 billionaires in the US. Making a million is one thing, a billion is a complete different scale and then when you start looking at the top end of that chart it's a completely different scale. Over the course of 2019, there was 2.25M new millionaires. If everyone or even a decent percentage could do it (billionaire fuck you money like Bezos, Musk, Gates, et al) there would surely be a higher number of billionaires each year than the paltry sum that do make it. No we weren't. You specifically said most people could take $300k and turn it into more. 90% of rich families go broke in 3 generations completely disproving your absurd statement. Most people are terrible with money. Except I wasn’t. An ex nasa rocket scientist taught me math as a kid. My college was paid for by my parents. I now can measure my income in fractions of millions. Still not a billionaire. Pls help. The fact it was his idea and he doesn’t want to part with it are not?! I see you’re quite the libertarian >if I wanted to not support Amazon completely, I'd have to stop using like 2/3 of the internet? Pretty much. And it's very difficult to obtain information about who uses what servers unless it's a company running their own servers. Because society values people with good ideas and seeks to reward them and protect the incentives for others to have good ideas. You’re the one who called it false Yeah, you're right. Money is just numbers in a computer. Would it make you feel better if I told you amazon software devs are paid in shares? Mate, once again, all teachers and the education system collectively are more important than Jeff/Amazon. But the fact of the matter is the number of people qualified to become a teacher is exponentially bigger than the number of people that are able to create and run a company like Amazon. Teachers are also more important than NBA players, but nba player are also far rarer, so they get paid more. > The majority of people working for Amazon are people who have a poor education due to defunding education. that alone tells me how little you know. Amazon isnt a trillion dollar company because of their warehouse and 2 day shipping. its their cloud platform aws that makes them money do you know what amazon does? i dont think u do How did you use my logic? I say Bezos created Amazon and so attribute Amazon's benefit to society to him You say a teacher created Bezos, so you attribute everything Bezos did in his life to his teacher? Including the creation and impacts that Amazon has on the world? You aren't trying to prove a point. It's not a good application of my logic. It gives me the feeling that you're not going to change your mind because you aren't interested in listening to what other people have to say. You hate Jeff Bezos, so your mind is made up. What's frustrating is that this argument isn't even related to whether or not Jeff Bezos is a good person. But you're letting that stop you from thinking rationally about what OP was trying to say. > And if your implication is that they made Bezos what he is, then that's also wrong, because there's only one Amazon. You'd expect that set of teachers to be consistently churning out world geniuses if that was true. Having something to do with someone's success is far from being THE REASON why something exists. Amazon doesn't exist without Bezos. Bezos very well might exist without his middle school homeroom teacher. I'm not trying to discredit his teachers, because certainly as a whole, they did teach him. But a _single_ teacher? A single teacher can't be attributed to Bezos going on to form Amazon. Put it in your perspective. Your argument would be: your parents raised you. All of your accomplishments are actually their accomplishments. You aren't important, they are. I would say that your accomplishments are your own. You were helped along the way by your parents (a lot too! they get a lot of credit), but if you cleaned up a stream, that's all you. YOUR contribution to society. You get to take that credit. Hell, your parents are legitimately THE REASON you exist, but that doesn't mitigate you as a person, or let them take credit for everything you accomplish in your life. You are who you are ultimately because of you. Your life was made by your choices. The other way also applies. If you decided to murder someone, who gets tried in court? Your parents? No, you do. You ultimately own your mistakes AND your triumphs You are leaving a whole lot of information out there buddy lol >Compensation is the only metric that matters? In terms of how valuable you are to a company, yes. >The only thing anyone can ever add to a company is value Yes. >the company's job is to determine that value and pay the worker less than that to make profit Yes. >Considering the median Amazon employee is living paycheck to paycheck now with rising cost of living That's irrelevant, no? Someone could be living on $1 or $10000000000000000 a day, doesn't change how much they contributed to the company. >I'm saying the proportions of compensation to total labor is absurd But the reason the proportions are like that in the first place is because Bezos and other A level executives are compensated in a more volatile stocks options rather than cold hard cash. Amazon could go under tomorrow and all of this money would vanish, there is an inherent risk (as well as an incentive to run the place properly). If you're a janitor, you go in, sweep some floors, you get paid and go home. You don't need to care whether the business is making money, you don't need to care whether the business is well run, a warehouse burns down and those with stocks are bleeding cash while the your pay is the same, you don't need to care about anything other than sweeping floors. Your pay is not exposed to any risk whatsoever. OP says that with a picture of 6 billionaires. If I made a meme with 6 actual self made billionaires does that prove something? No idea how many self made billionaires you need to be statistically significant by your standards to not dismiss lol. Yes, it is more likely to become successful starting with wealth. No need to lie in proving that point though is all I'm saying. Contracts go both ways Amazon pays money (and it's not even the worst paying job out there), the employee follows a set of predetermined guidelines he is aware of when signing. If you apply to amazon, that's because you accept these guidelines and think they are worth the pay you het in return. If you don't like them, you can not apply. It is you own choice to apply and accept the job. And if you realise you don't like the job, you can just leave, even after the first shift. You are not firced into servitude in any way, it's your own choice to do that and you can drop out freely at any moment. It is therefore nit exploitation Now, why don't they pay more? Because it is unskilled work that doesn't require any competency and you as an employee don't bring any value whatsoever compared to what the next guy might bring. If you think you are underpaid, they'll just say: ""fine, we don't need you, there's a mile long line ready to take your job at that price"" This is why an engineer that has a specific set of skills is worth more than a guy that might aswell be a machine Y'all are getting raises? But at the same time the company goes well because investors invested in the company, expecting a return Not only they are entitled to this money, they are OWED the money already did, just for fun now True, but I'd wager getting tuition assistance from parents is far more common than house payments. Going into college, most people don't have any money to speak of. I'd also wager that those families who gift money for a house also paid a larger proportion of college tuition for their children. This is all beside the point, though. Full seizure isn't extremely common opinion. Heavily taxes likely falls into the same way they want to tax exorbitant wealth. Most common is graduated tax. For example, X% on 0-1mil, x+y% on the next mil above that, etc. So I don't see this being in contradiction to any popular opinion. It's just silly that thinking that getting a car from your parents is comparable to getting a billion dollars, etc. Moreover, the ""unfair"" is treating the wealthy people as the baseline for standards. It's ridiculous. It puts the rest of the world at a disadvantage and then folks pointing to Musk as an example of ""he can do it, so there's no need to help you."" I don't understand how any of this is confusing. No one is saying paying for your kids college is bad, but if you're going to assume that the average student doesn't have debt and then base salary on no debt, you're going to have a fucking obvious problem and I don't understand how folks don't understand that. Privilege isn't a bad thing, but it needs to be seen as privilege and not treated as expected. Concentrating wealth indefinitely among fewer people over time is unsustainable. How that objective fact didn't bite you on the ass while analyzing your position exposes you didn't actually think through your position beyond the shallow level you've talked about. *That's* the fundamental difference in our thinking. [deleted] I did not find your statistic mentioned at all with that book. Gonna be honest, I inherited more than $2M. Still absolutely nowhere near being a billionaire. And isn't that what everyone should strive for? Make sure your kids start at 3rd base? But you wouldn't be ""thrashing your earnings"" buddy. You'd be turning them into HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS, remember? Or have you forgotten your arrogance? That was really my problem with your dumb ass comment, the pompous magnitude of it, if you just said you'd be turning them into a couple millions I would totally be able to digest your smugness and we'd never have this discussion. But no, you'd turn them into HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS. That's a 1000x rate of return you prick. Shut the fuck up. So what's yours? I literally live in an ex-communist country. I know first hand what it means and how it is in practice. It is not a coincidence that the ex-communist countries despise communism the most, we actually know the horrors. Theoretical communism from books is not real communism and it cant exist. The leaders are too greedy, its just human nature. Trust me, nobody values the freedom of speech and information until they lose it. Second Thought did a good piece on the idea that we, as humans, have outgrown our need for a profit based economy. https://youtu.be/2i0RrGx_GrE You give your money back to your employer… holy hell… dude you shouldn’t do that. That’s not in the model of capitalism. That’s socialism leaching off the back of capitalisms output. Here’s the definition to help since you haven’t studied it yet: cap·i·tal·ism [ˈkapədlˌizəm] NOUN an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state: It’s the enforcer of socialism layer being a parasite on an otherwise capitalistic environment. Ya know before 1914 there was no federal income tax. the problem is that somehow capitalism has to be kept from escalating into monopolies and neo feudalism and corporatocracy and plutocracy. and that's quite the task. Tell me you grew up priviliged without telling me you grew up priviliged. Work on gaining some empathy by your 40s homie or you'll be insufferable. Also all that transphobia, anti semitism and straight up Holocaust denial you post is real gross and sad. For real, log out and get help. Do you actually believe that bullshit? If you are barely making ends meet, working two jobs and taking the bus you don't have time to start a business. You don't have excellent credit you're not getting a loan. You have one medical emergency and it could cost you your house. Take a look outside your own bubble, there's real shit going on and none of it's solveable by bootstraps Banks create, store and dispense capital. Even if you think they aren't required that is how the system works right now. Besides it had a double meaning saying they lacked the funds in the first place. The point is there's no way to prove it, because the capitalist US strangled the alternatives in the crib. There's no example because the capitalists ensured it. There are a ton more people who grow up with all of the things that these billionaires have than there are billionaires. Having access to high quality education, ample free time to improve yourself, not needing to work, and having a support system does not mean that you're going to become a billionaire. It takes a special type of person to do that. Being born with a silver spoon is not the recipe to become a billionaire. It might be a prerequisite, but there are a **lot** of people born into ridiculous privilege. A tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of them hit the peaks that we're talking about. [deleted] Are you actually telling me that you think most first time business owners need more than a million dollars in liquid assets for collateral to secure a business loan? Are you insane ? Next your gonna tell me that you think u need at least 250,000 in cash to buy a house or at least 20k in cash for a car.... Lmao. Because he never had the first 300k? I literally said guys like mark cuban, despite having multiple successful startups, cant manage to reach the levels of wealth of the top guys because of it. Is your reading comprehension off? Do you really not understand the concept of how a risk reward equation is tipped when the risk is removed and the reward (which is % of company owned based) is kept at 100%? So let's see. Smart purchases: > House > 401k > Multiple lines of credit Dumb purchases: > House > Credit card > Car > Clothes, electronics, and all things in general that can't be resold So everyone should have a home, a 401k, multiple lines of credit... and nothing else. Just sitting there, doing nothing except making approved financial decisions. Not mad. Still find this very entertaining. Never denied the fact that your upbringing can make parts of life easier for a person. It’s all relative though. How poor would he have had to be as a child before you stopped attributing all his success to mommy and daddy? It really just feels like you’re a total failure and it makes you feel good to think it might have been different if only your parents invested 90k in the company you don’t have. The unfortunate reality is that you probably would have been a failure regardless of the circumstances. Just stating the premise in a slightly different and less ambiguous way for those who don't understand. It's a core concept in teaching. Sometimes just saying something a little more directly and in a slightly different way can help someone understand a topic or concept better. Much more likely to have tiny broken balls, no hair, a flaccid little cock, and anger issues. Then eventually the heart attack. There's nothing impressive about steroid abuse - literally anyone can do it. I totally forgot the other risks. Thanks for reminding me Holy fuck you idiot, you're quoting PPP loans🤦 reddit is such a disaster. Private loans buddy, private loans. Try to keep up. This is honestly the most embarrassing reply I've ever received. The epitome of ""I have a source that I didn't read"" Lmao. Dude. How much do you think it takes to start a brick and mortar in a metro area? It's much much more than 300k. Yeah sure, some are as low as $50k, but even a strip mall nail salon is gonna run $100k. Nice area stand-alone nail salon would easily clear $300k. Point being that $300k isn’t a crazy amount considering the value of Amazon. You’re arguing semantics. 300k is the amount he was loaned. The same amount millions of Americans have received. You're still a dipshit. We can pretty much guarantee that pro athletes work harder than people whining online. They also have nothing but free time once they stop playing. But hey it’s convenient to ignore anything that goes against your opinion. Technically, they have much higher college graduation rates compared to the population at large. I would bet pro athletes as a whole come in at just above the average for the us. That being said, their going broke is for whole other reasons. “So really the story here is something like “retired local businessman claims he made an unremarkable profit on a somewhat exotic investment back in the 80s; here’s the unusual story of how that investment may have come to be”. Of course, that story wouldn’t get much traction. So Business Insider anchored the articles to the retired man’s estranged (but remarkably famous) son, via two means: A colorful anecdote sourced to only the father (which, if it happened as described, you’d have expected the sons to have mentioned over the years) A supposed chain of connection between the emeralds, the family’s wealth, and Elon’s later success, again sourced to only the father.” It was also in Zambia. I agree, his father did say that. Elon Musk also said that his father lied about that. Take that for what you will, but there is no proof to back what Errol says. Seems to me that if these stories that Errol told were true, Elon wouldn't have had 100k of student debt when he graduated... You're absolutely right. But there's more to being poor than just the circumstance of being in poverty. And I'm going to use the argument of ""Where's mine?"" from personal experience. My ex wife grew up poor and we got married right after I joined the military. We dated for a couple years before I joined. I now had a salaried job. Her parents didn't ask us for help until I had the salary, even though we were all working before I joined up. But the idea of a salary, or consistent cash flow, was enough to convince them that they could ask for help and manipulate their daughter into handing over some of the salary...which was fine, until it kept dragging on and on and on. Then I got out of the military and pocketed a lot of money from doing a DITY move. Then they begged and manipulated her for a huge chunk of that money. People can become successful if they are born in poverty, but the people around them expect their cut and they will get it one way or another. It's how people in poverty stay there. It has nothing to do with education or advancing oneself. It's the being dragged back down by the people who are supposed to love and back you up. You're the one who needs help, apparently you're addicted to the taste of boots. I don't care what grade your essay got nerd. Who give a fuck about grammar The materials that are paid for by working class taxes filed under ""Medicaid/Medicare"", yes; not Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Blue and White collar workers' taxes. But thanks for letting us know they arent worth being mentioned for holding up my country. Only the rich assholes who directly contribute to poverty by hoarding wealth/resources Ah, intentionally ignoring me and then putting words in my mouth. Enjoy the block list. You are an S-tier card carrying bootlicker if you don't recognize the difference between the intentional negative nature of Amazon jobs, and the jobs that just aren't nice. Having ""firing quotas"" every month. They work someone to the bone, and then release them. They are literally basing their business around a revolving door of desperate people. Employees don't usually have enough time to use the restroom, piss bottles are common and ignored in these warehouses. Unsafe work environment, constant injuries, deaths and heat exhaustion cases. It's actually considered common for people to collapse from dehydration while working on the lines at Amazon. My brothers best friend saw 3 people collapse within 2 weeks during busy summer days. They also keep the warehouse sweltering. Amazon also does a good job at burying stories of the people who die in their warehouses. Being told to work faster and harder, even on borderline extreme fatigue. Having a computer videotaping you, and the computer calculates your productivity and creates a game on the screen that compares you to the other workers in the warehouse, a sick psychological trick to try to shame you into working past your limitations. They also will write you up and potentially fire you if you turn the screen with the game off. VTO, or Voluntary Time Off. May sound great, but it's how they maximize profit and torture the workers who choose to stay, they intentionally short staff in order to squeeze more profit. Can lead a horse to water... Except BH shares are few enough in number that liquidation of them would cause significantly noticeable price movements. I would strongly recommend looking into the activities and mechanisms of many charitable organizations. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has some very shady ties. However you want to measure it it violates common sense. You know that too. We all do. That’s why we all understand 2+2=17,000,000,000. Tell us about these cold blooded and ruthless acts then. Hey everyone, this person is giving free PR for billionaires. I’m gonna go out on a limb. I was a Oil Field consultant for 15 years and active duty Army for 8 before that. I have enough passive income from that to drive a 911 porsche as my daily and work when I want. And if you know anything about Oilfield workers I can safely say none of these cunts above me has worker harder. I averaged 100-120 hours a week for a LONG time. And let’s say I was deployed twice while active duty. You still want to say these cunts worked harder? Yeah I don’t think so. FYI, Stockton used to be dairy country. Lots of rough UFC fighters come out of there. It’s a rough place, especially now. Not know for being a nice place at all. The Diaz brothers are from there. Chris Isaac, and one of the Rick and Morty guys came from there. Nope. Shitty rich people are shitty. I love that you can't acknowledge nor respond to my analogy of a glutton letting people starve around him. no one with any level of compassion or morality attains that level of money. They give it away long before it stacks to the billions, because they know they don't need it. They don't give it to ""charities"" that they control so they can hide from taxes. There is viable alternatives to unchecked capitalism. God fucking damn It, its like you capitalism bros dont know what the fuck Europe is. Completely untrue, few people ever have a billion in liquid value, their wealth is often arbitrary in net worth value, economics are not a zero sum game, and while some billionaires are exploitive assholes, others are not. Exactly why someone like Buffet and Musk do not take large salaries as that would take money away from employees. Not to mention “a billion” is just an arbitrary number of inflation in of itself. Finite resources on earth doesn’t mean a finite economy. Things can get reused. Hell, energy is traded and that is practically infinite if you’re looking at green energy. Plus a zero-sum game in the context of the economy literally means if someone gains something, someone loses an equal amount. Which is demonstrably not true,as society as a whole is in a much better position than they were even decades ago. I'm not sure what your point is. Regardless of what's happening with the Colorado river, Earth's resources are still nowhere near being depleted. I'm not saying we aren't also facing massive environmental and ecological disasters. Then please, help reattach me to reality. What do you have to say? The notion that Teslas are readily available to the average person is insulting. Well, you didn’t address frozen illiquid money hoarded by billionaires at all. Not to mention amassing that kind of wealth means you stole it from someone else’s labor, another issue which stifles economies. My apologies then, I mistook your disagreement with the degree of the comment to be a disagreement with the factual basis of it. I don't intend to be hostile, just exhausted with seeing bad arguments on r/economy. I'm sure you feel the same. Be well, friend. Reality will exist with or without you narcissist The chances of that happening, are far few and inbetween, rags to riches are very very rare. It comes down to how you define rich. In this case, rags to millionaires aren't that common. There are so many factors that come down to it. Like, what kind of economy you grew up in, inflation, geographical location, your age, supply and demand.. Because economies area always changing. Crime also skyrocketed that summer because we were in the middle of a pandemic where thousands of people were laid of from their jobs without any financial safety net, various government institutions were pushed to their breaking point, and it was an all around unforeseen event in recent American history which we were not at all prepared for. Thus creating the ideal unstable environment in which crime flourishes. And the BLM protests didn’t push away police presence, it did the inverse. In many of the cities that were protests hotspots there was not only increased police presence, but military presence as well, which did little to actually deter riots from happening. I’ve gotta know more about the Jeff Bezos example—how in the world did they get his attention? Just via LinkedIn? I agree with everything you’ve said but would even take it farther and say that people as a whole are too shy. People are afraid to ask for what they want and then get frustrated they aren’t getting what they want. People want to help other people (generally). Just be sure to always pay it forward! In my experience, the quant world is pretty small at least if you stay in NYC and people kinda cycle through different companies doing the same thing. I worked at a place that's a vendor to a lot of quant firms and it was pretty routine that some guy would leave his job and end up dealing with us again at a different firm, immediately or a few years later. Even I just interviewed with a company that's run by the same people who founded one of my clients there. So I think once you're in, you might not need to network as much. Not trying to strawman you, just trying to say something in the context of the thread overall. My frustration is that it's really difficult to have a conversation about this with people using highly selective evidence. [deleted] “Knowing what you’re getting into”? VS what? Not knowing? I think knowing that you can start whatever business you want, create whatever wealth you want, take whatever job you want, is a good thing. The current iteration of capitalism has so many different layers and can be messed up… But in its purest form, it just means: anyone can choose to do what they want with their lives. Work hard and make some money. Doesn’t matter if you become super wealthy. You are the owner of your own life Got it you, don’t really have a point. Usually I don't care, but it does bring me a little joy to know that you're a miserable loser who is failing at life and hates themself. Thanks buddy I wish I could have that kind of trust in these institutions. How you have managed to maintain that is beyond me. I envy you. Having more than $98k in retirement isn’t anything to brag about, and certainly more than 49% of the population should be able to make that claim. But they can’t. If you don’t want to argue, feel free to stop commenting. Not sure why you feel otherwise You think their parents made the same money as your parents? Had the same amount in retirement? They didn’t. They had more. It wasn’t a risk for them. That dude doesn't understand how money works... It was the initial 300k (Worth way more than 300k in todays money) that made his business so attractive to additional investors later on. Do you even know how this stuff works? I've had other arguments. And I only insulted in reply, which is all you understand. I have to communicate on your sole level. You have no idea what you meant by that other shit. The insults... that was your argument. And some have no greater love than for those who have power over them. “ The family was very wealthy in Elon's youth; Errol Musk once said, ""We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe"". “ Quoted from Elon himself. He said his father was evil and he hated him, but he definitely grew up rich as fuck Lol, I call bullshit. > The Relationship with a father has a huge effect on a person and to ignore that is very disingenuous. I didn’t say otherwise. I said it doesn’t “change the impact of cash”. >But think how many people have access to a free 30k and wealthy parents and better conditions than him in every way but would never come close to becoming the richest person in the world. Sure, quite a few. >At some point you need to get some perspective, he didn't start with literally zero advantages, but he had disadvantages too. And compared to pretty much any other billionaire he should be considered self made. I’m not sure why we’d be comparing him to other billionaires. Why not compare him to someone who didn’t grow up wealthy, didn’t get a private education or any sort of investment from a family member? Those people are self made, and it seems very silly to insist that Musk is as well when he just plainly is not. You still suck. Money is infinite. We print it out of thin air. But poverty can never be stopped. 200,000 * .1 = 20,000 So pretty comparable. I’d rate that as mostly true “My Dad provided 10% of a ~$200k angel funding round much later, but by then risk was reduced & round would’ve happened anyway.” If anything it just makes it look like he helped less So his dad did help him fund it. It's always hilarious to me coming to subs like this. Which have a lot of knowledge and experienced people in them. And then finding the classic reddit 18 year old argue with them about how wealth is made and how every billionaire is some scam artist lol Its not misleading. He has accrued wealth at a rate which no human could even rival 0.01% of through honest productive labour even if they were doing something of incredibly high value to society such as life saving surgery or piloting for every hour of their entire lives. Its disgusting that any one man could accrue so much wealth, and its certainly not justified by him pulling a few all nighters here and there when business was busy. I think there's a lot of lee way there between those ideas. And your words as spoken could easily be taken in the context I've given. Edit: the bad writer blocked me. Lol Ok I think I see the root of our disagreement. Took you a whole paragraph to say poker isn't luck. >Pretty sure it’s relative Lol, well you sure go out of your way to pretend like you don't know that. >then why doesn't everyone who has x turn it into y? A lot of wealthy people... remain wealthy. >Oh boy, do I really have to explain this? A pit by definition is IN the ground (underground) and lava has to break free from the surface and flow freely. It’s literally in the definition you provided. On top of that, There’s no such thing as a lava pit, unless you count video games. Just google it. Maybe play less Minecraft/Mario? I provided a link. It does not say ""flow freely"". Please read my link before replying again. I directly used it as explained in the definition I provided. You provide no links because you're wrong. Thank you qannon for your ""Google it"" reply. B. Of course you're illiterate. What's it like to try so hard and completely fail? I see. Well, I genuinely enjoyed chatting and learning more about the subject matter. I know that sounds sarcastic but it’s not it’s sincere. Lots of your old comments are missed by the script. Guess its too simple? You seem like a really good IT guy. I can fix it for you for a price. Edit: Sheesh--you try to help a guy! Now my comment will be forever enshrined in his history. Just answer this riddle one and we can be done, how does one move to avoid conscription while living in poverty? Is mobility not restricted by poverty? Also Elon mush has three jobs at least and he is rich. I have 2 and go to uni I can afford milk. You've been hoodwinked so badly. Imagine thinking you can come from nothing to be a billionaire, what a fairy tale. ​ >But nah, you only believe things that already agree with your world view, and everything else is a lie. I hope one day you grow up and realize how dumb that is. I love it how all you idiots have got to finish on the same shit like this but buy into marketing so easily. How broken does your brain have to be. ""I'm going to believe the worlds most famous liar"". You couldn't make it up. My man, Elon musks father himself said he put him through university and extra computer classes which at the time were only for rich kids. Musk hates the guy so he doesn’t give him any credit. The guy had privileges that no one else had despite his father being a maniac. ""No!!! I will wait for the revolution!!!!"" Musk will never give you attention, so matter how much you ride his jock At this point, Wiki is robust enough that you can use it for anything outside academic/professional work. If you're trying to use it to write a paper, learn the topic from the page and use the citations at the bottom. Ah yes, by criticizing “self made” billionaires who got their start through nepotism and 300,000 gift money from their parents we are advocating for class envy. Are you even able to acknowledge that they had critical advantages in their starts that don’t come from hard work? > That or even worse you aer advocating for my political billionaires are okay and the other sides billionaires aren’t. Huh? You have a real habit of making stuff up… what billionaires have I backed? I’m waiting I’m not sure how paying people for their labour counts as exploitation, if it’s enough to live on. It’s one thing for sweatshops (which are absolutely exploitation) and a whole different thing for “workers aren’t paid enough ideally because the government hasn’t upped minimum wages”. Also, I think it’s “possible to probable” because it depends on which billionaires you’re talking about and because I think the interests of those in government and ancillary bodies already favour that wealth transfer; I don’t think they needed to be lobbied for it. Those workers traded their skills and labor in exchange for money. Thats how the world works. I don’t know what it means to horde? The dude with more money than any ever, isn’t hoarding resources? If we saw a monkey sitting on a pile of bananas while other monkeys starved, we would call that monkey a resource hoarding asshole and no one would be surprised if the other monkeys killed it to take the loot. But when Musk does it you think it’s fine? Why? Why is it ok that he have more than any person could ever need going to waste, while people starve and struggle across the fucking planet. Hello. In order to promote inclusivity and reduce gender bias, please consider using gender-neutral language in the future. Instead of **freshman**, use **first year**. Thank you very much. ^(I am a bot. Downvote to remove this comment. For more information on gender-neutral language, please do a web search for *""Nonsexist Writing.""*) Oh poor baby can’t accept the facts about wealth. If a monkey sits on a pile of bananas bigger than it could ever use, we would rightfully call that monkey a resource hoarding asshole and no one would be surprised if other monkeys starving killed it. How is it different when a person hoards more wealth than they could ever use? It’s fucking immoral. I don’t need a philosophy class to know that if you don’t understand that, then you just want to be the asshole monkey too and I don’t respect your opinion. Lots of projection here. You okay, bud? Need a hug? Because that’s lame. We covered this. If you suddenly find yourself rich, take a page from Bezo’s ex wife but go even further until you’re comfortable but not an embarrassment. Stupid, like the guy who thinks a sum of $.25T is possible *without* exploitation. Useful tool of who, eh? Not the oligarch elites, as you seem to be. [deleted] >You're making it sound like these guys are in the streets slaughtering people. It's a bit dramatic. I think there is a big disconnect between violent crimes and white collar crimes. These 4 are merely avatars of the system of economics so is it wrong to place all the worlds woes on probably not but I would argue greedy capitalists have been pushing the common man slowly back to indentured servitude. Hell Elon has even proposed indentured servitude for Mars. Bezos enforces (indirectly most likely but at the end of the day he was the boss and is at the end responsible for it) horrible working conditions due to the quotas being razor thin for the sake of profits. White collar crime gets pushed off for being far tamer than something like robbery. Wage theft is literally most common types of theft in this country. We have people who have to work multiple jobs to just get by. >I've seen a ton of people highlight there is an element of luck, but that doesn't dismiss the work they did. If they hadn't done the work before and after that moment of luck, it would have passed them by. There are a ton of people who do a ton of the work and never get recognized so luck plays a huge part in this. I mean hell on of the biggest lotto wins for everyone even the plebs like us is being born in a first world country. That is an advantage and I don't ignore that even though my life can also be filled with struggle. >Sure, most people get their jobs because they know someone, but like you mention, that isn't exclusive to the rich. Plus, rich people know non-rich people and can help them get a leg up. I mean its never right since it relies on bias. Also come on now, while yes rich people may know some non rich people but typically people are going to mostly deal with people who are in a similar socioeconomic status and certain hobbies/leisures do typically have a price tag like I doubt a poor man will be in a yacht club and be a daily visitor to a country club Yes, it is easier to not end up homeless. That still doesn't take away from how extremely difficult what they accomplished really is. Just look at their brothers/sisters which had almost identical starting conditions and yet didn't have the success they did, and they might measure success differently but really it's just another case in point of how rare these people really are. Let me ask you a question. If every single person on earth took turns in having the exact same starting conditions as these guys from the original post, what percentage of people do you think could replicate or improve what they did? Name one very successful business that went bankrupt. >Hard work and good decision making are not what I would consider advantages. It's not always that simple. >To be fair some neighborhood kids were simply not very smart and that will limit their potential. That's what I'm talking about. Their situation was certainly NOT the driving factor, and you have no basis for claiming they had any special privilege that 10s of millions of other Americans did not have. Their ""special privilege"" was the brains, the drive, the intensity of effort engendered in them by their parents. That is a privilege, but not a privilege of money. We have NOT seen ""an exponentially worsening debt and wage crisis"". Wages for the middle class have increased, on average, 7.5% since 1970. That is not a crisis. It is something to be desired. But that increase came about *because* we allowed certain entrepreneurial geniuses to make billions. Amazon employs millions. Without Bezos, there is no Amazon. Musk flies people into space. Without Musk, we would still be waiting on the way-over-budget Starliner from Boeing. These are exceptional men, with exceptional abilities. You are trying to engender envy, and prevent them from making our society better. That is madness. Their is a paywall, but the idea of taxing unrealized gains seems like the height to stupidity. Wrong. Musk just spent 44 billion dollars on a propaganda machine to say exactly that. Bezos bought the washington post. they all spend hundreds of millions if not billions to re-write their histories. Lmao you’re salt of the earth. Poor little working man who will never matter in the world. So what? You want them to admit they got to this point with the help of their parents? I have a feeling you'll still be salty about it. They were born with rich parents or parents with connections, nothing they can do about it. Were they supposed to throw away the money and opportunity that was given to them? Why are you talking with so much vitriol? I said I’m not ignoring their advantages. Many people get those advantages and still don’t reach levels anywhere close to Bill Gates. Contrasted, if someone was given your advantages, they would reach successes you couldn’t imagine. That was the point I was making. Being vitriolic and pretentious to random people online and discrediting the successful is only a temporary coping mechanism to mask personal shortcomings and envy. I don’t know if that’s the case with you but that’s what it seems like LOL keep projecting little guy. They think about people like me all the time, they're terrified of people like me. Why do you think they spend so much fucking money fighting against unionization? Right. You figured me out. Smh. Its not hard to trigger a minion such as yourself. Fair enough. Your loss, not mine. I feel like this is one of those cases when a little kid says something like ""oh yeah? ur stinky"" thinking it's a hardcore comeback while the adults in the room sit back and chuckle cause it's cute Look. If your last comment was totally unrelated to your point, then I can't help you with that. All I can do is respond to what you wrote. Which I did. Neolibs claim to love theory but run screaming at the sight of a paragraph. Classic *fucking Volvo sold twice as many vehicles in the same year lmfao* You’re ignoring the entire fact that his rate of delivery would get anyone else shut down and how minuscule of a population is being impact 150k *globally* for starlink? That’s success? Lmfao It auto generates you one in account creation dumbass lmfao Same place I got my definition. Just admit you failed to be a smart ass Again, no sources. Shocker. Ooooh yea bc capitalism can manifest ethical consumption, right? It is tho? It's not like any of those people listed is conscripting thier workers. Anyone could quit thier work, work somewhere else, found thier own company, or even be unemployed if you have another way to earn money to live. Unless of course you live in a country where you can't do these things. Well that goes without saying. Anyone who knows how to play roulette would know that… Actually, they did get back to him. The plan would've cost him less than 7 billion. Then Elon got real quiet. Both, they say Americans are incredibly dense and it's very easily provable when Americans who think they're on the upper half of the bell curve say shit like it isn't a first world country. As an American who's traveled to about a dozen countries, I can confirm that the US is in fact pretty well off and not a third world country. Could be better in some ways but I'd definitely take it over many other options out there. average r/neoliberal poster whose knowledge of third world living is comprised of “one penny can feed this African village for a month” commercials and their view from the shuttle ride between the airport and the resort they stay at for the entire duration of their trip abroad - if they even *dare* to *risk* vacationing outside of the US/Western Europe’s tourist-havens - insisting that by being *so brave* they’ve personally provided the small group of whitewashed English-speaking locals that work there a stable job and the opportunity to earn a gEnErOuS tip inb4 you start claiming that most people in America wouldn’t be poor anymore if they didn’t have a cell phone or use the internet and instead saved the funds necessary to have those “luxuries” so that one day they would have amassed enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and the comment i replied to talked about renting being the norm in europe not the US so i figured giving some context as for why it is the norm even though it is extremely suboptimal for the people doing it might help. Yeah as far as I understand it the situation and lack of protections is pretty similar as a renter in the US Fundamentally, it's about the plantations under various kings and Oliver Cromwell, the Famine of the mid 1800s and the way Catholics were treated by protestant/British landlords. Owning a home you can't be kicked out of is completely ingrained into our culture at this point. >We won our separation Still not the same, your bunch of colonisers gained independence from another bunch of colonisers. The Irish would identify a lot more with Native Americans than Washington & co. Would you mind sharing the name of the sub? Or you would only DM? That’s really interesting. I’ve never even heard of temporary walls like you’re describing. Aside from how tiny that seems, I would imagine it doesn’t offer much privacy as far as sound goes right? I dunno how long he could possibly quantify it Systems are comprised of laws, policies, traditions, processes, hierarchies, etc. Saying the solution to any large-scale problem is for “every individual” to do X is just a cop out. It’s an entirely unrealistic solution that just deflects from actually discussing the true nature of the issue and possible solutions. That's the exact same ""there is no such thing as society"" bullshit Thatcher used to carry on with, while she and others like her fucked up the social structures that might have given our species a chance of survival past this millennium. You might be commenting in good faith, but it doesn't sound like it. can i give you example of system. suppose you work at local food chain in your city and your company has rules that if you're resigning you have to give 3months advance notice and in that duration your salary would be halved from 12$. so clearly here boss is doing some egregious things which is illegal currently in united states, but what if these were legal practice in united states, how do you fix such things where these are pro interest of business but against interest of labor, by advising every individual to not do jobs like that Or Protest against corporation so that your government protect you against exploitation. same goes for child labor individuals cannot do all the things we need powerful entity to balance power because given a chance they'll sure do everything they can to get away with doing most illegal thing available to them like using child labor in Africa (Nestle). What will them doing that change, then? > it is hypocritical, and hence no one will listen to you. This part is a flat out lie and given your political proclivities you know it. I'm not sure why you must protect your ego at the expense of the truth but everyone else sees it so just stop being a clown. Unless you like people laughing at your antics then by all means continue. I'm not even going to comment on the rest of your weird strawman bs. [deleted] >This is a Christian practice of giving up 10% of your wealth to help the needy Lol you mean the least effective charities of all time where like 95% of the ""donations"" just go to administration and building costs for a bunch of middle class people to gather..? >Are you genuinely arguing that you think people with more money than you should give up some wealth for the benefit of society, while you should not? That's not at all what I said and it's either disingenuous of you to say so or you're just a moron that couldn't comprehend my point. The point is that I wouldn't be happy seeing 40% of my pay go to taxes if I'm the only one paying taxes. But since everyone is paying that 40% and it allows us to build roads, fund schools, provide welfare, etc. I'm happy to do it. I'm also not going to bitch about people who only make $30k/year and aren't ""paying their fair share"" or whatever. >Also are you, without any sense of irony, doing that from a $1k smartphone, which costs more than a lot of people in developing nations make in a year? Actually you fundamentally seem to not grasp the basic concept of this. The fact that you responded with this when I clearly laid out my point just makes me think you're a moron who is incapable of grasping my point. Whatever you say doodoo dumbface It’s buzzword bingo Finish the thought. Go ahead, use your words. Your point is...? >That's not what most people refer to changing the world. Textbook example of a bandwagon fallacy. >You know that though and you're just being obtuse Textbook example of claiming your opponent is arguing in bad faith. Nobody lives in a vacuum. We all contribute to changing the world by going along with or resisting the ideas of people in positions of authority or influence. If other people didn't participate then a single person could only make the small changes you're so flippantly dismissing. Radical change comes with scale, but we all participate. I'm not being obtuse, you just don't understand the full picture and you're attempting to claim that I'm arguing in bad faith. No I didn't. You got confused with someone else. Read the comment history. You’re misunderstanding the difference between could not and is not. It IS NOT because he controls it and wants to keep it. That is a reason why it IS NOT repurposed as a public service, not a reason why it COULD NOT. Not answering my question at all. Should we, yes or no, continue paying the guy who invented the shovel? It’s his IP right? Furthermore, do you think people would have no motivation to invent things if they limited the earnings of an inventor to say, 100 million? And do you really think people have no incentive to invent things without the motivation of money? Fair enough. It’s a false comparison because they are asking to draw a line in the sand for “too much wealth” and asking about corvettes and how many bedrooms someone can have when it is clear that someone with billions of dollars is well above that line. As for actual decisions on “too much wealth” it depends on the system. Currently I would say it would be pretty easy to cap wealth at 100 million and say that’s clearly more than any one family needs; but I’m in favour of a system which abolished capital all together. Under such a system, excess wealth would be determined essentially by viewing what people have and what people need. For example, if the people in an area need forks to eat, and some guy has 10000 forks, it’s pretty easy to see he has an excess. Now their is nothing wrong with having 10000 forks in itself, but when you have 10000 forks and other people have no forks, that’s when it becomes an issue. No, not at all. They should essentially be given all the shares, as they are the ones who do the work, and then have the fruits of their labour taken, and receive a pittance in return. So how many employees do you think work on AWS vs in warehouses and shipping? My statement wasn't the majority of the money they make is from lowly educated people, it's that the majority of the employees are low education. AWS which is the largest provider of cloud computing in the world, sub-contracting storage and fulfillment services for third party vendors, running their own private label, buying and selling inventory under their own company, operating Amazon Fresh from their WFM stores, owning and operating something like 500+ WFM stores, running Kindle and audible, which distribute audio and ebooks, and being a print on demand provider of books. Did i miss anything? Give them $300 grand, rich friends, and connections with even more money, and we'll see if they too can ""invent cloud computing"", a technology that began nearly 70 years ago with mainframe sharing, and the Sears and Roebuck catalog of the 1800s (but now on the internet!). Think for a second...what if Amazon burns down? Really think about what happens to the executives. If your answer was ""they lose everything, that's the risk"" you'd be right! Now they're in the same position as every single one of their employees below them. In the absolute worst case scenario, the worst catastrophic implosion of Amazon, Bezos' biggest fear is becoming a worker again. Now follow up, all of those workers who had nothing to do with the collapse of the company, are also out of a job. How come they're left out of the conversation? >If I made a meme with 6 actual self made billionaires does that prove something? It does. We'd need to examine the context to determine what it means. From the OP here we can discuss and the fact that it's not a complete story doesn't invalidate it. You can invest by giving a loan and being paid back that loan with interest. At no point is there a need to make that investor (part) owner or to give them (a share of) the profit in perpetuity. Fuck yeah! Godspeed You have a point here, especially since it's more common for parents to take out loans to pay for college as opposed to taking out loans to help for a down payment. A down-payment is generally not backed by a loan when coming from a parent. And it's also a lot more common to setup college funds over the child's lifetime. So while it has the same overall effect on the child like the other person pointed out, it's still different from a certain point of view Even if it's unsustainable why the fuck do I care? My family and people close to me (what we usually call an unit) prosper and that's fine. Why do I have to care about other people not in my unit? Nobody is going to care about my unit other than ourselves lol. If you think otherwise you're living in lala land or some 14 year old naive kid. Are you hiring? My background is IT and marketing. It's been a while, but I thought they talked about this cycle. I know the stat is in the Millionaire next door, but I can’t give you a page number off the top of my head. Ramsey Solutions repeated the study and published their white papers. That’s probably your best bet for finding the actual data. What's good for the individual isn't necessarily good for society at large. I simultaneously do whatever I can do advantage my kids, while supporting the policies that would prevent me doing that. At a different company. Killing the first. You are a special kind of stupid. Throw more insults around maybe you'll get your point across lol. That's also a 333x rate of return. Lol seriously dude... just wow >That was also just his initial seed money - the money used to make a pretty enough facade to get **other richer people** to invest millions. Remember when I said this in my first comment? I also don't know other billionaires, because my dad isn't a billionaire who can afford a $300k payout. It's not that complicated, money + connections = more money. I'm sure you think the Facebook guy was a super genius too, and didn't just build a slightly better knockoff of Myspace? [deleted] Honestly I agree. Except it wasn't communism again it was authoritarianism. That's what that is. Just because they said they were trying communism does not mean they actually did communism. People are too greedy for it I agree. But the way it was implemented wasn't even in the ball park of the idea. It was just flat out authoritarianism. The logistics of communism are too hard for a human to grasp. The only way to do so is to have an objective AI run it. Since that isn't going to happen the idea falls flat. But we can take lessons from such, like the importance of checks and balances. Honestly I agree. Except it wasn't communism again it was authoritarianism. That's what that is. Just because they said they were trying communism does not mean they actually did communism. People are too greedy for it I agree. But the way it was implemented wasn't even in the ball park of the idea. It was just flat out authoritarianism. The logistics of communism are too hard for a human to grasp. The only way to do so is to have an objective AI run it. Since that isn't going to happen the idea falls flat. But we can take lessons from such, like the importance of checks and balances. Not yet we haven’t… but soon when we have robot slaves that have the capabilities of humans… then sure No, I hand over the value of my labour and am allocated back a small portion of the value I have created in wages. If you work in a bakery and you're not the owner, you bake a loaf, and are given enough money to buy a slice. That definition doesn’t mention taxes or lack there of. How do you think stuff gets paid for? You want the government to be more involved in trade? [deleted] There were also no workers rights. Huh. Says the Reddit dwelling 18 year old that doesn’t want to work. I mean technically they are needed, but if you come with seed funding acquired from private investor networks or VC’s, it’s not like they’re going to turn you away. Internet/neo banks have also made banking way easier for small businesses. The meme is discusses initial capital and circumstances used to start businesses. This specific chain has been about Bezos's starting capital. I don't know how you could possibly miss the context. Ironic reading comprehension moment when you're having a hard time understanding this: **he's made 300k at some stage, other investors and entrepreneurs have also made 300k+ at an early stage of their business. They can now sell that equity in their business and use 300K as a starting point, Hell they can use more than that if their business does particularly well. They can now venture into a new business with this 300K and make their tens to hundreds of billions** Where are their Amazons/Microsofts? >Do you really not understand the concept of how a risk reward equation is tipped when the risk is removed and the reward (which is % of company owned based) is kept at 100%? Gates/Bezos do not and did not have 100% stakes in their companies. Musk was a billionaire post IPO. Come on now you are reaching . Don't be arguementive . House is a smart purchase if done correctly. But most people don't do that they go to a lender get approved for a certain amount and then go pick not a house that matches that maximum line of credit . And then their payment is really more than can afford. You know exactly what my point was . Yes a 401k can be a smart investment that you can to borrow against only mentioned because we were talking about the reality of being able come up with 300k to invest in a business like Bezos did. So don't try and twist it to something else . Same goes for being able to have multiple lines of credit. If your smart then your debt to income ratio Is never at a point where you can't borrow money if you were wanting to invest in a business like Bezos did again you knew what my point was and your trying to sum up 2 different things into one . me saying that a person who make 60k a year if they are good with their money should have a relatively easy time coming up with 300k . And a completely different conversation about why the avg person isn't able to do those thing and wouldn't be successful given the same opportunity. Thanks for mansplaining. Anyone can do it, not anyone can get the same results. But this is completely beside the point of steroids and cancer's relation to them. Whats your point tho? Steroids don't take away the effort they invest and they all accept the risks to achieve whatever they want, both in sports and bodybuilding. Anyone can take steroids but it takes a special kind of person to train in and out and follow the strictest diets imaginable and to maintain that consistently on the professional level. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/small-business-statistics Less than 15% of small businesses loans are over $50,000. There were about 5.6 million loans. That means only 840,000 people are getting loans over $50,000. Assuming a somewhat natural distribution, it's seems incredibly unlikely that more than a few thousand people get loans around $300,000. Ah yes, because 300k today goes just add far as 300k 30 years ago. Keep sucking billionaire cock I'm sure they read this. Do they ""work harder""? Or are they exercising and doing something they are passionate about for obscenely greater pay than normal? The problem with your logic is using college graduation as a metric for intelligence. I never claimed the mine wasn't in Zambia. And ""unremarkable profit"" of a few hundred thousand....in the late 80s. In a notoriously cheap part of the world at that time. Lmao, yeah, Bill Gates is totally a boot, bro. Acknowledging people's talents doesn't make you subservient to them. Try a little intellectual honesty sometime. > Who give a fuck about grammar LOL Funny I’m one of the top Medicare agents in the country I don’t recall infectious disease research being covered under part B. Maybe if Medicare and public services provided as much benefit as you say I wouldn’t clear 6 figures holding seminars on the subject. He made that freely. People liked the service he provided and gave him money by choice. They are richer for it, the world is richer for it. Your inability to make sense of it doesn’t change that. If you want to risk your time and money to build something you think people will want, go for it. If people love it, you’ll make a ton of money. And you won’t be evil for doing it. People like you that preach about common sense don't fucking have any, I swear https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/warren-buffetts-mobile-home-empire-preys-on-the-poor/ If you are seriously asking what Jeff Bezos has done then I suggest looking up how office workers are treated, how fulfillment center workers are treated, how business partners are treated - in short, what kind of work environments Jeff Bezos created. He may not have had a direct say in some of the decisions that make the headlines but at the end of the day, he's the one who pushes managers to make abusive decisions. So it's on him. OK, sounds like you’re mad they have more money than you. But it also sounds like you have enough money and time to fund your own venture. Make the next Amazon, Bezos’s startup money was only like 300k+ it says. Just do that and you can be one and have guys like you rail on you. I had to look up the title. It's called ""Sharing the Wealth"". My ex threw it away. I might need to buy it again. I think I finished it in a weekend. Very inspiring. Because your analogy makes no sense and irrelevant to your initial point. What someone is worth and what someone has are two different things. Basic economics will teach you that. A dude not willing to share his hoard of food is not the same as generalizing a group of people who have millions. You don’t know if these people give back to their communities or help the less fortunate. You just assume based on their worth that they have too much and that they don’t help people. Which is silly. [deleted] Earth’s resources, specifically those key to human survival are being ravaged and ARE being depleted. Humans areresponsible for kicking off the 6th great extinction causing MASSIVE amounts of species to go… you guessed it, extinct. We are literally obliterating the earth’s biodiversity. This are very small examples. They are widely available, and that’s what I said If you’re of the mindset that wealth is stolen from your labor when you work for a company, I don’t really know what to say other than that a continued conversation is pointless. Everything is relative to the observer. If you die and your brain stops working, then you won't know that there ever was a reality. But yes, reality to all other living agents will go on without ""you"", aka the mental model of a self that your brain creates until the brain stops working and you stop existing. And since memory recall requires a functioning brain, once again, we won't know any of this ever happened once the lights go out. It is like we are never born. Inflation??? Now you’re arguing just to argue. “Rags to riches” is incredibly broad. It’s not uncommon and it’s not hard to start with very little and be “well off”. And if your whole goal is money instead of a comfortable lifestyle, which most people try and balance, the people who only concentrate on being wealthy will attain a decent amount of wealth. No, prettty sure it was the rioting and destruction. I can’t have a conversation with someone who is completely ok with the destruction of poor neighborhoods in the name of political gain. Good luck to you > I’ve gotta know more about the Jeff Bezos example—how in the world did they get his attention? Just via LinkedIn? He is a student as Bezos's alma mater, reached out through the alumni network. Definitely helped a bit. [deleted] Haha naw my life’s pretty awesome bro. Doesn’t take much to understand a basic concept like this, hopefully one day you’ll stop being capitalisms bitch. Stay defending billionaires you fool. I’m sure one day you’ll be just as rich as Elon and Bezos. Enjoy the taste of their boots down your throat lmao Cause I've been through interviews at places like these and know people working there. Your parents' jobs are irrelevant. They'll laugh you out the door if you bring it up as a reason for hire. I’m just pointing out that your comment and narrative about people not have money is irrelevant because “average”. I agree that 100k isn’t good. 200k isn’t good. It appears that the mean is about $300k, which is a much more usable amount. And also the amount bezos received. I just want to know how many houses my parents need to potentially own for me to have grown up middle middle class. His step father was an immigrant who got his degree in engineering in the USA and his mother was a secretary single mom who at one point couldn't afford a telephone, so yes I believe they likely had about the same amount of money in retirement as my parents. This doesn’t make sense….poverty is one thing. There will always people living paycheck to paycheck, people living over their means, people who are underpaid….yes, poverty will always exist in some form. However… Homelessness, going hungry, lack of education, going without medical care….these are things we absolutely can eradicate with the resources we have. Capping personal income in all forms would effect all of about 100 people… and trust me, those people will be just fine with only 1 golden toilet. But this is well after zip2 is funded and going. Elon’s father didn’t jumpstart the company. Dude’s pretty self-made. That's not seeding, that's coming along for the ride. If you also consider my pair of tendies to be funding Gamestop I guess! He DId NoT oWN an EMeRaLD MiNe!!!! (Spoiler, his dad owned half an emerald mine and Elon really hates it when you bring that up but can’t really disprove the fact) It really is entertaining, isn't it? Edit: LMAO he just called me a bootlicker for saying Elon deserves his money. Fuckin peak redditor. You intentionally used misleading terminology, such as calling it a salary when really its being awarded very lucrative shares in a company because he built them up to be that lucrative. He is accruing wealth at an extreme rate because his companies are. He could lose that wealth just as fast if his businesses lose their wealth. At least he isn't hoarding that wealth in a way that a number of others do. At least he reinvests it in other new technologies and projects that improve all lives. It's disgusting that people want to try and take this wealth and redistribute it via govt programs that are notoriously inefficient and poorly managed and run. I'd rather Elon keep thst money and used it to fund thousands upon thousands of jobs. No. You have poor reading comprehension skills and claimed I said something I simply didn't. That was a component of what I said, but not the point. Well, since you apparently believe I have much more than 300k in my bank, I figured I might as well play the part. Okay, riddle me this. How can it break through the surface if it’s in a pit? No links? To what? A known definition of magma vs lava? You’re too much, man. Here, I’ll provide one last lesson. I think we are done here besides that. *Of course, you’re illiterate. I have no comments older than 3 days. I'm not sure what you are even talking about at this point. Maybe you mean posts and not comments but I'm not really sure nor care. I don't delete posts that I have made, only comments. Confusion LOL. If something needed fixed, I manage a team that could help if that was needed. Good day. ​ Oh I see it's another new spam account. Blocked. Using your logic, when the Koreans migrated to America in the 90s they where all rich and prosperous... oh wait Also saying you can afford milk, someone who is working 2 jobs and in uni is completely unrelated especially when you don't have kids. Poor people can still save money to move overseas that has happened longer then you think, think about every single minority that has moved to America. I'm not even a fan of Elon and I can see how stupid your argument is lmao. A known liar says something and you believe it, because it confirms your beliefs, no matter how dumb they are. No he did not, you commie Block me too you while you’re at it, please. Edit: they did, and I also received a suspiciously timed [false report of suicide watch too!](https://imgur.com/dLujNtQ) My point was that there are two points of view on this. It is either class envy, i.e. hating all people richer than you, or it is politics based. Do you have any idea how much different 300K and 30B is? That is a 100,000x diference. Are you telling me that you can realistically take $1 and turn it into 100K? Get the fuck out of here. Workers today have less free time than medieval serfs because the ruling class gets to decide how much labor is worth. Who do you think is lobbying to keep the minimum wage down? The working class doesn’t have lobbyists. You are putting billionaires on a pedestal above the other working class elite, where you acknowledge they are so disconnected they don’t even really have to lobby in the traditional sense for their interests because they can indirectly assert their power and you still aren’t understanding that my point is that no one man should have all that power? Our country is run by the billionaire boys club whether you want to admit it’s an oligarchy or not. And it’s exploitative. Especially when a billionaire who doesn’t need another cent for the rest of their pathetic lives does it. What’s so hard to understand about that? This response proves you do not know what the word hoarde means in the context of wealth. Seriously take a basic finance class, it will add significant value to your life. His wealth is not just piles of money lying around that he sits on. Jesus. fuck off This is u/idontneedone1274 IRL https://makeameme.org/meme/im-stupid-2gbqbg I’m not the one typing those words lol Yikes dude, I think I just caught second hand embarrassment :( Lol oh no friend, I'm just not mindlessly frothing and aimlessly flailing at people who are more successful than I am. Have you ever bought anything, ever, from Amazon? Have you ever eaten, once, at a chain fast food restaurant? Do you own a smartphone? A computer? [deleted] You use their term crime a lot to describe things that aren't crimes; you seem to just wish they were crimes. No one is forcing anyone to work at Amazon. You can say society forces everyone to have a job, but no one is holding a gun to anyone's head saying they must got to Amazon vs the million other companies out there. I've also heard stories from people who are ecstatic to have a job at Amazon. Perspective is everything. You can have 2 people doing the same job in the same place, making the same money, and one is miserable while the other is happy and content. I'd rather be the happy one. >I doubt a poor man will be in a yacht club and be a daily visitor to a country club Not as a guest, but they could work there. You never know when a member might take a liking to them and give them a shot at something more. I try to think positive. For every story of someone being an ass hole, there is a story of someone doing good... you just don't hear about those as much, because it doesn't get ratings. I think less than .001% but at the same time, there are many people in this world who don't have this chance. Like hell we right now have a major advantage living in the first world countries and not slaving away making a shirt worth a few cents for a wage of a dime a day (obvious hyperbole but not far off from the truth). Like sure these people did is rare. To gather this much wealth requires these people to be fucking sociopaths, sure you can make an argument of nurture versus nature. You are going to have to step on toes and backstab people to get there. That is why people are oppose to this. Do you understand the concept of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a means to restructure a distressed firm? Go back to eating Lunchables while you play Minecraft you economic illiterate. [deleted] That is fair. It is a bit taboo to tell people they simply don’t have the genetic advantages that others might enjoy. Much of that disadvantage can still be overcome. And it is very easy to screw up your life even if you are genetically gifted. [Productivity of the average American worker has grown 3.5x as much as their wages since 1980.](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/) [Executive to average worker pay ratio is up 940% since 1970.](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/) [1 in 4 Americans have medical debt.](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter-article/survey-79-million-americans-have-problems-medical-bills-or-debt#:~:text=Survey%3A%2079%20Million%20Americans%20Have%20Problems%20with%20Medical%20Bills%20or%20Debt,-American%20families%20are) [1 in 5 Americans have student loan debt.](https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/) [Amazon is continually cited as having some of the poorest working conditions of any company in the country.](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-workers-protest-unsafe-grueling-conditions-warehouse) We live in an oligarchy ruled by these men. People like you and me suffer the most because of it. And yet you and millions of others defend these men and hail them as heroes. Because you're dumb. What does any of that have to do with what I just typed? Found the bootlick. While I agree that hard work can and will improve your life you won't get that rich without having capital to risk. Maybe other dudes had the same idea, drive and smarts as Bezos, Gates, Musk, and Buffet. They just didn't have the money to risk starting a potential billion dollar corporation. Theyre. Not. Self. Made. Period. They had every advantage handed to them. aaaand that's not even remotely the fucking point of this thread. Also, Survivor Bias. They weren't special, they were lucky. Yeah I had you pegged from the minute you commented. You freaks are just to easy to pick apart, another spineless internet dweed who won’t do shit. Once again, I’ll literally venmo you $1000 right now if you can get one woman/man to vouch they’ve had an intimate relationship with you. Keep pretending like your idols Elon and gates will ever spend a second thinking about you, meanwhile you’ve got posters of them all over mommies basement. Loser 😂 Damn man why are you letting these rich people live in your head rent free. Or ""tax free"" lmao When you giving Elon his bi weekly blowjob? Better hurry up don’t want to be late! “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” This is like when the fat kid in class calls you fat. No it was exactly my point and I honestly dont understand why you typed out the thing that you did. You straight up say that the value of the painting is separate from the price with no good explanation, just that I am supposed to trust you. The problem is by your definition of value the conversation was always about price and not value as peoples wealth is not measured in your definition of value. If the ""value"" of the painting did not change, give me a numerical representation of the value of a painting. I'm not running I'm literally asking you for more sentences, I honestly want your answer. So what is the exact numbers of vehicles Tesla would need to produce to be considered a success? And starlinks? And Toyota sold more than Volvo. Does that mean Volvo isn’t a success? So what is the exact numbers of vehicles Tesla would need to produce to be considered a success? And starlinks? >fucking Volvo sold twice as many vehicles in the same year lmfao False. Volvo: ""Volvo Cars global sales grew by 5.6 per cent per cent to 698,693 cars in the full year 2021,"" Tesla: ""In 2021, we produced 930,422 vehicles and delivered 936,222 vehicles."" Sources: https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressreleases/293359/volvo-cars-records-full-year-sales-growth-sales-of-electrified-cars-grew-more-than-60 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000095017022000796/tsla-20211231.htm Interesting that even a 2 minute fact checking can verify you are spreading falsehoods. CC people in the same thread: /u/1098Triumph /u/happyafcows /u/OreoGamingGeek /u/IronicCharles Didnt for me You’re the one who was being pedantic pointing out he was around 100,000 off of the definition of “millions”. The definition of millions he wasn’t even using. Lmao Incredible self awareness. I'm so sorry, I was so wrong. You are totally correct here, I don't know what came over me. Thank you again for showing quotes from an Independent article which have no basis and which I have just quoted back to you; and which are also contradicted directly by three other people. You truly are an enlightened person, deserving of all the billions all these dastardly men stole from the proletariat. If everyone quit their job and started their own company then who would be left to work at Amazon or Microsoft? So your answer is not a real answer. Those companies need employees. Those employees deserve a fair share of their labor value. Good. So you understand what I posted. Excellent. You sure about that? I can’t find anything about “UN plan to end world hunger” with Google, DDG, or Bing beyond Elon’s request for it [the definition (of first world countries) has instead largely shifted to any country with little political risk and a well-functioning democracy, rule of law, capitalist economy, economic stability, and high standard of living.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World) We have some of these things! Yay first world! This man just made up an entire life story for me so he could be mad ​ touch grass, nerd Ok that’s interesting and understandable. Just, reality changes culture, which is all my original comment meant. Young Catholics in Ireland may really, really want a house due to culture but the reality is that may have to change if affordable housing isn’t available. we're not allowed to because of brigading rules, but you can check my comment history for the most frequented sub and that may point you in the right direction. Nothing in terms of sound privacy. Yeah just like a 600 sqft place turned into 2 190 sqft bedrooms and 200swft crammed into 1 bathroom that’s the size of your car trunk and a tiny kitchen/living room. Most people doing that are like 20-25 and don’t cook much anyway so it works for them Only way you can live in Manhattan at that age essentially So we should discuss change, not enact it? p.s. Systems are comprised of ""we, the people"", claiming other things control it is the actual cop out. Who do you think maintains, amends, or otherwise changes laws, policies, traditions, hierarchies?.. it's we... the people. ... Sooo you think a system is buildings?!? It is the buildings that are oppressing you? That and someone who has been dead for 8 years? Get a grip mate. Sure, and once again who would be enforcing this system? The piece of paper you signed on commencement of your job? Or your boss, a person? Who is enforcing child labour in Africa? It's not ""*Nestle*"", it is not a company, or a trademark that is doing it. It is the '*bean counters*', and the executives (once again people) at Nestle who have worked out that '*public outrage*' doesn't affect their bottom line as much as paying adults to do work. Do you know how the Nestle employees worked this out? It wasn't from a random roll of a dice, they have done research and found that they still turn a profit. Their sale data doesn't lie, and where does their sale data come from?.... *PEOPLE* buying their products. It is also the governments in developing countries who allow these practices... Governments which again are made up of *people*. I don't know, and irrelevant to my point. My point was, it is ridiculous to ask others to give up their wealth, if you are unwilling to do it yourself. lol k. Elon holding his wealth == bad. You holding your wealth == Good. > ""Your weird strawman bs"" ... the idiot typed from his thousand dollar smart phone, knowing full well this is more than some individuals make in a year. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. Lol what buzzwords? They proposed that humans are natural and eugenics is a method by which nature uses humans to carry out natural selection. Your only response to that flawed proposition is ""philosophy 101"" and ""buzzword bingo"". Interesting. >Textbook example of a bandwagon fallacy. Bandwagon fallacy is everyone DOING something, not the common understanding of a definition. You have no idea what you're talking about and trying to use fallacy shit to not seem wrong. Hint: you're wrong. I quoted you already. It could not because the government would run it into the ground like the USPS. Happy? IP protection runs out after a set term if I recall it's about 20 years after which the invention is free for anyone to use/sell. In order for someone to be awarded protection (a patent) they have to disclose in their application how to make their invention such that someone reading it can reproduce it. That is the trade that society makes for IP (your example a shovel). You get protection for a certain time and then afterwords everyone gets it for free using those instructions (if needed). I think money increases the motivation for people to invent things. And I think for the amount of labor, time, and money needed for some inventions without any protection and the promise of future riches many valuable inventions would not be discovered. How much should I bet that you typed all that on a macbook/iPhone you bought with inherited wealth? Perfect, the first line should suffice tbh bc no one really cares bout amazon fresh or kindle. Its their AWS that makes them so valuable. Cloud computing is the new norm now like how microsoft introduced computers to consumers. So saying things like ""amazon doesnt do shit someone else will replace them"" is prob equivalent to saying ""we dont need to advance computers its not important"" in the 1990s so go figure Comparing mainframe timesharing and cloud computing is like comparing a flintlock pistol to a sniper rifle. Sure, they work on similar underlying principles, but there is a ton of engineering that goes into a sniper rifle which simply wasn't available at the time of flintlocks. It's not a good comparison. FWIW, Amazon AWS began as a side project for Amazon to make money off of their massive server farm when it wasn't being fully used for Amazon's products. The idea wouldn't even be there unless you already had a giant network of computers. You would need far more money than $300 grand to have those prerequisites. It's not even clear if anyone would get the AWS idea without Amazon -- I can't think of any direct precursors to AWS. Sure, there was web hosting, but that's just maintaining a file folder associated with an IP. AWS's offer of selling access to a full-fledged operating system just for you was unprecedented, as far as I know. >If your answer was ""they lose everything, that's the risk"" you'd be right! Well realistically they won't lose everything. They are probably also paid in cash in addition to stocks, they just lost the stock part if Amazon did go down to 0. >In the absolute worst case scenario, the worst catastrophic implosion of Amazon, Bezos' biggest fear is becoming a worker again. How is this relevant on a discourse about how much value one brings to a company? >Now follow up, all of those workers who had nothing to do with the collapse of the company, are also out of a job. How come they're left out of the conversation? Again, how is this relevant on a discourse about how much value one brings to a company? Isn't what you're doing just appealing to guilt? And they aren't left out of the conversation, the company they worked for got burned to the ground. They already got compensated in the form of cold hard cash periodically in the form of wages, money which is in no way tied to the performance and wellbeing of the company. The only thing they lost is a place to work, and the reason they lost it is not because of some evil retrenchment scheme, the reason they lost it is because the company they worked at got burned to the fucking ground. Excellent additions. I agree. Also, the whole point of getting an education is so you can get a decent job and afford to support yourself entirely. That means buying your own house. Could my parents have afforded to cover my down payment? Probably, but it wasn't ever discussed because I'm an adult who got approved for the mortgage on my own. Never for a second did I consider that they might offer to pay for part my house, and I certainly wasn't going to ask them to. That's where you and I differ I guess. I have the human emotion of empathy. Caring for others is the backbone of a functioning society. If you see cracks in that foundation, look in the mirror. The book may well speak of generational wealth, I do not deny that. I only had time to search the specific statistic. I did see a lot of numbers and some tables, though. It does seem like a data driven book, and I’ll try to read it when I have time. Why the fuck do I care about the society at large rather than my own unit? Once everyone cares about their own unit then we care about the society. Like you guys like to say, it's not a zero sum game. You caring for society at the expense of your own unit is insane. > I simultaneously do whatever I can do advantage my kids, while supporting the policies that would prevent me doing that. This is one of the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why not just stop wasting your energy and stop doing both, it's the same result. Yeah you'd be killing your bootleg worthless company that would apparently break if you cashed out a couple hundred thousands and you'd make a new one worth hundreds of millions. Why wouldn't you take that deal? Oh well probably because 1. you don't own a fucking company in the first place and 2. because there's no fucking way you'd make hundreds of millions, you delusional doofus. And also you said, and I quote, ""I could at least have broken a few hundred million"". Considering ""a few"" means a minimum of at least 3, then yeah, your rate of return would be at least 1000x. That would be the absolute MINIMUM. Dummy. I guess I not only have to teach you basic math and economics, but also the english language now. Ah makes sense, you're part of the problem and likely come from an insulated bubble. The effects of capitalism have only gotten worse for the working class since the technological advancements of the 20th and 21st century. That’s the beauty, if you don’t like that you can use your skills to become an independent. But most people don’t want ro do the business side of things. You also don’t shoulder the burden of establishing the business and potentially working for free. Go start a bakery if you think it’s a money printer, tell us all how that works out for ya. Taxes are government forcefully participating in the otherwise free commerce. If you have taxes it’s not capitalism. The state can’t both take part of your wealth and we all magically pretend it didn’t happen and call it capitalism… that’s socialism. Ya know what you miss… that the wealth was put towards productive means, innovation was rapidly accelerating. Give that same wealth to the government and what do you get… war… war… more war… excuses to go to war. It’s astounding how blind you, and your clones can be. Governance is different from economic models… I see this common conflation. You probably don’t even realize that you probably prefer capitalism with the government only managing health, safety, retaliatory, etc. In capitalism you can pay a union to represent you.. the government is only there to create laws for workers generally… What socialism is… is the government inserting itself by force into the transaction and taking a portion… now that’s wrong when not consensual, and sub optimal economically Work is for plebs. Don't you have dividends and passive income streams that bring in a million a month? I'm getting off work right now after a 9 hour brew day. I'm almost 40. I work very hard and am mostly satisfied with my compensation. I just know that hard work doesn't equal dollars. Inherited wealth and your zip code are the biggest factors in success. Anyone that tells you different wants you to keep your nose to the grindstone. All true except the bit about them turning people away. They absolutely can and will. Even if your idea is baller. It's a bit easier than a bank due to feedback loops but the fickle nature is still that. [deleted] Okay. You dont understand how this works. Every start up goes through numerous funding stages. The earlier stages, you have to give up more shares for less money. In the first round, its not uncommon to lose 20 or 30% of the company for maybe 100k or a little more. You sell at the end, typically, when the value is highest. Having 300k in free funding protects a founder in the first stage. No one sells 100%, because you need millions in funding. Having 300k, like bezos did, is the difference between reaching an IPO with 51% or 21%. By the time Mark Cuban sold his companies, he was 21%. And, at that point, its no longer worth building his own start up, just bankroll everyone elses and steal shares off the top. This really isnt rocket science. You genuinely dont seem to understand how this works. Thanks for being so attentive to my TED talk. >Steroids don't take away the effort they invest They take away most of the effort they'd need to invest to obtain whatever results they have. PPP loans 😂😂😂😂😂😂 holy fuck the idiocy of this will never get old to me …that was in one year. I never said millions of Americans start businesses with loans that big each year. You gonna delete your misinformation or what man It's roughly the equivalent to 500k 1994->2022 according to calculators (28 years, but math doesn't strike me as your strong suit) That's less than a doctor's office requires to get started. You're still a dipshit spreading misinformation. I don't expect you to learn however, not with that narrow world view. The problem with your logic is you massively over estimate the intelligence of an average American. It’s all addressed in the article. Estimated $400K USD (2021) total revenue, not profit, over a few years. Not a windfall or life changing money. And all of this is attributed to Errol. Find me a source quoting Elon. Origin Story Business Insider South Africa published two stories roughly a week apart in early 2018, seemingly based entirely on a single interview with Errol Musk. Let’s start with the US headline of the first one (original South African edition here): This first article only mentions the supposed Zambian deal in passing, and instead centers on two related things: An alleged outing where teen brothers Elon and Kimbal sold a pair of emeralds to Tiffany’s in NYC for ~$2,000 USD An anecdote about the family having such profound wealth that closing the safe sometimes took multiple people and attempts (where the details of that anecdote are physically impossible in a rather obvious way) But note the story’s postscript: BI SA reached out to Elon for confirmation of the tale, but he did not respond. Father and son have a complicated history. Perhaps I should speak like an oxford white man to you, I presume? Does that tickle your fancy, buddy? Medical supplies are though. I didnt say the actual research was covered. That is not my point. My point is this: the further a society deviates from the common notions the more confused and corrupt it will become. The common notions teach that the more citizens who are able to participate in, and enjoy the rights and benefits of, civil society the more that society benefits all. And conversely when immense power is held by only a small minority, that tends to corrupt or harm rather than benefit society. History confirms this notion. For example, France in the 1770s, Russia in the 1910s and 30s, and Germany in the 1930s and 40s are examples of harms that result when these imbalances become extreme. I see no reason why extreme concentrations of wealth in a few compared to the many is exempt from what the common notions and history teach on this subject. But for whatever reason, the philosophy of the merchant class has taught that any debate on wealth is heresy and slander on our very existence. It's always interesting how people get upset over loan practices with low-income groups. Nobody is forcing them to take these loans and nobody is going to give them a particularly better deal either because they are high risk. What you and this article implies is that Buffet's company should either stop engaging in business with the poor or become a charity instead. Of course I've heard of the work practices of Amazon, people love to talk about them. I certainly would never work in that environment for what they pay. But what's unethical about it? What is so cold-blooded and ruthless? That they make their employees work really hard? Nobody is forced into servitude here. Boss, I’m just tired of people worshiping these assholes. Literal examples of how they had access was given. And people are still defending them. But they work hard! No, I know thousands of people who work hard. I KNOW, these guys do not. You wanna hear even worse? I know Southern Indians working in Saudi Arabia, speak 7 languages, write in three. While killing themselves for years without days off. Just to squeak by supporting their families. But Buffet works hard? Please. Fuck off. Musk just dropped 44 billion to buy twitter on a whim. America is unchecked capitalism. No. Europe is not pure capitalism. Youre either lying or you dont even know what capitalism is. >Earth’s resources, specifically those key to human survival are being ravaged and ARE being depleted. Which ones are close to depletion? >Humans areresponsible for kicking off the 6th great extinction causing MASSIVE amounts of species to go… you guessed it, extinct. We are literally obliterating the earth’s biodiversity. This are very small examples. This has nothing to do with whether resources are being depleted. Yes, humans are destroying the environment, and we are likely going to see environmental disasters worse than anything our parents have seen. That doesn't mean that resources are almost depleted. Insights and Prius have been around longer and are more affordable That was the most brain dead thing I’ve read in a very long time. Jeeeeeeeesus. Billionaires become billionaires by exploiting those below them. Are you even a human? How does this need clarification? [deleted] I guess you aren't paying attention to what I just said in my previous comment. It Comes Down To HOW you DEFINE RICH. If you want rags to millionaires rich, that aint very common. Even if there was a supposed increase of crime, you can’t chalk that up to a lessened police presence, because police were there. That’s awesome! It never hurts to ask. [deleted] You got that from just interviews huh? $300k is a getting to the point of stable retirement but that’s still slim for two people, and it also means you can’t loan it out. You don’t loan out a significant portion of your retirement, if you have $300k to loan out you have more than $300k. That's not the amount Bezos got and failing to understand that basic economical point shows why you shouldn't talk about economics. Also the mean is NOT 300k but around 170k in 2022 Less than 2, more than 0 You’re wrong. Who are you to cap how much money people can earn? Jesus you sound like Mao. He himself admits his family was extremely wealthy, even if his dad cut him off at 20 he still grew up with all the resources, education, and opportunities of a rich kid, and could probably expect a safety net if he failed. He's no more self-made than Paris Hilton. “His dad provided around 10% of 200,000 as part of a later funding round” Does the leather at least taste good? Well you are continuing the trend. >Okay, riddle me this. How can it break through the surface of it’s in a pit? So if lava is flowing though a field in a thick stream, you can also break though the surface. Is that magma in the inside? Lol >No links? To what? A known definition of magma vs lava? I gave it. And cited it. It find my example perfectly. I want a link to one that apparently corrects the inaccuracies in mine? I don’t know about Koreans migrating (you probably mean immigrating) to the states in the 90’s. I’m not American. Feel free to source it I’m happy to learn. My guess is you are probably confusing the terms poor and poverty. Poor people immigrate all the time for a multitude of reasons. People in poverty don’t get on planes. This is what I mean, you let a guy who’s dad was one of the richest men in the land, tell you he was essentially living like an African child you see on the unicef commercials, and yet you are somehow suspicious of my intentions. That’s fucking wild man. Yeah fair but just as unrelated to how much money she had is how many jobs she had. That’s how you know it’s a bullshit story. If your not an Elon musk fan then don’t fall for the marketing that’s all I’m asking. Their are plenty of sources that thoroughly outline how full of shit he is. Read them because it’s time to wake up, this sycophancy is becoming dangerous. Musk is not a known liar? What? Yes he did. Elon also had help from other family members who lived in Canada. > Are you telling me that you can realistically take $1 and turn it into 100K? Get the fuck out of here Again, you have a habit of making up arguments I have never said. Can you quote where I said that you dumb fuck. It can be exploitative and it can be not exploitative. I think people are allowed to exchange their labor for money. I mean it's kind of the basis of modern society. At any rate I've seen the salaries for engineers at Amazon and for $500k per year I don't think they are exploited at all. You’re a special egg aren’t you? If the richest person on the planet isn’t hoarding wealth I guess it’s impossible then huh. Or what do would you consider hoarding wealth then? Admitting defeat then? Once again you can’t actually address the point I’m presenting and just deflecting. Must be hard being so wrong. Happy to facilitate >You use their term crime a lot to describe things that aren't crimes; you seem to just wish they were crimes. No one is forcing anyone to work at Amazon. You can say society forces everyone to have a job, but no one is holding a gun to anyone's head saying they must got to Amazon vs the million other companies out there. I've also heard stories from people who are ecstatic to have a job at Amazon. Perspective is everything. You can have 2 people doing the same job in the same place, making the same money, and one is miserable while the other is happy and content. I'd rather be the happy one. I mean white collar crimes are actual crimes. Also you are acting like Amazon is in a vacuum. Where their policies and expected work quotas don't affect other corps or they don't see whats happening and do similar things since if everyone starts doing it, people can't just say fuck this I'm going somewhere else. Hell Amazon probably isn't even the originator of said system and merely just working on the system of only giving a shit about short term gains, more packages out of the facility per hour ignoring how they got such a thing to be there. I'm sorry but if everyone is actually happy with the system why does Amazon try so hard to shut down unions. Unions are what got us to where we are in this modern day, we work 8 hours a day because of unions. Those rights were fought for with sweat, tears, and god damn blood. Modern day regulations were written in blood. We are long past the days where realistically a single min wage worker could support a family. >For every story of someone being an ass hole, there is a story of someone doing good. Are you really suggesting that it is an even thing. I know you aren't being quite literal but I just lack the faith that is close to being true. I feel that is just pure optimism getting to the point of toxic positivity. It just seems to fall into fallacy or belief of a ""Just world"", hell even some feel good stories can be tainted by the reality of them. Little kid opens lemonade stand because someone in their family needs medical treatment (obviously this applies to the us and I shot very generically but popping that into google does show some results of very similar cases). Its a thoughtful gesture and that is the wholesome side of it but holy shit if you think about the implications of it, it so god damn depressing. You seem very focused on the micro scale of a thing instead of the macro scale of it all. These wealthy people have quite a bit power in the modern world able to lobby governments. Just because they did something nice for someone in a microscale does not excuse their actions in the macroscale. (it's irrelevant to the conversation but I'm from México which is not a first world country jajaja) I get your point, but the post and original comment is not questioning wether what they did was moral or not, they are trying to imply that they had it easier (which I agree) and therefore what they did was easy (this is where I disagree). And the fact that they are billionaires doesn't mean that every single action, opinion, etc is immoral, you don't have to be on board with absolutely everything they did to learn something from them. It's just as bad to demonize everything they do as it is to idolize these guys. Haha, you’re clueless. GM is absolutely not successful, they have been losing market share since the 1980’s. They are actually considering another bankruptcy right now. Marvel was bought and sold multiple times, restructured, broken apart, etc. Marvel is a brand, not a company. You need to try a little harder. Find a company that was successful and used bankruptcy to become more successful. These two ain’t it. Yea, I agree with that Ok, then, don't work for Amazon, and don't buy anything through Amazon. No problem. But we do NOT live in an oligarchy ruled by these men. Though they are influential, there are huge numbers of influencers in our country. They are not rulers. But they have created entities in our country that have never been seen before, and certainly not in other countries. They are a unique, rare breed. BTW Amazon lost money last quarter, and sales dropped. reading comprehension is hard for you isn't it? You could not be saltier about life if you tried. Don't even need to check your profile to see you're a r/antiwork fella My guy no one said they were. Who cares if their parents gave them money, were they supposed to say "" sorry dad, I choose poverty"" They took the money and used it just like you would if given the opportunity I’m not denying that they were not lucky, but I wouldn’t say they aren’t special unless your definition of special is someone who has no advantages and gets very successful. Its a combination of luck and competence. The fact they’ve maintained and grew it for decades adds more validity to their successes. The more competence, the less luck needed. If you’re competent and lucky, then you’ll reap rewards sooner and more plentiful. You’re pointing out how I’m not on point but never elaborating on where it’s off point? Instead doing snide remarks. Its a very insignificant one-track way of rebuttal that has no substance. But I actually take responsibility for what I do, so I should’ve realized that there was probably no real discussion to be had with your tone alone and I was dumb to think that otherwise Sure thing. Here's your proof. https://imgur.com/r/MakeMeSuffer/YsVwk9N What do you mean? Why would I be late? Is there a deadline? You going? I thought that was only for the 'self made' lmao. Keep tugging on the bootstrap and you'll be there. I promise. very cute! > No it was exactly my point and I honestly dont understand why you typed out the thing that you did. The exact words I used were ""material wealth"". Not value, not price. *Material. Wealth.* But *you* asked where the value of a painting comes from. So I answered you. Same place the painting comes from. The value isn't changing just because the price is. And the only reason the painting exists at all is because somebody painted it. > The problem is by your definition of value the conversation was always about price and not value as peoples wealth is not measured in your definition of value. There is more than one valid interpretation of the word ""value"". The other definition was never meant to provide a price estimation, because that is not its purpose. [Exchange value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_value) is the price of goods in relation to one another, before factoring in its utility. Goods and services have existed since long before currency or capitalism. Tribes would collect and distribute goods communally (barter economies are a myth). How was value estimated then? > If the “value” of the painting did not change, give me a numerical representation of the value of a painting. There is no numerical representation. Artistic value is abstract and even in mainstream economic models it has little, if any objective connection to price. Why is the original painting valuable, but not a copy? The person I responded to quite literally said “millions” of lives Starlink has positively impacted less than 1% of the US but *on a global scale* For anyone else, any other company, that’s be a massive failure. Teslas aren’t being delivered for long periods of time, which is bad. That one at least the Texas factory might help improve But these metrics from anyone else would have people panicking Lmfao If you make your account on mobile, it’s literally the final step before finalization. You can choose not to show it, but it makes one for you https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/8fd5q1/default_avatars/ https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/hn5pob/how_to_get_a_reddit_avatar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/pb4t35/why_or_how_was_i_gifted_an_avatar/ Literally everyone gets one, it explicitly asks if you want to hide it or not, “idiot” I was joking. Also ""millions"" when referred to the amount of people who brought something or watched something uses the definition I gave. So either he used the wrong definition or incorrectly used the work. I'm not being pedantic I was simply joking No one would, which wouldn't even happen, but if it did, they would increase thier salary in order to make it attractive to the people who left or are now trying to join. That's how the market works. And i still don't get how it's not volunteery, can you explain that? They have all the choices they need. What you posted was misplaced. Should have posted it to the person I replied to, just helping you out. [Bruh this took me two minutes with Google ""UN Responds to Elon Musk""](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-bezos-un-world-hunger-starvation-billion-donation-2021-11) **[First World](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World)** >The concept of First World originated during the Cold War and comprised countries that were aligned with United States and the rest of NATO and opposed the Soviet Union and/or communism during the Cold War. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the definition has instead largely shifted to any country with little political risk and a well-functioning democracy, rule of law, capitalist economy, economic stability, and high standard of living. Various ways in which modern First World countries are usually determined include GDP, GNP, literacy rates, life expectancy, and the Human Development Index. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5) Desktop version of /u/LTEDan's link: --- ^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete) Key word some lol My bad, I thought we were intentionally speaking in the least generous broad strokes possible and pretending they accurately represent the average person who feels differently. Yknow, the way people act when they lack any self awareness and hate acknowledging nuance that doesn’t support their worldview because it brings to light the cognitively dissonant possibility that they could be wrong in some way, which is scary and feels bad, so they pretend that nuance doesn’t exist and that anyone who disagrees with them is just a clueless moron. I thought we were doing that ironically. I didn’t say anything close to that and you know it. You fix systemic problems by altering or dismantling the systems. Individual action is great and by all means do it, but we can’t expect it to be enough to turn the tide against deep-rooted systemic problems. It doesn’t work I'm not being oppressed. Those who ignore the lessons of history, etc etc Enjoy your smug superiority though. Sadly enough, if not for that, we might find we have a bit in common. Oh well. [deleted] So you'd agree that them doing that wont change shit? Also, most people arent askimg for them to completely give up ALL wealth. Lets say you make a cap of 10 mil, in that case most ordinary people wouldnt have to give up shit, including that commenter, but it would still change a lot. Your comment twllkng him to give up his wealth just makes no sense whatsoever I didn't read your response because you're clearly a moron who can't respond to even the most basic of points. Have a great day. The term bandwagon fallacy refers to basing your argument on an appeal to the bandwagon (i.e. ""I think most other people believe this so it must be true""), rather than basing your argument on sound logical reasoning. You provided a textbook example of the bandwagon fallacy in the sentence I quoted, probably because you lack understanding in ""fallacy shit"". Literally just read the comment history lol, op comment was talking about 300k, not me. And in any case none of your 'facts' mention the sudden comeuppance of 300k, simply generational wealth which has nothing to do with the topic of the post. There is a legitimate reason why it could not. But I still disagree. I do see that government institutions are generally very inefficient, but I think this is rather a fault of specific governments and not governments in general. There are plenty of examples of public services being run well and plenty that are utter disasters, and thus I think it’s a poor argument to say “the government will fuck it up”, because it is simply a case by case basis. Imo even a poorly run government service is often better because they aren’t simply trying to maximize profit, they are trying to run a service, and thus have no incentive to inflate costs simply to gain more profit. I think your last point is fair, many things may not have been invented were it not for capitalism. But I do think people overstate the need for capital to motivate people to work or create things. To your point about the 20 year term, I think it’s irrelevant. Mostly because the example of AWS actually has little to do with IP. Sure their is IP used for AWS, but AWS didn’t invent web servers, they simply capitalized on web infrastructure. There is no 20 year limit stopping people from doing what Amazon is doing, their is the barriers to entry, namely being capital. > I think money increases the motivation for people to invent things. Especially when those things can require a great deal of investment in research and developement, years and years of your life, etc. If the moment you came up with something it could be stolen by anyone, almost no one would be willing to do anything that required sacrificing a large portion of your life or research and developement costs that would never be recovered because of IP theft. Tu quo que, ad hominem, and just not really an argument in any sense. Bezos didn't INVENT cloud computing. It's 70 years old. You know that, right? Yeah, and Amazon didn't come up with the idea, either. IBM *invented* the concept in the 70s, and had a business with it that they never updated, because they never thought it could be REALLY profitable. Hell, It was already a concept for smaller companies, and there was even a company in Dallas doing damn near the same thing as AWS in 2005, but that was still just building on IBM's ideas. AWS just made it easier to access at a time when there were more and more startups. That was their innovation. But, also in this discussion, Bezos gets the credit. Even internally, no one makes it seem like Bezos came up with the idea. He approved putting money towards it, but it was *already a concept they knew would work*. It's like giving every credit to the original founder of IBM. It's relevant because you brought up that execs and CEOs are paid more because they hold the risk, being paid in stocks and shareholder value. If that risk is not really important (i.e. just simply losing your share value), then it doesn't justify the absurd compensation they get year over year in relation to the workers below them. I care for others within my unit. That's how a functioning society should work. You care for your own unit then once your unit is taken care of you might cooperate with another unit related/close to you. You don't care about people 2000 miles away and ignore your own unit. That's how you get people caring about irrelevant things happening elsewhere while their own kids and family fail to progress in life. Which I see a lot in the West. Donating money to support some ""issues""/""charity"" unrelated to them but then ask their own kid to pay rent or pay for their own education. Thereby handicapping your own kid right from the start. You decided that your unit is EVERYONE IN THE WORLD which is insane and naive as hell. Edit: Let me show you an example. In Chinese culture it is not rare to have neighbours/families to pool money to send one of the other person's kid to college in order to raise the whole community's level without being expected to be paid back in cash. Another good example is you can look at how Asian immigrants in the US/UK who own a business usually a restaurant and hire family and friends in order to get them a visa/improve their lives which in turn improve the whole ""unit"". > Why the fuck do I care about the society at large rather than my own unit? The conservative mindset in a sentence. Fuck everyone else, I got mine. .... Money doesn't come from nowhere. You don't stick it in the money machine and all the sudden you're rich, it takes time and work and investment in the right places. You have some anger issues man, I'm sorry for whatever was done to you but you should really talk to someone before you hurt yourself. You shouldn't be this angry with a total stranger about a subject you hold no stake in. You actually think it makes sense to kill a company making $300,000 in profits for the sake of seeding another company idea in hopes of finding new investors? An already profit-bearing business? And if you're going to quote me, why do you keep leaving out the most important part? The time frame? We will all be dead before I have the time to make that kind of turnaround now, and unless you have a time machine to go back 3 decades you're wasting my time. Lastly, the definition of ""a few"" is ""not many but more than one"". You just arbitrarily assigned it a value of 3? I said a few not pi. We are just beating a dead horse now. You don't seem to comprehend business, the flow of time, or simple logic. Your reading comprehension is all but shot, much like your temper. I'm conceding the last word to you Tinkerbell. Make sure it's as insult-laden and sexually-depraved as you can manage. Bye Felicia [deleted] That’s not true, quality of living has gone up substantially more in the USA generally than anywhere else in the world. You just don’t like wealth inequality even though you type on magic glass that has the knowledge of all of humanity available through it. It amazes me how both out of touch with reality people like you are… and ungrateful. They think it’s risk free and that there’s a magic money tree. So should everybody go independent? So should everybody go independent? See, you said that like it was an argument in favour of capitalism, but it's actually an argument against capitalism. Starting a business is a risk in that you may end up working for free for a while. Most people don't have that option because their financial situation doesn't allow them to work for free without literally starving to death. I don't know how capitalism can exist without the state to enforce contracts and to protect property. Without the state another conglomerate would just act like the central government - charging a fee to do business and to use their infrastructure while private security/loss protection would simply evolve to something like the police. And if there isn't that type of central authority there would be one quickly as it dominates the market by threat and force of violence. [deleted] You sure have a fancy romanticized view of capitalism. If doing the inefficient thing is profitable that is what capitalism will do. I'm still holding my 50 dollar investment in gamestop. Can I has wealth now plz? Just to be clear here, I am not talking about receiving money from banks. Just being able to get a business account at a bank. If your idea is good enough and you have a team with the competencies to actualise it, then there are enough risk-willing capital out there to get funding from. That have nothing to do with banks. Of course if the idea is to make a restaurant, corner store or whatever else generic idea, then one would have to go through a bank to self-fund it. It's amazing how quickly dumb people resort to anger Reading comprehension's a struggle dude but you'll get there one day! Try shifting the goalposts between your ears so there's at least something there. You’re a bald wannabe Twitch streamer with a beard and a fuck ugly mail order bride, and yet you’re still pretentious somehow. It doesn’t get more cliche redditor than that. Spoken like someone that doesn't train. Truth is, your favorite athlete is on shit, and 90% or more of athletes of any sport at the highest level are doing any gear. Less than focusing on the ""cheating"" or ""steroids ez"" the main problem and why we want to get rid of them is how dangerous for longevity and health they are. The dumbass is quoting PPP loans 😂😂😂😂 I swear to God this site is such a shit hole. He thinks PPP loans are what people used to start these businesses I just can't Why do you keep parroting the doctor's office? Is that literally the only metric that you can use when choosing when seed money is not important to success? Anyone with half a brain knows that wealth can build exponentially. Just stop my guy it's embarrassing. Elon denies it because it looks bad. He has stated it in interviews if you use the wayback machine. I’d like to see you give it a try. Just for science. Maybe you should tell Medicare that. https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/supplies Medicare does however cover durable medical equipment so when all that fat leaves your head and redistributes throughout your body you can get a c-pap machine covered at 80% or a rascal scooter. Absolutely nothing you said prior to this was about a societal risk of someone having too much power. You were simply complaining that rich people don't work hard enough to deserve their wealth. I somewhat agree with your concerns but I also think the discourse of ""eat the rich"" and that the small minority who pays almost all taxes aren't paying ""their fair share"" are dangerous and misleading. They are propaganda to scapegoat a small group of people and it is dangerous and wrong. Rich people are just regular ass people who worked really hard, or whose ancestors worked really hard, to create things that society wanted. Society patronized their services and products so much that these people became wealthy. And all of that is a good thing for everyone. [deleted] I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the environment itself IS most resources and it’s being depleted and raped. Have you heard of the word unsustainable? Do you know why we use it? Ruminate on that Your whole conscious reality is generated by your brain. There is no consciousness when you sleep, so you can experience death every night. You just don’t wake up. There are some people out there that are gonna work very hard to make sure they don’t stay sleeping. Crazy that Elon has a merge with AI fever dream and just bought Twitter. You guys can stick with the soul stuff. We got work to do. Rags to millionaires is incredibly common. A million dollars isn’t even very much money. $300,000 to a billionaire is not common at all, like Jeff Bezos Police were explicitly asked to stand down. Please don't be ridiculous. [deleted] And knowing people there and their backgrounds... Lmao Dang, that’s a really extreme comparison. Huge jump from anything I said above friend. He left South Africa and moved to Canada at age 17 against his fathers wishes. He had a couple hundred dollars to his name. He and his father did not speak for a long time. You should read more about him. He doesn’t make money out of thin air, people think that Tesla is worth 1 trillion dollars, so his net worth is going up because he has part of the company. Username checks out ""Hurr durr you're a boot licker for supporting the rights of the individual over govt."" Logic isn't your strong suit is it? Look, it's really nice that your handler helps you post on Reddit, but they should get you tucked in, it's past your bed time. Lmfao you reported me to Reddits suicide prevention resources? Cope harder. And what trend is that? Me: how can lava break through the surface if it’s in a pit? You: if lava flows through a field and you break through the surface, is it magma on the inside? Let’s follow the trend! If you cut through the surface of the magma in a pit, is there lava inside? Your own link proved you wrong. Get over it. “Becoming dangerous”? Dude it’s been dangerous as fuck lol. Look where we’re at. Arguing about the history of specific billionaires while inflation is slowly decimating the country, all the while making them richer while we struggle to buy daily necessities. If they’re not actively using their billions of dollars to help as many people as feasibly possible, fuck em. They can even keep their mansions and their pretty cars and their private jets for all I care. They just don’t need 100s of billions of fucking dollars. You believe his father but not him. They both have equal proof, but you believe the one that lets you hate rich people. No he didn’t It is the essence of your arguement. Say that again for the Amazon contract warehouse workers and delivery drivers. Or do you think having people piss in bottles to make quotas for 20$/hr is not exploitative either. Hoarding wealth would be sitting on massive piles of cash and doing nothing with it. Billionaires do not do this. Period. That isn't a valid comparison. There is zero reason to respond. You fundamentally do not understand corporate ownership. >people can't just say fuck this I'm going somewhere else. People literally do this every single day. 2021 was a big year for that with The Great Resignation. >Hell Amazon probably isn't even the originator of said system and merely just working on the system of only giving a shit about short term gains, more packages out of the facility per hour ignoring how they got such a thing to be there. You can blame Jack Welch for that; most people do. But globalization and the internet are also to blame. When your competition goes from the 3 stores in town to ""the world"" there is going to be someone out of 6 billion is willing to do damn near anything to ""win"". >we work 8 hours a day because of unions Henry Ford did this over 10 years before the UAW union was formed. The justification being that if people are going to spend money on consumer goods, they need leisure time in which to make and enjoy those purchase. The economy wouldn't grow as much if no one had any time off. So.... I guess capitalism gave us the 8 hour work day and 40 hour work week.. I've been seeing some companies experiment with shorter work weeks lately and they aren't union shops. >We are long past the days where realistically a single min wage worker could support a family. The number of people working at the federal minimum wage level is extremely low, only [2.3% of hourly workers](https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm). I don't think it was ever really designed with the idea that someone should work minimum was to raise a family of 4. If some are to be believed the roots are much more racist, instituting a minimum wage to encourage business owners to hire white people at a time when black people were willing to work for less. >Are you really suggesting that it is an even thing. Obviously it's not going to be 100% eve, but it's literally impossible to know which way the scales tip. We humans also tend to overweigh the bad stuff, because that's how we survived so long.... look for threats and focus on them so they don't kill us. I've heard a lot of positive stories about people coming from nothing, people with money helping other people, etc... but almost none of it was in the main stream news. If it bleeds it ledes, after all. I have to put myself in environment to see them or go out of my way to find them. Life gets pretty bleak if you only look at the horrific shit the media pumps out there. >You seem very focused on the micro scale of a thing instead of the macro scale of it all. These wealthy people have quite a bit power in the modern world able to lobby governments. Just because they did something nice for someone in a microscale does not excuse their actions in the macroscale. I focus on myself and my micro-scale. Until a person masters that they have no business trying to control the macro. It seems like the height of hubris for someone who's life is a mess to think they should control how large complex companies and governments run. I know there are things I can do and control that will improve myself in the here and now. Waiting on, or trying to push, some external entity to solve my problems will leave me waiting and depressed until the day I die. Hard pass. That doesn't mean I think all these companies and governments can't run better, everything can always improve and some aspects downright suck, but I'm not going to spend my life trying to change it. If I did, I wouldn't do it by trying to change someone else's company. I'd try and start my own and run it how I think things should be done. If it was successful, others would adopt it.. capitalism loves stealing successful models. If it failed... then I know I was wrong. >And the fact that they are billionaires doesn't mean that every single action, opinion, etc is immoral, you don't have to be on board with absolutely everything they did to learn something from them. >It's just as bad to demonize everything they do as it is to idolize these guys. You are right they might not do ever single thing amorally but if they are giving advice on getting rich, the amoral stuff plays a pretty large part in it and their advice comes down to just being a good worker bee (I probably find it questionable). Hell even Hitler advocated for animals rights and no to smoking, I won't discount those ideas (simply because they are logical) but I will still say Hitler was obviously a bad dude (of course I had to use godwin's law) >It's just as bad to demonize everything they do as it is to idolize these guys. but at the same time, is it wrong to believe that these people can possible do good things to wipe away their sins. Hell Bill Gates has mostly done that with his later years with philanthropy. Social capital in the modern world is very important. So of course people are going to be questioning the intention of these billionaires. People worry about trusting the future with these fuckers like funny memester billionaire is the way forward when he has some troubling views for the common man especially around his plans of indentured servitude on his mars colony. So a giant company town you realistically can never escape from, that will likely accrue debt as you live there, it just sounds so god damn dystopian. [deleted] You are simultaneously praising Bezos for creating his Amazon empire while agreeing with me that Amazon is a shit company who treats its workers like slaves. Get your priorities straightened out mate. So let me get this straight — I made the assumption that you failed to understand the point I was making, and instead of clarifying what you were trying to convey in your message, you insult me? I’d still like to get a better understanding of what you are trying to argue (as a response to what I had previously written), but jesus I’m starting to see some parallels between the far left and the far right. How's that shoe leather taste? Do not engage the troll. It's not worth it This thread in this post literally claims they built from nothing. Wtf are you on? [https://i.imgur.com/B2LBEfQ.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/B2LBEfQ.jpg) Re read the OP. If he accepts your point he has to accept that he is at fault for at least some of his failures and he’s not brave enough to do that. 😂 The offer stands buddy, but we both know it’s not gonna happen. No sex for sad little virgins like you. Actually the more I think about it, you’re the prototypical incel - never thought I’d met an incel in the wild but here we are 😳 You love Elon. Just close your eyes and imagine him and Sean Hannity taking turns at your mom. What’s it like knowing you’ll never have an intimate relationship? What woman/man would ever be attracted to a little pest like you 😂 Material wealth is not defined how you think it is. It is also defined with the word value which is also under dispute here. I never asked where the value came from but what caused it to change. You claimed it didn't change, how do you know that? What was the value when it was created, what is it now? You seem to think the value does not change by definition but as I said before that calls into question why you ever used the term value when discussing billionaires. If wealth is the accumulation of value and value is not quantifiable being a billionaire is separate from your wealth. >Goods and services have existed since long before currency or capitalism. Tribes would collect and distribute goods communally (barter economies are a myth). How was value estimated then? Yeah, but you could still quantify it in the same way a billionaires wealth is qjantified. >There is no numerical representation. Artistic value is abstract and even in mainstream economic models it has little, if any objective connection to price. We are not talking about artistic value. >Why is the original painting valuable, but not a copy? Because the original is one of a kind and many copies can be made. So how many vehicles would they need to deliver to be considered successful? And starlinks? How many people would need service for it to considered successful to you? You avoided the question. You mean just like how his Starlink is the only pipeline by which we have unfiltered data coming out of Ukraine right now? Yeah that's totally a failure... You can opt out, you are still a terminally online dumbass My definition doesn’t specify the “millions” being referred to. Once again, it’s a number between one million and a billion. 1.9 million cars fits in that definition. It’s not a mutual arrangement. One party has significant leverage over the other. Terms of employment are dictated entirely by one party and can either be accepted or rejected by the other party. Most workers are not in a position to negotiate. They can accept the employers’ terms or they can reject employment. No it wasn't. I meant it for you. >cognitively dissonant I'll take ""psychological terms that people misuse in every discussion where they try to make themselves sound smart"" for $800, Alex. ​ Clearly if you think I pegged everyone wrong about why they might have the idea that America is not a first world nation, then you likely are one of those people; so feel free to explain your clearly amazing grasp of nuance, while I grab my popcorn. I actually have no idea what you are saying. From what I understand. You expect change to occur through the ""*system*"", which as we have boiled down is nothing more than its people; however you believe no people are capable of fixing the ""*system*"" through their actions, which means the ""*system*"" can never be fixed, only discussed. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. I don't need to agree or disagree, that is outside the scope of my statements. What you have described is called a '*tithing*'. This is a Christian concept where every individual gives up 10% of their wealth to the church who re-distribute it it the poor. You just seem to have missed the point where you **ARE** the rich. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. Not true. Everyone is doing it so you should do it too is a bandwagon fallacy. The definition of the word ""fallacy"" as understood by an English speaking population is not bandwagon fallacy. Neither is the understanding of the phrase ""change the world"" so you can go ahead and stuff it. You have ZERO idea of what you're talking about. You're just attempting to be a pretentious prick and failing miserably due to your lack of intelligence. Hush already. I'm going to quote you directly again here: >But most people could turn that money into a lot more money. It doesn't matter what money you were talking about. No, most people cannot take an amount of money and turn it into more money. Most lose it. 90% of families lose ALL of their wealth in 3 generations. It also has quite a lot to do with the topic of the post as the post is blaming generational wealth on the outsized success of the 4 individuals listed. Then you aren’t familiar with the concept of a premium or to put it simply getting what you pay for. I would know as I work for a government owned company and it’s sinful how counterproductively it’s run. Name me one government owned company that is well run and profitable Yeah but then you are ignoring the risk Amazon took in investing so much of their capital to make AWS. Opportunity cost is seriously an issue for all things, especially things that require so much money. I'm assuming I'm spot on? If so, then you are a benefactor of the system you despise. There's alot of talk about the right wing having double standards and being hypocrites but you can't enjoy a great standard of living with wealth your parents ""stole"" and then preach about it when you see someone else doing the same thing. But i never said they invented cloud computing. Microsoft didnt invent computers either. Apple didnt invent mobile devices. Google didnt invent search bars or web browsers. Ur point? >It's relevant because you brought up that execs and CEOs are paid more because they hold the risk The risk factor is relevant. > If that risk is not really important (i.e. just simply losing your share value), then it doesn't justify the absurd compensation they get year over year in relation to the workers below them. It is important. The only irrelevant thing is the circumstances of the employee. I rest my case. You don't understand the opportunities you had are not universal. Provided you're telling the truth. Sure we have technology that we did not have 60 years ago. What an observation. Look at CEO pay versus median worker pay now compared to 60 years ago. What am I supposed to be grateful for you leather licker? “I take my wife to red lobster. They didn’t have red lobster 60 years ago. Even though I still abuse my wife, she still has it better than back then.” [deleted] Choose your comfort. It’s the states only job to enforce the law… not to get in between contracts for a % cut Terrible human cost… yet you don’t propose the alternative. Manual fucking slave labor. All that innovation brought us both to abundance and safer working environments. Don’t be fooled… if it wasn’t for those enterprising innovative events, we would STILL be living in absolutely stifling colonial conditions. Your frame of reference is so entitled you don’t know how comfortable you have it, nor what enabled you to have it. No, I have an academic view. I think many of you don’t understand definitions True but it still requires capital to get as far as investment funds unless you have mad skills and a crazy idea. But you generally are right even if you are over playing it's availability. Such things are for novel ""high return"" business ideas. [deleted] 😂😂😂 nothing like responding to a detailed arguments with personal attacks, huh? Definitely shows how knowledgeable you are. You're an ugly, low IQ, unsuccessful mouth breather with bad taste. Nobody cares what you think lol. >Spoken like someone that doesn't train Since quite probably before you were born. I just didn't juice. >Truth is, your favorite athlete is on shit, and 90% or more of athletes of any sport at the highest level are doing any gear Yes, I know, but so what? >the main problem and why we want to get rid of them The ""we"" in that sentence is ""you"". You understand that right? Lots of people want to get rid of them for different reasons. Some want to keep them and for different reasons. I didn’t even read “2021” lol that’s hilarious. Lmfao. Go get a loan and do it yourself chief. I'll actively bet against your position. I use that metric because it's grounded, relatable, and easy to understand. There are hundreds of thousands of individuals who have gotten loans of the same size. Almost every business in this country requires significant seed money to get started. What I want to know is why you're so hungry to deny this fact. But yeah man, give anyone 300k and they'll make it into billions. It's so common. It’s all very innocuous. Not like his estranged dad, who he left at 17, was a mining magnate. Self made enough for me and you haven’t proven the meme isn’t disingenuous. ""An updoot for you good sir!"" I don’t think wealth or profiting is evil. But I also don’t believe it is universally good. Good and evil (or benefits and costs) like everything else is relative to one another. As for wealth, there will always be differences in opportunities, education, luck, parents, etc. and citizens should be able to prosper when they benefit themselves and others. Such an organized society benefits all. But there comes a time when growing concentrations of wealth stop benefiting society because wealth becomes the sole or primary factor as to one’s rights and benefits. I haven’t taken the time to research but my intuition tells me the increasing fractured nature of US society is linked to the growing concentration of wealth over the last 40 years. I’d expect the increase in extreme viewpoints to track the increasing imbalance between the few and the many. For wealth springs from civil society, not the other way around. Yet the main talking points by many is that wealth creates society, which is to confuse the effect for the cause. And the more a society deviates from such common notions like cause and effect, the more it suffers. Tell me about healthcare in the EU. Yeah, the environment is being depleted, but *it's extremely very far from being fully depleted*. That does not mean what we are doing is sustainable, or won't have massive consequences, or whatever else you're focusing on. [deleted] [deleted] Sure buddy. You want to limit how much people can earn to the amount you see fit. How do you plan to do this? Ask nicely? Nah, somebody else did that. Guess I’m not the only person who thinks you’re a clown though. Playing the part. Huh? If it doesn't break thoroughly the surface then it's underground. Then it's s not a pit. It's an underground pocket. I'm not talking about walking over solid ground with magma under it. I you could also call it a lava lake, is that also impossible? Can’t disagree with you there. Wish people like the guy I’m talking to would get on board. he's rich! I hate them both lol.They are liars and manipulative people. He was never living in poverty. Who the fuck do you know that just changed countries to escape conscription despite living in poverty?? Come on man, use your critical thinking for a second, these people are lying to you and you are suspicious of me. Fucking hell, whats wrong with this planet? Brainwashed. Fuck marketing is effective. No, it’s some shit you made up because you don’t have a real point. Learn how to read properly and stop using your imagination as fact. What is he doing with all 340 billion dollars of things he personally owns that is good for the world then? Where is his philanthropy like Rockefeller? How come there isn’t a big ass brand new Musk public engineering building in every town like the robber barons built theaters and libraries? He’s not even as decent as the people we vilified and named an entire Gilded Era after. You know when American prosperity really took off? When they taxes the fuck out of those rich bastards hoarding the wealth. You’re a loser making excuses for people who don’t give a fuck about you, acting superior because you think I don’t understand a system when in reality I just understand that it is not an ethical system. It doesn’t work well. We have proved this in American history before. This is a completely fucking unhinged take. How is that comparison not valid? What about that comparison is incorrect? Please since you apparently have such a superior intelligence it should be easy for you to say why it isn’t applicable? >2021 was a big year for that with The Great Resignation. Oh yes the years where people were basically forced out from their jobs at the start of it. Service/medical workers were labelled ""heroes"" with them getting a slight boost with hazard pay that got scaled back. So yeah you are right current it is a workers' market at the moment but this isn't the case always. >Henry Ford did this over 10 years before the UAW union was formed. The justification being that if people are going to spend money on consumer goods, they need leisure time in which to make and enjoy those purchase. The economy wouldn't grow as much if no one had any time off. So.... I guess capitalism gave us the 8 hour work day and 40 hour work week.. The first law in the United States that called for an eight-hour work day was passed in Illinois in 1867. That beats Henry Ford by 60 years. I mean it sounds like capitalist propaganda with your emphasis on Henry Ford. Hell the US government had 8 hour work weeks for federal workers in 1886 (it was a bit limited but again it predates freaking Ford.) >The number of people working at the federal minimum wage level is extremely low, only 2.3% of hourly workers. I don't think it was ever really designed with the idea that someone should work minimum was to raise a family of 4. part one, you are correct the median wage in the us is around 17.25 pre tax to around 12 something post tax. Now with that said around ~[60%](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/19/56percent-of-americans-cant-cover-a-1000-emergency-expense-with-savings.html) to ~[70%](https://www.yahoo.com/video/survey-69-americans-less-1-171927256.html) of Americans can't cover a 1000$ emergency charge. Sound advice is you want your rent to be at around 30% of your monthly salary but the median rent price is around 1,098$ (that is for a 1 bedroom apartment building mind you) and that alone takes up about 38.5% right there of a paycheck, that doesn't cover groceries, gas, etc. So this is talking about half of Americans right now who aren't locked to the minimum wage and very likely struggling. Part 2. >I don't think it was ever really designed with the idea that someone should work minimum was to raise a family of 4 Are you seriously telling me FDR the man who signed in Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) who made the comments of >In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ""business"" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living. -Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act June 13, 1933 >But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens–a substantial part of its whole population–who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. >I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day. >I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago. >I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children. >I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions. >I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. >It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope–because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. -Second Inaugural Address of FDR in 1937 Was not planning for the min wage to be able to support a family of 4. Even though at that period of time only men were the breadwinners in the family and the average family size was around 4.11 to 3.63 children per household. People who keep saying ""Min wage is only designed for high schoolers and the such"" don't know the history for min wage. Also at the end of the god damn day we are just subsidizing companies indirectly since people who are making less than a ""Living wage"" are probably going to be getting government assistance, hell even some work places teach their employees how to apply for food stamps. The private sector fucking loves to privatize their profits but socialize losses. >I focus on myself and my micro-scale. Until a person masters that they have no business trying to control the macro. If everyone did that, we might live in a better world but we don't and come on now do you really think those who amass this great wealth aren't egotistical and will try to manipulate the macro in their own self interests which is typically more god damn pointless abstract money. Do you think GM is a successful company? Seriously? https://www.wardsauto.com/gm-says-bankruptcy-not-option-it-considering I am trying to get a nuanced perspective of Bezos. He is not a saint nor a devil. He is a highly successful entrepreneur. He has created a company which provides service to literally everybody in the world. For that he deserves praise. His company should treat its workers better; however, they have the option of not working for Amazon. They are not slaves. It’s hard to reason with people who’s entire personality is based on politics and aren’t willing to understand both sides. I dunno, but it sure feels good to live life well. You should try it sometime! Maybe you won't be so lonely, miserable, and on track to die alone No multiple people said that yes they did get money from their parents . Wtf are you on? Yeah, and when you respond to the thread comments, you respond to what the comment is talking about. So in every case, I’m responding to the comment that’s continually derived from the post - which is responding to the image that discredits the success of these people by putting it all on their advantages. I believe you know that but are choosing to just be snide instead. I just hope you know where your vitriol on this topic genuinely comes from Yeah that’s kinda what I assume to be behind a lot of vitriol you see against people who are successful. That or just blindly parroting of what they think is the “morally good” consensus What’s sad about it is that once you take responsibility of your failures, and i’m sure you know, it gets progressively easier to do it again. You get better as a person and learn. But if you never reach a point, you stagnate. Blaming some random person who has little to no effect on how well you do in life. That's nasty man. Why would I envision that? Is that what you do instead of building your empire? Im just here to help. Not to fight. But that's the road you chose so Idk how to help you. > Material wealth is not defined how you think it is. Ok then, please provide a definition of ""material wealth"" that is not equivalent to ""goods and services"". I've never seen it defined in any other way. Adam Smith's definition of wealth is ""the annual produce of the land and labor of the society"". The painting is a physical object. Can we not agree on that? In order to produce a physical object, somebody must use their labor to make physical changes in the real world. ""Painting"" is defined by the fact that it *has been painted*. > You claimed it didn’t change, how do you know that? Demand changes. The inherent qualities of the object are the same. > What was the value when it was created, what is it now? The same. Assuming no labor is required to restore it. A Van Gogh painting is a unique good. > You seem to think the value does not change by definition but as I said before that calls into question why you ever used the term value when discussing billionaires. How, *exactly*, does a capitalist generate a consistent profit if they have no employees? Where does the painting come from if nobody paints it? If labor-value is not a component of either of these, then why do billionaires bother having any employees at all? > If wealth is the accumulation of value and value is not quantifiable being a billionaire is separate from your wealth. Labor-value, and goods produced by labor, can be sold. There are other factors involved in the final price such as demand and utility. But labor is a necessary component. Mainstream economists don't even disagree on this. Labor is one of the four factors of production. If any single factor in a mathematical equation is 0, then the output is 0. > Yeah, but you could still quantify it in the same way a billionaires wealth is qjantified. A billionaire's wealth has value because it was produced through the combined labor-power of thousands of employees. Even if someone gets rich by trading stocks or selling a billion-dollar NFT. The investor extracts wealth from the employees of the company he invested in, and the NFT owner gets wealth because the next biggest sucker gives it up. That wealth had to start as labor power, somewhere. [What's a billion dollars worth if it isn't being backed by labor power?](https://www.banknoteworld.com/zimbabwe-1-billion-dollars-banknote-2008-p-83-used.html?category_id=739) > We are not talking about artistic value. You are. You're talking about the price of a painting. Could have picked a commodity instead. Those are a lot more straightforward. > Because the original is one of a kind and many copies can be made. Right. It takes no labor to produce a copy anymore. The original is Van Gogh's unique mark on the world, which he produced with his labor. That is where its value comes from. Yeah? I said that? Lmfao My only point was it auto makes you one, you tried to claim it didn’t and then moved the goalposts It literally says it refers to numbers, not things. Let's just end this here as you won't admit your wrong and I can't be bothered Yes they can do exactly that. That's what I said... I simply corrected the person saying placing it on red would only double his money netting 600,000 not millions as he thought. You said a specific number on red hitting would get him 10.5 which is correct but a completely different bet. He could have bet on a black number aswell, or bought everyone there a banana split, or put all the money in a trash can and burned it. We could go on and on all day about OTHER things that could be done, but I only commented on what was being talked about. I don’t think you’re grasping this. Lmao, I even considered not using the phrase cognitive dissonance when I wrote that because it seemed unnecessary when I was already describing it. Thanks for being such a prick about it. Feel free to enlighten me to my misapplication of the term, and please, tell me how laughably idiotic I must be for trying to shoehorn basic psychology into my fake-bigly-smart assessment of what makes people act the way they do. In a country with inequality and a range of living standards as extreme as what’s found in the US, terms like first and third world might *to some* seem insufficient to accurately describe the reality. There’s a fair case to be made that the 1st/3rd world distinction is outdated, misleading, and lacking in relevance in the first place. Yes, on average, Americans live a first world experience. No, the US is not the only country with a wide range of living standards, nor is it the only one suffering from extreme inequality. Nonetheless, its averages are often worse than those [found in the rest of the “first world”](https://databank.worldbank.org/reports.aspx?source=2&series=SI.POV.GINI&country=) and its [lowest lows](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/12/12/570217635/the-u-n-looks-at-extreme-poverty-in-the-u-s-from-alabama-to-california) barely rise above the best of the “third world”, not to mention the comparison to the US’ past. Many in the rest of the “first world” would and do balk at the state of US infrastructure, social programs, living standards, civil rights protections, etc, on the whole. The point I’m trying to get at is that there are good reasons for people to question the supposed greatness of the US and say things like, “the US is a third world country with a Gucci belt.” Obvious, casual hyperbole is not a good enough reason to assume that anyone expressing a sentiment under such terms is a clueless moron without any leg to stand on - it’s something people from every walk of life do all the time. You’re right, you have no idea what I’m saying I didnt miss the point that we are the rich, im not saying being rich is a problem, or that generational wealth is always a problem. What im saying is that there should br a cap on how crazy stupid rich you can be, or at least, how much of a crazy stupid amount you can give to your children. Even at like 50 mil that is just an insane amount of fucking money, hell, make it 100 mil. But no one needs a billion fucking dollars my dude, let alone multiple billions I didn't read your response because you're clearly a moron who can't respond to even the most basic of points. Have a great day. >You're just attempting to be a pretentious prick and failing miserably due to your lack of intelligence. Ad hominem fallacy. Government owned company? I never said anything about that, I said government run service. And more so it’s not that they are run well, but that they are far better than private. An example of a service that is generally far better run by the government is healthcare, when you compare the United States to literally any other first world nation, it’s easy to see that it is not a good thing to privatize that industry. And all of these issues boil down to money. What risk was there apart from losing money? First of all, I don’t feel obligated to justify my class with a random redditor. But to make you happy, no I do not come from a wealthy family, but I do have an iPhone, as I’ve worked 50+ hours a week in construction since I was 17. Regardless, none of that is relevant. I never even said anything about right wing double standards, and I think many liberals or even leftists hold double standards, that doesn’t mean their criticisms are invalid, it just means they are faulty; human nature is to be faulty. But either way, your argument is a non argument. If I was born into this society, I am forced to participate in this society, or go homeless and starve. Does this mean I can’t criticize society? Furthermore, even if any of your argument was logical, it has at best a vague relation to my comment. >Ur point? The one that i made like five comments back? >And you think nothing would replace Amazon? Or that Amazon replaced nothing? They're literally just a cheaper version than other people. They're not selling magic pixie dust, and they didn't INVENT it either. I reiterate, since you clearly can't thinc reel gud. >And you think nothing would replace Amazon? Or that Amazon replaced nothing? [deleted] So your argument is envy… Huh, weird Domestic violence has also gone down as an average. Not willing to deal with? Or not able to deal with because with their current financial situation, a business failure, or even not being able to take a salary for a while, which us common, would leave them literally starving to death? How can the the state exist without taxes? Even feudalism required some form of tax. [deleted] All the tech guys in this post all had mad skills and crazy ideas. All of them being ahead of their time in many ways. My recommendation is if you’re a student and feel like you have a good idea. It doesn’t even have to be revolutionary, crazy or high return. It just have to solve a real life problem and have a sizeable market potential. Then join an accelerator or incubator program to mature the idea and setup a company structure. Then from there on use the accelerator to gain access to investors. It’s still super hard and requires good portion of luck, but it’s doable. The hardest part is finding the right people to team up with. Objective? Hah, not even close. Keep dreaming, maybe one day you'll win the jackpot and get your fortune of $127. Talk all the shit you want dude, it isn’t going to make your hair grow back. Enjoy charity banging that made in China bitch for the rest of your life. Dude didn't even read his own article, just saw a number that backed his incorrect world view and went all in This whole thread is about the myth of self starting. Did you lose track of that? > Good and evil (or benefits and costs) like everything else is relative to one another Sure. But the guy who goes out and buys barren land, builds a farm, and provides jobs and cheaper food for their community is to be commended over the guy who stays home and does nothing. It's not lost on me that the guy staying home is online every day complaining about the farmer being ""greedy"" and not doing their ""fair share"". > my intuition tells me the increasing fractured nature of US society is linked to the growing concentration of wealth It's not. It's due to social media and the fracturing of information. People are siloed into groups and then live in their echo chambers. 25+ years ago everyone watched the same news show and got the same information. Now everyone is able to find a niche group they identify with and not get information anywhere else. It's why anti-vaxers, etc., are on the rise. > Yet the main talking points by many is that wealth creates society I'm not aware of anyone saying that. Can you find a single article? Wealth is created. Turning barren land into a farm is wealth creation. I've seen a lot of far left people claim wealth is stolen, that it's zero sum—to have money is to take money from someone else. And I've heard a lot of grounded people refute that, that it is not zero sum, our GDP grows. Turning barren land into a farm makes everyone slightly richer. It pushes wages up with a higher demand for labor and pushes food prices down with more supply of food. But I've never heard a single person claim that ""wealth creates society"". I don't even know what that would mean. [deleted] You clearly don’t understand what not sustainable means. Resource depletion is not sustainable, untenable even https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/13/elon-musk-humans-merge-machines-cyborg-artificial-intelligence-robots.html [deleted] Taxes and closing tax loopholes. Again…. We’re talking about something that would effect like 100 people….who would still be the 100 richest people…. many of whom have actively campaigned for higher taxes on billionaires. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were pretending to be clueless. Yes, good job. If it doesn’t break through the ground, it’s not lava. A pit is literally a pocket within the ground…. I’m aware of what you’re speaking of. Your perspective isn’t complex enough for further explanations to be of any benefit, or for anymore links to be provided….. Lava lakes form from lava flowing over the surface and into that crater. If you happen to find a pit above the magma flow of a volcano, that’s still magma because it never breached the surface. Pit = a hollow or indentation especially in a surface. So, if you find a pit in a volcano, it will have magma inside of it. Your argument has been that billionaires are bad. Devoid of any real insight, thoughts or insight that can't be found on a Vaush clip channel. Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, Solar City, Neurallink, OpenAI, now Twitter. Plus he has invested in more than 100 companies that carry private market values over $50M. Philanthropy is for people who are too tired to continue their domination. Employing 110,000 people is far more of a benefit to society than donating money for some stupid park or concert hall for the sheer vanity of having your name on it. No, it is a take in reality. Your view is what is actually unhinged. Your assertion amounts to X has Y, therefore X has Y in liquid assets. This is just wrong. It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users. I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click! [Here is link number 1 - Previous text ""60%""](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/19/56percent-of-americans-cant-cover-a-1000-emergency-expense-with-savings.html) [Here is link number 2 - Previous text ""70%""](https://www.yahoo.com/video/survey-69-americans-less-1-171927256.html) ---- ^Please ^PM ^[\/u\/eganwall](http://reddit.com/user/eganwall) ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^[Code](https://github.com/eganwall/FatFingerHelperBot) ^| ^[Delete](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=FatFingerHelperBot&subject=delete&message=delete%20i6i12tt) > The first law in the United States that called for an eight-hour work day was passed in Illinois in 1867. That beats Henry Ford by 60 years. I mean it sounds like capitalist propaganda with your emphasis on Henry Ford. Hell the US government had 8 hour work weeks for federal workers in 1886 (it was a bit limited but again it predates freaking Ford.) Yes, the government did it first. Ford was the first major company to do it, that still matters... and his reasoning behind it was something other business owners could get behind. If you can frame something that is good for workers in a way that is good for business, then it actually gets adopted and everyone wins. >.. minimum wage section ... Fair points and references. How much of the current issues do you think are pure greed from companies vs all the incentives setup from the government to push labor to China and these other countries? A company really has to want to make products in the US, as a mission or marketing tool, in order to not farm it out to try and maintain competitive pricing in the market. That was where a lot of the middle class jobs where at. With fewer companies making stuff here, there are fewer jobs to go around. When you have a lot of people and a few jobs, the wages drop. Bring that work back to the US and demand for workers will go up, which should mean incased wages. Just forcing companies to pay people more ends with non-stop fighting and tension between companies and workers and puts them at odds with each other. It will also require constant government intervention to set new price targets, and all of this could ultimately hurt a lot of companies, as we still have global competition. If instead they fixed the trade imbalance and got it so it made financial sense to make things in the US again (the only fucking thing I wish Trump would have done that he talked about... 30 years ago, instead of being a fuck head the whole time), then we would likely see wages rise organically and a lot of this stuff will sort itself out without a bunch of fights and negotiations every 6 months.... then maybe we'd get the middle class growing again. And once they have money again, they'll spend it and profits will go up. Everybody wins... except China, but with all the money and manufacturing IP we've given them over the decades they're at a point where they can just compete without us, which we're starting to see more and more. Maybe none of this would work and it would all backfire... these are highly complex system. I just know if you truly want business to take an action, and to take it quickly and consistently over time, set up the system so it's in their best interest to do it and the rest tends to take care of itself. >If everyone did that, we might live in a better world but we don't and come on now do you really think those who amass this great wealth aren't egotistical and will try to manipulate the macro in their own self interests which is typically more god damn pointless abstract money. I'm a believer in the old adage that money doesn't change people, it just amplifies who you already were. If you were selfish and egotistical, you'll be more selfish and egotistical. If you were generous and caring you'll be even more generous and caring. I don't think anyone is going to do anything to fuck themselves over, why would they... you wouldn't go out of your way to screw yourself over either. But with millions of millionaires that we never hear about that are just living normal lives.... I think most of them are pretty chill and just living their life, and likely trying to do some good along the way. I've seen some of this first hand. [deleted] >however, they have the option of not working for Amazon. Every single conservative response is always this. ""They should just get a better job if they don't want to work there."" You think they work in those shit conditions by choice? Enough with the bootstraps bullshit already. Go back to blowing Elon. "" Gates and Bezos completely made their companies from nothing. Buffett built his wealth from Berkshire and Musk basically bought into the start up Tesla. But all of them made the vast amount of wealth by themselves by working long hours and many decisions that made their companies what they are today, it would just be nice if they paid their fair share of taxes"" No. They didn't. They didn't make SHIT from nothing. Every fucking one of them was handed their companies on a silver fucking platter. Wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment. It is sad, too. Lots of people out there are stuck in the mud. >Ok then, please provide a definition of ""material wealth"" It is not a technical term so I couldnt care less how it is defined but if you want to tie it to billionaires it needs to be quantifiable as a billionaire is a quantified term. >The painting is a physical object. Can we not agree on that? In order to produce a physical object, somebody must use their labor to make physical changes in the real world. ""Painting"" is defined by the fact that it has been painted. Yes. >Demand changes. The inherent qualities of the object are the same. But the change in demand changes the ""exchange value"" of the painting so the value has changed by a definition of value. >How, exactly, does a capitalist generate a consistent profit if they have no employees? >Where does the painting come from if nobody paints it? I didnt claim either of these things, paintings have to be painted and people who own buisness generally have people work at those buisnesses. >If labor-value is not a component of either of these, then why do billionaires bother having any employees at all? Again I never claimed that labor cant increase value just that value isnt exclusively produced by labor. >Labor-value, and goods produced by labor, can be sold. There are other factors involved in the final price such as demand and utility. But labor is a necessary component. >Mainstream economists don't even disagree on this. Labor is one of the four factors of production. Exactly it is a factor and not the ONLY thing. >A billionaire's wealth has value because it was produced through the combined labor-power of thousands of employees Yes but it is quantified by the price of all thier assets. >You are. You're talking about the price of a painting. That is not artistic value. The price of the painting is not necessarily tied to its contribution to the medium. >Right. It takes no labor to produce a copy anymore. It definitely does. They even sell replicas for hundreds of dollars with the buyers knowing full well it is a replica. You redditors are insufferable and annoying Are you a fucking idiot? Holy shit. The ONLY time you use numbers is to refer to an amount of things. Lmfaoooooo You’re ignoring everything I said. Are you being deliberately obtuse or are you just a lost cause? And I was commenting on your post about the topic that added to the conversation. It's not a big deal. >Nonetheless, its averages are often worse than those found in the rest of the “first world” I'm just gonna drop a [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/s2hfug/american_middle_class_has_the_highest_median/) to the NL sub that you probably hate; gini coefficient is supremely far from the only way to look at a nation's wellbeing. Gini coefficient isn't even a very accurate measure, if you merely go by World Bank gini numbers then you'd think China is less unequal than the USA, and apparently that somehow makes China the superior economy or nation - China literally has their [top quintile making roughly 10x what their bottom quintile makes](http://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/22306.jpeg), and that's *disposable* income, not total income. [In the USA it's roughly 6.5x.](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57061) Gini index is not a perfect measure. You basically are refusing to positively say whether or not you think the US is a first world or third world country (assuming we're using more vague definitions about economics and wellbeing, rather than the Cold War definition), while also criticizing the USA as a highly unequal nation that the rest of the world mocks. We consistently are one of the top scorers for the HDI, we consistently have superior overall economic growth to virtually every European economy (and indeed practically every ""developed"" economy, if you consider India and China to be ""developing"" which I think is somewhat fair - China has plenty of room to grow into its own boots still), we are extremely politically stable with a very notable exception with Donald Trump's election (I blame Russian efforts into destabilizing the country's populace and infiltrating the GOP for this, in large part), we're the majority security guarantee of NATO and Taiwan, and we are the ones who organized the entire democratic world to be ready for Russia's invasion before it happened, paving the way for the current teamwork in working against Russia and aiding Ukraine. The majority - and it isn't even close - of all software companies, which are responsible for a large part of global economic growth, are American (because most technology runs on software these days, and is touched by the American software industry if not outright created by it). We are one of the premier research nations in the world in basically every field, competing at the top in almost every arena (partially because we are one of the only ones who can afford to *fund* every kind of research.) [9 of the ten current most valuable publicly traded companies are from the USA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capitalization) \- almost all of them are either software companies or consumer electronics companies of some sort which heavily rely on software engineering to make and power their products (hell, half the reason to get a Tesla instead of another EV is because of the software in it). The most popular server operating system that powers the bulk of *all tech companies that use any servers at all?* Windows (over 70% market share). The most advanced GPUs in the world? Nvidia. SpaceX isn't even publicly traded but gets honorable mention for completely revolutionizing - if not outright creating - the ""space industry."" ​ Your response didn't say ""America is a third world country"" but you are still mistaken because you also didn't say ""America is practically the definition of a first world country."" The absolutely moronic phrase ""America is a third world nation with a gucci belt"" is far more accurately re-tooled as ""America is a first-world nation, an absolute supermodel, who's struggling to cure acne at the moment."" Because we do have a few glaring problems, as does every nation. But an honest look at our place in the world and how absolutely, absurdly, vital we are to the global order, is so far from the caricature you're flirting with (without directly stating) that you still are *even more wrong* than the caricature *I* made up about people who don't have any perspective of the rest of the world and think the US is a third world country. ​ Ta. I do like the part where you were like: it's laws, traditions, people, religions, Walmart shopping carts, the general structure of our highway system, the fortieth word on page 55 of the Kindle edition of Tao Lin's *Eeee Eee Eeee*... And they were like ""so we agree it's all just people"" .... because you're a raving lunatic, who isn't making a point, just arguing in bad faith. The people who complain about the system but do nothing about it….are not going to change the system. That’s the whole point. The problem with the system is the people that make up the system. The system will never change as long as it has the same kinds of people in it. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. I did address the argument so again, not ad hominem. You're really fucking bad at this. Come to Canada and I’ll show you what you get for a few dollars taken off your paycheck. Our governments fucked healthcare so badly we are turning towards private. Apart from losing money ?!??? How much of your hard earned money do you feel like losing? > And you think nothing would replace Amazon? Or that Amazon replaced nothing? naah actually ur right. amazon is a useless company idk why bezos is even a billionaire Like I said, you get it or you don't. Political and social issues are a hindrance in the first world too. What you learned about the US in TV and movies is all a fantasy. You recognize wealth inequality, but you think I’m envious of the parasitic and lazy wealthy class? You are taking boot licking to another level. Land tax only. You own land, you pay a tax. All commerce should be left to pure free market, and the land tax makes sure to avoid unproductive land. Collective bargaining is a fantastic capitalist compatible strategy. And since members of a union don’t pay dues to a federal agency… it confirms yet again capitalism has its own ability to self regulate. There we go now you're talking with nuance. Pretty well exactly this. I still stand by the idea it is out of reach for more people than it is in reach for but this is a good post. I like the shaved head look. I've been going Jonny Sins Mach 3 clean shaven on my head since high school. Which is probably why I got to fuck whoever I wanted. You see, when you're confident, successful and bald, you get to slay pussy. Unlike you incel types. Maybe if you had a personality and had above a single digit IQ you could get a date. So, no individual who receives a loan is a self starter? By extension, no one is a self starter? Got it. Got a nice no true scottsman fallacy going on here. Of all the people noted, it is above and beyond the one that started from the smallest beginnings. I agree with your first point. As for point 2, even assuming your premise, these silos are created because private operators, unlike public operators, have wide latitude as to what they may publish for profit. So the problem (angry echo chambers) is still connected to profit. But I doubt prospering and satisfied citizens, even if agitated by the “news” of CNN or Fox, would storm their capitol. As to your third point, I apologize for the confusion. “Wealth” was short hand for those who inherit or generate wealth. Those who inherit or generate wealth do not create society. Society creates them. These are citizens who live in a society that allows such activities. For example, rights in property are fictions in law. And law is a fiction of society. We adhere to these fictions because we understand such beliefs benefit society and therefore society encourages and enforces such activities. As for references of works on confused merchant philosophy, an early example is Herbert Spencer’s writings. He also coined the phrase survival of the fittest a decade or more before Charles Darwin. The Chicago School of economic philosophy is another example. Confirming you dont know what capitalism is. Here's what you seem to not be understanding: Even if earth became uninhabitable and all humans died, there would still be massive amounts of unextracted resources. My point is that running out of resources is not the problem; extracting resources in a way that will continue to sustain human life on this planet is the challenge. [deleted] and what happens when people dont pay their taxes? Huh? About your lack of perspective? Do you think I'm talling about an internal pocket where nothing is on the surface? You literally can't comprehend a pit that has surface lava? >especially in a surface. How can it be magma on the surface? It can't. How is this perspective be so complex you can't possible handle the idea of lava being on top of a pit? >I’m aware of what you’re speaking of. Your perspective isn’t complex enough for further explanations to be of any benefit, or for anymore links to be provided….. Lol, translation: I quit and I have zero sources of reasons and I give up. You have provided zero links. Do you know what a link is? Lol > Your argument has been that billionaires are bad. Again. You have a habit of making up stuff. Quote where I said they are bad. Try to read instead of using your imagination… I said they are typically not self made as is the entire point of this image above. Can you debate honestly instead of making straw men? Are you capable of reading? Just kidding, I know you can and you’re just choosing to be disingenuous. The principal purpose of those properties is to make Elon richer. They don’t do help people. You could also do both at once but he chooses not to and trolls Twitter about ending world hunger. Something the 44 billion dollars he just spend could literally do if he wanted to make it. That’s not a person worth defending. You might want to talk to a therapist about your lack of empathy if he is the kind of person you think warrants your effort. Oh yea, the real world where a person needs 340 billion dollars to get by. That’s hoarding buddy. He has more billions than hoarders have stacks of newspapers and literally no single human needs one. You need a perspective check if you think you’re living in reality. No, my assumption is that he’s sitting on a way bigger pile of bananas than any one monkey could ever actually use and that makes him a fucking asshole hoarding his wealth. That and you are delusional. Good bot >Yes, the government did it first. Ford was the first major company to do it, that still matters... and his reasoning behind it was something other business owners could get behind. If you can frame something that is good for workers in a way that is good for business, then it actually gets adopted and everyone wins. Okay I think you are giving far more credence to a person who is giving a pr statement. Social capital was very much a thing and honestly it seems like it worked because again you are still idolizing a man who was likely pressured by the workers, he ain't doing it out of the goodness of his heart. Even in his own statement it was to advance his wealth. Hell we are seeing this basically with Apple right now where they release a half assed ""right to repair"" self service that is only a small portion of what is requested for right to repair but they can point at their new service and say see they have ""right to repair"" so no reason to push legislation through about the topic. >incentives setup from the government to push labor to China and these other countries? A company really has to want to make products in the US, as a mission or marketing tool, in order to not farm it out to try and maintain competitive pricing in the market. >That was where a lot of the middle class jobs where at. With fewer companies making stuff here, there are fewer jobs to go around. When you have a lot of people and a few jobs, the wages drop. Except we would never be viable as a manufacturer because of our wages. If China wasn't the manufacturing hub of the world, it would be another 3rd world country that will be built up by ""all the money and manufacturing IP we've given them over the decades they're at a point where they can just compete without us"". There is no damn way we can compete with .03$ to 3.83$ wages. Hell the agriculture sector of our economy relies on under paid workers. Like the GOP might hammer home about hoards of illegal immigrants ""stealing"" jobs but they don't focus on the corps/companies that hire said immigrants, they merely target the people who come here because they know about the opportunities that are available to them. Globalization has been opened and there no way its being put back into the box. It makes no financial sense to have jobs here besides social/service jobs. Hell the system will have to change in the coming decades once general purpose automatons hit the scene. The idea of self driving cars could mean the end of an industry that employs nearly 1/10 of the US work force. There will certainly be some new jobs but it isn't going to be a 1:1 replacement scale. We need to plan for a future where this is a reality because if we slack off on it it will lead to a bad time for a great many. Hell the pandora's box of remote work has been opened now due to covid and that shit need to be locked down by governments because once companies figure out oh wow we don't need to waste money in commercial real estate, hell what stops us from just making other countries doing our remote work now due to us have the framework here to do it. Like I like remote work since it ended a pointless inefficiency of ""tradition"" but it needs to be steered before it gets out of hand and we just get another outsource wave. >I'm a believer in the old adage that money doesn't change people, it just amplifies who you already were. If you were selfish and egotistical, you'll be more selfish and egotistical. If you were generous and caring you'll be even more generous and caring. I don't think anyone is going to do anything to fuck themselves over, why would they... I think you are losing sight of this discussion was mostly around people who have accrued so much wealth that money becomes but a mere abstract concept. Millionaire realistically isn't a hard goal these days, if you own 2 houses in the current market, congrats you might be a millionaire by your mere assets alone. I fundamentally disagree with the assertion that power doesn't change people, it just amplifies who they already are. Yes I am aware I changed money to power but they are in a way interchangeable (Money can get you power or easier access to it and power can get you money). It implies humans are immutable things that are merely cursed to be how they have always been ignoring external stimuli. Of course there are rare exceptions to that rule but I think humans are far more a mix of their environment than they are to their nature. What a ridiculous and childish argument. Good luck. I don't understand what you want, then. Amazon offers the job, freely. If this is the best job they can get, then this is what their labor is worth. I cannot make their labor more valuable. And I responded to that by not denying or accepting any of the claims, but making a point that they have all have luck with some level of competence that’s better than most. Also making a point that those who seek to discredit success, true or not, are typically envious people who dislike having to see themselves and what they lack. The only way for these people to cope is to dismantle successful people by putting everything on “luck”, which I did not deny they had. Oh no, did someone’s ego get hurt by being wrong? It refers to any number from a million to a billion. It refers to the numbers not things. There's a difference. What have I ignored exactly? I wouldn’t call it adding to the conversation considering placing a bet on red and placing a bet on a red number are completely different bets. With different odds and different payouts. Of course this could be done, but that’s not what was being said. The fact you are having trouble understanding this makes me think you don’t know how the game works. To which I can only suggest using the internet for resources on how it’s played and some simple terminology to help you grasp things better. Beyond that, good luck and have fun! I appreciate the effort put into a genuine response. As far as the stats go - I’m not married to any particular metric, and I appreciate your thoughts on that particular one. I’m not under the illusion that any one statistical means of evaluating concepts like quality of life is capable of providing a foolproof, wholly-representative evaluation, try as they might. One of the fun things about these metrics is that there’s usually a case to be found where they don’t provide a particularly accurate picture at face value, like in the example you mentioned with China. The minutia of a given interpretation can be argued ad nauseam even in the best case scenario where all involved are well equipped to make sound assessments. I’m not a statistician. Though I’m not opposed to delving into the data or attempting to evaluate the means by which it was acquired, I prefer to leave the heavy lifting to those better qualified and practice healthy skepticism for my own sake until I feel compelled to make my own pass at it in the effort to better understand it or in combating misleading narratives that have gone unchallenged. To get back to the original point, no, I personally don’t care to speak to whether or not the US is a third world country. I wouldn’t make the claim myself for a variety of reasons - among them the fact that I don’t think it’s “true” as far as the popular understanding of the terms is a worthwhile frame of reference to begin with. No, the United States is not a third world nation. Yes, it has been and remains the poster child for capitalist success stories, and obviously it remains undeniably dominant and critical to the maintenance of the global economy even during periods of turmoil such as the 2008 crash, the Trump presidency, and the COVID pandemic. Frankly though, I don’t think the objective reality of the US’ place at the top of the food chain by a variety of metrics is really the point in contention in the first place, though I’m aware that’s how such criticisms are perceived by those inclined to respond defensively. I can’t speak for every argument nor those involved, but in my opinion conversations such as this are regularly derailed by miscommunication from the get-go. False assumptions of a lack of knowledge or outright denial on the part of those being critical of US/capitalist hegemony abound, even at their most grounded and diplomatically stated. It’s a matter of people seeing the same things and coming to different conclusions while struggling to keep in mind that others aren’t guaranteed to share the same thought processes - a confusion of values, priorities, and faith in the ability of the status quo and those dedicated to it to accurately assess its successes and its shortcomings. ... not what I said Chief, and if you truly believe a law (a piece of paper), and not the people enforcing said law (people) can stop you from doing something, then you're an idiot, who is arguing with as much bad faith as the other person was. Yeah, anyone explaining concepts you don’t understand is a raving lunatic. It’s them who are the problem, couldn’t possibly be you 🙄 No, the whole point is that you can’t boil down a large-scale problem to, “well everything is just made up of people so change the people” and act like that’s a reasonable and realistic path to change. Again, that’s just a cop out. I don’t know what country you’re in, but in America, the average citizen has essentially no impact whatsoever on government policy. So the first step towards change very often is large amounts of people complaining about the system. That is a step towards changing it. We can’t fix problems if we don’t honestly and critically discuss them first. “JuSt cHaNgE tHe PeOpLe” is not the easy answer you make it out to be. It’s no answer at all, just a way of making the problem seem insurmountable and shutting down the conversation so the status quo keeps on truckin’ Lmao, what kind of idiot makes this kind of reply? ""I dont have an answer but ur dumb and im right hur dur"" Just stfu and dont answer at all if youre not willing to talk, this answer is so useless lol I didn't read your response because you're clearly a moron who can't respond to even the most basic of points. Have a great day. Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black... Lmao buddy I’ve lived in Canada my whole life. While we have probably the worst/most inefficient publicly funded healthcare in the world, it’s still far better than the USAs privatized healthcare system. In the USA, you do get money taken out of your account instead of off of your check every month. And then when you go to the hospital, the insurance company that took said money then tries their hardest to make you pay anyways. This is not even mentioning the fact that even if they decide to pay for it in full,[in the USA you still spend more tax dollars per capita on healthcare than any publicly funded system.](https://www.cihi.ca/en/how-does-canadas-health-spending-compare) But tell me more about how Canada’s healthcare sucks and you wish you could be dealing with private insurance while you’re also trying not to die. Lmao, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point I’m trying to make is a counterpoint to you saying without money people wouldn’t be motivated to invent things. But how many ideas have been killed by lack of funding, or even just for being considered “too risky”. Also, it’s not his money anyways. Because he got $300,000 seed money from his parents, had rich friends who also invested, then repurposed ideas that were nearly a century old right when he could get funding during the dot-com bubble. He didn't *invent* something that changed the world. In fact, he used illegal business practices, like having AWS make up his margins while he undercut the price on products below cost, thereby beating his competition. And, if Amazon went away, someone like IBM, Microsoft, or Google will pick up the slack. If you had your Maslow hierarchy of needs met, would you complain about your neighbor having his met + $1bn dollars? It’s sad that you also don’t understand wealth for what it actually is, it’s an information system… and in capitalist environments it moves work and resource potential from the useless to the useful. Wow this is so simplistic. So you just don't care about import taxation then? Seems like any nation doing this would simply cease to exist or become taken advantage of. [deleted] Yeah all the successful people I know brag about how much pussy they slay, totally a thing that confident, well-adjusted people do. The difference between you and Jonnny Sins is I actually know who that is and he fucks multiple women, meanwhile you’re nobody and threw in the towel to marry some fortune cookie clone trooper from the wrong side of the ocean. No billionaire is a self made man. That was the entire starting point. Of course you turned it into ""Hurr durr anyone with a loan then huh?!"" which is way more of a no true scotsman than I ever said. I wouldn't have expected your neurons to accidentally bang together to actually make a point anyway. Anyway, I saw your profile and noticed you were a complete troglodyte troll that only has a good take like 5% of the time, so I'm going to block you so I don't have to see your drooling around the rest of the site. [deleted] Sorry bub, this is obviously going way over your head. [deleted] What happens now if you don’t pay your taxes? That has no bearing on what I’m saying whatsoever. I get it. You think taxation is theft right? We’re obviously not going to agree and I don’t care to fight about it Of not knowing that 300,000 is a lot to most people? That was a reasonable assumption. >Do you think I'm talling about an internal pocket where nothing is on the surface? That’s what a pit is…. >You literally can't comprehend a pit that has surface lava? Just as you can’t seem to comprehend a magma chamber with an opening >It wouldn’t be called a pot, it would be called a crater. There’s no such thing as a Or a magma chamber. My point was, there’s no such thing as a lava pit. A pit is much deeper and more narrow. A crater is more shallow and bowl shaped. What you described, by using the word pit, matches a magma chamber. If you meant a lava lake, use terminology you didn’t steal from a video game >How can it be magma on the surface? Because a pit is beneath the surface. >How is this perspective be so complex you can't possible handle the idea of lava being on top of a pit? You can barely string a sentence together and you have no idea what a pit is….. I don’t think you’re in any position to comment on anyone else being able to handle an idea. >Lol, translation: I quit and I have zero sources of reasons and I give up. If you prefer simplistic translations, that’s perfectly fine. At least translate correctly. I never said I quit. This isn’t a complex issue….. I have no idea why you’re demanding links. Do you have some kind of disability? Serious question. If you do, my tone will change. >You have provided zero links. Why on earth do you need a link for simple definitions? I’m mot your mommy or daddy, you can use any search engine or dictionary see the same exact definition as me. It’s not as though these terms are complex and under heavy debate. >Do you know what a link is? Lol I do. Are you capable of learning anything without a link, or do you seriously have a learning disability. I definitely should have asked that earlier. Saying ""I didn't say that"" when you said that in a different way is the epotime of the pointing spiderman meme. They employ 110,000 people.... Do you know what that means for those 110,000 people? Or are you actually that dense? He did not troll Twitter about solving world hunger. Wow you clearly do not acutally read beyond headlines. He told the idiot who tweeted him about donating 6B to end world hunger that show me a plan that will let 6B actually solve the problem. The head of the world food program had to sulk back to his corner and admit that the money wouldn't solve shit and would cover the food programs cost for 1 year. Guess what? That fucking money is the actual problem. Do some reasearch on what these programs do to countries where the food and money is sent to. I will save you the time becuase I know you won't look. It destroys the economy, funds warlords and makes it impossible for the population to compete with the stolen food products when compared to the costs to grow their own. Economies are built on agriculture, food programs are designed to destroy the agriculture segment of target countries. ​ You do not understand anything of which you speak with your self professed authority about. [removed] You need to get educated on basics of how economies work. Ironic really considering what subreddit this is. > Even in his own statement it was to advance his wealth. That's my whole point. Find a way to make it win-win and then it doesn't become a battle. Employees get what they want and the company gets what it wants. No one feels like they're getting fucked. This is a good thing, I'm not sure why you're trying to paint it as a bad one. >Except we would never be viable as a manufacturer because of our wages. If China wasn't the manufacturing hub of the world, it would be another 3rd world country that will be built up...There is no damn way we can compete with .03$ to 3.83$ wages. That's why you tax imports instead of just letting companies make things for pennies on the dollar overseas and ship them here. That levels the playing field, while also providing a source of income that can be used to pay for infrastructure, social services, or whatever. My point about China being able to compete with all the skills we handed to them was not about money, it was about quality. Back when I was growing up anything made in China was considered of poor quality. They didn't have the same manufacturing expertise as the US. That isn't true anymore. >Globalization has been opened and there no way its being put back into the box. It makes no financial sense to have jobs here besides social/service jobs. How about from a climate change perspective? Certainly having something made down the road has less impact on the environment than producing things in areas that care less about the environmental impact of factories and then shipping them halfway around the world. Everyone wants to be ""green"", but they still want to buy a bunch of bull shit for pennies. >Hell the pandora's box of remote work has been opened now due to covid and that shit need to be locked down by governments because once companies figure out oh wow we don't need to waste money in commercial real estate, hell what stops us from just making other countries doing our remote work now due to us have the framework here to do it. Like I like remote work since it ended a pointless inefficiency of ""tradition"" but it needs to be steered before it gets out of hand and we just get another outsource wave. Outsourcing has been happening for decades. In less developed countries it's actually more important for companies to have offices, as you can't rely as much on the infrastructure around all the workers. Reliable power, internet, etc. Not to mention noise. During COVID my company showed some pictures of people working from home around the world. One guy was in a plastic lawn chair, outside, with is laptop on a big cardboard box. It didn't look like he was just enjoying the weather, it looked like that was his option for getting things done without an office to go to. I will also say, there are major advantages to having everyone who is working together in the same timezone. Trying to communicate and coordinate things when people don't really have any overlapping time on-shift sucks. It's so inefficient. >I think you are losing sight of this discussion was mostly around people who have accrued so much wealth that money becomes but a mere abstract concept. Most of the people near the top aren't actually motivated by the money, it's a happy side effect of what they were doing. There is always a large mission driving these people, if there wasn't, they would quit long before they get to the point they're at. >I cannot make their labor more valuable. See you can actually, by doing this thing called ""voting"". Vote for people who will raise the minimum wage. Vote for people who won't freely give the \`1% massive tax breaks while simultaneously screwing over the middle and lower class. Vote for people who support proper workers rights. Stop bootlicking billionaire CEOs and start caring about the people they're hurting by being allowed to hoard these massive fortunes that they could never spend in 100 lifetimes. >Gates and Bezos completely made their companies from nothing. No they didn't. You've come in to defend them and distract from this. My original point still stands Difference of opinion about what adds to the conversation. Not a big deal. No need to take it personal. “Explaining concepts you don’t understand” Multiple layers of misconception and bad faith here Sorry,I personally have never been stopped by a law (a piece of paper with ink on it). Nor have I seen that, I have only ever seen people do that. But I am willing to learn. Please explain this concept to me, and even possibly link me to a youtube video, I would love to see paper overpower someone. You’re the one boiling things down to try and simplify a complex social problem. And idk what country you’re in, but everyone complaining about something has never done a thing for us. That is not a step towards anything. You’re right that we need to honestly and critically discuss these things. You’re also right that I haven’t provided an answer. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. See, that is ad hominem. You did nothing to address the argument. Hopefully you take this lesson and learn something. In Quebec the provincial government is pushing a new language law where a doctor wouldn’t have the right to speak to a patient in English. I’ll switch places with you tonight The money belongs to someone. If you're borrowing that money or otherwise 'taking care of it' you're responsible for it. > He didn't *invent* something that changed the world again bro, youre the only one here using the word invent So long as my neighbor didn’t exploit people to make that wealth. Chances are, he did. Useless to the useful…How many pitiful levels of bootlicking will you conquer? Nope, no import tax needed. Free market trade provides goods and services at the lowest cost to consumers period. Oh I see, you’re mistaking governance with an economic model. I bet you’re actually for capitalism with governance. What I’m against (so we don’t talk past each other) is for the government to receive money, proceeds, from commerce between consenting parties. Getting in between private commerce to “get a cut” via taxes is socialism and suboptimal. I'll think about your comment tonight while I rub my head and fuck my wife. Have fun jerking off into a sock, kid. Have fun spreading propaganda Oh no you uno reversed me Sorry for backing you into a corner bro. That's not what this is about. This is about you setting an arbitrary limit on the amount of money someone can earn, and taking it by force. Do you have any concept of freedom? This is one of the worst ideas i've ever heard outside of straight up communism/socialism. Clearly you're confused. So a random person lied to you and you just believed them. And you're insulting me because you now look dumb when you incorrectly use all that terminology. Hilarious. Imagine being so dumb you never ask for links and blindly believe everyone online. We figured it out. Edit: Pit-  a hollow or indentation especially in a surface of an organism: as. a : a natural hollow in the surface of the body. b : one of the indented scars left in the skin by a pustular disease : pockmark. Citation: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pit#:~:text=(Entry%201%20of%202),by%20a%20pustular%20disease%20%3A%20pockmark Multiple mentions of surface. You are undeniably wrong. Bye. Quote my words and show me where then. If you can’t provide an example then you don’t have a real point. How many times have I asked you to quote me and then you change the subject to “in essence you said that” OK then quote the in essences part! It shouldn’t be this hard seriously. Yea no one else would own these businesses if Elon wasn’t hoarding them all to employ those people and they would just be on the street. I forgot he’s your god so he single handedly is providing all those jobs you fucking clown. Don’t forget some of those employees might even have the protection of a union if he wasn’t a union busting shit. And yes, he trolled around about making a donation that would actually help people knowing full well he could nitpick any plan put forward and weasel out. So you don’t think your god boy Elon could have found a way to help provide food aide without enriching warlords? He might just be human after all huh. You have no empathy for people being exploited by a ruling class, that much is clear. And you sound like a bootlicking apologist for some of the worst people in society. Whatever floats your boat I guess. Ironically, economic policy has been used as justification for plenty of atrocities throughout history. Maybe look into the Irish ‘potato famine’. Just because the economy rewards an action does not make it a morally just action. Neither is agglomerating as much wealth as possible for yourself and giving nothing back, but the economy rewards that because capital is power. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, this is about more than just economic policy but you can keep trying to simplify away my actual point since you can’t actually address it. > That's my whole point. Find a way to make it win-win and then it doesn't become a battle. You are always falling for the fallacy of there always going to be a win win scenario for everyone. >That's why you tax imports instead of just letting companies make things for pennies on the dollar overseas and ship them here. That levels the playing field, while also providing a source of income that can be used to pay for infrastructure, social services, or whatever. Oh yes the tariffs, which we already have in place and at the end of the day it will just mean the consumer pays for them in the end. Also ""our skills"" aren't something special or unique. Again if it wasn't China it would be another 3rd world country. India probably the most likely to take that mantle next after people just say fuck China finally. >How about from a climate change perspective? Certainly having something made down the road has less impact on the environment than producing things in areas that care less about the environmental impact of factories and then shipping them halfway around the world. Everyone wants to be ""green"", but they still want to buy a bunch of bull shit for pennies. Because it is cheap. Are you seriously suggesting like a 200% tariff. People might bitch and complain about Walmart and the other big box retailers but they still go to them because they are able to offer the biggest discounts (because once other smaller business collapse they can just raise prices). >During COVID my company showed Are you seriously suggesting a company has an unbiased pov on such a topic. Yes those in less developed countries may still need centralized offices but we can still send a ton of work there easier because work that was classed as ""unoutsorcable"" was . Also its a bit odd since you ignored my whole point on automation and the system has to change in the coming decades and there is once again no WIN WIN there. >Most of the people near the top aren't actually motivated by the money So what are these 4 men's missions you claim they have? None of those things will change the demand for labor. If anything, they will decrease the demand for labor. Raising the minimum wage will certainly reduce the demand for labor. Now, a safe working environment is important, and must be seen as a prerequisite. But demand for labor is a different animal. You seem to think there is a finite amount of wealth in the world. There is at any given time, but more wealth is produced constantly. The 1% don't take from the poor to acquire their wealth (in the US, at least); they trade what they have to offer for what someone else has to offer. The trades are made voluntarily. I didn’t make that claim? Nor do I agree. No one builds from nothing. The only defense im making is that it’s not 100% luck. I also don’t believe any of them made a claim of being self made. I’m just pointing out the people who tend to flood these types threads angrily discrediting successful people are typically dissatisfied with their own lives, because I see no other way I would seek to discredit anyone’s successes and figuring out all the ways they had immutable advantages unless I was unhappy with my lot in life or believed things are rigged against you. Or possibly just parroting what they believe what the majority is saying here is correct. If you believe there’s another reason or why you personally seek to discredit them with vitriol, I’m genuinely interested to know. Sure it does kiddo, whatever makes you feel like you matter Yeah, on your part haha The reason a piece of paper with ink on it has never stopped you is because you lack basic reading comprehension skills 🤣 Speaking openly and honestly about problems is often the same thing as complaining in these contexts. e.g. A groups of workers complaining that they’re underpaid and disrespected by management is openly discussing a labor problem. It’s step one towards fixing it. I’m not saying that’s guarantees it will be fixed. But it definitely doesn’t get addressed if nobody speaks out (complains). I’m in the U.S. The history of social reform in America is that reform begins when large groups of people, people who themselves lack the power to enact change, start speaking out in order to put pressure on the systems that are perpetuating the status quo and impeding reform. Youre a dumb dumb and im right I didn't read your response because you're clearly a moron who can't respond to even the most basic of points. Have a great day. Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black... again... Lol and that has absolutely nothing to do with governments being inefficient, and everything to do with quebecs politics around language. Yes, but you asked how much of my own money I would be willing to risk. Well, I don’t have a ton to risk anyways, but with a 300k investment I would surely feel a lot more comfortable starting a business. Innovation isn’t exploitation. Notice you’re so emotional you defer to a term called boot licking. What if I’m the boot? You do realize that free market isn't always going to be free forever right? And if you don't levy an import tax what would be the incentive against out sourcing almost everything? Free market would also allow price gouging and collusion if there isn't any deterrents. [deleted] Imagine saying this and thinking that you’re bragging 😂 Tell your wife she did a great job snapping my iPad together. Hopefully if she saves up her whole life she’ll finally be able to by you a toupee. I imagine it must pay better than streaming to 0 viewers. Capitalism literally means you can own your own property and can own the inputs of production without the government input. However, we obviously have laws and regulations in place by the government that have a certain amount of control on business and the market which is not possible in a complete, unchecked capitalist system. Like all of Europe and much of the rest of the world we have a Mixed Market Economy with some characteristics of both socialism and capitalism. Projection’s a biatch. I do… I feel 100 people getting their personal income capped in order to provide a high standard of living to all people is completely fair and would actually provide all people the “freedom” we claim to be built on while still allowing 99.99% of people to still achieve as much monetary success as they could possibly want. Would you be on board if 100% of this money had to spent on the social services I listed? I don’t want to see the money disappear into the .gov sludge either. I want it to do actual good. Nope, pretty sure I’m not. A random person lied to me? Are you commenting on the right post? Honestly wouldn’t surprise me at this point….. If not, I’m sorry for being so harsh on you. I know you’re doing the best you can. Tesla would have gone bankrupt without Elon. SpaceX wouldn't have been founded. Boring Company wouldn't exist. Solar city wouldn't exist. OpenAI would be 5 years behind it's current development level without Elon. Neurallink wouldn't even be an idea let alone a company doing actual research. ​ But yes, do continue to spout things that you do not understand. You can believe what you like about his intention regarding the donation. He made it very clear that they needed to provide an actual plan to solve the problem. The food program didn't do that. He is not obligated to even donate. Why don't you give all of your money to them if you care so much? ​ You have no empathy for people who devoted their lives for the improvement of humanity, that much is clear. You think that actually bothers me. Cute. That's the thing about morality we all play a part in it's creation and implementation. The market rewards billionaires for the vaule they create for the world. Which by default means you are involved in that as well. Do you shop on Amazon? Guess what, you are complicit in the wealth that is held by Jeff Bezos. >You are always falling for the fallacy of there always going to be a win win scenario for everyone. It's at least worth looking for, instead of just thinking getting into battles with unions are the solution to literally every problem. >Oh yes the tariffs, which we already have in place and at the end of the day it will just mean the consumer pays for them in the end. Also ""our skills"" aren't something special or unique. Again if it wasn't China it would be another 3rd world country. India probably the most likely to take that mantle next after people just say fuck China finally. The tariffs clearly aren't high enough if it's still so cheap to get stuff over here. You say the customer is going to pay for the tariffs, but you who do you think is going to pay for the higher wages? At least with the tariffs the wages rise organically due to normal supply/demand and not through force. Price will go up either way, but wages should be rising as well. The idea that everyone is going to make more money while prices stay the same is not going to happen. If everyone across the board made an extra $20k/year there would be inflation and prices prices would rise. At the end of the day there will still be people on the low end of the pay scale that struggle more than the rest. You can't have a distribution that starts in the middle. >Because it is cheap. Are you seriously suggesting like a 200% tariff. People might bitch and complain about Walmart and the other big box retailers but they still go to them because they are able to offer the biggest discounts (because once other smaller business collapse they can just raise prices). I think all of this would have the added side effect of people consuming less, thinking more before their purchases, and buying longer lasting stuff instead of continuing on with this throw-away culture. All of this would have a bigger impact on climate change than most other actions being taken. Modern consumption is out of control and it's fueled by cheap shit. >Are you seriously suggesting a company has an unbiased pov on such a topic. I've also been to India multiple times and have seen where several of my co-workers work and have heard them and experienced what it's like when they have tried to work from home, even before COVID. >Also its a bit odd since you ignored my whole point on automation and the system has to change in the coming decades and there is once again no WIN WIN there. Is this a UBI argument? I thought Andrew Yang made some good points on this topic, but I also don't think it's going to be the end-game solution. A lot of people don't know what to do with themselves without a job. They need a reason to get up in the morning and their job gives them that. You may feel that a jobs sucks the life out of you and there are a million things you can think to do, but you're not everyone. I don't know where the jobs displaced by automation will pivot to, but I have to imagine there will be something. People made similar claims to the ones you're making around the industrial revolution. As productivity goes up, we just find most shit to do, once the other stuff is being done for us. >So what are these 4 men's missions you claim they have? - Buffett seems to genuinely enjoy reading financial statements and stuff. He thinks it's fun/interesting. - Elon wants to go to Mars and make humans multi-planetary. Tesla is basically his effort to help keep Earth viable long enough to get there, as his full vision is not something that will happen in his lifetime. With him buying Twitter he wants there to be a ""town square"" online that has the same freedom of speech people enjoy in an actual town square.... I wouldn't be surprised if he lost money on this. He also sunk everything he had from PayPal into Tesla, when that was a lot shot of a company. Everything he does doesn't seem like it should work on paper, he clearly was a vision and mission beyond just making money. - Bill Gates wanted to see a computer in every home. He also had a dream of a completely paperless office, I remember reading about at one point. Now he has a new mission. - Bezos wanted to have earth's most customer-centric company. Now with his rockets he wants to lay the foundation for future generations to makes space travel much easier. - Steve Jobs thought computers were a ""bicycle for the mind"" and could greatly enhance the human potential. He also invested his personal fortune at the time into keeping Pixar afloat until Toy Story came out. If that didn't work he would have basically been broke. People don't take risks like that if they don't believe in something more behind what they are doing. - Google wanted to organize the world's data. Also note that they don't just stop working. Bill Gates could retire and just have fun all day every day with his billions, but instead he started the foundation that spends billions of dollars every year to help fight disease and various things. This is his new mission. If it was about the money, he wouldn't be doing something that is just to give it all away. >The 1% don't take from the poor to acquire their wealth (in the US, at least); they trade what they have to offer for what someone else has to offer. The trades are made voluntarily. They do actually. They run the companies that pay slave wages, offer shit benefits, and lobby politicians to reduce workers rights under the guise of ""freedom of choice"". A worker trading their wages for labor isn't really ""voluntary"" when the game is rigged by the people who get to set the wages and workers have essentially no bargaining power or safety nets to fall back on. It's ""voluntary"" in a way that me choosing between two different shit sandwiches are ""voluntary"". You just like to paint it in a way that ""they have a choice"" to convince yourself that poor people are poor strictly of their own accord, and that these horrendously wealthy, unethical assholes are people worthy of praise. At this point it's just Feudalism with a different name, and you're kissing a king's ring and jerking off to his crown every night. Yes. I must be unhappy with my life, that's why I hate the people who are fucking up the entire fucking world in the name of MORE PROFIT. Not that i care but you still choose to have the custom snu and you are a dumbass so my point was correct Haha h o w I see, so you are saying people who are illiterate have a massive advantage over you... It is all making sense now, you have a mental deficit. By all means, whenever your 'geniusness' stumbles upon a video of paper overpowering anyone, feel free to send it to me, or you could make one yourself, since you have such difficulty with it. I suppose complaining is indeed step one. You’re right that nothing will get done if nobody speaks out. We’re just stuck at step one. The history of social reform in America is that the complaints made by the wealthy get addressed. It’s great when complaints of the unwealthy get heard by and empathized by the wealthy, but what happens when the wealthy want the exact opposite? I’m not sure how you can live in the US and still believe that loudness putting on “pressure” has any impact. What has had an impact is dollars. Hi, I didn't bother reading your response due to the overwhelming amount of idiots whinging to me on here. I know you think you are very smart, but you are not, and whatever crummy point you tried to make, I have already answered multiple times. Have a great day. And more ad hominem. I'm going to go ahead and assume you've given up. Unless you can provide some argument as to why the common understanding i.e. definition of a word or phrase is bandwagon fallacy (and the idea of that is fucking laughable) I'm going to go ahead and ignore you now. Have a great night. Hey look! Bandwagon fallacy in book form to you: https://content.etilize.com/225/1064446854.jpg An elderly man died as a result of not being able to be treated by a nurse who spoke English and a native woman died on the ground in her room while the nurses looking after her insulted her and blamed her for her death in her last moments but that doesn’t sound like inefficient management at all. I don’t know what I was thinking There’s always bigger fish small fry. You are still a boot licker. Collusion and monopolies are governance and policy issues… You people keep conflating governance with economics. As you type on magical glass that has access to nearly all human knowledge… and ignore the quality of living trajectory. I am sorry you're alone and nobody likes you. It probably stems from you being uninteresting, unsuccessful and unintelligent. Get a hobby, read a book, get good at something. Maybe stop living in your mom's basement. Maybe then someone will actually want to date or marry you. Your hair isn't going to be enough to impress anyone. Probably not, but you should at least try. Also not sure what you are even talking about with my wife. We went to high school together and she's American lol. Oh shit. You have no idea what capitalism is. I'm rubber and you're glue. Anything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you. >I do… I feel 100 people getting their personal income capped Gotcha, so as long as its a minority, its okay to oppress them. If only that counted for something. As you had basically every idea wrong and zero citation, I was obviously talking you. Pit-  a hollow or indentation especially in a surface of an organism: as. a : a natural hollow in the surface of the body. b : one of the indented scars left in the skin by a pustular disease : pockmark. Citation: [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pit#:~:text=(Entry%201%20of%202),by%20a%20pustular%20disease%20%3A%20pockmark](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pit#:%7E:text=(Entry%201%20of%202\),by%20a%20pustular%20disease%20%3A%20pockmark) Multiple mentions of surface. You are undeniably wrong. You've never looked up any if these ideas. Bye. Keep shilling. Who did he help by building a big ass tunnel under Las Vegas? How is trying to set up a debtors colony on l Mars solving any actual problems? You are delusional. What do you think I don’t understand? Again, Elon doesn’t design things he just owns them. These ideas would still be out there even if he never moved from South Africa to Canada. Oh yea, real big brained take there. “You haven’t completely disconnect from the capitalist reality of society so you can’t complain about it” is the shittiest argument in the book. They control so much of our world the only way not to engage is to completely leave and going off grid then makes making any systemic change impossible. Fuck off somewhere else with your logical fallacies. >It's at least worth looking for, instead of just thinking getting into battles with unions are the solution to literally every problem. Rights are won with fighting (verbally or physically). Just hoping big business wants to do thing because they are ""Kind"" is foolish. > At least with the tariffs the wages rise organically due to normal supply/demand and not through force. And you are suggesting tariffs aren't through ""force"". Seems you are justifying some things but not others. >I think all of this would have the added side effect of people consuming less, thinking more before their purchases, and buying longer lasting stuff instead of continuing on with this throw-away culture. All of this would have a bigger impact on climate change than most other actions being taken. Modern consumption is out of control and it's fueled by cheap shit. That doesn't change the nature of planned obsolescence and the removal for consumer rights. I even pointed to this with my last response on Apple's response to the ""right to repair"" movement. We wouldn't have seen jack shit without people angry about the current situation and again they are merely doing the barest minimums to try to avoid regulation. If you are for the consumption of less, we aren't going to get there naturally since companies have been pushing for lower quality stuff because making a high quality product that can last decades doesn't make them as much as a lower quality one that gets replaced every 3 or 4 years. Our current system wants infinite growth in the shortest amount of time damning the god damn future. >Is this a UBI argument? I thought Andrew Yang made some good points on this topic, but I also don't think it's going to be the end-game solution. A lot of people don't know what to do with themselves without a job. I mean you are implying work would not exist or nothing will be done. I fundamentally disagree with that for the same reason you argue against me. There are people who do work for the sake of purpose, hell even on the sadder end of it work is the only way some people have ""friends"". > I don't know where the jobs displaced by automation will pivot to, but I have to imagine there will be something. People made similar claims to the ones you're making around the industrial revolution. Like yes the same argument has been made about any period of technological change. Hell Eli Whitney thought the invention of the cotton gin would lead to the decline to US slavery since less people need to waste time picking seeds out of the cotton but it actually made cotton farming far more viable so they just shifting over the seed picking slaves to merely planting more cotton. Now with that said automation is a bit different because its not only affecting one portion of the economic sector but a great number of sectors at once like the most easily visible side of it would be transportation/pathfinding robots. There are other robots and programs that can simply replace humans. Like simple office work like report making, financial reports, and the such can currently be done with complex macros and this has been the case for quite some time. I already touched on driving cars but I didn't talk about how those could also make some warehousing jobs obsolete, Amazon has invested in a robotics company for this exact reason. There are even early ""creative"" AIs, some that can automate the tasks of writing, making music, etc. We've been seeing bots handling customer service roles via chat and via phone (hell voice recognition has taken off in the last 15 years). Hell the whole basis of machine learning is AIs teaching AIs to do things, that is why the whole ""algorithm"" thing is far more complex than people make it out to be since longer than a few simple if then statements. The working class is starting to look closer to the horses instead of the coachmen, we believe ourselves to be. >Also note that they don't just stop working. Bill Gates could retire and just have fun all day every day with his billions, but instead he started the foundation that spends billions of dollars every year to help fight disease and various things. Sure I guess but in each one of your examples besides Buffet is they are merely exerting their power. It also opens up the argument that of ""The end justifies the means"" so no matter how they do things as long as its for a good its all fine. I think you put too much belief in these people. That is not the way it works, and you know that. They certainly do have a choice, a choice among a variety of jobs. If they have skills above average, they can command more money. Why do you think college graduates get paid more? If the companies had their choice, they wouldn't pay more. But companies *don't* have a choice if they want a more skilled employee. This is the basic working of supply and demand. When all actors are free to accept or refuse the offer, then the optimal price for the transaction is, on average, reached. Poor people are poor because they don't have a skill to sell that pays well. That is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy, it is just the state of affairs. This is not feudalism, it is freedom. And it has been shown to achieve the highest standard of living for all members of society. I wouldnt put it like that but I think converting the automobile landscape away from fossil fuels to EV is a net positive for the world and far from fucking the entire world up, I think you’d agree. From your tone it’s hard to see a happy person. Do you think you are happy? I’m not trying to be pretentious, I genuine want to know. It may change my perspective because I do really think unhappy, hateful, or envious people tend to push the discrediting of successful people You literally said “mine didn’t” when I told you it was autogenerated lmfao You only changed to “well you can opt out” once you knew you were wrong I thought facts were more important than feelings?? Why are you getting up in your feelings with attacks when being proven wrong?🤔 That’s just not a conducive way to live life, it’ll set you back I definitely thought you were the other commenter. My mistake. I’m writing a reply to your other recent comment right now Ask and you shall receive. I’m sure you’ll find this video extremely helpful: https://youtu.be/NkxJSwa_b3A We totally agree that wealth = power and that the wealthy are absolutely the citizens with the most impact on policy in America. That’s been true since the inception of the country. The loudness (to use your term) is the start. When reform has been successful historically, what follows speaking out is causing significant trauma to the systems in place. Usually in response to human suffering. Examples; in the early 20th century corporate monopolists massively exploited the labor force. Eventually labor organized and fought back with repeated strikes and outright violence against capital (trauma to the system), leading to reforms like collective bargaining, laws mandating minimum wages and maximum work hours, etc. Women’s suffrage is another example. They spoke out, were met with marginalization and oppression, and responded with disruptive protests, marches, etc. that caused trauma to the established social system eventually forcing change. You can find the same pattern in the civil rights movement, and the LGBTQ rights movement. Nobody gives up the status quo without being pushed until their back is against the wall. Wealth is always the minority numbers-wise, hence their constant efforts to divide the majority (including the propaganda that individualized action solves social problems that I was calling out when this whole convo started). It’s a constant push and pull, and sadly we’ve lost ground in America over the past fifty years in many of the areas where we made progress in the early 20th century. It’s always a fight, and the answer is never getting every individual to give up/change their own consumption/spending/whatever habits. It’s about collective action to cause traumatic damage to the systems perpetuating the problems. And that action culminates in changing laws, traditions, policies (what I identified before) because that’s how to make change long-lasting for future generations. What arguments have you even made in the last 3 posts? Sounds like you're the one who's given up. Go ahead. Run away to save your fragile little ego. (*That* was an ad hominem fallacy. Or at least it would be if you had an argument to ignore.) I agree it’s a terrible thing, but again this isn’t a government issue, it’s an issue cause by a specific government. It also has nothing to do with efficiency, how do you solve this problem with efficiency? We are talking about budgets, not random examples of piss poor policy. Did you look at the link I sent you? Showing how the USA spends more than twice as much as Canada on healthcare per capita? That’s an example of poor efficiency. Further more, while again it’s terrible that these things happened, and it’s a terrible policy, I could give you countless examples of people dying in the USA because they don’t have insurance, or their insurance wouldn’t cover their medical bills, or they put off going to the doctor too long because of the costs. One last time, the USA spends more than twice as much per capita on healthcare, so tell me how privatization of services is more efficient. Lol, sorry you’re frustrated being poor. Maybe learn more skills, negotiate a better paying job, and consume less. You seem to not understand how free markets work. A market with zero government regulations will have bad actors, collusion, crime and would be subjectable to cartels. Monopolies and collusion are economic issues. You really need to realize how pathetic and phoned-in these insults sound when they aren’t true. You really think I don’t have I wife? You think I live with my mom? Way off. Now my turn: You are bald and have a beard, just like every other insufferable Redditor. You brag about how much pussy you got in high school, oh shit wait no, turns out you met your wife in high school. So I guess you just decided to marry the first girl you ever convinced to touch your dick. So much for all that pussy slaying. You stream on Twitch to 0 viewers and post clips to Reddit that get downvoted. See how my insults are actually *true*? Makes a big difference. You are not unique. You are not noteworthy. You are Keyboard Warrior Cringe Asshole #718. Fuck off back to obscurity where you belong. Are you sure about that cause I literally used the textbook definition of what it is and why the us and Europe aren’t considered purely capitalist BOINK I disagree that this is oppression at all. Laws to prevent imbalances (like monopolies) in every sector exist and are fair. This is no different. Try again… and don’t go there with the whole minority angle. Debate intelligently and have pride for your answers …or just don’t respond. If it counted as money, you wouldn’t understand. A natural hollow IN the surface. You’re so close though, that’s awesome! You’re right, the word “surface” was used in those sentences. I’m sorry, but since no one lied to me and there was never any mention of someone lying to either of us, I didn’t understand. That’s okay though, mistakes are made for us to learn from! You’re doing great! I think you deserve a reward. I’ll leave your last comment upvoted. Who cares if no one drives in the tunnel under vegas? Guess what, people were employed on that project. Your precious working class Andy's worked on that project. It is about as advanced as the arguments you made, which amount to ""whaaa I don't like that someone has money"" >Rights are won with fighting (verbally or physically). Just hoping big business wants to do thing because they are ""Kind"" is foolish. I said nothing about being kind. I am talking about aligning interests so they would be stupid not to do the thing you're after. If import taxes were raised to the point that it was cheaper to make things in the US than to do it in China... they would make things in the US again. That isn't them being kind, it's setting up the system in such a way to get the desired result. >And you are suggesting tariffs aren't through ""force"". Seems you are justifying some things but not others. The government setting rules that apply across the board regarding how business is done is much different than each company having regular negotiations with their various labor unions. >That doesn't change the nature of planned obsolescence and the removal for consumer rights. I even pointed to this with my last response on Apple's response to the ""right to repair"" movement. We wouldn't have seen jack shit without people angry about the current situation and again they are merely doing the barest minimums to try to avoid regulation. If you are for the consumption of less, we aren't going to get there naturally since companies have been pushing for lower quality stuff because making a high quality product that can last decades doesn't make them as much as a lower quality one that gets replaced every 3 or 4 years. Our current system wants infinite growth in the shortest amount of time damning the god damn future. And you think unions are the answer to getting them to product higher quality stuff? I am more on the side of spending money with companies that produce stuff that isn't trash and will last a long time and is able to be repaired. Once enough people do that, the big players take notice and start making changes. These companies just follow the money. They make cheap stuff, because people buy up all the cheap stuff, because they don't need to think much before buying it. People didn't start buying organic food because big grocery chains decided to put it in their produce section. It was people who stopped going to the big grocery chains, because they wanted organic food, that led the big players to start adding organic sections so they could compete. It's all just money, these companies don't give a shit what they're making as long as it's what people will buy. >I mean you are implying work would not exist or nothing will be done. I fundamentally disagree with that for the same reason you argue against me. There are people who do work for the sake of purpose, hell even on the sadder end of it work is the only way some people have ""friends"". You're saying we disagree, but it sounds like we agree. People need more than money to be fulfilled and work has historically played a key role in that for many people. >Automation..... While there are some companies doing amazing things on the leading edge of all this, I think adoption will have a long tail. It really requires companies to invest in it and get buy-in from everyone. I automate stuff for a living, but I see people on my team manually pulling the same date day after day and messing around with it in Excel. I tell them we can write a report or some custom code to do all of that... sometimes I just do it for them without asking, because I get annoyed watching them, but they just keep doing their thing. Or something changes and instead of asking for an update to the code they just go back to doing it manually. I've done overviews of how the reporting system works to teach other people how to use it and maybe 5% of people actually use it. I also did training on some of our automation platforms to people who are literally working around the clock to manually do a bunch of stuff that could be handed off if it was automated. I probably spent 8 hours or so, spread over a couple weeks, going through the very basics and building things up slowly to the point where they should be able to solve 80% of their problems, and for the last 20% they can solve it with some more experience. I also said that myself and the others who know the platform are available for any questions they might have, to review code, or whatever. Nothing has been done. Most people think if they automate something they will lose their job, so they don't do it. They just pretend to be interested in it when the boss is around. And I work in a large IT org in a company that is primarily selling SaaS; it's not a mom & pop shop.. those are going to be even worse. All these places talk about wanting to be like Amazon or they want to do ML and AI, but they aren't willing to put the resources behind it that Amazon does and they aren't willing to do the basic work, like cleaning up the data, to get ML and AI to be effective. It's really difficult to automate something when the data you have is a complete mess and no one is responsible for making it any better. Even the big players have had their negative side effects of AI. You never can tell what it's going to come up with, so if you aren't extremely careful with your guardrails it can do some pretty terrible stuff. Facebook and Google/YouTube have shown that time and time again. Even the low-code or no-code options are too complex. They'll get easier to use, but translating business process into these is a pretty big task in and of itself... and what most companies fail to recognize is that it's never done. Every time a process changes the automation needs to be updated, so if they want to pivot faster than code can change, then they can't automate until they get out of their own way. Sorry for the rant.... >Sure I guess but in each one of your examples besides Buffet is they are merely exerting their power. It also opens up the argument that of ""The end justifies the means"" so no matter how they do things as long as its for a good its all fine. I think you put too much belief in these people. I don't think starting a company is inherently evil. I don't think making a profit it inherently evil. I do think these companies enable so many things in our lives and I'm not sure what life would be like if we collectively said that we can't have large corporations anymore. We'd effectively be going back in time without a path forward. While I like the idea of buying stuff locally and try to support companies in my area, they don't do everything. Having the ability to get almost anything no matter where you are is a pretty big deal, especially for those who don't live near a big city and would have very limited access to a lot of things otherwise. >This is not feudalism, it is freedom. And it has been shown to achieve the highest standard of living for all members of society. Highest standard of living? US has shit healthcare and easily the worst workers rights standards of any industrialized nation in the world. Our standards of living are great - if you're well off. If you're in the middle class or lower you're usually one or two paychecks or a serious injury away from being broke and/or homeless. It is a shithole country that props up the rich by disenfranchising and taking advantage of the less fortunate at any and every opportunity. This isn't freedom, it's an oligarchy driven by crony capitalism. You've just convinced yourself that what we have is good because you've succeeded in the system. You have no ability to judge the world as it is because doing so would mean admitting that your life is a sham and this country hurts significantly more people than it helps. Buddy, i'm entirely happy. I'm happier in my life now than at any time in my life. and no, teslas are fucking shithole cars and are NOT a positive environmentally. Jeez man you care this much? You have a custom snu i think you are a dumbass what more you want Understandable! Didn't see paper over powering anyone. In addition to being more disadvantaged to than the illiterate, you must be blind too. I wish I could help with that, but it is not something anyone can really teach. If you need a test done you schedule an appointment, wait for said appointment, then wait for the results and wait for a follow up with the doctor. My friend walked in to a private clinic. He paid 300, was seen immediately and got a prognosis right after. He was in there for 30 mins A lot of assumptions there small fry. You what that does to you and me. The topic was capitalism. This means there is no government actor taking a cut of the transaction. Do you not understand how that is different than regulatory space which looks out for fraud and the public good? You seem extremely upset that I have a wife and can grow facial hair, which is weird. Seems that you're a lonely incel that can't grow facial hair. I stream as a hobby because it's fun and I like recording the fun my wife and I have while gaming. You don't have any followers or friends on any platform, you don't have a wife, and you're irrationally mad about someone making fun of your billionaire idols. Chances are you're a broke 20-something that can't get laid who is so superficial that they think ""ha you're bald"" is an insult? I like the way I look and my wife likes the way I look. Why would I care what some small dicked low IQ hard-stuck silver Dota player incel on reddit thinks of me? Nice job BOINKing yourself lmaooooo You think targeting a minority and limiting their income isnt oppression? You dont like rich people so you want to take all their money away via gunpoint. No one is ever going to support you on this you sound like a crazy person. And you've flip flopped our postions yet again? Lol >A natural hollow IN the surface. Yeah, that proves me right. Very good. A hollow in the surface means its exposed to the surface. Making it automatically lava. Boom. Over. Done. And I said: clearly someone lied to you and made up all that other dumb shit you've said. And clearly you never ask for citations or look anything up. You literally called me dumb for asking. You think it's stupid to ask for citations. Lol That says it all. You're having massive trouble understanding that another person is here now and the word ""in"". Lol If he wanted to actually help people he could. But he doesn’t unless it makes him more money. You’ve literally done nothing but prove that over and over. If that is your measure of a man, I don’t want your respect. No, they amount to one person having more money than anyone else has ever had while most of the country is struggling paycheck to paycheck is immoral as fuck. He can have money, but everyone else should get some too. You still ignored my point that during America’s most prosperous periods we had a much higher tax rate on the Uber rich because acknowledging that he’s keeping more than his fair share would go against your narrative. Keep pretending money exists in a vaccuum and that one person having so much doesn’t negatively effect anyone else, but I thought I was the delusional one who didn’t understand basic economic principles. What you are saying is that a group of people gets to take the production of another group of people because they want it. It denies the rights of the productive. Once the government starts denying rights, it won't stop. Ever. So its capitalism or Nazism, your choice. Well that makes both of us then. From the many peer reviewed studies, EVs seem to reduce emissions dramatically compared to normal cars. So even if you argue they are bad, they are much better for the environment than the alternative, which are fossil fuels. Tesla did jumpstart the EV landscape so if you want to argue teslas are shitholes and not good for environment, i don’t believe so, but it still seems to be a net positive for the world and environment by propelling the EV industry “dIdN’t SeE PaPeR oVerPowEriNg AnYoNe.” 🤣 Yeah, just keep bringing up the ridiculous straw man argument you introduced here. No worries, I found another video that suits you even better: https://youtu.be/nauLgZISozs Are you actually going to come up with any response to the link I posted, showing with data, instead of anecdotes, how privatized healthcare is significantly less efficient, at least in terms of spending? Or are you just going to keep bringing up anecdotal evidence. [Here is more data about how despite spending far more money, the privatized healthcare system in the USA is worse than other developed nations.](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/) Keep complaining, I’m sure that will fix your problems Keep on screeching as loud as you want man, let it all out. I know how frustrating it must be to only have sex with the same store-brand Mulan you’ve been dry humping since you were 14. Once she leaves you you might actually get to touch a second vagina, but I wouldn’t count on it. Keep up those ninja-edits too, it's clearly important to you to seem quicker and wittier than you actually are in the moment. Don’t forget to put sunblock on your scalp. Wouldn’t want your head to look even more like an uncircumcised cock than it already does. You’ve gone plaid, I see. No...I do not want to take all their money....I want to begin taxing them at a 100% rate at every dollar of personal income earned over 100mil a year. If that needs to be 90% to be legal or fair, thats fine too. In fact, this isnt absurd. In 1944, the top rate peaked at 94 percent on taxable income over $200,000 ($2.5 million in today's dollars) Yes, I feel 100m a year is more than enough for anyone for annual personal income. I feel earning more than that is predatory and cant be earned ethically, especially when so many people live without basic necessities that I feel should be inalienable. Personally I feel even that number is drastically high, however limiting it to the ultra-wealthy and this dollar figure would quite literally pay for all these social services without even touching our defense budget. Not to mention, raising people out of extreme poverty puts money into the economy ....this is literally trickle UP economics. *positions >Yeah, that proves me right. Very good. Oh, I’m sorry. I should have been more clear. Can you answer this question for me? When a straw is placed inside a juice box, where is that straw located? (Hint: The hole used to put the straw in the juice box is not the same as a straw) A.) On the surface of the juice box B.) Inside/beneath the surface of the juice box C.) Your grandparent’s house D.) on the moon >A hollow in the surface means its exposed to the surface. Oh, no! Not quite, but almost! It is exposed to the surface but where is that hollow located? It ‘s okay, take your time and remember the above question I asked. You’ve got this! >And I said: clearly someone lied to you and made up all that other dumb shit you've said. Ohhh, I see your confusion. When I said earlier that I used google, I didn’t mean I have a friend next to me named google. I meant I searched online for it. >And clearly you never ask for citations or look anything up. Oh, I definitely do. I should have been more mindful of your needs. I personally think this topic doesn’t require it, but I should have still complied for your benefit. I’m sorry. You did great though with all of your citations. It looks like a genuine report! >You're having massive trouble understanding that another person is here now and the word ""in"". Oh no, I know I’ve been talking to someone all this time. I’m also familiar with the word “in”. Would you like me to provide links on the definition of the word “in”? Do you wake and go to work everyday to not make money? >So its capitalism or Nazism, your choice. Or we could act like adults and look to other countries with far higher standards of living as examples of what the US should strive towards. Democratic Socialist governments offer strong social safety nets and basic human needs (healthcare, education, etc.) and operate with primarily capitalist economies. These countries annually rank among the highest in quality of life and have for decades now. Stop looking at every situation as if it's black and white. Grow up. I noticed that before you engaged with the troll, you averaged about 1 comment per week. Now you've spent hours commenting a dozen times. It's not worth it homie. Look at that person's post history. They spend ALL DAY on reddit arguing with people. I scrolled through probably a hundred comments of their's. All from the past 2 days. Hes a troll. They are just using you for attention they don't get in the real world. Let's move on brother 👊 Not a strawman argument, you don't even know what that is. Stick to what you know, telling other creeps on Reddit, who post pics of naked ladies that you wanna cum in them. I just hope your Mum doesn't walk in when you're doing that. The charts provided point more towards poor public health than inefficient care. How do you not see it? It’s right there in the data provided You’d know, how’s leather taste? I’ve never had it. Always made my way without kissing the chocolate starfish. Imagine being so infuriated about someone making fun of billionaires that you start insulting random people on the internet for how they look. Word of advice, kid. Get an education. Read some books. Touch some grass. Your hair isn't interesting and the billionaires you simp for aren't going to help you out. If you ever want some human interaction you're going to need to stop jacking off into socks, move out of your mom's basement and grow a personality that doesn't revolve around licking Elon Musk's boots. I'm not sure what this means, sorry :( Who are you to determine what is fair enough ? What gives you the right ? >Oh, I’m sorry. I should have been more clear. Can you answer this question for me? When a straw is placed inside a juice box, where is that straw located? (Hint: The hole used to put the straw in the juice box is not the same as a straw) > >A.) On the surface of the juice box > >B.) Inside/beneath the surface of the juice box > >C.) Your grandparent’s house > >D.) on the moon Holy fucling shit. You think the surface is a box? Lololol In a box is ... an enclosed object. In the surface is exposed to... the surface. NOT ENCLOSED. Thank you for the massive laugh of watching you run as hard as you can into that wall. Hint: inside is not the surface. There are no countries with far higher standards of living. All of the ""Democratic Socialist"" countries you are thinking of survive because the US has created a world in which they don't have to defend themselves, and don't have to do medical research. No country in the world spends more money on education, per pupil or total, than the US. >Look at that person's post history. They spend ALL DAY on reddit arguing with people. I That is so, so sad. 🤣 Not really a concern since I don’t live with my Mom. Have you graduated high school? I will agree many of the charts could be caused by poorer public health. But this too is partly an issue of privatization. Many people in the USA do not have a primary care doctor, someone who would be willing to tell them to stop smoking, drinking, eating so much, to get exercise, and to simply diagnose and treat problems early on before they become hospital visits. [You also still haven’t mentioned the first link I posted,](https://www.cihi.ca/en/how-does-canadas-health-spending-compare) which is quite a clear example of how horribly inefficient the US privatized healthcare system is. Bro you’re obsessed, super super weird, sign up for some Obama care and get yourself in for a checkup Holy fuck dude you're really out of steam aren't you? Is there a single insult in there that you didn't recycle? It's like you copy-pasted your previous insults from older comments. Although I guess I'm not surprised someone as fat as you is also lazy. Word of advice, manchild; until you put down the donuts and video games, nobody is ever going to respect you. You are the literal physical embodiment of [this guy](https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Jenkins_the_Griefer) and you aren't ashamed of it just because you have some submissive cunt tied up in your basement. Bald, Beard, Man Titties. The Holy Trinity of Reddit White Trash. You’ve never seen spaceballs?! Sorry, when I see someone going hungry, homeless, going without proper education or healthcare I tend to care a lot less about what’s “fair” to people who make enough money to make that all go away and still be the richest people in the world. …especially when they sure as hell didn’t earn that money ethically. >Holy fucling shit. Now, now. Profanity is very rude >You think the surface is a box? Thats right, the surface of a juice box is the surface of a juice-box. >In a box is ... an enclosed object. That wasn’t one of the selections but I’ll still give that point to you! Yes, the straw is enclosed in the juice box despite the juice box having a hole. Just like the hole of the juice box is on the surface and the straw is within it, the hole of a pit is on the surface but the pit itself is inside of that hole. >In the surface is exposed to... the surface. NOT ENCLOSED. I see your confusion. Is water inside of a cup even though it doesn’t have a lid? Or is it on the surface of the cup? That argument about the US subsiding defense to other countries is a moot point when discussing standard of living when you consider the US spends almost double the average country on healthcare and ranks well below many other first world countries in quality of care for average Americans. Oh and don't forget the medical debt! [Also the US is actually 8th on the list of developed countries in terms of medical R&D spending as a % of our GDP.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending) We just rank first in total spending because we're the largest country near the top of the list. Sweden, Germany and Austria all spend more than us on R&D as a % of their GDP and they all annually rank higher than us in basically every quality of life metric. Can you guess what kind of systems they have? So your defense argument is useless and your medical research argument is useless. The US does have some great education available though, I'll give you that! [Unfortunately that wonderful education system has left roughly 15% of our current population with soul crushing student loan debt that has been getting worse every year.](https://educationdata.org/how-many-people-have-student-loans) No looming debt crisis there though! No sir! I certainly can't see any potential issues on the horizon when more than 1/10 of every person in the country is burdened with high interest debt, much of which will never be paid off. Let's be honest though, none of this matters to you. You didn't bother looking at any of the links I sent you before, you won't look at any of these now. You'll just shift the goalposts to some other thing that ""makes America great"" because you're entirely incapable or unwilling to understand that we live in a shithole country that only allows wealthy people like yourself to become the way you are by keeping poor and indebted people stuck in an infinite negative feedback loop in which they spend their entire life paying off interest on loans for things they need to literally survive instead of just paying them a livable wage, giving them proper safety nets, and giving them an opportunity to...you know...live. You're gross, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Loser. Nothing you say to these people will ever be agreed upon. They will always reply back for more arguing. Look at their history again. As soon as this person disengaged with the troll, the troll starting looking for the next victim with this comment: ""Found the bootlick."" Homie took a nap then came back 4 hours later with ""how's that shoe leather taste"" lmao. The troll needs help lol k. Whatever you reckon. I'M a GRoWN aSS mAn whO CommenTS He wIll blOw in LaDies On REddIT. I just clicked on the one regarding spending but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to draw from this. The US has 10x Canada’s population which translates into an incompatible larger sector You’ve already made an ass out of yourself and me. Yet you keep going. Is that what they mean by an ass man? Kissing the chocolate starfish to climb the capitalist (exploitive) ladder and then claiming you’re “self-made”? Edit: clarity I mean... all your comments are just ""You're bald and your wife is asian"" Aside from the fact that my wife isn't asian, it's weird that you'd be so fixated on that. All you Elon simps and billionaire bootlickers are the same. You have no personality, no originality. You're all sad, unsuccessful, desperate little boys who can't get any human affection. I pity you. Ah, I haven't. Probably should watch it, I see references pretty often. So, when you see someone go hungry your thought is, lets point guns at people and force them to give their money to a corrupt system that spends 60% of every tax dollar on war. >…especially when they sure as hell didn’t earn that money ethically. if they got their money illegally, by all means, take it. Bwahahah.. You're trying to save that? Bwahahaha Oh god...keep going. Please! >see your confusion. Is water inside of a cup even though it doesn’t have a lid? Or is it on the surface of the cup? I love how you're too dumb to even ask a quesion that makes sense. Bwahah The water is exposed to the surface. So if you poured magma in a cup, it would be lava. BWAHAHAHA you have proven my point. Thank you. You are incorrect that the US ranks behind any country on quality of care. There are no data to support that, and plenty of data to contradict that. You are also wrong about the remainder of your post. You cited Wikipedia on R\&D; great, but that is total R&D, not medical R&D. Likewise, your understanding of educational funding is woeful. Student debt is predominantly acquired by the upper classes in the US; obviously, those who have gone to college. This will provide them with higher earnings throughout their lives than those who do not attend college. So it is reasonable that those getting the benefit should pay for that benefit. It is unreasonable that those who do not get the benefit should pay (through taxes, as is done in other countries) for the benefit of the upper classes. You need to think more deeply about your statements. And? 🤷🏻‍♂️ I think this is a poor argument, and I think it’s pretty easy to see that privatization is what’s making healthcare in the USA more expensive, not simply population. First of all, their is several countries on that list, and Canada is one of the smaller ones, France and the UK have around 65m, and Germany has 80m. New Zealand, which is also on the list has a population of just 5 million. So you have a bigger difference in population between New Zealand and Germany(16x) than you do between Canada and the USA(10x), or Germany and the USA(4x). But the only outlier in terms of costs is the USA, which is the only one with privatized healthcare. Yeah that’s exactly how I did it 🤣🤣🤣 Forget providing my fellow humans with goods and services they want vs my competitor… I just made out with a starfish and poof I was granted a swimming pool of gold coins! I don't think about you at all. Fuck off back to the fridge, cueball. Maybe Will Smith will stick up for you the next time the position is offered to a more competitive applicant. Of course! Now, I know you want to be silly, but let’s try to stay focused. Is the water inside of the cup? Is the pit inside of the surface? I know you can do this! Yes! We’re almost there! Just one more thing. Lava=surface Magma=beneath surface. I know craters are confusing but, remember, pits are not the same as craters. And?... You are clearly not a grown ass man. I knew Beta males back in highschool who weren't as cringe as that. Dang, you lick leather and kiss chocolate starfish? The difference being that I didn't ""stick up"" for Will Smith. I found entertainment in him slapping another annoying millionaire. I could care less if people make fun of him, his bad relationship with his wife, him getting banned from the Oscars. etc. Doesn't bother me at all. Who hasn't laughed at the Will Smith dying inside memes. You on the other hand apparently can't sleep at night if anyone dares criticize your precious Musk and Bezos. It's sad. You're really, really sad that you get so irrationally angry at random internet redditors over billionaire criticisms. Weird and sad. Go back to your basement and clean up your socks. Your mom certainly doesn't appreciate having to scrape your old cum socks off the carpet. The water is inside the cup, but does the water have a surface exposed to the air? And what is magma when it's exposed to the air? You can't do this. You're too dumb. This is literally the question you can not comprehend. Sad really. This literally proves my point. Lol >but, remember, pits are not the same as craters. What do you think a crater is? Lol Why don't you ""help"" me out and define it? Lol Hahaha beta males… oh boy, I should’ve known. Later, junior. Come back once you’ve grown up 🤣🤣 Fuck every single billionaire in this image. Elon Musk can suck my dick from the back. That has nothing to do with me being upset with you for being a condescending mansplaining asshole. How many more cum sock insults are you really going to make? Seriously you won’t shut up about cum socks. You mention them constantly. We get it, you have a fetish. Maybe if you were a little more clever your Twitch stream would have actually gotten off the ground farther than your dick when Sailor Moon comes on. No amount of insults are going to make your hair thicker or your titties smaller, asshole. It’s not my fault you chose to become a slovenly internet stereotype. >The water is inside the cup, but does the water have a surface exposed to the air? Excellent point! Does exposure to the air make magma? “Scientists use the term magma for molten rock that is underground and lava for molten rock that breaks through the Earth's surface.” https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-difference-between-magma-and-lava >And what is magma when it's exposed to the air? It is still magma. Lava flows ON the surface, not UNDER. Unfortunately, no one claims that air makes lava. Care to try again? >This literally proves my point. You’ve said this a lot! Are you ready to learn what a cliche is? k. Just don't stay up too late, you're school bus driver won't wait around for you mr. sleepy head. Ah so you're not an Elon simp, you're just mad that someone quickly and concisely elaborated on a topic that you inquired about. That's... not good. I suggest seriously considering seeing a psychiatrist or other mental health professional to help you deal with whatever issues you're clearly having. This kind of irrational anger over nothing is probably a symptom of a larger mental health issue you're facing. Going to be honest with you here, I was in the military for a decade and mental health issues are a big deal. Seen it ruin a lot of lives. Not even joking or trying to take a jab at you here. I hope you choose to get counseling and work out whatever issues you are having. Not going to respond to any more of your angry attacks. Last word is yours. Goodluck bud. >It is still magma. Lava flows ON the surface. I cited the definition. You are wrong. Second time using differnt sources as the first went over your head: while lava is the magma that reaches the surface https://pediaa.com/what-is-the-difference-between-magma-and-lava/ Reaches the surface...NO MENTION OF FLOW. Doesn't have to flow. Lol Stop adding make believe fake shit In. Third time: Magma refers to molten rock underground, while lava describes molten rock that has reached Earth’s surface https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/scientists-say-magma-and-lava Clearly some random person told you ""flow"" and now you're behind fucked in the head. The water surface would be lava. Edit: and you directly said: > Is water inside of a cup even though it doesn’t have a lid? Doesn't have a lid. You want to call me a bootlicker when you used to be in the military? Jesus Christ. Knowing what I know about you boys your wife is going to have some pretty new brain wallpaper any day now. “Mom’s basement. Cum sock. Cum sock, cum sock, mom’s basement. Living in a basement with cum socks on the floor. Cumming into a sock in the basement of your mom’s house. Basement floor cum socks. That’s enough wittiness for one day, time to treat myself to a Little Debbie.” - Your thought process. From your own source “Simply put, magma is an extremely hot liquid and semi-liquid rock located under Earth’s surface. When magma flows onto Earth’s surface, we call it lava.” https://pediaa.com/what-is-the-difference-between-magma-and-lava/ >Reaches the surface...NO MENTION OF FLOW. Doesn't have to flow. Lol Now, now, did you read your homework? >Stop adding make believe fake shit In. Oh no! Are you having a tantrum? If you keep it up, I’m going to have to take a point from you! >Third time: Magma refers to molten rock underground, while lava describes molten rock that has reached Earth’s surface Very good! You’re finally understanding. Magma underground, lava above ground. Now, do you know what the ground is? >Clearly some random person told you ""flow"" and now you're behind fucked in the head. Oh no! Did you forget? I use google, my friends name isn’t google. >The water surface would be lava. Now, now. Water is not lava. That’s just silly. Do you live under the surface of the earth. I live on the surface. Are you a mole man? If I see any molten rock, it's going to be lava. I'm not underground or going underground. Humans live on the surface. In that context... Lava is all I would talk about relative to the context. It would be incredibly unlikely for anyone to use ""magma"" in a casual example as I don't have some underground drilling machine nor underground roads near magma. Also, being on the surface I can dig a pit. It's easy. We dig them for cookouts. The fire is right on the surface. If it had molten rock in it, it would absolutely be lava. You're welcome for the education mole man. >If I see any molten rock, it's going to be lava. I'm not underground or going underground. Ah, but what if there’s a hole in the earth and you see a magma chamber flowing underneath and it never breaches the surface. Is that magma or lava? >Humans live on the surface. Good job! We sure do! >In that context... Lava is all I would talk about relative to the context. You sure do love lava! Talk about it all you want! >It would be incredibly unlikely for anyone to use magma as I don't have some underground drilling machine nor underground roads near magma. Ah, but how deep would the hole have to be for it to remain magma? 100 feet? 500 feet? 1 Mile? >Also, being on the surface I can dig a pit. It's easy. We dig them for cookouts. The fire is right on the surface. If it had molten rock it it, it would absolutely be lava. Yes! Lava on surface, magma underground! You got it! >Ah, but what if there’s a hole in the earth and you see a magma chamber flowing underneath and it never breaches the surface. Is that magma or lava? I didn't ever say anything about a hole. I said a pit. I can dig a pit. I could in theory put lava in it and make it a lava pit. It could be a natural pit, but no one said that either way. And if it was on the surface, it would still be lava. Much less anyone saying hole. >Ah, but how deep would the hole have to be for it to remain magma? 100 feet? 500 feet? 1 Mile? Lol, more hole talk. You know you've lost now, don't you? Your only hope us to fully talk about holes and to avoid your massive failure in all those prior paragraphs. Lolol >Yes! Lava on surface, magma underground! You got it! So...where did you get any idea about any of this being underground? Lol >Humans live on the surface. >Good job! We sure do! So why you tlaking about 100 ft underground? Lol >I didn't ever say anything about a hole. I said a pit. I can dig a pit. I could in theory put lava in it and make it a lava pit. Pit = (1) : a hole, shaft, or cavity in the ground https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pit >It could be a natural pit, but no one said that either way. And if it was on the surface, it would still be lava. Okay, natural vs unnatural doesn’t really matter. Also, a hole going 1,802 miles down would reach our planet’s core. Since that hole is connected to the surface, is that magma? Much less anyone saying hole. >Lol, more hole talk. I know why you don’t want to answer that. You don’t know. It’s okay, you can be wrong. This is a safe place. >You know you've lost now, don't you? Your only hope us to fully talk about holes and to avoid your massive failure in all those prior paragraphs. You definitely have a very special mind! Always so positive, especially about your capabilities! I admire that. >Okay, natural vs unnatural doesn’t really matter. Also, a hole going 1,802 miles down would reach our planet’s core. Since that hole is connected to the surface, is that magma? Lol, I can dig a little 5 inch pit. Pour lava in it. Is that magma? Lol Which do you think is more likley? A 1802 mile hole or a small pit? Notice you talk about wild theoriticals that make no sense in any context here. I talk about normal basic ideas in realistic, non-mole man ways. Why would I want to tlak about holes? You admit you want to change the subject and you have been defeated in discussing lava pits...we can then talk about holes. >Lol, I can dig a little 5 inch pit. Pour lava in it. Is that magma? Lol Well, since it breached the surface, it would be lava. That wasn’t too hard. Can you answer my question? >Which do you think is more likley? I think it’s magma before it breaches the surface and lava afterward. It’s fairly simple. >A 1802 mile hole or a small pit? A 1802 mile long pit! >Notice you talk about wild theoriticals that make no sense in any context here. Oh, it’s okay that these theoretics make no sense to you! Try not to make it a habit to assume everything you don’t understand is stupid though. You’ll never expand your mind that way >I talk about normal basic ideas in realistic, non-mole man ways. And you should be very proud that you managed to find yourself on the intellectual level of a normal, basic human being! I know how hard you’ve worked! >Well, since it breached the surface, it would be lava. That wasn’t too hard. It's all breeched the surface. Yes.. none of this is too hard. Exactly. Lol Thank you, it's all lava. Point proven. Issue resolved. >Can you answer my question? Nope, off topic. Not one single idea I've presented comes close to having a single thing to do with your question. Zero underground elements. Zero underground ideas. Zero possible underground theories. Again, if you want to start a new conversrion, end this one first. >A 1802 mile long pit! Again, clearly you don't live on the surface if that's more common for you. Lol >Oh, it’s okay that these theoretical make no sense to you. Try not to make it a habit to assume everything you don’t understand is stupid. As you refuse to communicate the reasoning and you have massive difficulties understanding a vast majority of all the words used here... it's not much of an assumption but based on your lack of logic and relevant facts in your replies. >And you should be very proud that you managed to find yourself on the intellectual level of a normal, basic human being! I know how hard you’ve worked! If only you could reach that level. Unfortunately it seems mole men are quite limited and have almost zero ability to understand the concept of ""surface"" >It's all breeched the surface. What, you mean all magma has breached the surface at one point? You’re going to have to be more specific. >Thank you, it's all lava. Point proven. Issue resolved. Good, I’m glad we finally resolved that magma is underground and lava is above ground. >Nope, off topic. I mean, if off topic to you means being directly relevant to our conversation, sure. Off topic. I think you’re desperate to get out of this conversation. >Not one single idea I've presented comes close to having a single thing to do with your question. Well, either your memory is horrible or you’re a liar. Shall I flip a coin? >Zero underground elements. Zero underground ideas. Zero possible underground theories. Uh, okay. I think I broke your mind. >Again, if you want to start a new conversrion, end this one first. Nope, I’m good. >Again, clearly you don't live on the surface if that's more common for you. Lol It wasn’t a question of commonality. I know, I know. You prefer simple, basic, common things. >As you refuse to communicate the reasoning and you have massive difficulties understanding a vast majority of all the words used here... it's not much of an assumption but based on your lack of logic and relevant facts in your replies. I’ve actually gone through excruciating detail and you just don’t seem to understand. You keep commenting about how “it makes no sense” to you and “how complicated” my arguments are. I have never once said anything like that because I’ve understood everything you’ve said, and I can see where your errors were. You’re quite literally talking about yourself. I’m not sure you know what logic is…. >If only you could reach that level. Unfortunately it seems mole men are quite limited and have almost zero ability to understand the concept of ""surface"" I mean, I’m not the one who was severely struggling with extremely basic theoretical questions. You didn’t even know that a pit and hole were synonymous, not to mention your inability to write a sentence not littered with spelling errors and incomplete thoughts….. I will also have a fond memory of how you didn’t even read your own articles. “It doesn’t say flow anywhere in the link I posted”. That cracked me up. It seems you’re preparing to wrap things up so, if that’s the case, I’ll grant you pardon. Farewell, my special little friend. I hope you do well in the future and that your delusions keep you nice and sheltered from reality. I truly mean that. >What, you mean all magma has breached the surface at one point? You’re going to have to be more specific. Fuck, so you admit you haven't read anything I've said? I'm on the surface. Did you miss those multiple paragraphs? You simply admit you're lost. That's all that entire reply does. To tell uou again, It's ALL lava I see. I don't look down any multiple mile long holes. Never talked about any mile long holes. Never part of any idea I've ever discussed, particularly here. Not even close. You literally made up an idea because you lost abd abandoned ALL conversation on topic. >and “how complicated” Nothing is complicated. You're just wrong. Very simply. In every instance. And all you can do is refuse to even attempt ALL discussion on topic. Thank you for writing so much so many times to prove me right literally hundreds of times over. > “It doesn’t say flow anywhere in the link I posted”. You even cited it and it did not? Lol? You didn't even read your own pulled quotes? You can't even understand what YOU write. Lol >Fuck, so you admit you haven't read anything I've said? Is….. that what you understood? >I'm on the surface. Yes, you are. That’s big boy knowledge! >Did you miss those multiple paragraphs? The ones I responded to? Nope, sure didn’t. >You simply admit you're lost. That's all that entire reply does. Nope, that would be you again. >To tell uou again, It's ALL lava I see. Yup, the trees are lava, water is lava, cars are lava, it’s ALL lava. >I don't look down any multiple mile long holes. Good for you, that’s dangerous >Never talked about any mile long holes. We sure did >Never part of any idea I've ever discussed, particularly here. Not even close. If you say it enough, you may believe it >You literally made up an idea because you lost abd abandoned ALL conversation on topic. Just describing yourself >Nothing is complicated. I’m sure everything is simple in your world >You're just wrong. Nope, that’s you again. >Very simply. What you’re good at! >In every instance. Yes, you’re simple in every instance. >And all you can do is refuse to even attempt ALL discussion on topic. All you need is to scroll up to find out you’re lying >Thank you for writing so much so many times to prove me right literally hundreds of times over. Like I said, people see things that aren’t real all the time. You’re seeing what you want to see. >You even cited it and it did not? Lol? It definitely did. Not really sure what you get from lying. It’s just us and we both know the truth. You don’t need to admit it, but I know. >You didn't even read your own pulled quotes? Yup, I definitely did. >You can't even understand what YOU write. Lol I definitely could Your single reply now is just quips for pointing your clear misunderstandings. >Yup, I definitely did. Then cite it. It wasn't in what you cited already. I’m actually mimicking your single responses….. not surprised you didn’t notice Cite what? I’ve provided multiple quotes >Cite what? I’ve provided multiple quotes Lol.. they all must have been very late edits. If so, not very fair. I remember one cited quote from you so far, which was one I already gave. Please give the quote with citation that discusses the necessity of flow, per the definition. Pardon me for missing it. >I’m actually mimicking your single responses….. not surprised you didn’t notice Wow, you really suck at that. I give explanations. You offer pure insult. Do you do anything well? Edit: >If you say it enough, you may believe it Also, please cite where I discussed miles long magma holes. >Lol.. they all must have been very late edits. If so, not very fair. I remember one cited quote from you so far, which was one I already gave. That’s uselessly vague….. >Please give the quote with citation that discusses the necessity of flow, per the definition. The below is the entire exchange. I’m sure you’ll conveniently forget it happened once more. Me: “Simply put, magma is an extremely hot liquid and semi-liquid rock located under Earth’s surface. When magma flows onto Earth’s surface, we call it lava.” https://pediaa.com/what-is-the-difference-between-magma-and-lava/ You: Reaches the surface...NO MENTION OF FLOW. Doesn't have to flow. Lol Me: Now, now, did you read your homework? >Wow, you really suck at that. I give explanations. You offer pure insult. I think you’re giving yourself too much credit….. between the mole man comments and denials, finding useable information to work with from you is like parsing data from an old report. Most of it’s useless but there are a few moments where you show a semblance of consciousness. >Do you do anything well? Yup, a few things Edit: Also, please cite where I discussed miles long magma holes. WE discussed them. Lol, wow you actually cited something. UNFORTUNATLEY it doesn't say it MUST flow. Which was your point. Which was not proven. So close if you're illiterate. So far if you're not. I've shared multiple other examples that do not mention flow. And hell, even you agreed with my pit example that it's lava, with no flow. >finding useable information to work with from you is like parsing data from an old report For casual converarion that's pretty good. While zero people have ever claimed any response from you was like any report ever. Your comments are a youtube comment section. >WE discussed them. You crying that I didn't answer the question and me saying it's off topic...isn't a discussion of the topic. Granted, it's more discussion than you've ever hand on any topic. >UNFORTUNATLEY it doesn't say it MUST flow. Which was your point. Which was not proven. I see, so now you agree that it says “flow” but now you’re not wrong because it must also have the word “must”. These mental gymnastics you’re doing really aren’t the best I’ve seen. >So close if you're illiterate. So far if you're not. You’re projecting your insecurities on to me. I know how to spell and write….. you’ve proven your lack of ability in both. >I've shared multiple other examples that do not mention flow. Oh yes, multiple! Uselessly unspecific once more. >And hell, even you agreed with my pit example that it's lava, with no flow. You mean pouring lava that broke through the surface into a 5 inch hole? Yeah, that’s lava. That’s not the point you think it is though >For casual converarion that's pretty good. Did you need me to provide a link for parsing? Just want to make sure you’re not confused. It’s a bigger word than pit, after all. >While zero people have ever claimed any response from you was like any report ever. Compiling reports and providing them to clients is a part of my job…. I’m really not sure you can fathom how childlike you are to me. I admire your blissful ignorance. >Your comments are a youtube comment section. I’m bot surprised to hear you frequent YouTube comments. >You crying that I didn't answer the question and me saying it's off topic...isn't a discussion of the topic. Oh yes, me asking for clarification of what the limits of magma’s definition are during an argument we are having between the difference between lava and magma is completely irrelevant…. Are you even trying to make an argument? Some people in this world don’t have to try that hard to be good at something, but you clearly do. Please try a little. Your lack of effort betrays your low intellect >Granted, it's more discussion than you've ever hand on any topic. I’ve discussed many topics. Another statement that I classify as useless. >I see, so now you agree with it says “flow” but now you’re not wrong because it must also have the word “must”. These mental gymnastics you’re doing really aren’t the best I’ve seen. A cat can have fleas. It doesn't HAVE to have fleas to be a cat. That's mental gymnastics to you. >I know how to spell and write….. you’ve proven your lack of ability in both. Grammar nazi, the last refuge of the lost argument. >Oh yes, multiple! Uselessly unspecific once more. You don't know what a citation is? Or you forgot I used any? There weren't that many of them and they were mostly all on the same topic? Yet you can't figure out which I'm talking about? Do you have no end to your energy to pretend to be even more stupid with every reply? Pretending to not know multiple definitions of even more words? Lol Your entire argument: ""You're dumb, wait what's going on... I have no idea what any words mean"" Over and over. Well I believe you. No need for further proof. You have no clue what any of this means >Compiling reports and providing them to clients is a part of my job Why lie? Lol You can't complie a single sentence on topic. Certainly never even a paragraph for a report. Much less a full report. Abd behind that, NO office would ever keep you on board as you're so extremely toxic. >A cat can have fleas. It doesn't HAVE to have fleas to be a cat. A cat must have the D.N.A. of a cat. I don’t need to put the word “must” in my explanation for most people to understand this. I can simply say, cat’s are determined by their D.N.A. Is it exhausting being so pedantic to an impotent degree, or does it come naturally? >That's mental gymnastics to you. That’s called logical thought…. >Grammar nazi, the last refuge of the lost argument. Your spelling and grammar go far beyond what even a Grammar Liberal would allow…. >You don't know what a citation is? Or you forgot I used any? There weren't that many of them and they were mostly all on the same topic? But there was more than one, right? Am I to guess which one you mean? As I said, uselessly unspecific. >Yet you can't figure out which I'm talking about? If you said something was in your hand and asked me to guess, I’m sure you would feel very clever when I got the answer wrong…. >Do you have no end to your energy to pretend to be even more stupid with every reply? I can ask the exact same thing. >Pretending to not know multiple definitions of even more words? You’re parroting back what I said about you once more. >Your entire argument: >""You're dumb, wait what's going on I have no idea what any words mean"" If you must lower me to crude sentences to make yourself feel superior, go for it. It is pitiful though. Good lord what a mess. It's like you're quoting me but with no structure or point. Edit: Oh now you've edited a bit maybe? I just don't care anymore. Read it once more. Nah, I'm gold. I’ll accept your forfeit then You neither have the stamina nor the ability to pull together an intelligent argument to ever win a debate. I feel sorry for you. Lol"