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The rich get richer while the rest of us starve. Why can’t we have an economy that works for everyone?
Discussion/ DebateEasier to control or a dangerous game? Ask the French monarchy how that worked out for them.
Both, just sometimes they forget where the line is that the French monarchy crossed and need to be reminded. I doubt people alive now have the guts to stand up to the elites though, most people can't even go without their smartphone for more than a few hours.
The French still do. They have firefighters fighting cops trying to wrangle protestors mad about raising retirement age and shit.
Any American that smack talks France’s balls needs a reality check.
Americans think they’re the “patriots” that the French actually are.
God, imagine getting half of the benefits the french have at their jobs and then realize they're still tryna get more
Keep pushing. See how much we can get. Demand everything. This is what the French monarchy taught the Third Estate. It's just they realized the power of their exponentially larger numbers and organized. Imagine for a moment what we could change if we stopped being distracted by the insignificant differences and all demanded better terms in our social contract.
America’s rich people would sooner slaughter the good people than allow their plantations to organize en masse.
That's EXACTLY the point of the culture war our politicians flame the fire for !!!
Thing is we would have to change the fundamental culture we have of "everything is a competition", "Everyone is an individual/island", and "I got mine".
The French have a greater sense of greater purpose and unity. The US citizenry is practically canabalistic in an "everyone for themselves" mindset. Organizing and unions are key, yes, but they dont work if you have people undermining it.
The French are far from perfect, but the working class and so-called middle-class have it so much better in France regarding wages, job stability, and benefits.
I know it's joked about that French are cowards (atleast in war) but they always seem ready to throw down when they feel revolution is necessary.
As opposed to the Americans who seem ready to through down for revolution to give more of their social contract away.
This...gravey SEALS love talking about how France and French people love to get rolled, when it is really the American public at large that the rich continuously molest and put down. The French have class solidarity, and over here in the US, we have people living in trailerparks worrying about the miniscule taxes that billionaires pay. It is quite hilarious.
We Americans don't even vote in unions when we have the option. Head slap. I swear if unions were opt out instead of opt in, we are so brainwashed, we'd opt out.
It's not the fact that we don't have balls. We'll fuck people up! The problem is we're too stupid to realize that the fucks we should be fighting got us fighting each other. And they continue to laugh all the way to the bank about it.
Panem et circensis
I can almost puzzle this out, but what does this mean and what does it refer to?
Bread and circuses, like give em smartphones and, if they aren't starving, they won't care about societal problems
Thank you! Where did this originate?
Ancient Rome
The rich have been suckering people since the time of Pharoah 5000 or so years ago. Where the Pharoah was the richest and living god among humans. The Romans brought it to whole new level.
Though Pharoahs relied on the servile work distractions handily.
Arbeit macht frei?
I prefer 'No Gods, No Masters'
You nailed it. As long as they can keep the masses complacent with their phones and Netflix, they won't want to revolt.
Give them just enough to keep them quiescent while also extracting more wealth from the workers. A system as old as history itself.
The Reign of Terror, also shows how that desire, to "kill The Aristocracy, and this will solve problems", can get, "Out of Control". Thomas Jefferson, Who was Ambassador to France, at the Time of The French Revolution, at first supported It, but later; under the Reign of Terror; was appalled at the wholesale, and unjustified slaughter. Among the Victims of The Terror, were Lavoisier, The Father of Chemistry; and The Creator, of The Terror; Maximilian Robespierre; who himself, became a victim, of The Guillotine. Anarchy is not very "particular".
This is 10000000% correct. Im so sick of hearing people say that we will never let certain things happen, we will stand up and fight.🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️. No one is doing anything, the reason people fought back 100/300/800 years sgo was because living was extremely hard anyways, now living is so plush.
Right, they’re spoiled rotten compared to a French peasant. They won’t do anything because deep down they know it’s not that bad.
That’s because most of them don’t know who they are. They are not just domestic, they are global and each one has their own private security force.
Right. Cows get entertainment
Nah. It’s simple.
Labor.
You need cheap labor.
You can’t enslave.
Indentured Servitude is out.
Only thing left is Poverty Wages and Children.
It’s incredible that nearly every problem we have is indirectly caused by the need for cheap labor.
Wait until the robotic workforce is perfected. It will not be too long before that happens thanks to A.I. then what? When most of the population isn't qualified for most jobs it will get ugly. The pendulum swings both ways.
The billionaires have been floating that idea as a threat for decades, and they gave it a shot with McDonalds drive-thru and Target self-checkout. Both things failed and you don't see them anymore.
I agree at some point it will be viable, but for now it's going to take someone dumping a shitload of money into it to benefit all of the billionaires, and none of them are going to foot the bill for everyone else.
That's what they use publicly funded universities for. Free research advancement for them, at no, or little cost to them.
Bruh, what are you talking about? In 2007 I installed the first self checkouts in Meijer. I was right out of school and my job was to maintain, and fix any problems that arose. I was literally hired to do "computer stuff" with no degree simply because I was under 20.
At that time the store employed 35 to 40 cashiers. After I left 6 months later, the store had 8 self checkouts and 18 cashiers. I largely facilitated nearly 20 people losing their job as now one person can monitor 4 transactions. Meaning they really only needed 1/4 of the manpower. But since they still have regular checkouts, and alot of old folks we're going to ring themselves up they ONLY got rid of half their staff.
Upon realizing what I participated in... I left. Unfortunately, I was just a 19yo kid out of high school doing my best, because "if you work hard, it'll pay off in the long run."
Nearly every major retail leans heavily on self checkout, and they've taken it a step farther, you download their app and scan while you shop, (admittedly I really like this change, lines suck)
Self driving cars are probably less than two decades from removing people from long haul trucking. Which will have a cascading effect on truck stops and "trucker towns" who are dependent on serving those guys for revenue.
UBI will be a necessity. We don't need that many damn coders.
You should see NVDA stock price recently.
Great point.
What happens then? I will tell you what happens then because I work in tech. AI needs a lot of training data. To get a lot of training data, you need a lot of high-powered GPU chips, kind of like the type that Nvidia produces. Unfortunately, these chips consume a lot of power. But you know what doesn’t consume a lot of power? The human brain. Yet it can process extremely complex operations just like these high-powered GPU chips. So the end result is going to be like the matrix. The middle class and the lower class gets hollowed out and to survive, they have to rent their brain to the billionaire class who own the various AI companies.
So when robots take over the workforce, who is left to buy goods?
I know it's radical, but... maybe we just evolve to a different incentive structure? Kings and Emporers though Democracy was an ultra-rafical idea (and they still do in the Middle East). But just because an idea is radical, does not mean it isn't feasible. But, usually, the fist attempts fail. The earliest democratic versions of Greece and Rome suffered their defeats. But modern democracies survived because they learned from those mistakes. It is said that the best business owners are ones who have presided over 1 or 2 failed businesses.
People expect the transition to a new economy or govening ideology to be seamless. No, likely the first few attempts will fail. That doesn't mean the concept isn't viable. It just means it needs to be modified. China and Russia found a way to marry Communism and Capitalism. Perhaps people like those forms less, but they do work. The Netherlands found a way to marry Socialism and Capitalism. In America we have found a way to marry Corporatism and Capitalism.
And maybe in an automated future, the next system needs elements of all of them.
Poor uneducated children from poverty stricken states will fill those factories out nicely.
And what do they make? Everything that every member of society wants or needs to function..
HAHAH! Please, what do you think paying for college is?
It's 100% indentured servitude! With of course wage stagnation included. And all sorts of other stuff that makes it hard or impossible to pay back your "loans".
I would say that indentured servitude is coming into fashion. Even if we call it a new name this time.
They decided to punish us by doing this because we won't let them own black people anymore
The thing is, modern governments and oligarchs saw that go down. They watched the monarchy get beheaded, they saw Lenin lead the charge and take Russia, they saw the slave revolt in Haiti. And they've spent a lot of time and a lot of money making sure it won't happen again
The cops in my town have an armored personnel carrier lol
The Haitians had to pay an "Indemnity" to France that stopped around 1948 for the "privilege" of being a recognized nation. Now that Haiti has been exploited to the hilt. There is no talk of restoring back to Haiti, the now billions of dollars taken from Haiti and given to France. Keep people in chains... like forever...is the mantra.
The difference is that the French police are scared of the French public. They aren't an occupying army with the ability to kill at will with no repercussions. In the US, they are.
And we have courts saying that the police aren't obligated to protect people.
Ask the French monarchy how that worked out for them.
Well, for the most part, pretty well as it wasn't the starving that caused the French Revolution. Instead, it was a political crisis in conjunction with the French monarchy’s chronic financial woes.
And the common people didn't really benefit from the French Revolution until much much later (afterwards). There's a reason that the Reign of Terror got its name (increasingly draconian measures designed to root out “suspects” and “traitors” leading to thousands of people across the country were executed as “counter-revolutionaries.”) And to be clear, it took the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte to force a reasonable amount of control over society, allowing regular commerce, trades, etc. to begin again (until then, the average person really just suffered with commerce being subject to extreme risk/variables, etc.)
Common people never benefit from revolution just new owners installed.
You're completely correct.
But to be honest, I'm pretty sure that's beyond the understanding of most. Hell, most can't get beyond an idealized harlequin romance version of revolutions.
Aka power corrupts.
Our monarchy has nukes and drones so they feel quite comfortable these days. Though they’re actively trying to disarm us.
I worry that with today's military and technology, a revolution like that will never happen again. When the time comes that it's needed, I'm not sure it'll be much more than internet posts and marching.
I also am an uneducated, unskilled laborer so take everything I say with a grain of salt haha
Afghanistan survived 20 years against the "strongest" military in the world. The cartels run half of Mexico. It's not completely out of the realm of possibility. The more likely is if a nuclear power is looking at getting the guillotine would they just say if I can't have it no one can. And let's not act like there hasn't been some pretty major civil unrest in the US unseen since Vietnam in the past 5 year.
The current US economy has more disparity than France did at the times of the revolution…
Our vile rich enemy didn’t accidentally militarize their domestic wealth protection brigades and enslave them to conservative ideology, you know.
Americans could never…. They’ve got us pitted against ourselves. But man, I’d love to see farmers and garbage services just start dumping on the politicians lawns. America the embarrassment.
They did and they have. The British and the against each other. The real embarrassment is the state of our democracy.
It’s both, but in the US, they know that’ll never happen, because too many people here consider themselves temporarily displaced millionaires instead of poor. The moment those people have someone to look down on, they will, which prevents any kind of rallied support against the elites.
How long did the French monarchy last through
Yes and no, the French did not go rogue against their monarch as easily as some like to think. The original idea was to keep them alive but they were caught fleeing the country and therefore were sentenced as traitors of the nation. Many people from the aristocracy actually stayed in power and the monarchy was resorted once. Just causalities really.
We're not doing anything now...
"Ask the French monarchy how that worked out for them."
If you don't go to the extremes, nobody will retaliate
People prefer to spend their whole lives complaining instead of doing something about it
Ok, I get we are not all going to be civil rights leaders. What I am saying is not extreme. All we have is each other, and call me crazy, but when you view the entirety of the universe it's lonely out there. It would be nice to have some friends along.
you have one example of backfiring versus the literal thousands of times it.. didn't backfire?
Easier to control. It work for decades or centuries. And when they revolt you can easily grab the power back after a few years.
Nah that ain't happening this time around. As long as people aren't starving they won't resort to that. They're smart enough to just let enough crumbs off the table.
Let them eat cake!
Nah, real cattlemen want their livestock fat, happy and no stress. Makes the meat tender, well marbled and sooo tasty.
Honestly a great analogy for developed society. "Look at how fat and complacent our cattle are. We employ all of the trademark humane policies we made up ourselves. How can anyone say they're being mistreated?"
History shows that food riots bring down governments. Because people stop fucking around with the social contract when they're starving.
And people are getting fatter and fatter.. ergo, much less likely to riot or revolt. It's hard to be mad on a full stomach. Our bodies do all sorts of chemical things to tell our brains everything is ok when we are full.
Starve? Most poor people in the US are fat af
Low quality food is usually the cheapest.
In the US, it's possible to be obese and malnourished simultaneously. Our food is mostly over processed junk calories.
The rich people are doing this to us on purpose.
It’s a bit of a metaphor. It doesn’t mean literally starve. The people who are fat af are lacking one very important thing, which is health. Ever notice how it’s expensive to be healthy? I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me it was by design.
Taxing us into slavery and we’re just sitting by while the government takes half our incomes and fills there pockets. Then sends our money overseas to fight wars that can’t be won. We’re slaves people, at some point we all need to stand up and take America back.
I’m not sure cattle is the right analogy, but the sentiment is spot on.
Yeah but who is the better golfer
I’ve seen your swing
Depends on whether you count the cheating or not.
This is how you train animals. The hungrier they are the more likely they are to respond to commands with food as a reinforcement.
To elaborate- I listen to political podcasts while I walk the dog. I have time to walk the dog because I don't have two jobs.
Also, to misdirect criticism; instead of directing it, at those, responsible.
Ditto. What's really shameful is that $25/hr isn't much. I make $50 and sometimes $65 and even that isn't much after taxes. It's really the side issues that keep them in power. Every one is arguing over the little things while they open up the treasury safe and leave us the bill.
No, no. That was early feudalism. In the modern era we keep a few token homeless to remind the middle class. We are kept at just the right balance of comfort vs. servitude so that we will continually complain but never take action.
Ranchers don't starve their cattle, and the American working class are nowhere close to starving.
Gotta make sure they're just dumb enough to not figure that out either.
Smart enough to do more work. Still too dumb to realize you're cattle.
Friend of mine said "someone has to do the shit jobs." Thing is, the shit jobs don't have to be that shitty.
Every trade that I made with Jeff Bezos has been voluntary and benefited me. It’s a good thing that bezos is about to make this trade billions of times.
Any monopoly grows that way. Bezos controls the distribution of goods. If you have a great product, Amazon will clone it into Amazon Basics and undercut your business until you go out of business, then he raises the price. When no competition remains, he can do a McDonalds and double the price in 4 years.
Are you trying to say McDonald’s doesn’t have competition?
I think if we ignore the mcdonald part, the patterns were observed with the tech startups (and those that “make it”) which practically is enshitification.
At first they offered a solution, and people are intrigued because it is not only better, but cheaper. It then disrupt a more traditional businesess, which is fine in the context of natural progression of human advancement, if not for the last point.
Sometimes we just end up with the same problem but with a new player, another time the company was burning money to destroy competitors only for it to raise prices when competitors are off the table. Another time, it creates a new set of socioeconomic problem.
Companies like Uber, Netflix, AirBnB are some of the easy example.
The best example of this was Walmart vs toy stores in the 1990s. There were toy stores in pretty much every town in America. I live in a small town and we had one in the mall and two stand alone.
Walmart priced the toys so cheap that they lost money for about five years and ran every toy store out of business and then jacked the prices back up. By the end of the 1990s small towns had no more toy stores and Walmart was your only option.
Yes but seeing as the employees who deliver my product wind up either pissing in bottles, or wearing adult diapers because a bathroom break or 2 might get them fired by an AI employee monitor, I would completely understand if the workers went postal one day.
Bezos isn't the one providing the good. Your logic is the same as saying the king deserves all of the profits of the peasants because it's mutually beneficial.
But you're happy with the fact that Bezoz is one of the richest people in history, with his own space programme, whilst his workers are on the poverty line and sleeping in their cars?
Nothing to do with finance.
This is becoming a shitpost
It started as one
It's called propaganda
You mean to tell me the problem with giving a raise to the burger flipper is that the teacher now makes the same, and we need to pay more to teachers? Or is the problem we need to have a maximum wage we can pay burger flippers?
The problem is teachers and burger chefs fighting while billionaires pick everyone pockets. The %1 exploit public infrastructure and goodwill. All hail the oligarchy of 🇺🇸
Nobody is forcing you to use the services or purchase the goods provided to you by billionaires.
Sure however depending on what you are looking for or where you are located you don't actually have a choice, just the illusion of choice.
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You say that like Amazon is still just a store that sells things direct to consumers, and not a tech giant you can’t go two pages on the internet without connecting to an AWS-run website, or a wholesaler that sells bulk merchandise and processes payments for the small businesses you shop at.
Nobody needs Amazon, but it’s pretty much impossible to avoid supporting them indirectly since they got a hand in every cookie jar of the economy.
Just look at some financial articles about the company and realize that they’re much more than an online shopping mall. https://fourweekmba.com/amazon-revenue-breakdown/ (TLDR, Amazon wouldn’t even be profitable as a direct retailer, but the exclusive consumer data they get from their store makes AWS integration invaluable to advertisers and third party merchants, and AWS is what makes the company profitable. They’re like Alphabet/Google or Meta/Facebook at this point, we’re no longer the customer, we’ve become the product.)
I'm not a victim. But I do think that so much wealth being concentrated into the hands of a few like Bezos Musk and Gates not only isn't right, it's dangerous.
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I’m not sure if they’re actually criticizing the private allocation of capital and the benefits that has brought us, i read their concern more so due to the snowballing effects of that capital and where it’ll take us in the very long term
the thing is we’re seeing a massive trajectory acceleration in the trend of wealth distribution skewing towards the upper end of the scale, a smaller % of people are accumulating a larger % of the wealth at a faster rate than we have ever seen before. In some ways it does sort of feel like we’re moving towards a dune-like future where a small handful of families effectively control everything in the galaxy lol
choices under coercion aren't choices
So I can stop paying my portion to lockhead Martin for shit we don't need? Oh wait, the government IS forcing me to pay for goods provided by billionaires.
the military industrial complex is one of the few things that makes me somewhat ok with taxes
Every single facet of daily life in America is provided by a semi monopoly of billionaires. Corporatism runs rampantly unchecked. Not a single person that values their life can just not use the services or purchase the goods. The entirety of the system is set up to feed the rich at every single opportunity.
When they are de facto monopolies and do collusion that translate in gouging, merge of competitors, lobbying, wage fixing, and coercion for things like medial services, then yes you are forced.
It's not all the time, but it's too common.
When did this finance page become a whining and complaining page with communists?
When too many people became poor and had to learn class consciousness.
Is criticising inequality the same thing as communism?
To a good amount of stupid Americans, yes lol.
Ah yes, communism is when people complain that the billionaire doesn't want to pay their employees a living wage
Misusing the word communist aside.....It's reddit and anything popular eventually gets full of leftists and they upvote nonsense when it comes to finance.
The richest person in Australia is rumored to have suggested those who make $15 should get paid much less: $2. What personality is that? Where else does this get any attention besides in a book like this?
Wasn't there an Australian businessman who said that employees have gotten it in their head that they have power they don't, and that there needed to be financial suffering in order to teach them that?
Or something along those lines? Fuck that guy.
The thing is that most people don’t demand or require $2500 and hour. They would be thrilled to sleep at night knowing their basic bills are paid with a nominal amount of extra to play with. But somehow society tells them that’s unreasonable.
It’s not.
Well, the rich gave the poor and middle class topics to fight each other through the media.
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if we didn't allow monopolies and conglomerates, we would have thousands more millionaires and fewer billionaires. these thousands of millionaires would own privately held companies where they don't feel pressure from stock holders to increase profits by lowering wages.
we need a president who is a trust buster! but the only way we can get one is to elect one.
these thousands of millionaires would own privately held companies where they don't feel pressure from stock holders to increase profits by lowering wages
this part is doubtful, particularly the implication that the pressure is applied externally; or that exiting capital equity and credit markets reduces the desire or need to maximize cash profits.
George Carlin said it best....the goal of the rich is to use the poor to scare the hell out of the middle class
I make $23/hr as a custodian and everyone deserves a living wage
Because that’s not how Capitalism works. lol.
If you want something that works for everyone then it becomes Socialism, but you don’t want Socialism, do you? lmao.
Because then everybody becomes poor. lmfao.
Or so the Capitalists tell you, and insist that you believe them, without being able to show you any actual/concrete evidence of that actually being the case.
Truth is, there are other versions of Capitalism out there.
In other countries.
In the hands of Socialists (in Europe) and Fascists (in Asia).
Where they have modified Capitalism so that it actually works for the population as well as for the rich/wealthy/wealthiest.
Not everybody’s an asshole to their own countrymen.
Some people in other countries are actually patriotic.
Except it’s not working well in Europe, I can tell you first hand as a dual citizen that having your well educated kids find opportunities in the USA is a very common goal parents have for their children right now. There are more jobs, more funds to do science, it’s easier starting a company, salaries are higher, etc.
There is a reason way more people move to the USA than out of it
WhAt ArE YoU? SoMe KiNd Of CoMmiE?
Poverty is component of capitalism. It’s literally part of it.
What's the solution? More government that you think is going to make everyone equal? We've seen that play out countless times and it never ends well. Never.
I think people want to live work play in a thriving economy. People are getting a raw deal and feel like big corporate interest are actively hostile against workers. So people start to lean on the government to intervene.
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"We're doing better today than we were yesterday, let's just give up continuing trying to improve the situation."
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The guy you replied to didn't say if he thought it was better or worse before, just that people were fed up with being treated like crap by large companies.
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And then we're back at "it's the best it's ever been let's stop trying to improve". It might be the best it's been through history but it's still far from good enough.
According to the UN 3.1 billion people can't afford a healthy diet, 49 million people in the US had to turn to food assistance, and according to the world economic forum at least 150 million people are homeless, over 600k in the US alone.
Oh here we go again on the "criticizing business means big government commies".
"More" and "less" government is a lazy way to cop out of debating a solution.
In any case, regardless how you facilitate it, the answer is actually more competition. Free markets don't really work when you reach a point of scale where that's not possible.
Mom and pop shops won't have the competitive firepower to stand up to conglomerates that can afford loss leaders, outsource production, and buy up competitors and new verticals.
You have options, some more practical than others.
You can vote with your dollar of course, but enough people are too poor to do so that it wouldn't work even if we had enough willing participants.
You can start trust busting.
You can figure out any number of ways to deincentivize poor wages or outsourcing.
You can create public options in important sectors.
Take your pick. And do better.
Regulation is needed to save unchecked capitalism from raising to the bottom and killing itself
The Nordics certainly seem to be doing better than the US for the average person and they have far more government.
Less deals between government and companies. Increasing wages and implementing strong labour laws while simultaneously increasing taxes on import , so that any company who wants to do business has to do it through local branch.
And overall add people who are good in this subject to decision making just like rich use to save money
"More government" doesn't make everyone equal, but private enterprise is built on exploiting ineffeciences and asymmetric information, while focusing on short-term, siloed self-interests that will always need to be checked or offset.
What you’re currently experiencing is late stage capitalism. Everyone saying that the government can’t fix it need to stop voting against their own interests.
Save it is a lie that wages haven't increased they have routinely out pace inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N
Also looking at the pre-Reagan vs post-Reagan stats 2/3 people that left the middle class moved up to the upper-class not down to lower class, median and mean incomes are up even accounting for inflation and the slope is greater peri/post-Reagan than pre-Reagan, virtually everything save for habitation and education (two of the most heavily regulated industries mind you) is cheaper when accounting for inflation and/or objectively better quality than at anypoint 10+ years ago, also every objective measure of quality of life is up not down, percentage of people working at minimum wage is down from ~20% in the 70s to ~1.8% now, number of hours worked per week per worker has decreased by 14hrs since the 50s, home ownership is up from the 70s but down from the high of 2007-2008 https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-states/ and just about every other stat is better now too. If that is failure can we please I beg of you have more of that sort of "failure?" And if it is a scam then can we get more scams that improve everyone's lot?
What was the rate increase for the wealthy? If all things are equal I would expect the % of wealth growth to be similar. It isn't. How many households need two full time workers than in the 70s? Inequality isn't just the raw numbers, when the wealthy see a larger share of the increase in wealth that's inequality and what is bothering people.
I’m sick of people who make 250$ per hour
Getting bribed by people who make 2500$ per hour
So they pay less taxes than people who make 25$ per hour
While people who make 15$ per hour
Try to compete with people willing to work for 10$ per hour
And people who make 250$ per hour
Tell us everyone should make 20$ per hour
Even if they work harder than 20$ per hour
$2,500 an hour is hilariously off the mark. I make low six figures and last year Zuckerberg earned my annual salary in about 30 minutes. It only took Elon Musk 8 seconds, and Bezos earned my salary every 3 seconds.
Bezos made the equivalent of $8,000,000 an hour in 2023, yet he makes his workers pee in bottles and won't let them unionize.
Bro doesn't understand the difference between income and networth.
When the stocks bezos owns goes up, his networth goes up. Bezos wasn't handed $8M of new cash to spend every hour, the value of his stocks went up. This is beyond absurd and not at all how finance works.
Amazon's net sales in 2023 (thats sales before expenses) were ~$127B, at $8M/hr bezos would have earned $16B working full time...so by your logic bezos took home 12% of all the money amazon took in...and he's not even the CEO anymore...do you hear how absurd that is?
What drove those valuations up? Fairy dust? If you know that much, then you understand P/E ratios, pump&dump, leverage, or how collaborative networks can control prices. Bezos happens to be good at competitive strategy & scaled out logistics, but there's no high minded principle here, as evidenced by some of his more notorious tactics.
Excessive financialization contributes to speculative frenzies, which pool resources into fewer & fewer hands.
People who make $100 an hour pretending that they have it just as tough as those making $20 an hour ate just as annoying. The upper middle class NIMBYs are certainly no friends of the working class, but really want to pretend.
The collect money (the value produced by other people) they’re not earning that money. The people who make paycheck are earning their money.
It’s always been this way. Worse now and alternatives haven’t worked. We’re so selfish by nature only a system that assumes sociopathy, capitalism, works at scale and by work I mean doesn’t collapse as it drains the life out of so many.
The problem are bootlickers. All those people who defend capitalism because they are class traitors and can’t think for themselves.
My dude this is very outdated
The people you need to be worried about are making millions an hour now. Literally millions an hour, for a 40 hour equivalent. Cool let's say they work 2x as much. Still millions per hour for an 80 hour equivalent. This meme is deep fried.
The system to properly distribute the wealth created by technology has not been developed. When 1000 people were needed to make a product, they were paid a (reasonable) living wage. Now 1 person controls the line that makes the product, and 999 are laid off. And the owner? 5000x more profit than before. This system will destroy our world as we know it.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-rich-is-jeff-bezos-mind-blowing-facts-net-worth-2019-4
Since mid-October 2019, Bezos' fortune has grown by $80 billion. Based on the year-over-year change in his net worth, Bezos has made $152,207 per minute — and $2,537 per second. That latter figure is more than three times what the median US worker makes in a week.
I'd suggest the answer is mandatory conversion of conventional corporations to worker owned cooperatives, for any business above the level of a "family" company (say more than 1000 employees?).
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5d
Stop importing cheap labor. Then everyone goes up to $50 an hour and the fat cat drops to $1,000
Wall Street, donors to politicians, and business owners want open borders. Why do you want the same thing?
Seems like such and easy fix by capping the multiplier they’re allowed to make more than the lowest paid person
America can’t have an economy that works for everyone because too many Americans vote for republicans.
Poor depressed citizens make for bad revolutionists
If that’s frustrating- wait until you try to convince Americans that America is great
Or, if you look at the $46B Elon Musk got from Tesla over the past 6 years (I think it was 6), assuming he works 12 hour days, 7 days a week (which he certainly does NOT do) then that works out to:
$46,000,000,000/4,380hours/year ≈ $10,502,283.11per hour
$10 Million dollars per hour. Jebus.
Because his time is mostly spent at Twitter and SpaceX, he doesn't put that much time into Tesla. If we say he works 24 hours per week at Tesla then that works out to:
$46,000,000,000/1,248hours/year ≈ $36,858,974.36per hour
$36 Million dollars per hour.
Because it's controlled by the government. And the government wants to control the people.
We were headed, that way; before Ronald Reagan destroyed The Progressive Tax System. The Purpose of Progressive Taxes, was to reward People who worked hard, and got ahead; by working hard, but beyond a certain point, after Your basic needs were covered, along with some other discretionary expenditures, like savings, investing, retirement, etc., as You made more money, there was a growing disincentive to make even more money. Estates were taxed, at death; to allow future generations, in a family; some benefits, earned by The Deceased, but, in the spirit of Fair Play, and Equality; the larger the Estate, the bigger, the Tax bite, actually, since People were not taxed, by the Estate Tax, until a certain amount was reached; say, $60,000; for State Estate Taxes, to even begin, to be assessed, and $300,000, for Federal Estate Taxes; with some exemptions (and, this was in 1990 dollars, so correct, for inflation); most Estates paid little, or no, Estate Taxes. The Theory was, there should be some reward, to Heirs, for the hard work, of their Benefactors, bur We did not, want a Class System, as in Europe; based on Wealth, and Land Ownership, While Heirs should be given, a slight "head start", in the race; the race should be fair, to all. The same, applied to Income Taxes: as income grew, there should be a "disincentive", to earn additional money. Moreover, deductions were given, for taking care of Children, the elderly, the disabled; and, as incentives, to accomplish, a "public good". It was not a perfect system, nor was it, indexed to inflation (which would have given, Government; a disincentive; to raise taxes, without consulting The People); but it did, work.
In the 1960's and 1970's; there was a belief, fostered by The Republican Party; that Taxation, at all; was unfair. This led to Proposition 13, in California; and "Jarvis-Gann" Legislation, being passed, across the Country. The Estate Tax, was labeled, as The "Death Tax", with the impression given the Public; that everyone paid it, which was untrue.
Short answer is a party keeps giving corporations unlimited power because “capitalist free market” but the same people also give them “socialist bailouts”. It’s a fun little game they do while keeping us fighting against each other.
ITS REALLY PISSING ME OFF AS WELL - There’s no getting ahead in life anymore unless you’re already rich. Something needs to happen
Everyone is in it for themselves. That’s humanity.
The rich get richer while the rest of us starve.
We have an economy that works for everyone - that the rich think actually matters. Obviously, "the rest of us" don't.
Its the oldest story in the book. The issue can be solved with guillotines
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
2500 per hour? try 2500 per minute
You don’t understand. If the poor aren’t fighting each other, they might finally realize the rich have been fucking them over the entire time.
Name an economy that works for everyone
We don't currently know of one. Is that sufficient evidence that one can't ever exist?
Hey up until pretty recently, slavery was seen by many as a pretty good system of economics until some people got all uppity about it. (/s)
I’m sure plenty of people back then also thought it wasn’t worth changing as well.
Slavery never really ended. Most people were wage slaves before that. Now everyone is wage slaves.
If we rewrite it this way: "Name an economy that works for everyone all social classes, then I can name quite a few (e.g. Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, etc.).
All of them have this in common: free, democratic unions, recruiting and active at national and/or industry levels, not at branch/company levels.
1950s-1960s America. With aggressively high top tax brackets. It’s about forcing the rising tide to lift all ships instead of just the guy at the top. Incentivizes companies to pay their employees well instead of just dumping all compensation on executives. The social strides we’ve made have been awesome, the fiscal ones have been so stupid.
It’s in the interest of those in power to keep the cattle as starving as possible.
Easier to control them.