this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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We have that problem NOW.
Billionaires don't work at all, they just siphon money away from us all, our labor, our hard work, our time, they get 99% of all that profit, we get crumbs.
It's a great deal, for them, the rest of us get just enough to not die or start rioting.
Try again.
You will always have the rich & powerful and the poor. The problem is that the rich have lost all care for the poor. When you look throughout history the aristocracy was raised to rule and to steward great wealth. This meant funding art, cathedrals, public works, social services, charitable endeavors etc This raised the HDI for their surrounding community and nation. Certainly it wasn't perfect but it was something, more than what we have now.
While most billionaires are invisible to the public what's very clear with the visible is that they are loosely 'self-made' in which maybe they were rich to begin with but not remotely close to how rich they are now. This comes with a "well I earned it so I'll spend it" philosophy. Furthermore our culture has no shared sense of identity or morality anymore so the social contract is broken. Having shed all historical culture and tradition we're increasingly atomized and alien to one another. As a result America and to a lesser extent "The West" is comprised no longer of nations but instead of balkanized economic zones. It's late-stage capitalism for sure but I would argue more succintly that it is late-stage materialism. Nihilism will always be the result when you remove the soul from the social equation.
Btw, Thinking that billionaires don't even work is just silly.
Work can mean a lot of things, in many ways Elon Musk could be said to work a lot. But itβs not comparable to what we mean when we normally talk of work. Musk has already amassed more wealth than he can meaningfully spend, regardless of how he uses his time. For all intents and purposes, all his time is free time. He chooses to spend it by laboriously being an asshole.
No it isn't, that's the economic reality. Do you think billionaires make that much because of some outrageously high salary or hourly wage? Because that ain't it. They make their money by having money.
Having money AND taking it from all the people under them. Sorta like a pyramid. It's sort of a scheme where the top guys get most of the profit while doing the least actual work. I wish we had a term for that. An upside down funnel, of sorts.
Underregulated Capitalism like we have now is just a
Tap for spoiler
Pyramid SchemeIt works fine for me and most people. You just need to be dedicated and have a skill that's valuable. If you don't have one then you need to get one.
Valuable and in demand are not the same.
I never said they were, but if you're good enough at your skill you will be valuable
What job are you doing that isn't having most of the value you made taken from you?
I'm a highly skilled person, I've been in corporate America for 2 decades and have a long list of skills and abilities and work hard.
I've literally generated multiple millions of profit for companies I've been at. Did I ever see an extra penny? A bonus? A % raise? Anything beyond the normal bare-bones standard "cost of living raise" (which never ACTUALLY goes up as much as CoL does BTW) ? Nope. And that's part of the issue we are talking about. I could be a STELLAR employee and generate the lion's share of profit OR I could be a lazy unproductive idiot that costs the company money and you know what? Neither of those things changes pay for me. What does? How well liked I am, how much I brownnose, who I shake hands with, who I know, what shady deals I may do in secret, etc. But I have integrity and I refuse to lie, cheat, grift and schmooze my way up like most execs do.
It is EXTREMELY common to work your ass off, earn some CEO and shareholders millions and billions, then they can lay you off or you die and no one cares. They milked every last drop of productivity from you and will happily discard you at any time.
Dude, if you're making your company millions of dollars and they don't recognize it then that's your fault. You're obviously not playing the game right in your company.
That's exactly my point though. It's arbitrary and has nothing to do with "hard work" or "ability" as you claimed.
It certainly does but with your hard work you also need to make sure that you get recognized for it. And that's up to you