654
The wealth of the 1% just hit a record $44 trillion
(www.cnbc.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
654 points (98.4% liked)
News
23260 readers
3021 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I would lower that to $100 million. I don't think there's even a good reason for anyone to be that rich, but if we're going for a crazy upper limit...
I would love to hear which "certain goods" are so expensive that one hundred million dollars is insufficient for a lifetime.
You gotta protect your fortune from inflation...
You mean cars built specifically for rich people that absolutely no one needs to own? Because you probably can't own an indoors swimming pool coated in 24 carat gold and the entire pool filled with water with gold flakes suspended in it for under $100 million either. Who gives a fuck?
Rich people can drive Toyotas and Chevys like everyone else. They could even afford a Porsche.
You're not making a very good argument.
So are you going to limit how plush or high tech cars can be OR limit the MSRP ?
Yes.
Also, if you are worth $100 million, you can literally afford the most expensive cars ever made and still be a multimillionaire.
Now, please explain why anyone in this world needs a $30 million car and why it would be a hardship for someone who would still have $70 million after buying it.
Because those cars bring new technology to the world.
They are vehicles for innovation.
They inspire people involved in making that car to be better at their jobs, to push the envelope.
Wealth does not trickle down, but technology does.
And if you want to put a legal limit on innovation and invention, thats an issue.
What innovation did that $30 million car bring to the world? Please explain specifically what technology trickled down.
And you still haven't explained why it would be a hardship for someone with $100 million to spend $30 million of it on a car. Please explain that too.
One off the top of my head, the passing material science down from race cars into production quantities (albeit low but then into bmw and benz, then into sport models etc.) benefits to average drivers. More specifically, brake pads. Thier effectiveness and durability are so much better than 30 years ago. save lives all the time, and everyone is driving much faster and braking later.
I never spoke up on individual wealth and/or income. Pro UBI in fact. But you still need to incentivize learning, innovation, and development somehow. And right now we use money for that mostly. Or stock options, crypto, etc. Drugs, sex, power, indulgences have also been used historically.
My thrust is that limiting intellectual advancement is stupid.
I asked about that specific car. You didn't answer me.
That isn't even remotely the same as communism. That is capitalism with an upper income limit.
You don't have some people earning $100 million a year and others making $25,000 a year under communism. That's only possible in a capitalist economic structure.
Your understanding of communism is on par with that of Joseph McCarthy.
No it isn't.
You actually think if people worth $100 million getting taxed at 100% above that $100 million equals socialism or communism? Really?
Either people have unlimited income or its communism?
It is in no way the same idea.
Communism is about the workers controlling the means of production and distributing things according to people's needs. This has zero to do with that.
I mean it's not a secret what communism is, so I don't know why you don't know what it is, but here-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
Also, Karl Marx wrote extensively on the subject. Believe it or not, limiting upper income levels was not something he ever wrote about. Probably because that wouldn't even be a thing in a communist society.
No, that has nothing to do with socialism either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
The whole idea of income requires capitalism. You don't seem to understand that basic fact.
It's almost as if they weren't actually socialist countries.
Next you'll be telling me that the elections in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are unfair, which is why we shouldn't have democracy.
I don't know, maybe because just because a country calls itself something doesn't mean it actually follows that ideology?
Believe it or not, the National Socialist German Workers' Party were also not socialists.
But I do enjoy how you keep ignoring the actual definitions of these words and instead are going with what countries do.
It's oligarchy disguising itself as socialism. If the people at the top are far richer than the people at the bottom it is neither socialism nor communism. Period.
Capping income at an upper limit is also not communism or socialism. It is still capitalism.
Now that we've straightened that out, maybe you can explain why anyone needs to be worth more than $100 million.
This basically never happens. You must know this. People that rich pretty much only care about making more money. The exceptions can be counted on one hand.
And income is not the same as achievements. Elon Musk is not a model of a great achiever. There are people who have done far more to help the world than Elon Musk and are nowhere near as rich as him. Alexander Fleming's work has likely saved billions of lives. Do you think he was getting paid anywhere near that high? Do you think he was worth what Elon Musk is worth? Spoiler: Not even close.
I have no idea why you think wealth is always earned or deserved when it almost never is.
Please stop commenting on politics if this is your level of education on the matter. Communism is absolutely not relevant here, because communism is
You haven't even begun to understand if you think communism is related to this discussion.
Even accepting the absurdity of suggesting those as "good reasons" to need more than $100 million dollars in a lifetime, fine. You buy both of those and "only" have 30 million dollars to live on for the rest of your life. That's still very comfortable and more than most people's lifetime earnings by an order of magnitude.
If your name is Rowan Atkinson you are going to need several of those McLarens...
I doubt the billionaire will spend that $100 Mil on altruistic endeavors.
Tax shelters, itemizable donations, kickbacks into campaign funds, etc i believe.
Actual large scale altruism? Nope.