If you pay any of your employees a non-living wage you're not "earning" your billions. You hire someone you're expecting them to show up, but also be well rested, hydrated, clothed, physically healthy, mentally fit, and motivated. They can't be all of those things if you're not compensating them well enough and providing them the flexibility life demands. If your employees depend on government services just so they can show up to work then it's the taxpayers that are padding your pocket, not your own "hard work".
this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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Sure you can. You just have to figure out a way to live for 10,000 years.
You can create wealth. The issue is distribution not wealth creation. The American workforce needs a raise.
Trying to understand this type of concept, as economics is not a super strong topic of mine, and I hear or see this type of phrasing sometimes; "creating wealth" "wealth creation".
How do you define how someone creates wealth?
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Wait turn she finds out most billionaire didn't have a billion dollars
I couldn't access the site with protonvpn but removepaywalls fixed it.
It's big that she said this. It's a big political risk.
It's common knowledge here, but certainly not everywhere it needs to be.
Nah. They are few. We are many.
They own all of the media. I guarantee that the propaganda machine has started up against her already.
The propaganda machine includes this very article. It's already been going since her first primary run, and it will continue churning the propaganda against her out.
What shitty media do you read?
There's dozens of amazing independent news outlets in the US.
There are dozens of us. Dozens!
You have more access than most people in the world to firearms. Glass bottles are cheap, and gasoline, while increasing in price, is relatively still inexpensive
You're just one plane ticket away! Surely that won't stop you from showing us how it's done.
good luck
Oh, okay. You’re doing all you can, yeah? Not at all mistaking cowardice for helplessness? Nah. Couldn’t be. Weird how your whole country dined out for a couple centuries on the myth of being REALLY good at fighting tyranny against great odds. It’s almost like you made it your entire deal and used it as a cudgel against those who suggested you weren’t living up to your stated ideals. Huh.
You could at least get your own country to stop using the US dollar, stop trading with the USA, stop buying weapons from the US at least, and stop training with the US military. That would help a LOT.
But, instead you'd rather enable the USA. Disgusting.
It's a plane ticket for either one of us, and since you're the smart one with all of the solutions, you should of course lead the way. Like you said, glass bottles and gasoline are cheap, and so are plane tickets, so hop on the plane and SAVE THE WORLD.
Or... just sit on your ass and tell other people what to do, while your own country enables the USA. You're doing all you can, right?
No, keep going.
Keep getting defensive and illustrating exactly why they’re steamrolling you. Don’t stop. It’s already clear to me but I think it’s useful that other people see the mindset that’s keeping US liberals from stopping MAGA.
Why are you obfuscating? It's just a plane ticket, glass, and gasoline, right? So YOU can stop MAGA
please save us from the MAGA
What a stupid rebuttal...
In response to being accurately accused of not doing anything to overthrow the fascist ruling class in your own country, you ask people from other countries to come do it for you? And you think you're being smart?
She's not wrong.
Since billionaire don't have a billion dollars she is literally right as well.
Here's the relevant quote from the article:
“You can’t earn a billion dollars,” Ocasio‑Cortez said. “You just can’t earn that. You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth. But you can’t earn that.”
You can't move up that high financially and be a honest person. Some people do get lucky by having a great idea or business model at the right time. What keeps them there is they can look around at others struggling and justify "I deserve this more." Than continue to exploit as much as they can to keep it.
I can think of one guy who deserves to be a billionaire and it's the guy who invented a commercially viable blue LED.
But he's not.
Because billionaires robbed him.
The word "billionaire" exists because "slave owner" had a negative connotation.
I like the way both of those words sound, right before the new industrial revolution begins churning out freshly sharpened guillotines.
In both cases, the people rejoice and get a free ball to kick around.
That sounds like a really good way to break a foot. Heads be heavy af, yo. Stay safe
That's because evil is the root of all money.
All those Gabe lovers will tell you otherwise.
Edit: see. There they are.
The thing with having a billion dollars is that you don't earn it, you divert part of the economy of a given sector into your wallet. I don't know whether Gabe did this dishonestly, but clearly part of the whole gaming industry lands in his bank account... In his case, maybe the biggest gap is a gap of taxation...
I don't know whether Gabe did this dishonestly,
Gabe made his billions by violating the First Sale Doctrine which was ruled by the Supreme Court and passed into law over a hundred years ago.
He was one of the original tech bros: Let's do something illegal and add "on a computer" to the process to claim the law doesn't apply.
I use Steam, but I'm well aware that I used to be able to buy old video games at a huge discount before Steam sidestepped the law with "it's not a game it's a steam key".
I can't take Gabe lovers seriously, either.
see. There they are.
See, I tried to start something on purpose and then that happened! It's these other evil people who are the problem!
I'd rather GabeN has the money than Musk. Ideally neither would.
They're not as bad as Taylor Swift fans when you point out she is a billionaire.
I'm not a fan exactly, but I often see people use her wealth to make other criticisms about her like, "She's not an artist, she's a product." It's a criticism I never hear people make about male artists, and of all wealthy pop stars, she deserves SOME credit. She pays her stage crew well and takes time at every show to recognize them. She has writing credits on all her songs. She endorses Democrats for president (yes, at the last minute, but it's more than most celebrities do.)
See, you're already defending the billionaire. I will say she is an extremely talented artist. Like you said she writes her stuff and for others. She 100% deserves the fame, the accolades, and wealth, but nobody should have that much wealth. Nobody. I always hear the same things about her paying her stage hands and performers well, as well as giving them generous bonuses. Meanwhile she still was able to become a billionaire, she's abusing someone. A lot of it is her abusing her fans. Her latest album had something like 27 different versions on launch. If you wanted the complete album you had to repurchase it several times and from different stores. That's straight up predatory capitalist behavior. Not to mention the cost of a ticket to a performance...
Contrast that with someone like Bad Bunny. He stayed in residency in Puerto Rico making much less money than he could have if he toured. He reserved a certain number of tickets per performance for locals. He did these things specifically to allow his Puerto Rican fans to afford and have the opportunity to see him.
I'm going to guess the fediverse has more Gabe fans than Swifties.
Who the fuck is Gabe?
He owns a little known gaming platform called Steam
Eh, gotta be pragmatic.
Is it wrong for people to have that much wealth? Yes.
Is it inevitable for it to happen in the current world? Yes.
At that point I'd rather GabeN have control over the PC Games market than say, Microsoft, because we can see the result of their work.
At that point I'd rather GabeN have control over the PC Games market than say, Microsoft, because we can see the result of their work.
Centralized money and power in one person is ALWAYS a bad thing, even if they are smart, benevolent, and generous. Even if the results in this one instance are ok, they are part of the same system that allows for all of the other oligarchs and capitalists to have obscene unitary power over people. We shouldn't ever allow the values and whims of one person have sway over millions. Period.
And Gabe is a human being. He will age and retire. Or he will die. His views may change. Then what happens? Being ok now is not a guarantee of the future. Better to get rid of the system than to prop up the occasional good guy of the system as an example of it working.
Yeah sure, that has nothing to with what I wrote tho.
Want to stop allowing "the values and whims of one person have sway over millions.", get rid of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Microsof-CEO-du-jour. Can't? Well then the guy selling games and loot boxes isn't really a good consolation prize, especially when the consequence of removing him is reducing support for alternative operating systems and limiting the freedom of millions, to replace it with an unknown.
I agree some billionaires are worse than others. Also, it's the accumulated wealth that is wrong, not the accumulator. We don't have to send them to the guillotines — though by all means convict them and punish them for crimes their wealth has made them immune to.
That would leave GabeN in charge of stuff, just with less money to throw around, while others might need a head basket — metaphorically speaking. I'm not down with the death penalty, though I shout louder in some cases than others.
Agreed, it is impossible. Hedgies should be immediately punished and pay reprimands for the rest of their lives
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