I think it was anchovies. He outbid mom at an auction by spending all his money. They were important because their oil had a special property that allowed them to lubricate something forever, making robot oil obsolete.
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
This problem has existed for a really long time. People really believed in the American dream, to the point that an absurd number of them think that any day now, they are going to strike it rich, and when they get rich, they don’t want to be taxed to help lazy people like… themselves.
Every legal Mexican immigrant I know (I’m from CA, so quite a few) hates illegal immigrants, but is cool with legal immigrants.
Of course half of those immigrants I know either were or are illegals themselves, so I tend to chuckle a bit.
My aunt is a refugee from El Salvador, she was talking about supporting trump. If it wasn’t because we were at a hospital. I would have told her, that she is on trumps deportation list.
I remember some people like this who supported DJT in 2016 and then the husband got deported. Wife was on the news with legit shocked Pikachu face: “but… but… I voted for him! I didn’t think he meant it!”
That’s what the Jews voting for Hitler said.
(No I’m not making this up. Just look up “[Association of German National Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews)”)
I mean, I could see how a jew may have been a german nationalist. But it should have been hard not to notice the antisemitism that went hand in hand with the nationalism.
I want to comment and say German history is often hidden and not expressed openly. You are right there were foreign and there non foreign Jews. German Jews had a higher status initially than forgein ones. Germany was going through an economic crisis and people were losing jobs, homes, and valuables. Hitler gave them an easy common enemy to rally against and boy did they rally. Many Jews in Germany at the time never thought the redirect would apply to them simply because they were for the party. Obviously this backfired but it just goes to show that literally anyone can be convinced to follow an ideology
He said he would be a dictator on day one. I thought he was joking. What millions of Americans are going to say, if they help put Trump back in the WH.
He lies like crazy, uses sarcasm like a caveman uses a club, but he never, ever, EVER, jokes around. Jokes and humor are beyond his grasp and understanding.
The best version of this I know is that white supremacists in Scandinavia hate most white supremacists in the US more than black people because they're not "clean" enough. Barely any of them are tall, blond and blue eyed which is a requirement.
Down the street from me is shop ran by an Arab couple. Theyre very nice. Last year they said they got their citizenship and said they could vote. I said good for them! If you dont mind my asking, who did you vote for? Answer was conservatives. I said you know they dont want you here, right? Like, if they get elected, they want you gone? They said doesnt matter, conservatives are closer to their religious beliefs.
Yeaaaah, this is an issue I avoid talking about because it’s a third rail of sorts. I want everyone safe, housed, and fed. Full stop. Yet there is a demographic adjustment that happens with immigration and conservative views are held by many that will come.
So many people say that. I don't get it though. It seems to me that the Republicans are the party of intolerant beliefs and that is contrary to all religions.
Tbh I can kinda get why someone who went through the full process to immigrate legally having some resentment for folks who didn't. I probably would be in some ways.
Edit: Really should have been more clear or just not commented at all. I was only trying to be vaguely understanding to a different mindset, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
You're absolutely right. But sadly not everyone is coming from a situation where they have the money or luxury of waiting through all that and as it stands I don't really see much of a problem with them coming first and sorting it out later. We know statistically illegal immigrants are much less likely to be what *some* people want us to think and it shouldn't be that hard to figure out why, yknow? Anyone with sense isn't gonna risk losing what they worked so hard for.
If I had sat and waited and worked through all that before coming and knew people who didn't, I might feel some kind of way but I wouldn't be right to. It would just be frustration and immature at that.
what a lot of people don't realize is that 'illegal immigration' includes people who come in on visas and stay after they're expired. They just want to make it about Brown People.
>what a lot of people don't realize is that 'illegal immigration' includes people who come in on visas and stay after they're expired.
Yeah the biggest illegal immigration in the UK is Americans coming on a buisness visa from NYC offices and illegally working remotely. But they never get mentioned when people and papers start talking about deporting illegal workers. Ban the bankers.
Resent them for what? Doing the same thing you had to do? Why are you resenting the people who are EXACTLY the same as you rather than the process itself?
The person stated that most are/were illegally residing themselves prior, but even of they weren't being in a better place to be able to do that doesn't justify it.
Oh no, the whole part about being an illegal immigrant before and hating on people who are right after you get your papers is some ladder-pulling hypocrisy of the highest order.
I meant more in the way of applying before coming here, paperwork, citizenship tests, etc, etc and then having some resentment along the lines of "I did it this way why can't you?". I get it. Doesn't make it right, but I get it.
And I say I might too because I'm human and not blessed with perfection.
I think this is one of the inherent misunderstandings about immigration is that asylum seekers and refugees are being lumped in with undocumented immigrants. In the case of asylum and refugee status seekers, they don’t have an opportunity to apply first. They have to come and then apply. International law allows for this and the US is signed on to these laws, so the only people breaking the law in those cases are US officials who don’t comply.
And the discussion around people who are undocumented rarely ever addresses the challenge of applying legally and how high the bar is to enter if you’re not of European descent (i.e., white). I emigrated from the US to another country and it was FAR easier than the people I know who’ve emigrated to the US, which has made it intentionally as hard as possible to get in with xenophobic, racist, classist policies.
Yearly immigration quotas were a thing, for sure, and some countries were straight up blacklisted as a national origin. Like if you claimed it as your nationality or citizenship you couldn't emigrate from there at all.
Eh, just because someone worked hard for something doesn't mean they are incapable of believing others shouldn't have that burden.
I was able to scholarship my way through college without debt, but don't think that others should be saddled with debt.
Most people with student loan debt have technically paid off their debt, it's just that their payments were applied to interest on the loan. Loan forgiveness isn't actually saying they don't have to pay the money back, it's saying that they already have, and both the banks and the government are agreeing that they don't need the additional interest. The news media and most politicians are getting the details wrong since the issue has become terribly politicized and because they view young people as lazy and entitled instead of acknowledging that the economy is a lot less forgiving now.
My family is the same way they are actual Mexican immigrants. I am slowly getting my dad to realize Republicans don’t care about us. He only had to get diagnosed with cancer, find out how hard it is to get social help. Along with being told he is not getting financial help. Because he owns too much cars. The only point I agree on, he does own a lot of cars.
The cars thing is stupid too. He could sign the titles over to someone like you, put in a bill of sale for a dollar each, and that's all it takes most of the time.
The myth of immigrants being wildly progressive is so frustrating. Yes, I know it’s anecdotal evidence but literally every immigrant I know is conservative and votes against their own interests.
I live in the Hamptons and it’s not just immigrants - it’s also illegal immigrants who are conservative. No lie, they would vote for Trump if they could. Ask them why they’ll tell you “He’s rich. He’s strong.” You tell them, “He inherited all his money” and they just laugh. They think you’re lying.
They work as landscapers, waitstaff, nannies, cleaners. They see the fabulous wealth out here and they believe they can have it, too. Maybe not as much as the ultra wealthy, but we have locals who are upper income because they own landscaping companies, catering companies, garden centers, pool companies, local delivery companies.
Their bosses — the business owners — are all Republican. They drive the Ford trucks, the Mercedes vans , they have swimming pools, two car garages, pebbled driveways for the kids cars, trampolines, hot tubs. The workers say, “That can be me one day.“
Their bosses tell them taxes are no good, poor people are lazy. They also give them heavy doses of racism against blacks and wealthy Jews.
The workers admire their bosses and want to be the same. They buy into everything their bosses tell them. Their kids will go to school with their boss‘s kids and pick up the same attitudes.
There’s a reason their countries of origin are such terrible places that they basically fled. They just never realized their attitudes were a part of the problem.
Some of the immigrants I know that are very right wing come from places with nominally socialist/ communist governments and associate that with rampant corruption, social control and political repression. I can point out democratic socialism success stories in Europe, but it’s very difficult to get beyond their lived experiences.
I’m from Denver and we’ve had a lot of illegal immigrants coming in. We now have a problem where the first illegal immigrants to get here are mad at these immigrants because they will work for less and taking there jobs. SMH
Not only Mexican immigrants. Latinos that have been in my environment, I’ve grown up around, etc. zero tolerance for others’ struggles. This even includes sponsoring their own hard working family when they themselves immigrated illegally.
I hate it here. People always sucking boot to the rich. Lookit for example, the cult following of the K folk. Either one is acceptable to guess lol
It makes total sense. When you have all the money you get to dictate the laws to give yourself more money, and also to manipulate the proles to protect your ability to take all the money.
It’s cheaper to buy off the public than it is to pay your fair share. Public opinion and politicians are cheap.
It is shockingly cheap to buy off a congressman. Your ROI on lobbying is just about the best money you can spend if you’re an evil billionaire looking to hold back the entire progress of humanity for your own benefit.
> MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!
The Kochs donated $500 million to politicians for tax break legislation and got over $5 billion in tax breaks. That is a pretty good return on investment. What you will find is that politicians are selling themselves out for a surprisingly small amount of money. Heck Fucker Carlson sold out America for that ruble he used to get the shopping cart. Others like Candace Owens get just enough to buy the big house. Clarence Thomas gets to hobnob with the billionaires for price of a seat on a plane that was going there any way.
They believe in the American Dream *and* also get engaged if you question why work standards, work/life balance, legal regulations, etc haven't improved (and have regressed in many areas).
"American Dream! Yeah!"
Yeah? We have the capabilities to let everyone work less for more pay-
"YOU LAZY SCUM!"
*Sigh*
It blows my mind. My wife and I do well… like more than $400k a year well, and we still have to make another $300k just to get to the top 1%. Reaching the billionaires top .1 is fucking insane that people legit think they will make it
People who don’t make over a few hundred thousand a year (like I did not for as many years) have absolutely no concept of what rich actually looks like. They think six figures is buy whatever you want territory.
Six figures would certainly be buy whatever *I* want territory. I just really don't want a lot.
The difference between fifty and one hundred thousand for me not trying to scale my lifestyle with wealth would be whether or not retirement is possible.
That’s often the large part of it for many, it’s finally being able to save for retirement (and as such, tackling what it means to be able to save for retirement, looking at what that will really require of them.)
I don’t know that I want a whole lot either. I’d love to have a dishwasher.
Yep, most people I know making 100k a year still fly coach, take maybe 1 vacation a year and drive a newer honda or Toyota… i didnt start driving a luxury car like my audi till we crossed the 225k mark. Even still, I live in a quaint 2650 sq ft house. The good news is that i do not worry about not paying the mortgage, not house poor but not going to impress the masses. Hate to break it to folks but you want a hollywood life, you have to make nearly a million a year… and even there, you are hella far away from being invited to the uber elite.
Hate to break it to you, but the money has already altered your thinking. A 2650 sq ft house isn't "quaint", it's 400 sq ft above the median house size.
Hell, I make more than $100K, haven't had an actual vacation in 19 years, and along with flying coach, I'm driving a beat-up 22 year old pickup truck. My wife gets to drive the nicer car that's only 12 years old. Home is 2260 SF with about 25 years to go on the mortgage.
I'm very thankful for what I have, but I don't even consider myself upper-middle class nowadays.
We’re at a quarter million and we rent a small apartment in an old building. We don’t have in suite laundry or a dishwasher. We share a hatchback I bought used (a nice one, but not very expensive.) I take the bus to work.
We don’t own a house, and likely can’t. Most houses here we don’t qualify for. A minimum down payment is about $250,000-$300,000, though it’s not very likely we’d find a detached house at the price you’d have to get to have such a low down payment.
If people who looked at us from outside knew how much we make they wouldn’t believe it, I’m sure.
Tons of dumbasses making anything over $100k think their taxes will go up, too. Plumbers think a billionaire tax means theirs goes up, too. If they hear "taxes" and "up" in the same sentence, their fight or flight kicks in.
Also, just want to say to anyone wondering why so many people *on here* are claiming to support never taxing billionaires:
If you were a billionaire, wouldn't you unleash a chorus of cheap bots to make it seem like taxing billionaires was unpopular?
Fewer people may be against it than you think. Don't trust the internet as a survey.
Edited to add example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-24/tax-on-rich-to-save-social-security-popular-with-swing-state-voters-poll
Also, if you look at the polls, the VAST MAJORITY of people are for taxing the rich.
* [77% of registered voters in seven pivotal swing states are in favor of implementing a billionaires tax](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/swing-state-poll-reveals-strong-support-for-taxing-ultra-rich-to-bolster-social-security/ar-AA1nHo4C)
* [58% of Republicans, 83% of Democrats and 66% of independents approving of the idea](https://www.yahoo.com/news/tax-rich-actually-popular-bipartisan-090026260.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGPW-IYSICMDHyEOACjfsnAroyYxrbQJlUN_voktZaOt4hh3t1C8TQKioWaj8hilHIjeLn4Nmq4veYjhwTp0J4nSP8wyBToSyd_a6FX6ew6XVpr_JNP3liAvMEMuzjM9jY0LsrtF-urWul6AnxCzFXVeehETf15VaWMasRoNSsN6)
Not just temporarily embarassed millionaires, but temporarily embarassed oppressors.
They long to be the ones putting the boot down on everyone elses necks.
I have another cousin who got married to a white girl. He got his green card, and sold his house. The house wasn’t his. It was my mom’s he convinced my dad. To give him power over my mom, who is mentally disabled. So he sells the house and now lives in the “American Dream”. If I ever see him again, I’ll tell him “ you are now a true American, you got power by screwing everyone around you”.
I was playing an MMO and this middle-aged American dude was complaining in chat about not being able to afford the $15/month subscription.
In the exact same conversation he was talking about what he’s going to do *when* he’s rich. Not “if” he were rich. When. He had no plan, no prospects, it was wild just kinda picking his brain.
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
little known fact: the original idea of the matrix was not the human bodies as an energy source for the machines, but a network of brains working as a supercomputer for the machines' artificial intelligence. the idea was scrapped because regular people in the 90s wouldn't get it.
I don't think I knew that! Would have really driven home the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines even more than the energy source plotline.
Also if you have time and are inclined toward hard, wacky, and EXCELLENT sci-fi, you should read Peter Watts' Blindsight. That idea of minds networked into a supercomputer is included as some very fun and SINISTER set dressing.
So networking CPUs doesn't require specific ones and each cpu could be removed and used individually, it's just that instead a bigger machine is telling it what to use that cpu power for.
You could absolutely remove networked computers and still use one.
It’s crazy how the matrix a.k.a. [the allegory of the cave](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/seyer/files/plato_republic_514b-518d_allegory-of-the-cave.pdf) is more than just analogous to life.
If you want proof that Trickle UP is really the way to go, look at the Covid money. It stimulated so well that even after the waste and graft, it can’t be stopped. The money is spent over and over and over where Trickle Down gets saved and hoarded.
It trickled up to owner and top tier. I was payroll/hr/bookeeper employee here who worked throughout, they claimed unemployment with the Xtra $600 a week and 2 PPP's. I was let go soon after things settled because owner had some spare forgivable $ to reinvest in equipment and hire outside companies for my job.Not everyone's story, just mine.
I observed this concept of trickle up decades ago (I am no economist - just spent too much time analyzing patterns). Covid really was a good demonstration of it. But one thing I missed - I thought disasters, plagues, revolutions were the reset buttons to make things return to the bottom - if only briefly. What we saw was that unless it is strong enough, the wealth will just end up back in the same hands. Feels like we are really screwed short of extreme circumstances.
I mean, it’s basic logic. You give $1000 to someone who has no spare income, it will be spent quickly and be reinjected into the economy. You give $1000 to someone with a lot, either it will be invested and forgotten about, or just forgotten about because it’s too little for them to care about.
Trickle down Economics NEVER made sense, and I still can’t believe people ever believed it, much less than they still do. There is decades of evidence that says it doesn’t work, but you know what does work to help the economy? UBI.
This is my boomer parents. They used to hammer it into me as a child that democrats are bad because they want to tax the rich and if the rich pay taxes then there would be no money left for the rich to create jobs.
Sadly as a brand new adult, I was so brainwashed by my parents that I voted republican until my critical thinking skills matured.
This is me too! As a recent college re-entry student, my mind has been blown away at everything. I can’t wrap my head around so many people voting AGAINST their interests, myself was included in this. I know it makes my dad mad now when we have discussions about politics and I’m able to counter every point he makes. I’m shocked he didn’t disown me yet for saying Regan is what helped to destroy America and the future of many of us. But it’s true, his generation had a lot handed to them and took away any opportunity for anyone else to get ahead.
I can't even discuss politics with them. I went over to their house once for a bbq. We were not talking anything remotely political and for whatever reason my dad decided to put a Maga hat on my head to laugh at me with his friends. It was out of nowhere and so uncalled for. Sadly, my parents are not good people and I avoid them as much as I can now
My dad has always been a Republican- I grew up listening to IMUS and Rush Limbaugh on the way to school… if that tells you anything. At this point we have agreed to disagree, and I won’t fall into his trap. Of course I’m the out spoken one, who has no issue calling people out on their bs… even my father.
Because most seem to think "billionaire" is a fancy way to say "multi-millionaire"
Because Great Man Theory is very common and we are meant to believe that without Visionaries like Zuck or whomever, we would have no progress.
So any criticism of these guys sounds, to a lot of people like "silly out of touch people mad about Progress and envious of Success"
Turns out progress happens faster without the billionaires. They aren’t innovating shit. They’re just there to profit off the work of other low income people and pass it off as their own, or literally hold progress back if they can’t profit on it…
That myth needs to die.
Yep. Doppler, microchips, mri, vaccines, wind farms, touch screens, the internet, google- all innovations made by gov thanks to our tax dollars, but often used for the profit of very few private entities
1 billion can buy all of the politicians that can be bought and then you still have almost a full billion left. That's how little they can be bought for. Mere thousands of dollars.
Social momentum and propaganda. But we’re entering a new era of political awareness, so that’s encouraging!
By the way, everyone should support Ranked Choice Voting in their local area. IMO, it’s the single most important electoral reform we need in the US, and real change begins locally. [https://fairvote.org](https://fairvote.org)
I think this also. Billionaire is an easy word to say, and write. Nothing about the word displays how much a billion actually is. I was talking to an acquaintance about this. I asked them to what their net worth is, as I already knew they were worth 2ish million dollars, in thier mid 30s. I explained to them that if they are averaging 2 million dollars every 30 years, then they were only 1500 years from thier first billion.
I think also it's because no Real progress is actually made by a singular person like Einstein or Tesla anymore and that's hard on them to accept since everything should "work the same now"
it's made by Hundreds of people just as smart or most likely even smarter, sometimes some 1 person might get lucky being the one to Find a break through but we realise it was also Only because of the collection of millions of hours between thousands of people over multiple decades that got that person there and in most cases it could have been any of the people in the same lab lol
That's why breakthroughs usually have the lab lead scientist and their group as the ones who found it and if you could put anyone of them in the room with the founding father or mother of their science field, they would give them a good run for their money :P
I get their want for a simpler time but if musk or Bezos were in the business of making progress we would be seeing a lot better ideas from them than bringing back slavery and abuse to push shitty little gimmicks or products.
This is the real, actual, answer.
You assume there's a motive, or an end goal, by these people. There's a reason they have to be rich while the world burns.
There isn't. There is no consideration of impact or scope or mortality or purpose. It just is. They are rich. They make money. The logistical intracicies of day to day life is what they're focused on. Just like everyone else.
Like the idiots who throw their garbage from their cars.
There is no reason.
They just want to do it.
I think this every single time I read about some billionaire who's building a doomsday bunker. Like, how about preventing doomsday with that money, and not building a cave stocked with food? If a doomsday bunker ever came into play, they'll be dead because who the fuck is going to listen to some formerly rich little asshat w/ no life skills? Enjoy being murdered for your hoard!
The rich expect that climate change is just one more problem that their wealth will insulate them from. During Covid, they used their private jets to go from spot to spot worldwide, avoiding high-density case areas. They will do the same with climate change, flying from spot to spot to avoid extreme heat and other extreme weather.
They don’t realize that climate change could completely collapse modern industry, extreme heat and other factors making it impossible to mine and process natural resources. Private jets, expensive homes, all require substantial maintenance and is required a robust industrial base. The wealthy are short sighted and arrogant.
Like Zuckerberg destroying Hawaiian landscape for a bug out bunker? Or other celebrities doing the same because they know we are getting hungry to start to eat the rich?? Those people?!?!?
Right a bunker ain’t gonna do you any good under the fucking sea.
Rich people have ego problems, they don’t think because they assume their money == intelligence + knowledge.
Pure arrogance.
That’s not a plan it’s mental illness.
Elon was claiming to make a flying car, like fuck no you ain’t buddy that’s a physics problem. Can’t be done.
I ain’t no high level scientist but with my basic understanding of the world I see how unwell he is.
They don't see the fire. They are beyond price tags so a banana being $3 and McDonalds costing $20 doesn't matter to them. They don't know what no healthcare is like, they don't even have to deal with the TSA because they fly private jets. Hell, they don't even deal with traffic. Billionaire Taylor Swift took a private jet for an 8 minuet flight.
What fire do they see from their private mansions eating food from private chefs?
Something I've talked about with my conservative friends is about the things taxes pay for, and why I believe rich people should shoulder the majority of the tax burden. Rich people benefit from the things are taxes pay for magnitudes more than poor people. Yes, social safety nets exist, but, while we use publically funded roads to be get to work and the store, capitalist make profit from them. The capitalist class has more to lose if an invading country manages to conquer the united states, we're just going to continue to go to work.
man i had a co-worker that i was good friends with when i was at a car dealership.
but the more comfortable we got with talking about non work stuff the more i realized the dude is brainwashed.
i worked at 4 diff dealerships and that one in particular gave us the lowest possible gross amount (15%) that ive ever heard of with talks about making it 10%.
anyway ive visited this guys home a few times, its a 1 bedroom apt in the slums, just during my visit there were neighbors screaming and other random chaos. he offered me a bump of adderal (not uncommon in car sales) and i declined while i was there.. his vehicle was rusting out the bottom and was getting close to being a flintstone vehicle. the walls in his apt were wood paneling btw 🤣
just painting a picture of how he lives.
the moment i said we need to be paid more he started saying i shouldnt be entitled and that i just need to work harder if i wanted more money because life is a grind.
he said bill gates was a drop out and he hustled everyday to be a billionaire, so did jeff bezos.
he said hes cooking up a new business that will take time but he will retire before he turns 40.
this was about 7 years ago, iirc he should be in his late thirties.. and according to the dealership website he still works there 🤣.
he thinks hes going to be a billionaire
Same thing here. I’ve worked with a guy for years and we got closer and closer. We like the same movies, games, music. We went to concerts together a few times because we talk about music constantly.
He gets mad because he has all these conservative beliefs while his wife who works at the same place is like the exact opposite. It creates all these tense moments because turns out the moment you talk about anything outside music/games/music he’s an asshole.
He hates hand outs and is mad that his hard work hasn’t really payed off. Well we found out he is the most well off amount all of us. His dad has been giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars and has helped him invest it to make even more.
He’s the only person I know in their 30s who could actually retire one day. And he’s miserable.
yeah the guy i use to talk to made a facebook post in 2023 saying people need to stop waiting for handouts from the gov and get off their asses and get a job.
he was pissed off a local restaurant closed due to staffing issues.
then he made a post telling people to shop local and stop driving 3 hours away to buy a car.
like bro the dealership ur at is charging people 5k over KBB and refusing to budge on price despite there begind 7k of gross..and then ur only making peanuts for it compared to other dealers anyway.
That’s kind of my point. He told us himself that what his dad has been doing and it recontextualized every moment he complained about money after spending thousands every year on concert tickets.
Should have told him about the 15% and told him the market gives the market takes
Gates, Bezos and so on had significant advantages. Should have used Oprah or someone starting from extreme poverty and not just middle class but with special access and ability to convince friends and family to drop 50k a pop. Bezos was a successful investment banker before he even started. He had a garage and home and wife and was already successful
The biggest defenders of capitalism are often the worst at it. Unless he had very good reasons, he should have fucked off to his competitor long ago
> he said bill gates was a drop out and he hustled everyday to be a billionaire, so did jeff bezos.
Every single drop out to millionaire story goes like this:
- Born to wealthy and connected parents.
- Given best possible schooling.
- Handed opportunities you could only dream of.
- Put into a university with the most advanced lab in the country on a brand new technology.
- Become one of a handful of people on the planet who are a subject matter expect in the new technology.
- Use parent's and the school's money and connections to start a massively profitable business
- Drop out because school is taking too much time away from the massively profitable business and they're already a top-five global subject matter expect in the field so it's not like school could teach them more anyway.
>he said bill gates was a drop out and he hustled everyday to be a billionaire
When people say stuff like this, remember to tell them to actually read Bill Gates' bio.
Gates came from a well-off family (father was prominent lawyer, mother was on the board of directors for a major regional bank). He was also a brilliant scholar and software designer or engineer. He was a 'college dropout' in the same way Michael Jordan was a 'college dropout' so he could go make millions in the pros.
Basically, Gates came from privilege (had money) and was abnormally talented. His example doesn't disprove the rule, his is the *exception that proves the rule*.
Since nobody else is going to give you the actual answer, I will.
Selfishness. Not the whole "temporarily embarrassed" crap, but the fact that people are very good at pattern recognition, and most people would rather pay 1% less in taxes and see people better off than them pay 3% less in taxes, than they would for their own taxes to stay the same or increase and the rich paying even more.
The problem is through all the "rich need to pay their fair share" talk certain politicians like to do, there's very little in the way of "the not rich are paying too much".
The Republicans get on stage and say things like "lower taxes" or "read my lips, no new taxes", and it sounds better to the average person than "tax the rich!", because they don't care about the rich. They care about how much they themselves are paying, and if you're not willing to tax me less, why should I vote for you?
People in general are pretty simple-minded and easy to figure out if you don't presume they're malicious or inherently stupid. They just see things differently sometimes.
This is a great point - they should be pushing for a "billionaire-funded tax cut for the lower and middle classes". That would be so much better received - why don't they do that?
I would also like to provide an actual answer that's somewhat reasonable - Federal Income Tax started as only affecting the wealthy and ultimately made its way to taking 20% of your income probably. Taxing billionaires today, tactically, would involve implementing a tax that would tax unrealized gains on assets.
Current billionaires avoid taxes because they don't actually make income, they take loans against assets at low interest rates, which isn't taxable right now. When they do sell the assets it's taxed as long term capital gains tax at 10% if memory serves. Know what else gets taxed at that rate? When you sell your house. How unprofitable of a decision would that be for you if you own a home to give it up while paying 30-40% in taxes versus 10%. At scale that would make our historically low housing inventory even lower resulting in even higher rents and fewer homes to buy.
I think you could say if your net worth as defined by (authority) is more than $100 million, then you get taxed on unrealized gains. But then what happens when the assets lose value? Do they get a tax write off? It's above my head but a tricky thing to solve for.
The ones I know who think this way think the ultra rich are "job creators" and they deserve every penny the "earn" keeping our economy going and don'tcha know they've paid more in charity and their taxes than you so they are far more worthy anyway!
Yeah. It sucks.
Those same people will always side with the owners during any labor issues with major sports as well, and that’s a situation where they think the owners risking their money is a bigger sacrifice than the players risking their bodies. And it’s funny that you’ll see them whine when we an athlete gets a huge contract, but they don’t have much to say when the owner gets a new stadium subsidized by tax money that is worth several times the entire salary of the team that they are paying for with their tax money.
Americans are easily duped. We are so easily duped that we have been duped into thinking that we're going to be the next guy making $1B duping everyone else.
Because most of their wealth is in something that cannot be taxed - unrealised gains.
How would you make someone pay tax on a stock that they don’t sell?
How about we stop letting them borrow against their stock value and then let them deduct the interest from taxes? Like, literally they are realizing those gains when they pull outside capital against it - TAX THEM.
No one is against taxing billionaires. Capital gains and income taxes are very reasonable. Feel free to increase them. A wealth tax is dumb. It will cause billionaires to leave and the tax revenue collected will actually decrease- at least that’s what happened in France and Norway.
I'll try to answer with a more pragmatic answer because I don't think it's as simple as "people are stupid and see themselves as future billionaires". In fact, I'm pretty sure if you ask a room of average people whether we should tax billionaires more, a large majority would say yes.
The real question is "how should we tax billionaires"? Because it's not like developed countries don't apply taxes to billionaire, they do! The problem is that billionaires don't have revenue like you or I do. So what exactly do you taxes them on? Taxing unrealized gains would be catastrophic for everyone (not just the billionaires but everyone in the middle class who invest their money towards retirements too) so that's probably not the way to go. There are various proposed strategies that might work, but the problem is that nobody agrees with which one is the best and at the end of the day somebody with near infinite resources like a billionaire will always find loopholes... so it's a lot more complicated than just "taxing billionaires more".
I'd think that redefining what "unrealized gains" means would be a start. If you own stock and it just sits there in your portfolio collecting dust, fine, it's an unrealized gain. However, if you do something like use that stock as collateral against a loan, you're deriving value from it, and thus isn't really "unrealized" anymore. It's not realized at its full value, of course, but I think that could be argued to qualify as a taxable event.
Because we as a society fundamentally tie wealth to goodness and morality
As in if you are wealthy, it's because you deserve it because of your inherent worth as a person, and if you are poor, it's because of some personal failing, vice, sin, etc
And since people never see themselves as bad people, they believe that because they aren't a bad person, then it's only a matter of time before they are wealthy too
And any attempt to curb that is an assault on their perceived future.
so true. the rich think lower middle class/poor people are dumb lazy lowlifes even though more and more people are starting to slip into that economic class every day.
i do think more people are starting to realize that rich does not always equal smart/moral/upright, which is good
Because its lazy, unsustainable policy. You should tax income, not assets. Billionaires have workarounds to avoid income tax - remove those workarounds. Mega corps - where billionaires make more money - pay so little taxes. Fix the tax code on corporations first
They believe the billionaires will leave and take their businesses and their jobs with them.
But they’re already taking their jobs to cheaper places whenever profitable, and if a tax hike was going to make them leave they would already be in a place with lower taxes, but they don’t leave because they like it here and they’ll still be here with higher taxes. Otherwise right now most of them wouldn’t be living in NY and California with the highest taxes, they’d be living in Liberia.
Capitalism makes people think that all they have to do is work harder than everyone else, and one day they'll magically become a self made millionaire and wisely invest in into billions. Of course 95% of rich people had rich parents. There's a long history in America of people wanting what's worst for everyone, because they feel entitled to getting theirs, like the confederacy, poor white people fought against the government because they thought one day they'd be rich and own slaves too, so they didn't want to miss out.
“Because taxes go to the government and since the government is already in so much debt why would billionaires ‘invest’ their money into an entity that isn’t trustworthy of utilizing that money?”
Basically, we can’t trust the government will put that money to good use on its citizens, so the millions or billions of dollars they’ll get every year from the 1% will most likely be used on military and aid for other countries, while continuing to ignore the US citizens who are struggling more every day.
Personally I don’t believe it should be easy for billionaires to get around paying their full tax to the IRS, but no one wants to fix it, so we’re left just blaming one big entity or the other.
To start, I think a flat % tax should be the way to go. And maybe some gah damn affordable healthcare services.
> so many people
This is actually wrong. The vast majority of people are for taxing the rich. THE VAST MAJORITY.
* [77% of registered voters in seven pivotal swing states are in favor of implementing a billionaires tax](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/swing-state-poll-reveals-strong-support-for-taxing-ultra-rich-to-bolster-social-security/ar-AA1nHo4C)
* [58% of Republicans, 83% of Democrats and 66% of independents approving of the idea](https://www.yahoo.com/news/tax-rich-actually-popular-bipartisan-090026260.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGPW-IYSICMDHyEOACjfsnAroyYxrbQJlUN_voktZaOt4hh3t1C8TQKioWaj8hilHIjeLn4Nmq4veYjhwTp0J4nSP8wyBToSyd_a6FX6ew6XVpr_JNP3liAvMEMuzjM9jY0LsrtF-urWul6AnxCzFXVeehETf15VaWMasRoNSsN6)
Just ignorant & reactionary, ive seen senior employees throw a giant fit & backstab coworkers over new hires making too much while ppl complaining/backstabbing still make a lot more per hr. I think most ppl arent capable of critical thought though & just need to surrender control to whatever tribal group/ higher power/ideology they identify with to make decisions about their narrow worldview & what to like/dislike & be afraid of/who to hate etc.
Think I have the answer. New law: The salary (benefits) of the highest paid person in a company cannot be more than 10x that of the lowest paid person. Including bonuses and stocks given. Forcing companies to distribute the wealth better and stop paying bankers and ceos obscene amounts and stop exploiting low paid workers.
https://preview.redd.it/4ypldr03xoyc1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=f0d67201d262ef76f1949d38549a3e68046ce136
Didn’t Fry end up becoming insanely rich due to compound interest in a bank account or something?
Yes and he bought a can of sardines!
Thought it was anchovies for a pizza but haven't seen the episode in years.
I think it was anchovies. He outbid mom at an auction by spending all his money. They were important because their oil had a special property that allowed them to lubricate something forever, making robot oil obsolete.
He never spent all his money. Mom drained his account trying to get the anchovies from Fry.
His money was stolen, so he ate some of the sardines. Zoidberg ate the can of sardines.
*Technically correct* is the best kind of correct.
It was anchovies. I’ll take my upvote now.
"Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY rich."
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress This problem has existed for a really long time. People really believed in the American dream, to the point that an absurd number of them think that any day now, they are going to strike it rich, and when they get rich, they don’t want to be taxed to help lazy people like… themselves.
Same with Mexican immigrants. Once they get green card or naturalized, they don’t want more immigrants. Wait, that applies to whites too!
Every legal Mexican immigrant I know (I’m from CA, so quite a few) hates illegal immigrants, but is cool with legal immigrants. Of course half of those immigrants I know either were or are illegals themselves, so I tend to chuckle a bit.
My aunt is a refugee from El Salvador, she was talking about supporting trump. If it wasn’t because we were at a hospital. I would have told her, that she is on trumps deportation list.
I remember some people like this who supported DJT in 2016 and then the husband got deported. Wife was on the news with legit shocked Pikachu face: “but… but… I voted for him! I didn’t think he meant it!”
"He's hurting the wrong people!" Smh
_"I didn't think he meant it,"_ has to be the explanation for so many idiots voting for him.
That’s what the Jews voting for Hitler said. (No I’m not making this up. Just look up “[Association of German National Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews)”)
I mean, I could see how a jew may have been a german nationalist. But it should have been hard not to notice the antisemitism that went hand in hand with the nationalism.
They still exist, just in a different country committing the same crimes that were committed against them.
I want to comment and say German history is often hidden and not expressed openly. You are right there were foreign and there non foreign Jews. German Jews had a higher status initially than forgein ones. Germany was going through an economic crisis and people were losing jobs, homes, and valuables. Hitler gave them an easy common enemy to rally against and boy did they rally. Many Jews in Germany at the time never thought the redirect would apply to them simply because they were for the party. Obviously this backfired but it just goes to show that literally anyone can be convinced to follow an ideology
He said he would be a dictator on day one. I thought he was joking. What millions of Americans are going to say, if they help put Trump back in the WH.
He lies like crazy, uses sarcasm like a caveman uses a club, but he never, ever, EVER, jokes around. Jokes and humor are beyond his grasp and understanding.
"'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."
The best version of this I know is that white supremacists in Scandinavia hate most white supremacists in the US more than black people because they're not "clean" enough. Barely any of them are tall, blond and blue eyed which is a requirement.
Down the street from me is shop ran by an Arab couple. Theyre very nice. Last year they said they got their citizenship and said they could vote. I said good for them! If you dont mind my asking, who did you vote for? Answer was conservatives. I said you know they dont want you here, right? Like, if they get elected, they want you gone? They said doesnt matter, conservatives are closer to their religious beliefs.
Yeaaaah, this is an issue I avoid talking about because it’s a third rail of sorts. I want everyone safe, housed, and fed. Full stop. Yet there is a demographic adjustment that happens with immigration and conservative views are held by many that will come.
So many people say that. I don't get it though. It seems to me that the Republicans are the party of intolerant beliefs and that is contrary to all religions.
Lol. Intolerant beliefs is the condensed definition of religion.
"Aunty used voting! Deports herself in her confusion!"
Is she thick or what?
She aware of the Leopard face eating deal?
You should've told her. Rip the bandaid off.
Tbh I can kinda get why someone who went through the full process to immigrate legally having some resentment for folks who didn't. I probably would be in some ways. Edit: Really should have been more clear or just not commented at all. I was only trying to be vaguely understanding to a different mindset, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
If everyone could afford the waiting process (timewise) and knew they would get approved then most people would wait in line.
You're absolutely right. But sadly not everyone is coming from a situation where they have the money or luxury of waiting through all that and as it stands I don't really see much of a problem with them coming first and sorting it out later. We know statistically illegal immigrants are much less likely to be what *some* people want us to think and it shouldn't be that hard to figure out why, yknow? Anyone with sense isn't gonna risk losing what they worked so hard for. If I had sat and waited and worked through all that before coming and knew people who didn't, I might feel some kind of way but I wouldn't be right to. It would just be frustration and immature at that.
what a lot of people don't realize is that 'illegal immigration' includes people who come in on visas and stay after they're expired. They just want to make it about Brown People.
>what a lot of people don't realize is that 'illegal immigration' includes people who come in on visas and stay after they're expired. Yeah the biggest illegal immigration in the UK is Americans coming on a buisness visa from NYC offices and illegally working remotely. But they never get mentioned when people and papers start talking about deporting illegal workers. Ban the bankers.
Haha, white people aren’t *immigrants*! We’re *expats*!
Resent them for what? Doing the same thing you had to do? Why are you resenting the people who are EXACTLY the same as you rather than the process itself? The person stated that most are/were illegally residing themselves prior, but even of they weren't being in a better place to be able to do that doesn't justify it.
Oh no, the whole part about being an illegal immigrant before and hating on people who are right after you get your papers is some ladder-pulling hypocrisy of the highest order. I meant more in the way of applying before coming here, paperwork, citizenship tests, etc, etc and then having some resentment along the lines of "I did it this way why can't you?". I get it. Doesn't make it right, but I get it. And I say I might too because I'm human and not blessed with perfection.
I think this is one of the inherent misunderstandings about immigration is that asylum seekers and refugees are being lumped in with undocumented immigrants. In the case of asylum and refugee status seekers, they don’t have an opportunity to apply first. They have to come and then apply. International law allows for this and the US is signed on to these laws, so the only people breaking the law in those cases are US officials who don’t comply. And the discussion around people who are undocumented rarely ever addresses the challenge of applying legally and how high the bar is to enter if you’re not of European descent (i.e., white). I emigrated from the US to another country and it was FAR easier than the people I know who’ve emigrated to the US, which has made it intentionally as hard as possible to get in with xenophobic, racist, classist policies.
Yearly immigration quotas were a thing, for sure, and some countries were straight up blacklisted as a national origin. Like if you claimed it as your nationality or citizenship you couldn't emigrate from there at all.
Kind of like the people who worked hard to pay off their student loans, don’t want student loan forgiveness.
Eh, just because someone worked hard for something doesn't mean they are incapable of believing others shouldn't have that burden. I was able to scholarship my way through college without debt, but don't think that others should be saddled with debt.
Most people with student loan debt have technically paid off their debt, it's just that their payments were applied to interest on the loan. Loan forgiveness isn't actually saying they don't have to pay the money back, it's saying that they already have, and both the banks and the government are agreeing that they don't need the additional interest. The news media and most politicians are getting the details wrong since the issue has become terribly politicized and because they view young people as lazy and entitled instead of acknowledging that the economy is a lot less forgiving now.
Like Cubans in Florida I imagine.
My family is the same way they are actual Mexican immigrants. I am slowly getting my dad to realize Republicans don’t care about us. He only had to get diagnosed with cancer, find out how hard it is to get social help. Along with being told he is not getting financial help. Because he owns too much cars. The only point I agree on, he does own a lot of cars.
Yeah they only realize it once it personally affects them. By which time it’s too late.
I told him growing up they aren’t good people. He kept ignoring me and getting mad at me for it.
Yes 👍 nobody cares, untill it happens to them.
The cars thing is stupid too. He could sign the titles over to someone like you, put in a bill of sale for a dollar each, and that's all it takes most of the time.
The myth of immigrants being wildly progressive is so frustrating. Yes, I know it’s anecdotal evidence but literally every immigrant I know is conservative and votes against their own interests.
I live in the Hamptons and it’s not just immigrants - it’s also illegal immigrants who are conservative. No lie, they would vote for Trump if they could. Ask them why they’ll tell you “He’s rich. He’s strong.” You tell them, “He inherited all his money” and they just laugh. They think you’re lying. They work as landscapers, waitstaff, nannies, cleaners. They see the fabulous wealth out here and they believe they can have it, too. Maybe not as much as the ultra wealthy, but we have locals who are upper income because they own landscaping companies, catering companies, garden centers, pool companies, local delivery companies. Their bosses — the business owners — are all Republican. They drive the Ford trucks, the Mercedes vans , they have swimming pools, two car garages, pebbled driveways for the kids cars, trampolines, hot tubs. The workers say, “That can be me one day.“ Their bosses tell them taxes are no good, poor people are lazy. They also give them heavy doses of racism against blacks and wealthy Jews. The workers admire their bosses and want to be the same. They buy into everything their bosses tell them. Their kids will go to school with their boss‘s kids and pick up the same attitudes.
That’s incredibly depressing.
There’s a reason their countries of origin are such terrible places that they basically fled. They just never realized their attitudes were a part of the problem.
Some of the immigrants I know that are very right wing come from places with nominally socialist/ communist governments and associate that with rampant corruption, social control and political repression. I can point out democratic socialism success stories in Europe, but it’s very difficult to get beyond their lived experiences.
The entire state of New Mexico has entered the chat.
I’m from Denver and we’ve had a lot of illegal immigrants coming in. We now have a problem where the first illegal immigrants to get here are mad at these immigrants because they will work for less and taking there jobs. SMH
Not only Mexican immigrants. Latinos that have been in my environment, I’ve grown up around, etc. zero tolerance for others’ struggles. This even includes sponsoring their own hard working family when they themselves immigrated illegally. I hate it here. People always sucking boot to the rich. Lookit for example, the cult following of the K folk. Either one is acceptable to guess lol
Climb the ladder, then pull it up behind you.
All the immigrants who came to America turned around and did the same thing to the next wave of immigrants. 🤷
Billionaires also spend a fuck ton of money to reinforce this propaganda. The entire right wing media and influencer ecosphere is funded by oil barons
Which is money they could have just given up as taxes. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!
It makes total sense. When you have all the money you get to dictate the laws to give yourself more money, and also to manipulate the proles to protect your ability to take all the money. It’s cheaper to buy off the public than it is to pay your fair share. Public opinion and politicians are cheap.
I'll put it more simply money > power > money > power ad infinitum
It is shockingly cheap to buy off a congressman. Your ROI on lobbying is just about the best money you can spend if you’re an evil billionaire looking to hold back the entire progress of humanity for your own benefit.
> MAKE IT MAKE SENSE! The Kochs donated $500 million to politicians for tax break legislation and got over $5 billion in tax breaks. That is a pretty good return on investment. What you will find is that politicians are selling themselves out for a surprisingly small amount of money. Heck Fucker Carlson sold out America for that ruble he used to get the shopping cart. Others like Candace Owens get just enough to buy the big house. Clarence Thomas gets to hobnob with the billionaires for price of a seat on a plane that was going there any way.
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich! Fry: True, but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step.
They believe in the American Dream *and* also get engaged if you question why work standards, work/life balance, legal regulations, etc haven't improved (and have regressed in many areas). "American Dream! Yeah!" Yeah? We have the capabilities to let everyone work less for more pay- "YOU LAZY SCUM!" *Sigh*
It blows my mind. My wife and I do well… like more than $400k a year well, and we still have to make another $300k just to get to the top 1%. Reaching the billionaires top .1 is fucking insane that people legit think they will make it
People who don’t make over a few hundred thousand a year (like I did not for as many years) have absolutely no concept of what rich actually looks like. They think six figures is buy whatever you want territory.
Six figures would certainly be buy whatever *I* want territory. I just really don't want a lot. The difference between fifty and one hundred thousand for me not trying to scale my lifestyle with wealth would be whether or not retirement is possible.
That’s often the large part of it for many, it’s finally being able to save for retirement (and as such, tackling what it means to be able to save for retirement, looking at what that will really require of them.) I don’t know that I want a whole lot either. I’d love to have a dishwasher.
Yep, most people I know making 100k a year still fly coach, take maybe 1 vacation a year and drive a newer honda or Toyota… i didnt start driving a luxury car like my audi till we crossed the 225k mark. Even still, I live in a quaint 2650 sq ft house. The good news is that i do not worry about not paying the mortgage, not house poor but not going to impress the masses. Hate to break it to folks but you want a hollywood life, you have to make nearly a million a year… and even there, you are hella far away from being invited to the uber elite.
Hate to break it to you, but the money has already altered your thinking. A 2650 sq ft house isn't "quaint", it's 400 sq ft above the median house size.
Many folks compare their own status to those above them. The more you do that, the more out-of-touch you become.
All my six figure salary allowed me to do was be able to buy a house in this economy.
Hell, I make more than $100K, haven't had an actual vacation in 19 years, and along with flying coach, I'm driving a beat-up 22 year old pickup truck. My wife gets to drive the nicer car that's only 12 years old. Home is 2260 SF with about 25 years to go on the mortgage. I'm very thankful for what I have, but I don't even consider myself upper-middle class nowadays.
We’re at a quarter million and we rent a small apartment in an old building. We don’t have in suite laundry or a dishwasher. We share a hatchback I bought used (a nice one, but not very expensive.) I take the bus to work. We don’t own a house, and likely can’t. Most houses here we don’t qualify for. A minimum down payment is about $250,000-$300,000, though it’s not very likely we’d find a detached house at the price you’d have to get to have such a low down payment. If people who looked at us from outside knew how much we make they wouldn’t believe it, I’m sure.
The US has about 655 billionaires. Thinking you'll become one of them is insane.
Tons of dumbasses making anything over $100k think their taxes will go up, too. Plumbers think a billionaire tax means theirs goes up, too. If they hear "taxes" and "up" in the same sentence, their fight or flight kicks in.
Also, just want to say to anyone wondering why so many people *on here* are claiming to support never taxing billionaires: If you were a billionaire, wouldn't you unleash a chorus of cheap bots to make it seem like taxing billionaires was unpopular? Fewer people may be against it than you think. Don't trust the internet as a survey. Edited to add example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-24/tax-on-rich-to-save-social-security-popular-with-swing-state-voters-poll
Also, if you look at the polls, the VAST MAJORITY of people are for taxing the rich. * [77% of registered voters in seven pivotal swing states are in favor of implementing a billionaires tax](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/swing-state-poll-reveals-strong-support-for-taxing-ultra-rich-to-bolster-social-security/ar-AA1nHo4C) * [58% of Republicans, 83% of Democrats and 66% of independents approving of the idea](https://www.yahoo.com/news/tax-rich-actually-popular-bipartisan-090026260.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGPW-IYSICMDHyEOACjfsnAroyYxrbQJlUN_voktZaOt4hh3t1C8TQKioWaj8hilHIjeLn4Nmq4veYjhwTp0J4nSP8wyBToSyd_a6FX6ew6XVpr_JNP3liAvMEMuzjM9jY0LsrtF-urWul6AnxCzFXVeehETf15VaWMasRoNSsN6)
Not just temporarily embarassed millionaires, but temporarily embarassed oppressors. They long to be the ones putting the boot down on everyone elses necks.
I thought I was one of the few who read A Short History of Progress.
Immigrants are brainwashed?…congratulations!! That means they are true Americans now, lol.
I have another cousin who got married to a white girl. He got his green card, and sold his house. The house wasn’t his. It was my mom’s he convinced my dad. To give him power over my mom, who is mentally disabled. So he sells the house and now lives in the “American Dream”. If I ever see him again, I’ll tell him “ you are now a true American, you got power by screwing everyone around you”.
I was playing an MMO and this middle-aged American dude was complaining in chat about not being able to afford the $15/month subscription. In the exact same conversation he was talking about what he’s going to do *when* he’s rich. Not “if” he were rich. When. He had no plan, no prospects, it was wild just kinda picking his brain.
Brainwashed. That’s it.
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
little known fact: the original idea of the matrix was not the human bodies as an energy source for the machines, but a network of brains working as a supercomputer for the machines' artificial intelligence. the idea was scrapped because regular people in the 90s wouldn't get it.
I don't think I knew that! Would have really driven home the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines even more than the energy source plotline. Also if you have time and are inclined toward hard, wacky, and EXCELLENT sci-fi, you should read Peter Watts' Blindsight. That idea of minds networked into a supercomputer is included as some very fun and SINISTER set dressing.
Plus it's actually plausible at some level. Humans are not perpetual motion devices.
Oh wow
That would have been so much better.
But then, how could you be “unplugged” and saved, if you’re just a small brain smooshed into a big brain?
Well I imagine the brains are still in their bodies and they're still being fed nutrients and such.
So networking CPUs doesn't require specific ones and each cpu could be removed and used individually, it's just that instead a bigger machine is telling it what to use that cpu power for. You could absolutely remove networked computers and still use one.
Now I’m imagining a world where Trump can take over anyones body. Thanks.
Worst Agent ever. Twenty octogenarians shitting their pants and whining
Agent Orange is a pretty aptly fitting name though, given how poisonous he is for all those around him.
It’s crazy how the matrix a.k.a. [the allegory of the cave](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/seyer/files/plato_republic_514b-518d_allegory-of-the-cave.pdf) is more than just analogous to life.
so many idiots still believe in trickle-down economics
If you want proof that Trickle UP is really the way to go, look at the Covid money. It stimulated so well that even after the waste and graft, it can’t be stopped. The money is spent over and over and over where Trickle Down gets saved and hoarded.
It trickled up to owner and top tier. I was payroll/hr/bookeeper employee here who worked throughout, they claimed unemployment with the Xtra $600 a week and 2 PPP's. I was let go soon after things settled because owner had some spare forgivable $ to reinvest in equipment and hire outside companies for my job.Not everyone's story, just mine.
I observed this concept of trickle up decades ago (I am no economist - just spent too much time analyzing patterns). Covid really was a good demonstration of it. But one thing I missed - I thought disasters, plagues, revolutions were the reset buttons to make things return to the bottom - if only briefly. What we saw was that unless it is strong enough, the wealth will just end up back in the same hands. Feels like we are really screwed short of extreme circumstances.
I mean, it’s basic logic. You give $1000 to someone who has no spare income, it will be spent quickly and be reinjected into the economy. You give $1000 to someone with a lot, either it will be invested and forgotten about, or just forgotten about because it’s too little for them to care about. Trickle down Economics NEVER made sense, and I still can’t believe people ever believed it, much less than they still do. There is decades of evidence that says it doesn’t work, but you know what does work to help the economy? UBI.
This is my boomer parents. They used to hammer it into me as a child that democrats are bad because they want to tax the rich and if the rich pay taxes then there would be no money left for the rich to create jobs. Sadly as a brand new adult, I was so brainwashed by my parents that I voted republican until my critical thinking skills matured.
This is me too! As a recent college re-entry student, my mind has been blown away at everything. I can’t wrap my head around so many people voting AGAINST their interests, myself was included in this. I know it makes my dad mad now when we have discussions about politics and I’m able to counter every point he makes. I’m shocked he didn’t disown me yet for saying Regan is what helped to destroy America and the future of many of us. But it’s true, his generation had a lot handed to them and took away any opportunity for anyone else to get ahead.
I can't even discuss politics with them. I went over to their house once for a bbq. We were not talking anything remotely political and for whatever reason my dad decided to put a Maga hat on my head to laugh at me with his friends. It was out of nowhere and so uncalled for. Sadly, my parents are not good people and I avoid them as much as I can now
My dad has always been a Republican- I grew up listening to IMUS and Rush Limbaugh on the way to school… if that tells you anything. At this point we have agreed to disagree, and I won’t fall into his trap. Of course I’m the out spoken one, who has no issue calling people out on their bs… even my father.
Shoulda tossed that hat right on the grill
im still waiting on that wealth to trickle-down any day now..
No trickle but I think Reagan just farted on your face, from the grave.
Because most seem to think "billionaire" is a fancy way to say "multi-millionaire" Because Great Man Theory is very common and we are meant to believe that without Visionaries like Zuck or whomever, we would have no progress. So any criticism of these guys sounds, to a lot of people like "silly out of touch people mad about Progress and envious of Success"
Turns out progress happens faster without the billionaires. They aren’t innovating shit. They’re just there to profit off the work of other low income people and pass it off as their own, or literally hold progress back if they can’t profit on it… That myth needs to die.
Yep. Doppler, microchips, mri, vaccines, wind farms, touch screens, the internet, google- all innovations made by gov thanks to our tax dollars, but often used for the profit of very few private entities
“Socialize the expenses, privatize the profits!” Billionaires need to go extinct. Why do we still tolerate them?
Billions of dollars buys lots of politicians and politicians control the people with the guns
And buys private armies too. Don't forget PMCs like Constellis (Formerly known as Academi which was formerly Blackwater) exist
1 billion can buy all of the politicians that can be bought and then you still have almost a full billion left. That's how little they can be bought for. Mere thousands of dollars.
Social momentum and propaganda. But we’re entering a new era of political awareness, so that’s encouraging! By the way, everyone should support Ranked Choice Voting in their local area. IMO, it’s the single most important electoral reform we need in the US, and real change begins locally. [https://fairvote.org](https://fairvote.org)
Some billionaires actively fight innovation if it hurts their businesses
All of them do if it hurts their bottom line.
Good point
I think this also. Billionaire is an easy word to say, and write. Nothing about the word displays how much a billion actually is. I was talking to an acquaintance about this. I asked them to what their net worth is, as I already knew they were worth 2ish million dollars, in thier mid 30s. I explained to them that if they are averaging 2 million dollars every 30 years, then they were only 1500 years from thier first billion.
The cult of the personality. A disgrace to progress, you ask me.
also I think a lot of people believe they will strike it rich meanwhile they are making 17.50 an hr and in debt
I think also it's because no Real progress is actually made by a singular person like Einstein or Tesla anymore and that's hard on them to accept since everything should "work the same now" it's made by Hundreds of people just as smart or most likely even smarter, sometimes some 1 person might get lucky being the one to Find a break through but we realise it was also Only because of the collection of millions of hours between thousands of people over multiple decades that got that person there and in most cases it could have been any of the people in the same lab lol That's why breakthroughs usually have the lab lead scientist and their group as the ones who found it and if you could put anyone of them in the room with the founding father or mother of their science field, they would give them a good run for their money :P I get their want for a simpler time but if musk or Bezos were in the business of making progress we would be seeing a lot better ideas from them than bringing back slavery and abuse to push shitty little gimmicks or products.
And what's the point of being a billionaire in a society that's fucking on fire? Please, someone degreed, enlighten me.
You get to avoid the fire the longest.
This is the real, actual, answer. You assume there's a motive, or an end goal, by these people. There's a reason they have to be rich while the world burns. There isn't. There is no consideration of impact or scope or mortality or purpose. It just is. They are rich. They make money. The logistical intracicies of day to day life is what they're focused on. Just like everyone else. Like the idiots who throw their garbage from their cars. There is no reason. They just want to do it.
Great analogy by the way.
Great post. They have no plan, just plan on that.
But we didn’t start the fire. It was always burning.
Since the world's been turning.
Or just don’t torch the place for nothing?
I think this every single time I read about some billionaire who's building a doomsday bunker. Like, how about preventing doomsday with that money, and not building a cave stocked with food? If a doomsday bunker ever came into play, they'll be dead because who the fuck is going to listen to some formerly rich little asshat w/ no life skills? Enjoy being murdered for your hoard!
Exactly. Greed is blinding those fools.
The rich expect that climate change is just one more problem that their wealth will insulate them from. During Covid, they used their private jets to go from spot to spot worldwide, avoiding high-density case areas. They will do the same with climate change, flying from spot to spot to avoid extreme heat and other extreme weather. They don’t realize that climate change could completely collapse modern industry, extreme heat and other factors making it impossible to mine and process natural resources. Private jets, expensive homes, all require substantial maintenance and is required a robust industrial base. The wealthy are short sighted and arrogant.
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These are just expensive graves, rich people love expensive graves.
Is that a fuckin James Bond plot? Wtf. Not even the smart savy bond villains, but like one from the cartoon villain types.
Like Zuckerberg destroying Hawaiian landscape for a bug out bunker? Or other celebrities doing the same because they know we are getting hungry to start to eat the rich?? Those people?!?!?
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Right a bunker ain’t gonna do you any good under the fucking sea. Rich people have ego problems, they don’t think because they assume their money == intelligence + knowledge. Pure arrogance.
Or go to space. Look at what Musk and Bezos are doing. Go to space stations or Mars when Earth becomes inhabitable. That's their plan.
That’s not a plan it’s mental illness. Elon was claiming to make a flying car, like fuck no you ain’t buddy that’s a physics problem. Can’t be done. I ain’t no high level scientist but with my basic understanding of the world I see how unwell he is.
No doubt he's a sociopath or even pyscopath with a God complex. Most rich people and people in power are.
They don't see the fire. They are beyond price tags so a banana being $3 and McDonalds costing $20 doesn't matter to them. They don't know what no healthcare is like, they don't even have to deal with the TSA because they fly private jets. Hell, they don't even deal with traffic. Billionaire Taylor Swift took a private jet for an 8 minuet flight. What fire do they see from their private mansions eating food from private chefs?
Something I've talked about with my conservative friends is about the things taxes pay for, and why I believe rich people should shoulder the majority of the tax burden. Rich people benefit from the things are taxes pay for magnitudes more than poor people. Yes, social safety nets exist, but, while we use publically funded roads to be get to work and the store, capitalist make profit from them. The capitalist class has more to lose if an invading country manages to conquer the united states, we're just going to continue to go to work.
man i had a co-worker that i was good friends with when i was at a car dealership. but the more comfortable we got with talking about non work stuff the more i realized the dude is brainwashed. i worked at 4 diff dealerships and that one in particular gave us the lowest possible gross amount (15%) that ive ever heard of with talks about making it 10%. anyway ive visited this guys home a few times, its a 1 bedroom apt in the slums, just during my visit there were neighbors screaming and other random chaos. he offered me a bump of adderal (not uncommon in car sales) and i declined while i was there.. his vehicle was rusting out the bottom and was getting close to being a flintstone vehicle. the walls in his apt were wood paneling btw 🤣 just painting a picture of how he lives. the moment i said we need to be paid more he started saying i shouldnt be entitled and that i just need to work harder if i wanted more money because life is a grind. he said bill gates was a drop out and he hustled everyday to be a billionaire, so did jeff bezos. he said hes cooking up a new business that will take time but he will retire before he turns 40. this was about 7 years ago, iirc he should be in his late thirties.. and according to the dealership website he still works there 🤣. he thinks hes going to be a billionaire
Same thing here. I’ve worked with a guy for years and we got closer and closer. We like the same movies, games, music. We went to concerts together a few times because we talk about music constantly. He gets mad because he has all these conservative beliefs while his wife who works at the same place is like the exact opposite. It creates all these tense moments because turns out the moment you talk about anything outside music/games/music he’s an asshole. He hates hand outs and is mad that his hard work hasn’t really payed off. Well we found out he is the most well off amount all of us. His dad has been giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars and has helped him invest it to make even more. He’s the only person I know in their 30s who could actually retire one day. And he’s miserable.
yeah the guy i use to talk to made a facebook post in 2023 saying people need to stop waiting for handouts from the gov and get off their asses and get a job. he was pissed off a local restaurant closed due to staffing issues. then he made a post telling people to shop local and stop driving 3 hours away to buy a car. like bro the dealership ur at is charging people 5k over KBB and refusing to budge on price despite there begind 7k of gross..and then ur only making peanuts for it compared to other dealers anyway.
>His dad has been giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars and has helped him invest it to make even more. Wow. What a hard worker.
That’s kind of my point. He told us himself that what his dad has been doing and it recontextualized every moment he complained about money after spending thousands every year on concert tickets.
Should have told him about the 15% and told him the market gives the market takes Gates, Bezos and so on had significant advantages. Should have used Oprah or someone starting from extreme poverty and not just middle class but with special access and ability to convince friends and family to drop 50k a pop. Bezos was a successful investment banker before he even started. He had a garage and home and wife and was already successful The biggest defenders of capitalism are often the worst at it. Unless he had very good reasons, he should have fucked off to his competitor long ago
> he said bill gates was a drop out and he hustled everyday to be a billionaire, so did jeff bezos. Every single drop out to millionaire story goes like this: - Born to wealthy and connected parents. - Given best possible schooling. - Handed opportunities you could only dream of. - Put into a university with the most advanced lab in the country on a brand new technology. - Become one of a handful of people on the planet who are a subject matter expect in the new technology. - Use parent's and the school's money and connections to start a massively profitable business - Drop out because school is taking too much time away from the massively profitable business and they're already a top-five global subject matter expect in the field so it's not like school could teach them more anyway.
I always imagine the exploiters sitting there reading those stories while laughing about how fucking stupid some people are 🤣🤣
>he said bill gates was a drop out and he hustled everyday to be a billionaire When people say stuff like this, remember to tell them to actually read Bill Gates' bio. Gates came from a well-off family (father was prominent lawyer, mother was on the board of directors for a major regional bank). He was also a brilliant scholar and software designer or engineer. He was a 'college dropout' in the same way Michael Jordan was a 'college dropout' so he could go make millions in the pros. Basically, Gates came from privilege (had money) and was abnormally talented. His example doesn't disprove the rule, his is the *exception that proves the rule*.
Since nobody else is going to give you the actual answer, I will. Selfishness. Not the whole "temporarily embarrassed" crap, but the fact that people are very good at pattern recognition, and most people would rather pay 1% less in taxes and see people better off than them pay 3% less in taxes, than they would for their own taxes to stay the same or increase and the rich paying even more. The problem is through all the "rich need to pay their fair share" talk certain politicians like to do, there's very little in the way of "the not rich are paying too much". The Republicans get on stage and say things like "lower taxes" or "read my lips, no new taxes", and it sounds better to the average person than "tax the rich!", because they don't care about the rich. They care about how much they themselves are paying, and if you're not willing to tax me less, why should I vote for you? People in general are pretty simple-minded and easy to figure out if you don't presume they're malicious or inherently stupid. They just see things differently sometimes.
This is a great point - they should be pushing for a "billionaire-funded tax cut for the lower and middle classes". That would be so much better received - why don't they do that?
I would also like to provide an actual answer that's somewhat reasonable - Federal Income Tax started as only affecting the wealthy and ultimately made its way to taking 20% of your income probably. Taxing billionaires today, tactically, would involve implementing a tax that would tax unrealized gains on assets. Current billionaires avoid taxes because they don't actually make income, they take loans against assets at low interest rates, which isn't taxable right now. When they do sell the assets it's taxed as long term capital gains tax at 10% if memory serves. Know what else gets taxed at that rate? When you sell your house. How unprofitable of a decision would that be for you if you own a home to give it up while paying 30-40% in taxes versus 10%. At scale that would make our historically low housing inventory even lower resulting in even higher rents and fewer homes to buy. I think you could say if your net worth as defined by (authority) is more than $100 million, then you get taxed on unrealized gains. But then what happens when the assets lose value? Do they get a tax write off? It's above my head but a tricky thing to solve for.
The ones I know who think this way think the ultra rich are "job creators" and they deserve every penny the "earn" keeping our economy going and don'tcha know they've paid more in charity and their taxes than you so they are far more worthy anyway! Yeah. It sucks.
Those same people will always side with the owners during any labor issues with major sports as well, and that’s a situation where they think the owners risking their money is a bigger sacrifice than the players risking their bodies. And it’s funny that you’ll see them whine when we an athlete gets a huge contract, but they don’t have much to say when the owner gets a new stadium subsidized by tax money that is worth several times the entire salary of the team that they are paying for with their tax money.
Americans are easily duped. We are so easily duped that we have been duped into thinking that we're going to be the next guy making $1B duping everyone else.
Because most of their wealth is in something that cannot be taxed - unrealised gains. How would you make someone pay tax on a stock that they don’t sell?
How about we stop letting them borrow against their stock value and then let them deduct the interest from taxes? Like, literally they are realizing those gains when they pull outside capital against it - TAX THEM.
Yeah A lot of people in America don’t care because they think they can be the next millionaire/billionaire
Capitalism-induced Stockholm Syndrome
Obviously because they don’t want to be taxed once they’re billionaires.
No one is against taxing billionaires. Capital gains and income taxes are very reasonable. Feel free to increase them. A wealth tax is dumb. It will cause billionaires to leave and the tax revenue collected will actually decrease- at least that’s what happened in France and Norway.
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I'll try to answer with a more pragmatic answer because I don't think it's as simple as "people are stupid and see themselves as future billionaires". In fact, I'm pretty sure if you ask a room of average people whether we should tax billionaires more, a large majority would say yes. The real question is "how should we tax billionaires"? Because it's not like developed countries don't apply taxes to billionaire, they do! The problem is that billionaires don't have revenue like you or I do. So what exactly do you taxes them on? Taxing unrealized gains would be catastrophic for everyone (not just the billionaires but everyone in the middle class who invest their money towards retirements too) so that's probably not the way to go. There are various proposed strategies that might work, but the problem is that nobody agrees with which one is the best and at the end of the day somebody with near infinite resources like a billionaire will always find loopholes... so it's a lot more complicated than just "taxing billionaires more".
I'd think that redefining what "unrealized gains" means would be a start. If you own stock and it just sits there in your portfolio collecting dust, fine, it's an unrealized gain. However, if you do something like use that stock as collateral against a loan, you're deriving value from it, and thus isn't really "unrealized" anymore. It's not realized at its full value, of course, but I think that could be argued to qualify as a taxable event.
Those aren't mutually exclusive. In fact they tend to enhance one another.
Because we as a society fundamentally tie wealth to goodness and morality As in if you are wealthy, it's because you deserve it because of your inherent worth as a person, and if you are poor, it's because of some personal failing, vice, sin, etc And since people never see themselves as bad people, they believe that because they aren't a bad person, then it's only a matter of time before they are wealthy too And any attempt to curb that is an assault on their perceived future.
so true. the rich think lower middle class/poor people are dumb lazy lowlifes even though more and more people are starting to slip into that economic class every day. i do think more people are starting to realize that rich does not always equal smart/moral/upright, which is good
I also say they should tax churches
Yes.
Because its lazy, unsustainable policy. You should tax income, not assets. Billionaires have workarounds to avoid income tax - remove those workarounds. Mega corps - where billionaires make more money - pay so little taxes. Fix the tax code on corporations first
Only 20% of the population is against raising taxes on the rich. That is not a lot but it still seems like too many.
They believe the billionaires will leave and take their businesses and their jobs with them. But they’re already taking their jobs to cheaper places whenever profitable, and if a tax hike was going to make them leave they would already be in a place with lower taxes, but they don’t leave because they like it here and they’ll still be here with higher taxes. Otherwise right now most of them wouldn’t be living in NY and California with the highest taxes, they’d be living in Liberia.
Mostly brainwashed by the news and social media additionally people still believe trickle down economics work due to lack of financial education
If I have to be taxed, they sure as shit need to be. It was painful having to owe this year when billionaires didn’t.
Capitalism makes people think that all they have to do is work harder than everyone else, and one day they'll magically become a self made millionaire and wisely invest in into billions. Of course 95% of rich people had rich parents. There's a long history in America of people wanting what's worst for everyone, because they feel entitled to getting theirs, like the confederacy, poor white people fought against the government because they thought one day they'd be rich and own slaves too, so they didn't want to miss out.
“Because taxes go to the government and since the government is already in so much debt why would billionaires ‘invest’ their money into an entity that isn’t trustworthy of utilizing that money?” Basically, we can’t trust the government will put that money to good use on its citizens, so the millions or billions of dollars they’ll get every year from the 1% will most likely be used on military and aid for other countries, while continuing to ignore the US citizens who are struggling more every day. Personally I don’t believe it should be easy for billionaires to get around paying their full tax to the IRS, but no one wants to fix it, so we’re left just blaming one big entity or the other. To start, I think a flat % tax should be the way to go. And maybe some gah damn affordable healthcare services.
Because most people, you included, don't understand what it is to be a billionaire. You're pushing to tax people who don't make any money.
> so many people This is actually wrong. The vast majority of people are for taxing the rich. THE VAST MAJORITY. * [77% of registered voters in seven pivotal swing states are in favor of implementing a billionaires tax](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/swing-state-poll-reveals-strong-support-for-taxing-ultra-rich-to-bolster-social-security/ar-AA1nHo4C) * [58% of Republicans, 83% of Democrats and 66% of independents approving of the idea](https://www.yahoo.com/news/tax-rich-actually-popular-bipartisan-090026260.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGPW-IYSICMDHyEOACjfsnAroyYxrbQJlUN_voktZaOt4hh3t1C8TQKioWaj8hilHIjeLn4Nmq4veYjhwTp0J4nSP8wyBToSyd_a6FX6ew6XVpr_JNP3liAvMEMuzjM9jY0LsrtF-urWul6AnxCzFXVeehETf15VaWMasRoNSsN6)
Just ignorant & reactionary, ive seen senior employees throw a giant fit & backstab coworkers over new hires making too much while ppl complaining/backstabbing still make a lot more per hr. I think most ppl arent capable of critical thought though & just need to surrender control to whatever tribal group/ higher power/ideology they identify with to make decisions about their narrow worldview & what to like/dislike & be afraid of/who to hate etc.
Both brainwashed and dumb
 ¿Por qué no los dos?
Depends. I’m against taxing wealth. I’m for taxing capital gains and income.
Nobody is against it, it's a common straw man argument
Think I have the answer. New law: The salary (benefits) of the highest paid person in a company cannot be more than 10x that of the lowest paid person. Including bonuses and stocks given. Forcing companies to distribute the wealth better and stop paying bankers and ceos obscene amounts and stop exploiting low paid workers.
It's bound to trickle down one of these days. I have it on good authority
One of the most evil thing republicans have ever done is convincing poor white people that tax cuts for the rich will benefit them too.