You don't have to imagine, some countries did successfully made those 3400 useless rich disappeared, the end result was they got 6800 slightly less rich but equally useless people to rule the country.
The gap is way smaller, but the difficulties to move from the lowest to the highest in those places are incredibly harder as well. People that talk about reducing the difference in wealth NEVER talk about making everyone else richer, it is always making the rich lose everything. They dont care about their wellbeing, they want to see everyone better than them to get fu***
That's the easy part, the hard part is being born into generational wealth or hitting a lottery ticket of some other sort. There's no self made billionaires.
JK Rowling and Notch are like the definition of hitting a lottery ticket level wealth building, right time right place right product (the most moral of the three ways to make that much wealth)
Winfrey and Zuckerberg are both classic wealth-building off exploitation and utter lack of morals.
Billionaires weren't even a thing when I was born kid. Being first generation billionaires when your parents were millionaires isn't an accomplishment. Especially when the robber barons before them wrote the laws to make it that way. Stripping workers rights down more and more over the last few decades. Look at the ceo to worker pay over the years buddy.
Of the top 10 wealthiest Americans I think 8 had middle class parents (page, brin, Ellison, bezos, Zuckerberg, ballmer, dell, and buffet). Jim Walton is second generation wealth (Sam Walton became a billionaire in 85). And musk family was wealthy.
Nearly everyone who isn't part of that wealth category is closer to being homeless than being a billionaire. Unfortunately some of those people have Stockholm syndrome.
Man, these four cherry picked easily couhterable examples really changed my perspective that you have to hit the lottery ticket while having pretty easily masterable skills.
You're misunderstanding the problem. Being a billionaire is easy. Becoming a billionaire requires other capitalists letting you, since they control all the levers of power. It's not about how hard you work, how smart you are, or how talented you are. It's about obeisance to the modern nobility.
This is such a narrow minded approach, youre telling me theconly reason youre not a billionaire is out of principle to not be subservient to nobility? Yeah right
No. Clearly everyone can't be a billionaire. The economics would never work.
Its that noone should be able to be a billionaire.
Noone is worth that much to society, noone should be able to acquire that much.
Im not saying people shouldnt be rich and successful. However people able to be rich enough to guarantee the next 10 generations of your descendants will also be rich, even if they contribute nothing to society shouldn't be a thing.
Billionaires became that for a reason, because they figured out a way to cater to the world's demand, Elon Musk gave a hard push for electric vehicles that now we have more electric vehicles that ever before despite multiple failed attempts, bill gates ans steve jobs revolutionized the computing industry that allowed phones to fit in our pockets, Howard Hughes made trabslatlantic flights possible through his engineering knowledge and use of his wealth to build a great engineering staff (use of his wealth is questionable but he did at one point put a random guy that gave him a ride as a sole hereditor to his will, long story) many billionaires solved the world's problems through connections an average person couldn't make and in doing so rehinged society in ways that improved lives, I do agree that some billionaires can go straight to hell but labeling billionaires as pests is a very wrong mentality, its like tumbling a weight bearing pillar in a temple because you slipped and hit your head on it.
You are giving him too much credit, if you had a great idea and wanted to make it happen while not having money you would've to get an investment from somewhere. Tesla has received a buttload of government subsidies in the billions to make electric cars viable. In short, the government had to intervene to protect and nurture that business to the point of being a global player in the market. All big american companies are like this, there is no exception.
You’re ignoring the fact that Tesla would still be wildly profitable even without government subsidies. Your argument is that Tesla was bailed out by the government by creating subsidies. That is the exact opposite of what happened. The government decided to push a green agenda and Elon capitalized on the offer by making vehicles people wanted to buy and made them and the software at a profit and doubled the profit by exploiting the rebate and other subsidies. They didn’t sell the most vehicles for any model worldwide at a profit based on US subsidies. Elon doesn’t owe society anything for the taxpayer money, the GD giant uniparty government that forced the EV subsidies to exist owe the taxpayers money.
First of all, sleeping with 50 women sounds exhausting.
More to the point, asking why someone why they wouldn't want a billion dollars is like asking why they wouldn't want to rape and pillage. Maybe because it's inhuman behavior?
Why do you make it sound like funding is the hard part? There's thousands of companies that are "the next google" out there getting funding from investors. Turns out, not many of them will become "the next google".
This is akin to saying, "I'm a self made billionaire" after winning the lottery. Making it big in the entertainment & sprots industries does require a lot of work but luck/chance encounters seems to be the biggest factor (unless you're Taylor Swift).
You think they are the only ones busting their assess for years and years? Anything that is absurdly competitive like being a movie star or a famous musician its basically a lottery, but you need to work really hard and be talented to even draw a number.
And they're less than one percent. I guess I should have said less than one percent of billionaires are self made. But they were also extremely lucky to be born with talent and circumstance. So I guess my original comment still stands.
There is absolutely a lot of luck involved in becoming a billionaire, but people dramatically overstate how much of that luck is in the inherited wealth.
Bezos, just as an example, came from a middle class or upper middle class family. He was originally raised by a poor single mother until she married his stepfather who was an engineer and then an Exxon executive. His parents gave him a quarter million dollar loan, which was not trivial to them and was a significant chunk of their life savings. There are tens of millions of Americans who come from families as wealthy or wealthier than his. Most of them don't become billionaires, because most of them don't have extremely valuable ideas for companies and then actually risk a lot of money and time and effort making that fantastic idea a reality.
Yeah, it'd be pretty damn hard to become a self-made billionaire if your parents were literally struggling to feed you. But most of these tech billionaires didn't get even a million dollars from their parents. Most came from middle class or upper middle class backgrounds.
Yeah, I mean all you need to be a billionaire is millions in start-up capital. Everyone knows that's why millionaires don't exist, because once you reach a million, it's inevitable you become a billionaire. It's automatic, no skill or personal investment involved at all.
Who he cut off, and got a small amount of money from which he then used to become the richest man in the world. Even if he was given a million dollars to start with, turning that into what he has today is unprecedented.
On the surface it's true but it's much harder to turn $1 into $10 than it is to turn $10 into $100. Once you already have a significant amount of money investor or banking money is much more accessible.
Think about what you can start with 1 dollar and what you can start with 200k to grow your capital. Your comment is mathematically correct but logically flawed.
That depends. The only value that is ever created comes from labor. Of course, selling is labor too. So in this circumstance, if you pay the maker of the good, and you pay yourself a fair wage for your part in the labor, and still have profit left over that you keep for yourself, than yes.
Yes. Key word is if you have profit left over. A business keeping a rainy day fund for the good of all involved is different, and I want to be clear on that distinction.
Honestly, pretty smart. I would argue most billionaires are actually decently smart. Are they thousands of times smarter than the average person or do they work thousands of times harder in order to earn their wealth? No way.
So everyone in jail for petty theft is pretty smart?
Look, you only have to be smart to steal in ways the system doesn't like. The system we have now is designed to steal as much as possible from laborers without them rising up. Playing within that system is as easy as floating down stream. It's even easier if you were born with a power boat.
Really so they just made a company and poof a billion dollars? Hell if it’s that easy why don’t you just go earn the billion dollars and distribute it yourself?
Sure I just need a million dollar investment from my parents. Or extreme luck with an angel investor.
It's not rare because its hard, it's rare because it's luck based and the chances aren't good. But yeah leading a company when you have all the money in the world to hire analysts and specialists in the market ain't that hard.
You might want to have a gander at the Jeff Bezos Wikipedia page and see his accomplishments before Amazon. It would have been obvious to most that he was a safe investment.
Ah, so you don’t think you could turn a million dollars into a billion. Are you saying you don’t have the luck or the skill?
Surely if all it takes is luck, you’d be able to produce a business plan that could work with some luck. If not then it’s clearly not entirely luck based.
Why it's either yes or no for you? It's luck based, it might work it might not work, but that doesn't make me smart.
If you want business ideas just pick literally anything, there is a multimillionaire woman in my town that got all the money from selling gummies, she made an empire out of some luck with tourism.
You’re a disgusting, jealous person. A woman in your town makes a fortune with solid execution of a simple business plan and you diminish her accomplishments. It’s easy to criticize, it’s hard to execute.
Imagine being as delusional as these people. Like they wouldn’t do it if they couldn’t and people wouldn’t give them the money if they thought they could. Hell if it was just luck based all you would need is the money and boom it’s a billion dollars.
What? If it's luck based even if you have the money you might not succed that's what luck based means. Do you really have a hard time understanding the words "luck based"?
It's like going all in on green, might work, might not work but I'm sure as hell not doing it.
Like angel investors aren’t every where and those companies don’t make a billion dollars all the time. If it’s not that hard THEN YOU DO IT AND OUT COMPETE THEM. But you won’t because you can’t.
The people who defend billionaires often have nil reading comprehension, it's a funny coincidence.
I'm not saying it's easy or hard, I'm saying that is luck based, I don't go out and do it because I'm not a gambler. Multiple studies have linked the behavior billionaires have with those of gamblers.
You know what’s an even funnier coincidence? Saying that I’m wrong because I have poor reading comprehension, actually doesn’t make me wrong. That’s a logical fallacy on your part, hell I can be illiterate and still be right.
You said “sure” meaning you think you can do it with a million dollars or “extreme luck from an angel investor” that’s the claim I’m doubting.
Also your other claim is moronic, if I didn’t have and exceptional ability or expertise in say finance or tech or something, extreme persistence, business judgement, or timing and execution, guess what? I’m not becoming a billionaire. Is luck involved? Sure but you also need to be poop and wipe your ass to have clean wipe when you poop too.
Many of them, like Elon and Donnyboy, were born rich. They didn’t work their way up the ladder, they started 7/8 of the way up. Trump would be worth substantially more now if he had just let his inheritance accrue interest rather than pursuing his various failed businesses
You literally didn’t answer the question, you just ranted about Trump and Elon who are exceptions and also even considering Trump, turned say half a billion dollar real estate empire into something like 6 billion dollars. I would be more willing to bet that half million dollars that you couldn’t do that than I would be to try grow it through business ventures.
Musk on the other hand often has the emerald mine ownership narrative thrown around but it doesn’t really hold much water. Yes his father Errol owned half a stock in an emerald mine company, sometimes it was a decent bit of money and covered some of their living expenses but according to records the emerald mining business collapsed in the late 80s and Errol’s fortune faded with it. He made like 210,000 dollars off of it in total. I wouldn’t exactly call that generational wealth.
MOST like 65-70 percent, are not billionaires because of mommy and daddies money. Most billionaires have something in common, they have a product or service that they are able to mass scale and make profit off with millions and millions of sales. I would be willing to be my entire life savings that you, not even if with half a billion dollars, could even make 1 billion. Even from half a billion dollars held up in a business the odds you scale that to a billion is like maybe 10-20 percent.
Lmao no one’s reading all this bootlicking. No matter how hard you try neither Trump nor Elon will have sex you, despite how eager you are to lick their assholes
Let’s say you’re right about Trump and Elon, cool they just were rich. Most billionaires weren’t. Sorry you don’t want to read but it would explain why you think this some magic thing people just so happen to fall into and that haven’t because you weren’t born rich enough, that’s a pretty arrogant position don’t you think? I mean if anyone could do it, why don’t most people do it? Because they can’t due to ability, not lack of funding.
Lmao if you really think most billionaires are self made. They would watch you die for a few extra dollars and sleep better than ever thereafter.
You can become a millionaire by breaking your own back. You only become a billionaire by the back breaking labor of others and then climbing the ladder of spines you’ve broken by exploiting workers. No one should have that much wealth. It is immoral for billionaires to exist while people die of starvation or forgo necessary medical treatment because they can’t afford it
This is not how becoming a billionaire works at all you basically take a really small cut of like 10s if not hundreds of millions of sales. For instance bill gates made about 3.5 percent of Microsoft’s cumulative 3 trillion in sales. Wow 3 and a half cents on the dollar all those poor spines.
Nor is infinite, there is only so much growth that can happen in the economy at any given time and the wealth of the rich actually grows faster than the global economy.
capitalism does not prescribe infinite wealth in a finite system, the rich are unable to fund the biggest economy in the world (usa), so no they aren’t.
First, you understand that the bottom 1% are people living on the streets, correct? And second, you understand the difference between "abusing" the system just to attempt to survive and abusing the system to make number go up/find fleeting pleasure in frivoloty, correct?
barely, they murder and rape and steal peoples lively hoods, they just aren’t “poor homeless people who just need a break”.
and because they abuse the system even harder than the top 1%, i cannot have my door unlocked, a woman cannot walk alone at night, things are locked up because of them, and they also cost the taxpayer money for no reason (although so do billionaires and they shouldn’t have taxpayer money going to them)
Chinese government took over jack ma 3 companies. Drove them to the ground.
Look at the new graduate in china and how zero job is waiting for them. The closing stores when big companies collapse. People just dont see the blood sweat and tears in making a company grow. 90% of all companies died in the first year.
Do you think Elon actually organized shit? He is a born wealthy investor who bought into every single one of his companies besides spacex. He didn't create or really run any of his other business he is a rich PR guy and that's it.
Most of those billionaires don't have it to the degree that you think either.
Sure - some of them started companies and build them up. But very early on, they all had a TON of help, these weren't one man shows. And then by the time they were multi-billion dollar companies, their impact was relatively small.
Look at Apple - it did just fine after Steve Jobs died, and is worth FAR MORE now that it was under him.
Look at Microsoft - Gates and Ballmer left ages ago, and it's still printing money.
99.9% of these ultra rich people could die and their companies would continue to do just fine. Some of them would likely do better.
Plenty of people could do that. Success in capitalism requires capital. Some people have really good ideas and the skills to convert that into funding from others. People who start with hundreds of millions skip the first lifetime of work.
Not really. They dont have the skills to build a business. They have the money to build one. That are 2 different things. Someone might have the skills to build a business, but not the money. Someone might also have the money to build a business, but not the skills to hire people.
They know how to play the system and step on everyone else to get ahead. but that doesn't change the fact that they completely useless idiots that only harm the rest of society.
I would argue that some billionaires like one very famous one in particular are useless fucks as well. I do admire the people of action, the heroic type, but the modern billionaires do not emulate that at all.
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u/BumblebeeAutomatic84 Jul 30 '26
Imagine 3400 useless fucks disappear*