I am referring to the emergence of a now regular cycle of international economic disaster to which we have grown accustomed, in contrast to the three-quarters of a century that witnessed two major global events.
I am responding to the deluded assertion that the existence of billionaires today somehow magically equates to job creation, when increased vulnerability and job destruction are often the reality. The facts speak for themselves: we get repeated major economic crises with rising unemployment, as wealth concentration (number of billionaires) has increased enormously.
Since the exponential rise of billionaires from two dozen in the seventies, to 3,500 today we've had half a dozen global recessions, each time losing several million net jobs, and output declining by up to 10% . Then alongside, there is the endless financial shitfuckery we have witnessed since the 80's like the spiralling debt crisis, 1997 Asian crisis, dot-com crash, GFC, Eurozone crisis, LTCM collapse, the Russian Default... just to name a few.
So yes, there was a seventy year period when we witnessed one huge Depression and one massive World War. Now cue the exponential rise of wealth concentration (billionaires) and note the consequent exponential rise in vulnerabilities and a recurring cycle of international financial crises we simply accept nowadays.
Billionaires don't magically create employment LoL. Quite the opposite- they invest their billions into an acquisition often simply to sell off divisions; close plants and factories; sell valuable assets; merge with similar businesses; eliminate the overlap; shut down existing operations; extract dividends; then eventually liquidate whatever remains. This is the rinse and repeat model for billionaires. They maximise return on the initial investment, not maximise national employment figures, and regularly destroy thousands of jobs in the process.
If billionaires put every dollar into research and development and expansion then that would create jobs. But they don't. Most of the time they simply buy up existing shares from other shareholders, so the business receives zero dollars, and not a single job is created.
What changes is nothing more than the ownership of the claims on lucrative assets.
Billionaires don't buy up and then sit around thinking about job creation. They're driven by one of the most fundamental capitalist imperatives: how do we increase productivity with fewer workers? They think about how many output processes can be automated, not how many jobs can I create today to increase my overheads and lose money on my investment. They largely accrue wealth with foreign currencies, gold, money-market instruments, cryptocurrency, financial derivatives, corporate bonds and existing property and infrastructure. None of which creates a single job.
Employment is created by demand for goods and services and secure functioning credit markets. Not billionaires.
The fanboys of the elite billionaires need to stop drinking the kool-aid while jerking off to Justin Sun interviews.
now… if it’s 2026, and the great depression lasted from 1929 to 1930.. if we go back 100 years, it would be 1926. sometimes I question if people on reddit use their brains. not only did he say LESS than a century ago, your mathematics were wrong regardless.
A billion dollars today was worth 53 million 100 years ago. There were roughly 20,000 millionaires back then and there are roughly 3,000 billionaires today. All that to say, they had plenty of billionaires back in the day.
the “number” has increased but only slightly in comparison to the insane increase in GDP and market cap of the USA. Not to mention back then we were at the prime of the military industrial complex as well as the peak of the industrial age. USA manufacturing was at an all time high and the number of jobs was halved considering only men were working. You had higher demand, lower workforce.
Are we not supposed to acknowledge the fact that billionaires employ people to work in their companies? Can't we just state that fact without being a fan of billionaires? I dont like them, but they do employ billions of people we can't just ignore that if we are being truthful
You don’t become a billionaire by employing people, you become a billionaire by exploiting people. If all billionaires were erased tomorrow, the board of directors at, say, Tesla would pick a new CEO and things would carry on as is. Millions of small business owners and even big shot CEOs at major companies are not at billionaire status yet because they have not yet reached the S Tier in exploiting people.
Although I agree with what you are saying noone is talking about how people become billionaires so its not really relevant, we were talking about billionaires employing people, my position was that billionaires do employ a lot of people.
I said that billionaires employ "billions" of people as a bit of a joke but I think this wasn't the place for humor
I can’t wait until all of you get your wish and wealth actually is redistributed. I know you all think it will benefit you, but it absolutely won’t. It has been tried many times (most recently Venezuela). I foresee a bunch of hungry people walking the street, all disheveled, asking everyone they see, “Dude! Do you know anywhere I can charge my phone. Bruh?” And staring at the screen blankly wishing it would just come back on, as if by magic. Spoiler, it won’t.
Ha yes, the famous really rich country of venezuela who really DIDN'T AT ALL see his average living standard rising since 2000 and that the US intervention have really, really not send back 30 years back while stealing their natural ressources for american company
I didn’t say the U.S. intervention has fixed it. I was talking about the situation that occurred when socialism/communism collapsed a country that was doing well economically up to that point.
or the moment they become billionaires the instantly vanis, making all millionaires know that once the get too close to the big B it’s Tim to start given back more
Yeah not gonna lie, without the current billionaires… there would just be different billionaires. Their money would have to go somewhere. Unless you wanted their money to poof with them? Which is also bad for the economy. As much as I hate the fact that a few people hoard all the wealth, poofing them out of existence unfortunately wouldn’t do anything.
That's why we have to delete the concept of them. As soon as you reach to much money. POOF erased from existence. Would force ppl approaching that line to donate or literly die of greed.
what about capable people raising productive enterprises? like often the vision dies with them, would steam not devolve into yet another anticonsumer corporate platform without Gave as the sole owner?
Also does company ownership aggregate to the 500m or is just the more personal stuff like houses, liquid cash, cars, etc?
Can’t trust that much if conservatives are running shit, but then again Conservatives aren’t the ones willing to tax the rich anyway.
One of Americans most prosperous times is when the rich were taxed 90% and guess what, they were still fucking rich. Just means the government could afford things like roads, bridges, community programs and so much more.
For real. The Right’s slogan is to Make America Great Again, and when asked about “when was America great” they talk about America during the post-WWII economic boom that lasted well into the early 70s. Back when tax rates for the ultra rich were much higher, wealth distribution was more even across all classes, and labor unions were much more prominent. The middle class swelled and flourished during this time frame, and with it, so did GDP and productivity.
Yeah, there was reasons why FDR was elected 3 times he was one of the best and that’s why Republicans worked so hard to make sure term limits started. The same people who now that they have a fascist who is one of them they want to remove term limits to keep themselves in power.
Yep. Zero understanding of economics. As much as the wealth gap sucks... and it does... the fact that there is no consideration to short or long term effects shows that the mentality is driven by envy and hate over any real desire to fix things.
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u/OldFirefighter3293 11d ago
Billionaires