“work”. Well, i guess it’s networking.
Imagine working so hard, you end up getting birthed by a billionaire! Keep pulling those bootstraps peasants!
Please sign up for thislifelong debt subscription service for a threadbare set of bootstraps that have a limited lifetime warranty and will break due to non covered reasons.
Why is this a surprise, exactly?
Ikr? Everyone today grinding for that “generational wealth” and I honestly don’t see why. Do people really want more spoiled brats in the world?
You seem to be mistaking a chance to give your family a place to live with whatever the fuck a billion is supposed to offer them.
Life kinda sucks, wealth insulates you from the worst of it, and affords you more opportunities.
If you’re rich you can become an actor, poet, artist, writer, athlete, journalist, doctor, academic, etc. No coincidence that people in these fields are disproportionately from well off families who were able to support them.
Without wealth, a lot of those careers and opportunities are closed to you, and you end up doing dead end jobs, even if you have far more potential. Not that surprising that rich people who love their kids (and grandkids) would want them to have that opportunity.
Of course, too much money can also fuck you over, so perhaps Bill Gates has the right idea in not giving his children too much, and donating most of his wealth.
It’s also quite obviously not fair, that some fields are dominated by defacto aristocracy, and its to the detriment of society that it isn’t truly meritocratic, but I get why their parents want to give them that opportunity.
It still needs to be repeated over and over since people are absolutely opposing a higher inheritance tax thinking it would influence them inheriting their grandma’s house because that’s how those populists are usually spinning it…
Water is wet.
The sky is blue.
Yachts are an indefensible source of carbon emissions.
sails
I remember this study done:
“Today’s rich families in Florence, Italy, were rich 700 years ago”
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11691818/barone-mocetti-florenceB…but muh bootstraps???
The only German in the top 10 of the richest Germans that didn’t inherit that spot is the founder of Biontec - and while he did a great job there it’s just sheer luck that the pandemic hit when it did
Billionaires don’t “work”. At least not in the sense that they get some amount of money that’s in any way in relation to the value they create. They shuffle around money to do things for them and sometimes that makes them more money. Calling that “work” lessens the meaning of that word and gives them too much credit.
No they don’t really do that either, they pay people to do it for them.
Of course they do. It’s simple math.
There was a study on ownership in London’s wealthy “City of London” district about 10 years ago which found most of it had been in the same families for several hundred years.
Is it different for the current generation?
no. It’s been a part of the fabric of society from the onset of agriculture. slave owner families are now the billionaire oligarch families in every country.
This is a really reductionist take that isn’t all the useful as analysis imo.
LOL what useful analysis am I providing?
Next generation of billionaires … from inheritance
Sure must be nice to have that to look forward to in life.
Indeed. The only thing I’m looking forward to is the last of my older family members passing so I can finally just off myself and not hurt anyone…
I mean, if you inherit a billion dollars, that’s more money than you will ever earn in several lifetimes of actual work… so yeah.
It seems like there is definitely an upper limit to the amount of money you can make from actual work. That doesn’t seem fair
If you earn $100 an hour, and worked every day for 8 hours, and never spent anything, you’d have to have been working since 1400BC to earn a billion dollars.
that’s more money than you will ever earn in several lifetimes of actual work.
Imagine you earn 20 dollars an hour, ten hours a day, work five days a week, two weeks vacation so that’s 50 weeks a year.
20 x 10 x 5 x 50 = 50,000 per year. All your expenses are covered for some reason.
To earn a million dollars you would need to work 20 years.
To earn a billion dollars you would need to work 20,000 years.
To be as rich as Elon Musk is now, you would need to work 3.7 million years .
Look, I hate to say it but Elon earned his money by working 370,000 times harder than the rest of us
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Oh, no. Far, far more than that.
1 billion / 50,000 a year = 20,000 years.
Musk’s worth 214 billion / 50,000 a year = 4.28 million years.
The problem is that wealth correlates directly with power in the West. You’ll never see a Western billionaire get Jack Ma’d, and that’s the problem: Western billionaires have less accountability and more rights than the average citizen.
You’re saying that like it’s a unique problem to the West. Do you think Asian billionaires don’t have extra rights and latitude?
Yeah, democracy my ass lol
Jack Ma didn’t get knocked down because he’s rich.
It was because he pissed off the CPC.
Not that I want to defend any mega-rich person, but he seemed to be using the influence that his wealth allowed him to speak out against actual oppressors.
There are no good billionaires. Only people who bypass regulations and cause immense suffering can get there. Idk why y’all are so mad about China getting rid of one lol
The rich typically hate welfare…unless that welfare is unearned wealth passed down to children.
Hey!! My dad worked very hard to inherit his wealth from his father, so I should benefit from that too! - billionaires
Inheritance tax urge to the redistribution of the wealth.
If it was for me i would abolish Inheritance entirely. The problem is i cannot imagine a non-dictatorial type of system that could make it work. You would have to make presents illegal, and other things like this. If anybody knows a solution please let me know and they got my vote
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Enforce.
Yes, via the IRS that we actually had a shot of doing!
And then… Something something “ThEy’Re CoMiNg AfTeR YoU Mr.PoOr AmErIcAn!”
Fucking propagandists… I can’t fucking stand that they are allowed to exist. Honestly I loathe Rupert Murdock and whatever asshole chucklefuck responsible for Newsmax 100000x more than I loath Trump or any politician.
I don’t like to wish death on anyone, but my God does Murdock deserve all the worst things that could happen to a person.
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I think a scaling inheritance tax that accounts for all assets could work
Company ownership would be wacky after a founder dies since now the government would own most of the company. If the government sells off their shares, the companies value would crash and random other people could get control. So the government would probably need to keep the ownership for a long time at least. Which I guess is one way to nationalize companies.
Better idea: family-owned companies, upon death of the owner, get turned into a coop owned by all the employees of the company, each getting 1 share.
That sounds like a good way to have huge companies with one employee and thousands of contractors. But might be good if you can make it bulletproof.
That sounds like the you need more enforcement against fake subcontracting.
