Or their wealth has grown so rapidly that they gave away half of their 2010 wealth?
That’s 247 billionaires we could have put in the buffet. Never trust a billionaire. Eat them at first opportunity.
These people are genuinely sick in the head, this level of pointless greed is not normal. Of course they aren’t going through with it.
Exactly like gambling addicts. They are blinded by capitalism, because capitalism is nothing but gambling, and not only are these people addicts, the game has completely usurped society itself. Just think about it- what dictates our society? It’s not our values, or ideals, our wishes and wants and dreams, it’s the economy.
The Economy is a fucking golem that has overtaken democracy, we have no say, what The Economy wants always takes precedence, and the only thing The Economy wants is MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE. MORE people, MORE things, MORE money, MORE. You know what else does that? Cancer.
Exactly! And like cancer, it will eventually consume and destroy its host. It may take time, but it will.
Every country would need to adopt a universal taxation of wealthy individual for increased taxes to work. What I am saying is if US has a 75% for those earning over certain amount. Then other countries have to do the same. If not then Billionaires will run/relocate to the cheapest taxes. Which would be easy since the country they move to will be happy to get Billionaires tax money.
Or. If billionaires leave the USA. We seize their properties and industry in the name of national defense.
That is a slippery slope. If a millionaire is approaching that certain number. They would just leave before it hits their bank account.
What you are describing is straight up Nazi type tactics.
I mean. If the industry of our nation is being siphoned to oversea’s facilities. It’s in our best interest to protect and nationalize the facilities being sent abroad.
Relocation is a bogus threat. Billionaires will not leave first world countries.
Someone needs to read up on “capital flight”, this is a known phenomenon we’re talking about, not speculation.
I’m not saying it doesn’t ever happen, but we really need to stop talking about it like it’s such a serious threat to the country’s financial stability that we should chicken out and stop taxing the rich.
The billionaires in all those other tax haven countries also repeatedly make the same threats to their own governments too. They’re playing us for chumps.
it’s such a serious threat to the country’s financial stability that we should chicken out and stop taxing the rich.
No one’s saying this, this is a straw man.
It’s just a simple fact that there is a ‘sweet spot’ when it comes to maximizing tax revenue. It’s the same as if you’re selling a product for $10, then 100 people buy it, and you assume that you’ll double your $1000 profit if you sell it for $20 instead, but then the number of buyers went down to 10, and now your bottom line is $800 less, instead.
“Just tax them more” is not the simple/obvious solution it appears to be on the surface. Also, people don’t just not react when stuff like this changes, to protect themselves; just compare tax revenue presently to what it was when it capped out at (iirc) 91%.
And even IF ‘turning that dial’ simply increased tax revenue, it needs to be combined with that revenue being spent productively, for it to make any difference at all. Hell, I think the US already brings in more than enough tax revenue to do everything we want it to do, if it was doing it as efficiently as it could be.
No one’s saying this, this is a straw man.
…and then you go on to spew exactly that talking point at length.
Liar. This is what I identified as a straw man:
it’s such a serious threat to the country’s financial stability that we should chicken out and stop taxing the rich.
Now quote me “spew[ing] exactly that talking point” that we should stop taxing the rich. You won’t, because you can’t, because I didn’t.
Shameless, pathetic liar.
…you do understand that “stop taxing the rich” in that sentence doesn’t literally mean set it to 0%, yeah? The only strawmanning here is you taking things way too literally. You still argued exact the thing I was talking about, i.e. that taxing them might make us lose revenue therefore we shouldn’t do it.
Also, ad hominems get you blocked, so bye bye
They will, on paper.
That’s why more countries should adopt the usa’s stance on external taxation. As much as people bitch about it, it’s a great anti tax haven policy, even if we don’t follow through on everything else necessary to do so
Can you elaborate?
Usa taxes citizens in foreign countries. Though they can subtract local taxes from the total, so you only get taxed if local taxes are less
I see, the for clarifying
Get their passport and problem solved
I forget where I heard this story, but apparently Bill and Melinda were at a dinner party during the Obama Presidency. Bill said that he had “way more power than Obama” and Melinda kicked him under the table. TBF I think he was completely right: politicians in the US derive their power from their ability to raise money from rich donors, while rich donors derive their power directly from their money. And they continue to derive power from their money even when they deposit it into a “foundation” which doles it out tax-free to favored recipients.
In Gates’ case, a lot of his “charity” involves donating patent-protected drugs to third world countries to forestall their saying “fuck your patents” and producing life-saving drugs for themselves. Preserving intellectual property rights is the primary goal here, with actually helping people secondary. Anyone who thinks these ruthless multi-billionaires suddenly become benign, caring people in their advanced years is a rube.
politicians in the US derive their power from their ability to raise money from rich donors, while rich donors derive their power directly from their money
Technically they derive their power from the electoral mandate, but to achieve it requires a lot of money from said rich donors - so they don’t derive their power from it, it’s more a prerequisite to play at all. The second half is true. The rich are just rich, nobody voted them into wealth, that’s why they’re more powerful than the politicians.
It’s like a high score in a video games for them, nobody needs that much wealth
I don’t get why the countries don’t all join forces to push wealth taxes at the same time… Suddenly the loop holes close and either the countries get huge funding to fix their economies, or the wage thieves take their money back and pay it all back to the workers they stole it from.
Because the countries are controlled by the ultrarich.
But they could detach and get their money back so easily…
There was a push for an international minimum tax rate from some guy. But that guy was old and so people decided to replace that old guy with an old guy that’s a billionaire, but because he’s crazy he doesn’t seem as old I guess. But anyway, it’s highly doubtful something like that will happen any time soon.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Financial obesity is literally capitalism. That’s the disease. Period.
Financial obesity is a large part of capitalism, but it’s by no means exclusive to it. Replacing capitalism with anything that tolerates obscene wealth accumulation would be a categorical failure.
I really like that as a term, never come across it before.
why did they only use an 8-bit number to count billionaires , surely there are more of em
/dumbface
What are you, one-based or something? If it were an 8-bit integer there would have been 255.
it’s 255 for maximum index, but still 256 for maximum count though lol but agreed, 255 would be more obvious
Well still 255 for maximum count if you’re using an 8-bit number to COUNT billionaires like your initial comment said - but if you’re using an 8-bit number to index your collection of billionaires, then yes, you could get up to 256.
For counting we should always at least have the possibility of a 0 value, hence we count actual billionaires from 1-255. With indexing, 0 is already the first billionaire, so we get billionaires from 0-255, or a total of 256
Yes, 8 bit indexing. We should have Null billionaires.
Can’t say that I’m shocked.
Lol… While gates foundation does do some decent work. Let’s be real it is astroturf operation inherently
Also, Warren already back out.
So this is just a shill op for these “good” parasites.
Read between the lines folks, these people are your enemies
The only good billionaire is a dead billionaire whose stolen wealth has been returned to the people
Does that mean Gates will be “good” if he spends all his money on vaccines and then dies of natural causes?
I assume that tax avoidance is also a factor.
What taxes?
You wouldn’t expect these clowns to pay taxes that’s what w2 slaves are for. In fact, the treasury should be paying them. Just look at the national debt since 1980s then look at how fat these swine got.
Crux of the everything crisis we got on our hands.
But hey the good parasites paid 15k for a fluf piece, put on a suit and say thank you!
Why would you waste $10 to save $5 in tax?
I can’t say how the tax avoidance strategies of the super-rich work in practice, but in any case, their feigned philanthropy is a key part of it.
It’s not.
This is a common misconception based on meme level reasoning.
I don’t know how this works but I know I don’t like billionaires.
You need to be more specific. I’m not going to waste my time refuting your statement because I can’t even begin to imagine how you came up with that.
That makes two of us I guess.
You said that you don’t know how it works, I can’t really respond to that.
You said that philanthropy is not misused to avoid taxes—that is definitely wrong, but if you want to believe it, please do.
It’s the difference between spending money to have your will enacted, and having your money taken by the people, for use of the commons.
The latter is a very dangerous precedent to set. You don’t want the people feeling like they can have their will enacted.
Let’s not forget
lobbyingbribery. And since said political influence is ostensibly being bought for the sake of charity, nobody would even blink.Just my theory, mind you. But every one of these charitable foundations is primarily done for tax avoidance. No question. Well that is every one of these foundations except for the one set up by Mr President Tiny Dick. He just can’t resist the temptation of embezzlement. I mean seriously, he bankrupted THREE casinos, and had a judge not just dissolve his foundation, but also bar him from running one of these so-called charitable foundations ever again.
I don’t even want to know how you can fuck up that egregiously. One of those things where you have to wonder if successfully finding understanding of how it happened is going to hopelessly corrupt your own soul for all of eternity.
It always has been (points gun)
To people like this, the number in their bank account is like a scoreboard. They didn’t get that high up the leaderboard purely by accident.
Anyone who thinks that kind of person is just going to give up their place on the scoreboard is either incredibly naïve or gullible.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some people to there who may have some semblance of empathy, but as seen by the title, that’s about 1 in 25.
They also don’t do good things out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it to win social points so that they don’t get gunned down in the middle of a NYC street.
To people like this, the number in their bank account is like a scoreboard.
It’s not just that.
Besides the humanitarian work that the gates foundation does do “voluntarily”, money is agency, it is power.
There is very little argument and reason to believe that “people” and “countries” would actually be more responsible in spending it.
If there was a big, motivated, carefully planned social movement that had a solid idea and spending plan, things would be different. And such a group could also force them to give up that money to spend it on these things. But such a movement doesn’t exist.
As it stands, the idea that they would voluntarily give up money is dumb. To do what? Feed the corruption and nepo network in their country, that then will benefit only the people that are just like them, but less rich? That makes no sense.
It has to come from public pressure and equal wealth taxes.
They didn’t get that high up the leaderboard purely by accident.
You also don’t stay up there in the leaderboard by accident
This doesn’t make much sense to me.
Sure. Gates is not a “nice” person. The business practices involved in becoming a billionaire require him to be a vile human being. Granted.
That said, he has given up his place on the leaderboard. He has become dramatically less wealthy as a result of his philanthropic work.
What are you claiming is Gates’ motivation here? Not getting murdered? Come on. There are much more practical, reliable, and cheaper means to achieve that.
also Gates have accused of vaccine colonialism by african countries, hes not doing out of his own heart, its most likely his way of laundering money, plus to distance himself from epstein.
This doesn’t make any sense.
He’s been doing this since long before Epstein was arrested.
He also doesn’t need to launder money because he’s already paid tax on all his money. He’s becoming demonstrably, significantly less wealthy in the course of distributing vaccines. If he were laundering money he would be becoming more wealthy.
Link to report instead of awful Fortune link: Giving Pledge
Look, I’m fully aware that this won’t sit well with the billionaires are horrifying monsters that not only should be slain but should be strung up in the town square and be given the blood eagle…BUT if you’re going to make the argument that traffic fines or any other monetary penalties should be a percentage of your net wealth or yearly income, then you have to acknowledge that giving away half of your lifetime earnings is a tremendous act of good will.
Now–there is a difference between me giving up $5000 of my roughly $11,000 in liquidity. We still have around $40,000 in student loan debt and $120k in a 25 year mortgage while we make about $100k per year. And these billionaires could still buy a second house in Cabo with a helipad using what is remaining, but it is SOMETHING. If they truly are “spurning” their billionaire status they should start with giving away half their fortune and continue to give away half their yearly income on top of that, but I won’t totally disregard the contribution that they’ve already made. Unless they’re republican. Then I’m nearly certain that money is going exactly where it shouldn’t.
And these billionaires could still buy a second house in Cabo with a helipad using what is remaining
Important to remember just how much a billion dollars is. Even a billionaire who has only $500m after giving away half would be able to buy a dozen of those properties. A multi-billionaire could potentially buy hundreds of similar properties with money left over. A billion dollars is a TREMENDOUS amount of money.
A hundred million dollars is 10% of one billion.
$100,000,000 is only ten percent of a billion dollars.
I personally, am a kind of guy who likes to walk around with ten thousand dollars cold hard cash. But I always keep it in my dirty socks so they will be sure to get foot fungus when they rob me.
And my feet get real sweaty, too.
Haha!
I line my socks with fake two dollar bills from the monthly potluck Alesha or whatever her name is always brings. I bring stuff sometimes, too.
billionaires… should be strung up in the town square and be given the blood eagle
Meh. People are always saying blood eagle this and blood eagle that. Of all the ways to die, the blood eagle isn’t all that bad. Once the lungs are pulled out, that’s it. You choke to death within a minute. All the good tortures last at least hours; look at crucifixion, which sometimes dragged on for days. The description of scaphism (which was written by someone who allegedly often stretched tales) said the longest one was 17 days, I think.
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As though a wealthy person would speak the Truth…
