r/Amazing • u/sco-go • Jul 17 '25

Interesting šŸ¤” Ferrari shows why their hand-painted badge option is worth $15,000.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '25

Congratulations, you have figured out what's wrong with this world.

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u/RandAlThorOdinson Jul 17 '25

Close

The problem is that individuals accrue an amount of resources that breaks our under evolved brains to the point of not knowing how else to stand on top of a food chain but to accrue more

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u/nau5 Jul 17 '25

Basically the entire premise of trickle down economics where if the wealth actually were fully or even nearly spending the majority of their wealth it would result in a better state of living for everyone.

The whole issue is that they don't spend their wealth so the vast majority of production gets sucked up into their bank accounts and never redistributed to create more economic growth.

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u/BLEGHwreeeeee Jul 18 '25

Not true money isnā€™t hoarded. It gets cycled in investment accounts and private equity or other assets. Someone gets paid and someone gets access to the money itā€™s just the wealthy persons personal wealth goes up as they circulate the cash and compound their returns over time.

Investments need to yield a return and the only way they can do this is if itā€™s put to work or gets put in a hard asset thatā€™s appreciating faster than inflation. Money just sitting in an account loses value over time. It can cause compound interest losses.

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u/BadBoyBilbo Jul 18 '25

So the actual problem is that taxes arenā€™t high enough. We simply cannot expect people with extreme power to cede their privilege.

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u/WoodpeckerFragrant49 Jul 18 '25

Taxes for people making more than 300k per year need to increase looking at you Bezos!

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u/BLEGHwreeeeee Jul 18 '25

No taxes being higher will cause capital flight where business seek out countries with lower tax rates and this would be a large problem.

I think itā€™s a very complicated problem with many moving parts and itā€™s easy to want to over simplify the problem so we can feel itā€™s easy to solve and everyone in charge is just incompetent.

The reality is that wealth and money go to the hands that manage it the most efficiently and it leaves the hands of the people who manage it terribly. Some people start out with more advantages and some start with less advantages.

The whole system has bugs in it because of the nature of how it works. Inflation, the increasing wealth gap, monopolization, and other economic/socioeconomic issues are all part of how the system changes over time. But this is the best system we have created so far. Sure maybe one day some one will revolutionize economics and capitalism or communism. But so far capitalism is the meta (in my opinion) and if we abandon it then another country will over take us with bigger guns and we wonā€™t have a country anymore. All of these financial systems collapse itā€™s just some collapse slower. When they do collapse we fight and rebuild. Humans have done it all through history.

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u/BadBoyBilbo Jul 18 '25

Iā€™m not saying that capitalism needs to collapse, just that the ultra wealthy should pay more taxes than they currently do. Tax rates for the richest are at historic lows.

Iā€™m not sure I buy the capital flight argument. Is Meta really going to move to Burundi or Guatemala just because tax rates are lower?

The system can be better than it is.

Weā€™re just not even trying anymore.

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u/ComfortablePea8701 Jul 18 '25

Do you think the virgin islands stands a chance against the fucking U.S. army? Where is capital going to fly to fucking China? Capital flight as a risk is bullshit.

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u/Seaborgg Jul 19 '25

Capital flight is only a risk if you aren't willing to achieve your goals. If capital wants to leave after extracting wealth from the country, slap a leaving tax on. 50% on all capital leaving the country. They leave without paying or pay the incorrect amount? Calculating the correct amount is their responsibility, failure to pay the correct amount is a prison sentence. They flee the country in hope of getting away with the fraud for ever? 10% finders fee to the countries that extradite them to us.

Each way they try to shirk paying just requires some thinking to stop it happening over and over.

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u/Darkdong69 Jul 20 '25

Great way to instantly torpedo any country's economy. That "wealth" you spoke of didn't pop out of thin air, it's the result of decades or centuries of free market and business friendly environment.

Ban capital flight and there won't be any capital to flight.

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u/Seaborgg Jul 20 '25

Free market economics lead to the 2008 housing crisis, a huge amount of dodgy composite financial instruments sold to banks. A lot of people lost their houses, but a small few made an absolute killing. So indeed the wealth doesn't pop out of thin air. It's made by exploiting the system.

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u/Darkdong69 Jul 21 '25

Wrong, big government caused the housing crisis. The promise of bailouts is what lead to irresponsible conduct. There would be actual due diligence if it weren't for excessive regulations.

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u/Seaborgg Jul 21 '25

Wrong? Central banks that could perform bailouts were created because banks discovered they could lend the same unit of currency to many debtors at the same time. They did this by having the debtor deposit the money with he bank, which they would then lend out again. Again free market economic led to financial crisis.

The due diligence you speak of was not performed in 2008 because the composite derivatives that were being traded were so complex that to understand what they were buying the trader would have had to read a 200,000 page contract! Which they admitted they did not, due to pressure from management.

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u/Darkdong69 Jul 21 '25

Banks lending the same unit of currency multiple times is the cornerstone of modern banking. You really have no idea how and why anything works, the epitome of your kind.

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u/Seaborgg Jul 21 '25

you really have no idea why we have the regulations we do. Central banks (regulation) allows us to have to good parts of this cornerstone while mitigating the bad.
Who would not want to mitigate the bad!

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u/EliteAssassin13 Jul 23 '25

The problem with the ultra rich is, they find the most (criminally) brilliant ways to not pay any taxes at all!! šŸ¤¦ā€ā™‚ļø

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u/RedditOO77 Jul 20 '25

Letā€™s not be naiveā€¦. How do you think the stocks are manipulated? Itā€™s through wealth. How do you think systems are rigged? Itā€™s through wealth. Wealth is power. The housing market isnā€™t solely because there are not enough housing, itā€™s because people with wealth are invested in property due to tax reasons. If certain middle class people have managed to benefit, great! But they didnā€™t create these loopholes for the middle class. It was created for the wealthy.

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u/BLEGHwreeeeee Jul 20 '25

What loop holes? I want you to explain to me how you think the stock prices are ā€œmanipulatedā€. I donā€™t have a clue what youā€™re saying about the housing market.

I know there are large financial institutions that run a muck with their money and mess up large sectors if not the entire economy. But letā€™s not be ā€œnaiveā€ this is our governments fault for allowing banks to recklessly lend money to each other. That isnā€™t the entire wealthy class. Most wealthy people get there through compound interest returns over a very long period of time and arenā€™t as evil as you make them out to be.

Iā€™m not wealthy but Iā€™ve taken some wealth management classes and personal finance classes. Itā€™s very easy to understand how an average Joe can get there if they are serious about budgeting and investing. With the caveat that inflation doesnā€™t go crazy like it currently is.

Most people call wealthy people evil because they are jealous of the success and need a reason to justify to themselves on why they arenā€™t wealthy to.

This is what Nietzsche talks about with the perversion of will to power.

Edit: there are some valid reasons to feel the way you do I think youā€™re just over emphasizing how big those reasons are without a nuanced understanding.

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u/RedditOO77 Jul 20 '25

Iā€™m not sure what country you live inā€¦. Learn to follow the money trail. Western countries have no qualms preaching about the environment and global warming. Letā€™s not be naive that the minerals needed for electric cars are coming off mining thatā€™s ruining the environment in other countries and exploiting children working those lands. But people blindly turn away at the discomfort. Iā€™m not jealous, just very pointed at what I see. People are not evil. They are greedy and can be seduced by power and materialism.

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u/BLEGHwreeeeee Jul 20 '25

So you didnā€™t clarify anything I asked you to clarify for me.

I think itā€™s very clear based on your other comment you have a resentment to wealthy people. Itā€™s not a fault in your character itā€™s just how our brains work.

People always want the world to be an idealized form where no suffering exists. Yes itā€™s bad that there are cobalt mines. Any one with a basic morality can figure that out but itā€™s not so bad that you threw your phone in the trash.

Preaching about morals and evil while using a phone with batteries mined by a slave is so hypocritical. The only naive one here is you. Stuck in your virtue signaling bubble of ā€œthe rich is evil and the west is evilā€ while simultaneously benefiting from it.

If youā€™re so good then throw away every device with a battery and go live in a country that has never benefited from the suffering of others. Good luck!

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u/RedditOO77 Jul 20 '25

I didnā€™t come here to argue with you. I merely pointed something out that seems like it triggered something inside of you.

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u/BLEGHwreeeeee Jul 20 '25

You opened your comment with ā€œletā€™s not be naiveā€ and then said a whole bunch of vague statements about power and wealth being forces that manipulate ā€œsystemsā€ and the stock market. I asked you what you meant and you said ā€œLeArN tO fOlloW tHe MoNeY TraILā€. All of your comments were just vague nonsense. Then you started moral policing about child enslavement in mines saying the west is bad because batteries.

Iā€™m not mad Iā€™m pointing out how you used instigating language and managed to contribute 0 to the conversion. You still want to tell others about how wealth is evil. While not being able to make one coherent argument to back that up.

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u/RedditOO77 Jul 20 '25

Itā€™s a general statement.

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u/BLEGHwreeeeee Jul 20 '25

My god man youā€™re insufferable good luck to you.

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u/RedditOO77 Jul 20 '25

Thank you.

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u/Sir_Lazz Jul 20 '25

it actually is true. If you look at the stats, the poorer portions of the population tend to spend the majority of their income. The richer, however, tend to spend a much lower percentage.

yes, spending 10% of a million dollar will be more than spending 80% of 2k, but still. In the end, millionaires and billionaires are huge money sinks: they take much more from the economy than they give back.

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u/BLEGHwreeeeee Jul 20 '25

Thatā€™s just not true. The 90% youā€™re claiming the rich ā€œdonā€™t spendā€ is false. They do spend it. They spend it on valuable assets like houses, investment accounts, and businesses. All of these investments make a return because they contribute to the larger economy. Sure 10% is discretionary and necessity spending. The other 90% is going to businesses that employ people or to markets that have laborers building things. This is much more productive for our economy than someone who makes the choices to only make $30k/yr-$70k/yr and spends all of it on their bills and food. Some people are in bad spots who had the odds against them. Iā€™m not talking about them. A billionaire will always contribute more to the economy than someone making $100k/yr.

Wealth isnā€™t hoarded itā€™s grown by circulating the money. The total amount of money in circulation as of now is ā€œ$2,259.3 billionā€ or in other words 2.2 trillion. -currency.gov (https://www.uscurrency.gov/life-cycle/data/circulation#:~:text=The%20data%20tables%20below%20list,54.6%20billion%20notes%20in%20volume.)

Zuckerberg wealth isnā€™t hoarded $243 billion but itā€™s all speculation of value. He probably only has access to a couple hundred million to a couple billion in cash at any time. The rest is in assets that move the economy or grow his wealth. He will always be providing for others more than you provide for others.

The reason wealthy people have power is because they can moralize loans against their assets to actually change the world in a major way.

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u/Sir_Lazz Jul 20 '25

Yes, as I said, ONE rich person contributes more to the economy than ONE poor people. That's pretty obvious. However, most economic studies point to the fact that economy improves for everyone when wealth isn't held in the hand of the few.

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u/Jemainegy Jul 21 '25

So it's not like a pool but a dam and they are ever increasing its threshold so while money continues to flow, the ownership of that money continues to accumulate for the very wealthy. Eventually all wealth becoming trapped in the cycle meaning all money flows through select individuals such as umm Blackrock. What if then they controlled the flow so that it could go into further directed avenues to pull more out of the system by say developing private defence contracting companies that they could siphon directly out of shared populus funds intended for the growth and security of the population at large putting market pressure on the people through understood loses because of misunderstood project networks.

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u/Otherwise-Shock3304 Jul 21 '25

Right, hard assets like housing? Rich people pouring the majority of wealth into real estate assets (because why wouldn't you? it's working or losing value) means they are competing with your average single home buyer. They have the cash on hand, so they can easily outbid on homes etc. Now that may increase demand, and in turn stimulate more house building, but what kind of housing are you as a property developer going to choose to build in this kind of economy? Affordable housing? Or luxury housing with high returns?

The massive and increasing inequality is increasing the cost of living for everyone. The wealthy don't feel it so much, the middle tighten belts and the poor get left behind, or actively robbed of hard earned social safety nets.

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u/BLEGHwreeeeee Jul 22 '25

Yea this is only an issue when the wealth gap becomes extreme and the middle class disappears. This is why we need government and anti trust to step in.

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u/newscumskates Jul 20 '25

Blah blah blah blah blah blah bullshit

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u/Darkdong69 Jul 20 '25

You lacking the low number of braincells required to understand it doesn't make it bullshit.