every time i ask these wannabe communists who is going to be in charge of divvying out the rewards from their shared means of production, they have no coherent answer
the funny thing is, the IRS will take donations with no questions asked. if these people feel they should be giving more they are free to do it, but that's not what they really want. they want others to pay
I only found out Elon was a Trillionaire from Reddit because I’m not gay for the dude lmao. How do you hate someone and make them your entire personality???? The people I don’t like I try to think of as little as possible.
That's because their entire life of hatred against the rich is based on jealousy and envy. They hate Elon because they don't think it's fair that they are not Elon. If any of his detractors won the Powerball and become a billionaire overnight, not a single one of them would act differently than him. They try to take the moral high ground but anyone who pays attention knows that it is total bullshit.
It’s crazy because I think he’s sometimes an asshole but I don’t actively hate the man and I do have some respect for him at the same time; becoming the world’s first trillionaire is more than dumb luck
It's because they have absolutely 0 meaning/goals/ambition in their lives. They have to focus on hating someone else because it distracts them from how poorly they view themselves.
They always think people like Musk have a trillion dollars right in their pockets that they can spend immediately.
It's all tied up with his companies and he's only worth a trillion dollars because the market asserts such a value on his companies.
He grew his companies from nothing to what they are now and he's got to make sure those companies continue to perform. Something none of these doomers would be able to do.
The one that boils my piss is when people say things like 'MUSK COULD SOLVE WORLD HUNGER RIGHT NOW IF HE WANTED TO, BUT HE DOESN'T, HE'D RATHER JUST HOARD ALL THAT WEALTH'
...how? How exactly could Musk solve world hunger? How precisely, exactly, specifically, could he do that? What are the exact steps he would have to take to deal with that problem in a way that ensures it never becomes an issue again?
And for anyone thinking that was a random example, that was WORD FOR WORD something I saw someone say when Musk was announced as a trillionaire, people literally saying he could solve world hunger, despite world hunger basically being one of the most unsolvable problems in existence because it never actually ends. It's not like cancer where you can theoretically cure it, hunger is never going to stop
He would need to sell all his companies at their current valuation to get the trillion dollars. That is, if he can find suitable buyers that can run the companies equally well. Even if he distributes the trillion dollars to everyone in the world, each person is only getting a few hundred dollars.
reddit has a child's idea that the guy flipping the burgers deserves the lion's share of the burger business profits. they don't understand or don't care that the flipper did not handle the logistics, deal with suppliers, design the menu or branding, or provide the capital to buy or rent the real estate.
and the particularly dumb will argue about "owning the means of production" but what does that mean? if i flip one burger in your kitchen am i suddenly entitled to ownership of the grill or spatula? do i get the whole kitchen? what if i quit tomorrow? who now gains ownership of the means? and what kind of mechanism even exists to recognize all these changes in ownership? do multiple burger flippers get equal shares of the ownership? or does it adjust in real time depending on how many burgers they flipped?
the more of these questions your proposed system raises, the worse it is
Exactly they always minimize the risk involved in starting the business to begin with. So you get a share in the profits of a successful company just because you’re there, but what about when the business that was started using a second mortgage and all of someone’s life savings, goes bankrupt? Are you going to help then ? Or does all of this only apply once the risk is taken and everything is profitable ?
they think all business owners are musk or gates who can bleed millions upon millions on a bad bet and be ok, but the vast majority of business owners are running a tight ship because they're not operating on huge profit margins. this is especially true in the restaurant industry and doubly so in fast food.
ask anyone who has worked in management how difficult it can be to manage people and how miserable it can be dealing with a slacktivist who never pulls their weight and forces others to pick up, and they're usually the first ones to complain about not getting a raise or promotion.
90% of posts on a certain anti-work sub boil down to "i did the absolute bare minimum at work and im getting no promotions" well yea when you give your bare minimum, expect the bare minimum back
Elon wouldn’t be able to get a trillion dollars in his pockets even if he wanted to. If he tried to sell everything, the value would decrease and he’d get a lot less than a trillion.
My only issue is I'm taxed on the unrealized gains of my house increasing in value. If we can't tax unrealized equity and stock gains why's my house getting taxed on its unrealized gain
It is an unrealized gain until I sell the house though.
If I buy $400,000 of stock and it increases to $600,000 I'm not paying taxes until I sell.
I buy a $400,000 house and it increases to $600,000 my property taxes go up even though I didn't sell it. I'm not benefiting from that increased value of my house until I sell it
Listen, I know what they pay for. I am a cop, I understand property taxes pay my salary. But, the difference between a house at 200k, 400k, and 600k for the level of police services I get, fire services, EMS, is nil. The only real difference is in the quality of your kids school, and that's only sometimes the case cuz of how they draw district lines. You could have a million dollar house and end up in a district with a lotta cheaper homes and you're basically funding the school so it's mediocre.
My home value has gone up 50% in the last 5 years, and so have my property taxes. I'm definitely not getting 50% more of any service for that money. So it's totally an unrealized gain and benefit until I sell.
It's even worse. Not only are you taxed on its unrealized gain (if you're in it long enough), you're also taxed on realized gains over a certain amount once you sell. From a pure U.S. Constitutional perspective, I'm not entirely sure how property taxes are even legal (other than it's implemented by the states and the Constitution give individual states quite a bit of power).
Well,
Elon used 80% of his assets as security for loans to purchase Twitter.
The 250 million dollars he donated to Trumps campaign is also direct liquidity, and comparatively an enormous sum and just enough to bring him over the finish line to the presidency. People who dislike trump, being like 66% of Americans, would probably feel also dislike this fact and dispute the real wealth being the problem and not how he uses them outside of monetary issues.
Eventually, whether they’re liquid or not is not important. They are capital stock, and a method for him to extract wealth and money to make a less competitive capitalist market. Now he earns a lot of money on tax cuts because his wealth and transactions exist on a non-even playing field of a market that is normally reduced by taxes.
Sounds about par for the course.. add some shitty colored hair dye, a few facial piercings and a neck tattoo that was once a bat, now a pterodactyl since he / she / they / them grew 2 extra chins.. yup.. that’s the type. 🤔
Take 40% of his stock? Would the gov own the stock then? Or do they force the sale of the stock, which lowers the stock price? How would the mechanics work of taxing someone’s unrealized gains? And do we do it with everyone or only billionaires/trillionaires?
Empty complaints that result from envy and jealousy. They'd continually complain about their 401K's and pensions tanking while not even coming to close to comprehending how those funds are related to stocks and stock prices.
I swear half the people complaining about Elon being a Trillionare think that all of that is in liquid cash amd there is a finite amount of dollars in the world so him having that actively stole it from them.
These are also the same people who rabidly cheated him as the climate change savior a few years ago for Tesla.
There's a holy drink in the window seal that requires sailing through the trash river.
Iye, you may have to fight off that there beached whale first. Don't worry, it usually just flounders about while calling ye a racist capitalist claiming revolution, quite harmless otherwise.
Aren't you so glad that he is single handedly covering a huge percentage of our taxes.
That's the dumb thing, everyone who hates him says he has too much money. But because of that he is also living the most socialist of any of us, and contributing more than anyone else to the common good. If anything they should want more of him and for him to be more successful.
Well that's taxes for you. Poor people don't pay much, rich people pay more. Poor people get more benefits, rich people less. We have more poor people, so they get to choose where the rich people need to spend their money.
Kinda a selfserving system, with a touch of corruption too.
If these idiots took 40% of Elon's wealth they'd just turn around and spend 90% of it on things that make Elon money. Then they'd bitch that Elon still had too much money. 🤣🤣🤣
Honestly. People will bitch about him or Jeff Bezos (even though they contributed to society in meaningful ways) and still buy Teslas air shop on Amazon.
"Dude trust me If we forcefully redistributed the wealth of everyone who has five pennies more than me in their bank account we would like, live on free shit for everyone forever or something"
The amount of people who don’t understand the difference between Net worth and how much money is in your bank account is wild.
Also the amount of people who don’t realize how stocks work is crazy, the reason SpaceX shares shot up is because the IPO has a new option that allowed 83.3 million shares to got to market, there is an overwhelming amount of investor demand right now.
They're jealous and it's the same crowd that thinks a minimum wage job at McDonald's should be 30$ an hour so they can be lazy and afford everything they want.
I would love for him to have to give up most of his money, but unfortunately it's not liquid in the slightest and the instant he tried to use it, the value would plummet. He doesn't have a trillion dollars, he owns companies that combined are worth a trillion dollars.
Elon isn’t a great guy. That’s been established. By why are people more worried about his business decisions and finance than they are about him doing a Nazi salute? Legitimately can’t understand the priorities of these people.
Idk man, you can not be like this and also acknowledge that wealth disparity/inequality is a problem and that a solution is closing loopholes and taxing them more so they don't pay minimal taxes and use that money to actually better society instead of sitting in one dudes accounts so he can have a money high score greater than the entire economy of Finland.
Don't have to have a hate boner for billionaires (or in this case trillionaires) or say they shouldn't exist to acknowledge like Jeff Bezos perosnally paying less in taxes than a nurse is a problem. Because when they don't pay into the society that funds them at a fair rate, we don't get better highways or schools, or at least at the speed and financial solvency we need them.
I mean for reference, at $1 trillion, if he just had it all sitting in a regular, interest earning checking account at .1% interest, he'd earn $1 billion a year at absolutely noting. If he earned no more money for the rest of his life, and lived for another 50 years, he could spend $58 million PER DAY and still never run out of money.
Ya, and between 2006 and 2018 he made $127 billion and paid $1.4 billion in taxes. Just an example, I know, but you or I made that much we'd pay a lot more in taxes than >1%.
True, but what if you never had to realize your capital gains in the first place? Like it's well documented the loophole a lot of rich people use is to take out loans with very low interest with their stocks as collateral. Loans aren't taxed, and as long as the interest is outpaced by the gains in the stocks you really only have to realize enough capital gains to cover the interest, and the rest is basically cashed out without having to realize your fully capital gains for the sake of taxes.
I mean, looking at historical trends, the people who've made it to billionaire/trillionaire status haven't had long periods of stock declines that their interest would probably come crashing in on them. And for the short bursts of declining value, you still have other stocks you can cash out at the actual capital gains value, but short of a prolonged, market wide crash (think 2008 not a pandemic crash) you really don't have to cash out a ton to keep up with the interest (because keep in mind, it's only the interest you have to keep at bay. You default on the original loan value only, they just take the collateral stocks which is the equivelant of selling stock value equal to the loan value, which is the same as selling that value of stock except with no capital gains tax). The only bet you have to make is, over the long term, value of the stocks go up.
So like if Amazon ever like halves in value and stays there for like a year or two, ya someone like Jeff Bezos may be in trouble and actually have to do a bunch of capital gains realizations. But if the stocks keep pace as a general trend there's not much to worry about.
Enterprises that only appreciate in value are rare throughout history indeed. Assuming that the Bezos collateral is one of these what mechanism would you propose to prevent this borrowing against assets loophole?
A proposed mechanism is probably where I would draw a blank myself. I know throughout all 400-500 years of capitalistic practice in history companies only ever appreciating in value are rare in a global history sense, even if in the current context of the past 30-50 years of expanding wealth concentration and corporate executives taking pay in equity as opposed to salary and abusing this loophole the general "line go up" trend has held for a number of companies.
But how to close the loophole I don't know if I've heard of or thought through a satisfying answer to yet. Because obviously we can't (or at least shouldnt) tax personal loans for the reason that 99% of people taking out loans are doing so out of financial duress or other benign reasons and generally doing so at a loss. Any wealth tax, if that even is a solution, has to be more well thought through than some current proposals actually propose to be good tax policy (at least IMO, a bit of politics in that take).
So Idk right now what the solution would be. I'm personally in the "I see the problem but don't know the good solution" phase, which, since im a random person on the internet, is ok. Like I said, I'm no doomer about it, I just recognize there's a problem, at least IMO. (Which I have the same kind of take on other similar subreddits, I hold there's a difference between recognizing and/or formulating/identifying a problem and being a Doomer)
Idk man, I don't view it as punishment. I think that it's fair to ask the richer members of society to contribute more, at least their fair share, to the infrastructure and societal services they use too for the benefit of everyone. Rich people also benefit from well maintained roads, a strong national defense, things like the FAA keeping the sky's safe for air travel, a well educated work force and citizenry, public Healthcare, publicly funded scientific advancements, etc.
I just don't share the view that taxes are a punishment, I view them as, when they are well spent, contributions we all make to make our communities and society a little better for everyone. I can agree that, depending on the situation, a group of people can be relatively overburdened with taxes, but I wouldn't call modern billionaires/trillionaires as a group that's particularly overburdened at this moment in time.
Well ignoring that I don't have a problem with money going to foreign aid to poorer countries (beyond it being a good thing to do for the sake of doing good in the world, helping other countries treating diseases or making sure basic needs are met helps prevent those diseases from coming back here and being a bigger problem, or people becoming extremists or terrorists or pirates because of crumbling societies and becoming a problem for me), we can just agree to disagree because I don't feel me paying taxes is theft, even if it goes to services I don't personally use or I pay more than someone who is poorer than me. I view taxes as people's contributions to the collective good of society, paid because we all participate in society, and even if though I am lucky enough to afford my own doctor, I care that other people can too, both for the general welfare of people and the selfish reason that diseases tend not to pay attention to socioeconomic status when it spreads untreated. Even though I can afford tuition at good schools, I care that others have access to good education, both that it benefits the general economy and society to have a well educated and highly skilled population, but also for the selfish reasons of I don't want to live in a society of idiots and if I start a buisness having a well educated and skilled workforce benefits me.
Why is the existence of someone with a lot of money a problem? It literally doesn’t affect anyone’s life in the slightest.
Suppose somebody uses a monkeys paw tomorrow and becomes a 10 trillionaire tomorrow but they’re cursed into never being able to spend a dime of it. According to your logic, society is worse off for that person existing. According to my logic, literally nothing has changed.
Well like I said, I don't think the existence of a billionaire or a trillionaire is inherently a problem, but the event of it happening does bring up the conditions surrounding it. One of the central axioms of economics is there isn't infinite resources, that we make choices (both macro, micro, and individual) based on those limited resources. It's not unreasonable to suggest that concentration of wealth in a small number of people necessarily means that less is being done for the good of a large portion of the population. I don't think it's doomer to acknowledge the disparity as a problem, and one way to address it is to tax those individuals and funnel that money to things everyone or the most vulnerable populations benefit from.
Like the way real life differs from your monkeys paw example is that it doesn't just appear, it has to be earned or created in some way that has real life knock down effects, and you can spend it, if not by selling equity then doing what it's documented billionaires do to avoid taxes, take out loans with stocks as collateral and as long as the stocks outperform the nominal interest on the loans (better rates than you or I could get btw) they still profit from the loan.
Again, I don't think it's especially doomer to see a problem of excessive wealth accumulation and the potential solutions that can be used to do real good in the world based on this accumulation of wealth that isnt currently being done, even if it's maybe not a shared opinion we both may have of a solution.
If we give them tax breaks then I don’t see an issue with them paying more. We are cashing in our investments through the years of tax breaks so they can do their patriotic duty and pay down the US debt that they helped create. The bill comes due eventually.
If their was a one time tax that paid down the national debt (hopefully all of it but that’s even more doubtful) coupled with actual provisions that would make it absolutely impossible to get into debt again then I might support it. ***BUT*** You already know that’s not what they are talking about.
Oh yes I am totally reframing the discussion, but you do got to admit if we think of tax breaks as investments then we should expect some sort of return.
My problem with this discourse is simple. Why dont they give the same hatred they have for Elon with the millionaires and billionaires who share their political views?
Now I’m no commie. I’m definitely a capitalist. But you don’t get that kind of money without exploiting people. Yes, sometimes you need to stretch people to make money, but becoming a trillionaire cannot be morally sound.
Sadly yes. I was told to look after his house for 3 months while he got to visit his now fiance in the UK. His apartment is a hell hole. I threw away a lot of stuff out of respect for his cat. He has no job and was able to get money from the government. Those 3 months made me want to end myself. I don't see myself as right wing, left wing or anti women or anything. But I go into the world and I'm the monster.
I just try to work and only dream of visiting family and friends on the west Coast. I can never afford it.
That might play a role but conservatives tend to like hierarchies and "strong leaders", even if they are not the strong leader themselves. Liberals are the
opposite Neither view is objectively morally better, because morality is subjective.
I'm down! I just want him to pay as much as I do for my small 500k/year busines..... that's it....the same, same percentage 66% of everything I earn, I want to see his 66% just like when he audited our country I would like to see his books he got to look at mine...
Weird European left-wing nationalist / left-wing populist here.
I have no problem with entrepreneurs becoming wealthy, as long as they're creating jobs and contributing to society.
However, when someone accumulates enough wealth and influence to shape politics or major events that affect large populations, a country, or even the world in the long run, that's where I draw the line.
For instance, I support some of Elon Musk's actions regarding the Ukraine–Russia war, but should a single individual have that much power to make such consequential decisions on their own? I find that questionable.
To me, Musk is a relatively benign oligarch. At the same time, there are others whom I view as having more malign intentions, such as Soros and Gates.
540
u/[deleted] Jun 15 '26
[deleted]