The prospect of still being billionaires, but with less billions, was just too much to handle
Exactly why they need to be taxed more.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist to begin with and don’t assume tax money are used by governments for good.
I mean, you don’t become a billionaire by giving money away.
Now imagine if there was some way a government could take a percentage of that and put it towards improving society as a whole.
Oh well, guess we’re fucked.
Now imagine if there was some way a government could take a percentage of that and put it towards improving society as a whole.
Yes, some form of “giving pledge” where the amount was standardized and there was no option to back out. Radical thinking here.
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.
I really like that as a term, never come across it before.
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.
tbh I’m surprised that there are 9 who did
as a reward we should leave them for last
On an unrelated note, Bill Gates is in the epstein list.
And the reason Melinda divorced him.
Serious or joke?
We can only speculate, but his infidelity with staffers was known, and him being on the Epstein list may have been the final straw.
A decent person would have gone to the press with it, but she’s wealthy so she didn’t.
Because it would reflect poor on her, too. It’s like when people don’t report being victims of sexual assault, because they know people will look at them differently forever, doesn’t even have to be that extreme, just imagine being a normal family in a normal neighborhood where everybody knows everyone for decades, and then you find out your husband has a fling with a younger woman. It’s just embarrassing, you know?
You and me and all of us lie all the time about way less embarrassing things, because we don’t want to be seen a certain way, as victims, as having been duped or gullible or even the butt of a joke.
Imagine on that level, where you are married to one of the richest men in the world, and your rollerdex contains thousands of names to some of the most powerful people on the planet, and you “go to the press with it”.
It would change your life forever, the scandal would stain every aspect of your life F O R E V E R.
And he didn’t donate shit without an economic incentive, it’s all a tax writeoff, it’s all a scam. Even that shit he did pumping money into AIDS research as “charity” went into companies where he held stake himself. It’s so fucking vile.
guillotine.jpg
Didn’t know that, but not surprised.
In an email sent after Gates went to have dinner with Epstein in his Manhattan mansion he wrote A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late
The fact that there are 256 billionaires is an absolute failure of our society.
256 billionaires that we know of!
Soon to be a few trillionaires and a thousand billionaires
If there were 3 billion would that be a failure?
Wowza scoob. Imagine that. Rich people lying.
Just wow.
Sound like rich people ought to be dying
Ruh roh!
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.
They broke their arms patting themselves on their backs and can’t write checks anymore. 😢
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.
You don’t understand, they’re making money so much faster than they can reasonably give away.
making money
I think you mean stealing money.
Not true.
They’re also using imaginary methods to make money grow out of other money.
Isn’t that basically just stolen money from stolen money?
If you say things with enough confidence, maybe toss in the phrase “AI” somewhere…yeah you kinda can just create money from nothing.
In entirely unrelated news grocery prices go up.
Then they’re not really trying. I get what @Hobo@Lemmy.World is saying, but I find it hard to believe. If their bar for “respectable charities” leads to them not being able to find charities, then just lower the bar. Or just give money to people.
Yep, pay for everyone’s university for a year, pay everyone’s healthcare debt, do something.
A pizza party would be cool also.
This is kind of the actual problem though. It’s hard to actually have effective charities. Even some of the most ethical, and well run charities, end up with surplus funds (Dolly Parton’s charity for example). The government is setup to spend that much money helping people though. But paying taxes is somehow bad and wrong. I don’t know if I had a real point other than maybe we should actually tax these rich folks so they can achieve their dream of giving away at least half their wealth.
There was a post a while ago where a German person posted that they were confused by the US nonprofit systems, they basically said I pay my taxes and the government makes sure it’s spent feeding the needy and foreign aid and all that. Why should I go through the trouble of researching all these charities trying to find a good one to donate to.
Not that Germany doesn’t have non profits, but they really should be for special interest type cases where you explicitly want to send money to a cause, not general global well being.
Paying taxes is only wrong when it goes to a democratically elected government whose purpose is to benefit all citizens. But if it’s paying tithes to the church or tribute to monarchs, then it’s a MORAL DUTY!
The Ayn Rand fever dream!
Please do not compare Dolly Parton to Bill Gates.
by followed up you mean: “Ok after I die, I will donate half of my money to my tax-exempt family-owned-and-operated charity, that just happened to only pay salaries and donations to causes that serve the interests of our family-owned-and-operated shell companies”… :D
it’s like sequeezing your late’s father dry-drenched cumsocket which he used his entire life, then drinking it, and brag about it… to which I say thanks but no fucking thanks.
And I don’t believe shit of it. I think all their “donations” to foundations and “charity” are tax scams. I’ve seen so many of these deeply immoral and greedy fucks do this and go on charity drives and I’m not buying any of it, I know these people are just scamming us somehow, they don’t do anything out of the kindness of their hearts and betterment of society, it’s all about money.
The worst part is- they are not the problem per se, the system is. The system creates this, capitalism creates this, it promotes these people to the top sure, but if not them then anybody else willing to sell their souls to the literal antichrist.
Capitalism is a malignant cancer and needs to be excised and chemod or we all die. DIE. Civilization GONE. Humanity GONE. Culture GONE.
It’s us or capitalism.
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.
giving half their wealth to what? charities that they control for pushing agendas (and possibly money laundering if we are talking about billionaires in third world countries with much less regulations)
I was about to say. There’s a girl on Youtube that’s documenting how Carnage Melon’s old trust fund is alive and kicking and authoring dystopian plans to censor and monitor the internet. They are the authors of England’s new Online Safety Act. Don’t trust billionaires, especially when they turn into philanthropists. You can’t say philanthropist without making the same sounds as full on rapist.
