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I think this phenomenon perpetuates false beliefs along the entire economic spectrum as well. I grew up middle class, and myself and my friends always considere

I think this phenomenon perpetuates false beliefs along the entire economic spectrum as well. I grew up middle class, and myself and my friends always considered movie stars as the richest people around! When in reality, movie stars have nickels compared to executives, and old-money families. Many folks just can't comprehend the difference between 5 million dollars in assets, to 500 million dollars. Which begs the question: at what dollar amount does wealth become obscene and unnecessary? It's a moving target, but if I had to throw a dart I would probably pick 100 million as being the upper limit for wealth for an individual. There is just no reason to have more than that.

tiggybear 9y ago
I grew up very middle class in a very middle class place. Doctors and small-time businessmen were what I considered "rich", then I went to university and was surrounded by people from big cities that had family jets, chandeliers in their homes that cost more than my family home, etc. Besides having to recalibrate what I thought of as "rich", I was just astounded at the sheer number of people I met with trust funds and things like that. You see people like that in TV shows like Gossip Girl and stuff, but I always thought it was the tiniest minority of people.
cjlars 9y ago
I don't think there's a threshhold. Take Bill Gates for example. He's done a lot of good in his life. He built a huge company that transformed personal computing, employed an army of people and then put billions of dollars into poverty mediation programs that the world's governments didn't seem to be able to handle. Along the way, he also payed billions in taxes. Without old Bill, the world is many billions of dollars poorer. I think there's a lot of value in letting people that are 10,000x better than the average person at creating wealth do so. Maybe there should be something to limit the excesses of luxurious consumption (I for one, favor a progressive VAT), but I think trying to impose punitively high tax rates on very successful people makes society worse off in most cases.
- crimsonalucard 9y ago
  Bill did not build a company alone. He built it off the backs of employees. His earnings are so substantial that it is fundamentally impossible for him to earn it off of his own two hands and intelligence alone. No one man has enough intelligence or physical ability to generate a billion dollars. Can one man create the windows operating system? Can one man construct a boeing 747? If no one man can construct a boeing 747 than how can their exist people who have wealth greater than the worth of a passenger airliner? There is only one explanation. This wealth was earned unfairly. What Bill and all other billionaires do is utilize the labor of other people. Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are all group efforts where humanity pools their collective power together to construct something greater than one man can produce. The issue here is that, the leaders of these groups get rewards that are disproportionate. There is no way one human can contribute labor worth 50 billion dollars to the world. It it physically impossible. The taxes that Bill paid is wealth generated by the employees, not Bill.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    > There is only one explanation. This wealth was earned unfairly. Define "unfairly". If by "unfairly", you mean "earned by owning a company that paid its employees well, gave them stock options that made millionaires out of many of them, and still made the owner insanely rich", well, that's kind of an odd definition of "unfairly".
    - Retra 9y ago
      Are you aware of the concept of loaded language?
    - crimsonalucard 9y ago
      This is hard to define and is subjective. I use a hard metric for my own definition that makes sense. Find a physical product that is fundamentally impossible to be built by one man. Say a boeing 747. Find a man who has more wealth then the cost of a boeing 747. By common sense: if it is impossible for a man to build a 747 with his bare hands then it is impossible for a man to own more wealth then the cost of a 747 without going through trades and transactions that are unfair. If such a man exists then he attained his wealth through unfair transactions. This is my definition of unfair. You may have another definition and I respect that. IMO in the ideal world Bill Gates probably deserves to be a millionaire and billionaires would represent a perversion of wealth that is insanely obscene.
gertef 9y ago
movie stars are very close to the wealth level of execs at big companies. Chris Pratt is American actor who has a net worth of $30 million dollars McDonalds CEO Don Thompson's cumulative net worth is $20,000,000.
oculusthrift 9y ago
why? i don't get why there needs to be a limit. people are pretending like wealth is a zero sum game. Someone being wealthy doesn't inherently hurt anyone else. This is the soviet model where the rich are to be hated because the only way to get money is to steal it from the poor. Neglecting that the economy facilitates transactions where both sides are winners. When i buy bread, the bread maker gets money and i get food and we're both happy. Should we punish the bread maker if he sells too much bread and feeds too many people?

tiggybear 9y ago

I grew up very middle class in a very middle class place. Doctors and small-time businessmen were what I considered "rich", then I went to university and was surrounded by people from big cities that had family jets, chandeliers in their homes that cost more than my family home, etc. Besides having to recalibrate what I thought of as "rich", I was just astounded at the sheer number of people I met with trust funds and things like that. You see people like that in TV shows like Gossip Girl and stuff, but I always thought it was the tiniest minority of people.

cjlars 9y ago

I don't think there's a threshhold. Take Bill Gates for example. He's done a lot of good in his life. He built a huge company that transformed personal computing, employed an army of people and then put billions of dollars into poverty mediation programs that the world's governments didn't seem to be able to handle. Along the way, he also payed billions in taxes. Without old Bill, the world is many billions of dollars poorer. I think there's a lot of value in letting people that are 10,000x better than the average person at creating wealth do so. Maybe there should be something to limit the excesses of luxurious consumption (I for one, favor a progressive VAT), but I think trying to impose punitively high tax rates on very successful people makes society worse off in most cases.

crimsonalucard 9y ago
Bill did not build a company alone. He built it off the backs of employees. His earnings are so substantial that it is fundamentally impossible for him to earn it off of his own two hands and intelligence alone. No one man has enough intelligence or physical ability to generate a billion dollars. Can one man create the windows operating system? Can one man construct a boeing 747? If no one man can construct a boeing 747 than how can their exist people who have wealth greater than the worth of a passenger airliner? There is only one explanation. This wealth was earned unfairly. What Bill and all other billionaires do is utilize the labor of other people. Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are all group efforts where humanity pools their collective power together to construct something greater than one man can produce. The issue here is that, the leaders of these groups get rewards that are disproportionate. There is no way one human can contribute labor worth 50 billion dollars to the world. It it physically impossible. The taxes that Bill paid is wealth generated by the employees, not Bill.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  > There is only one explanation. This wealth was earned unfairly. Define "unfairly". If by "unfairly", you mean "earned by owning a company that paid its employees well, gave them stock options that made millionaires out of many of them, and still made the owner insanely rich", well, that's kind of an odd definition of "unfairly".
  - Retra 9y ago
    Are you aware of the concept of loaded language?
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    This is hard to define and is subjective. I use a hard metric for my own definition that makes sense. Find a physical product that is fundamentally impossible to be built by one man. Say a boeing 747. Find a man who has more wealth then the cost of a boeing 747. By common sense: if it is impossible for a man to build a 747 with his bare hands then it is impossible for a man to own more wealth then the cost of a 747 without going through trades and transactions that are unfair. If such a man exists then he attained his wealth through unfair transactions. This is my definition of unfair. You may have another definition and I respect that. IMO in the ideal world Bill Gates probably deserves to be a millionaire and billionaires would represent a perversion of wealth that is insanely obscene.

gertef 9y ago

movie stars are very close to the wealth level of execs at big companies. Chris Pratt is American actor who has a net worth of $30 million dollars McDonalds CEO Don Thompson's cumulative net worth is $20,000,000.

oculusthrift 9y ago

why? i don't get why there needs to be a limit. people are pretending like wealth is a zero sum game. Someone being wealthy doesn't inherently hurt anyone else. This is the soviet model where the rich are to be hated because the only way to get money is to steal it from the poor. Neglecting that the economy facilitates transactions where both sides are winners. When i buy bread, the bread maker gets money and i get food and we're both happy. Should we punish the bread maker if he sells too much bread and feeds too many people?