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> use a brand new luxury car as a dinner table … every day… and still be making more money than you can spend Just because you own a company doesn't mean you h
by koonsolo 4y ago
> use a brand new luxury car as a dinner table … every day… and still be making more money than you can spend
Just because you own a company doesn't mean you have instant access to its value in cash.
- ceejayoz 4y agoA billionaire will have an extensive amount of credit - Amex alone will probably let you put millions on one of their charge cards without any questions asked - and the ability to have nearly instant access to enormous amounts of cash.
- brookst 4y agoBanks won’t do same day spot loans collatoralized by equity? Since when?
- koonsolo 4y agoLoans need to be paid back in the future, with intrest, or did you think it's free money?
- brookst 4y agoAre we moving the goalposts from “access to cash” to “unlimited gifts of cash with no obligation”?
- koonsolo 4y agoIf you > use a brand new luxury car as a dinner table … every day then you will have to find a way on how to repay that money back to the bank.
- brookst 4y agoI thought the assertion was that equity ownership can't be used for liquidity. Apologies if you were just saying wealth doesn't mean you can spend money without net worth declining.
- hnbad 4y agoWe live in a renteer economy. Nobody owns anything, nobody has money, it's all about credit lines and liquidity. And Elon literally was able to leverage billions of dollars to buy out Twitter (and then saddle Twitter itself with most of that debt because leveraged buyouts are a thing). He wasn't able to leverage that kind of money because his creditors think he'd do a so much better job at running the company. He was able to do it because they figured he'll be able to make sure they'd gain more from giving him the money than holding onto it. It's not a meritocracy. Heck, ultimately this is what political power boils down to: not how much you have but how much you can do. And billionaires can do a lot more than a single person with a net worth closer to the median. Framing that in terms of purchase power is just a visual shorthand that's easier to understand without unravelling how the entire system operates.