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When Elon's wealth peaked at $300 billion (at least on paper), I calculated that with $3 million being an extremely comfortable retirement, he could retire 100,

by titzer 3y ago

When Elon's wealth peaked at $300 billion (at least on paper), I calculated that with $3 million being an extremely comfortable retirement, he could retire 100,000 times. It's an absolutely obscene inequality. And billionaires crow about taxes. Like, literally, if they took NINENTY NINE PERCENT of that wealth away, he could only retire ONE THOUSAND TIMES. STFU billionaires.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
Did you make a similar observation in the opposite direction when his wealth dwindled? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-net-worth-worst-loss-of-fortune-in-history-guinness-book-of-world-records/#textSome20estimate20he20lost20upin2020002C20according20to20Guinness https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-net-worth-worst-loss-... https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1591291952464801794 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1591291952464801794 I see this common pattern. 1. Stock goes up: "Oh no, they are stealing from us" 2. Stock goes down: Silence > And billionaires crow about taxes. Not just billionaires. Even non-millionaires crow about taxes. Fix the leaky bucket first before filling it up is a good strategy.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > Did you make a similar observation in the opposite direction when his wealth dwindled? Did it dwindle enough for the point to no longer be valid? (No, not anywhere near close.)
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    Please define "valid" Valid for what?
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      Does Musk's loss of half his on-paper fortune change the "I calculated that with $3 million being an extremely comfortable retirement, he could retire 100,000 times. It's an absolutely obscene inequality." calculus meaningfully? He can now retire comfortably 50,000 times. It's a good illustration of just how huge that fortune is, and how little someone needs that much money.
      - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
        What does retirement got to do with whether his wealth is his or not t keep? > It's a good illustration of just how huge that fortune is, and how little someone needs that much money. A lot of that money is illiquid wealth that he helped create. Should he give that up to a corrupt politician to distribute "fairly" (cough buy votes for power cough) or should he invest in venues that better humanity. He doesn't have a Scrooge McDuck type vault with gold coins. I have some questions below, not to attack, but to understand this view. 1. Should no one have wealth beyond a limit set up by some politician? (lets leave aside what is a "fair" limit and assume politicians have omniscience in this regard) 2. If yes to #1, what incentive would that give for entrepreneurs to create? 3. Do you think wealth is not created? In the world, has wealth remained constant since 1000 AD (an example date). Wouldn't that imply value of human knowledge, creativity and effort is zero?
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        #1: A wealth tax on wealth exceeding a certain amount of a couple percent a year. Chances are they can grow it faster than that. #2: Plenty, and do incentives really matter from $100B to $200B? They’re going for high scores at that point, not needs. #3: Sure it’s created. I don’t think the distribution is correct with regards to who’s doing the creating.
b112 3y ago
That wealth is not sitting in a bank account somewhere. It is in the form of corporate ownership, stocks, it is part of the economy. Some of it is never raw cash. Are you purposing the governement take 99% of ownership of endless corporations? That's pretty much what would happen, if you taxed 99% of billionaire's wealth. And if you did that, who would the governement sell the shares to? Remember, you just taxes those nasty billionaires, taking 99% of their wealth, so there is no one to sell those shares to. And next year, there are no billionaires left. And likely the economy has crashed, because yeah, the government knows how to run large corporations well. All that "billionaire" means, is that the person directs private enterprise. Get over it. We need leaders, and they're it.
- titzer 3y ago
  Hello me from 2003. I would have written almost this exact comment twenty years ago. In the meantime what I've learned is that: 1. Billionaires have 10 fingers and 24 hours just like the rest of us. They are not superhuman, superintelligent, or even particularly good at anything. Many are on top of their organization simply by inheritance or successfully navigating internal organizational politics. 2. Greed is a real disease. It's a mental illness. We don't call it that anymore. But what would you call an obsession with acquiring thousands of times more wealth than is necessary to have a full and complete life? Many lifetimes!? There's some kind of serious pathology there. 3. Billionaires either inherit huge amounts of money or they create organizations that funnel money up to them. The day-to-day earnings of the organization are the operation of a huge pyramid of people who do real work. They're taxing the produced wealth of their org they sit atop of. 4. Most organizations can coast for months or years without any real leadership, but would sputter and stop instantly if the people at the bottom stop working. Our age's conceit is to think the guy with the rudder in the fog is the leader when there are dozens of slaves doing the rowing and fish are jumping in the boat. 5. Billionaires never get screwed. Ever. They have bad ideas all the time. They can literally fuck up until the cows come home and still get mega payouts and people still lionize them.
  - jntvjnvutnuvt 3y ago
    You completely misunderstand where billionaire wealth comes from. They are billionaires on paper, not from funneling money from workers to their bank accounts.
WalterBright 3y ago
If all the wealth of the US billionaires was confiscated (all of it) it would fund the government for 9 months. And then what? Where are you going to get the money to fund the government? Countries that have tried confiscating all the wealth from their wealthy have made things worse for the rest of the country, not better. As for Musk, if he didn't make a lot of money, SpaceX never would have been possible. His wealth is all invested in his companies, and he uses it to create more companies.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  There’s a lot of actions that’s not just “confiscating their wealth”. For example, requiring employers over a certain revenue to have a workers council, and a seat at the board. Creating stronger union protections. Not weakening them. Requiring sick pay, paid time off, etc etc. Limiting the abuse of using contract workers to avoid doing benefits.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Other countries do that, which is why they have anemic economies compared to the US.
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      While doing better on nearly every other social aspect. Also, the U.S. economy can’t be compared with anywhere else because we are the reserve currency. The control we have over our economy is literally not possible anywhere else. When we didn’t have this control, our economic policies led to the great fucking depression.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        > our economic policies led to the great fucking depression That policy was, specifically, tying the exchange rate of the dollar to gold while inflating the hell out of the dollar - Fed policy enacted in the 1914 Federal Reserve Act. This disconnect between the dollar's value and gold's value eventually caused a run on the banks which collapsed them, as you could buy gold for half price. The depression did not start to recover until the government halted gold purchases. > While doing better on nearly every other social aspect. Debatable. I've lived in foreign countries.

by titzer 3y ago

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

Did you make a similar observation in the opposite direction when his wealth dwindled? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-net-worth-worst-loss-of-fortune-in-history-guinness-book-of-world-records/#textSome20estimate20he20lost20upin2020002C20according20to20Guinness https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-net-worth-worst-loss-... https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1591291952464801794 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1591291952464801794 I see this common pattern. 1. Stock goes up: "Oh no, they are stealing from us" 2. Stock goes down: Silence > And billionaires crow about taxes. Not just billionaires. Even non-millionaires crow about taxes. Fix the leaky bucket first before filling it up is a good strategy.

ceejayoz 3y ago
> Did you make a similar observation in the opposite direction when his wealth dwindled? Did it dwindle enough for the point to no longer be valid? (No, not anywhere near close.)
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  Please define "valid" Valid for what?
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Does Musk's loss of half his on-paper fortune change the "I calculated that with $3 million being an extremely comfortable retirement, he could retire 100,000 times. It's an absolutely obscene inequality." calculus meaningfully? He can now retire comfortably 50,000 times. It's a good illustration of just how huge that fortune is, and how little someone needs that much money.
    - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      What does retirement got to do with whether his wealth is his or not t keep? > It's a good illustration of just how huge that fortune is, and how little someone needs that much money. A lot of that money is illiquid wealth that he helped create. Should he give that up to a corrupt politician to distribute "fairly" (cough buy votes for power cough) or should he invest in venues that better humanity. He doesn't have a Scrooge McDuck type vault with gold coins. I have some questions below, not to attack, but to understand this view. 1. Should no one have wealth beyond a limit set up by some politician? (lets leave aside what is a "fair" limit and assume politicians have omniscience in this regard) 2. If yes to #1, what incentive would that give for entrepreneurs to create? 3. Do you think wealth is not created? In the world, has wealth remained constant since 1000 AD (an example date). Wouldn't that imply value of human knowledge, creativity and effort is zero?
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        #1: A wealth tax on wealth exceeding a certain amount of a couple percent a year. Chances are they can grow it faster than that. #2: Plenty, and do incentives really matter from $100B to $200B? They’re going for high scores at that point, not needs. #3: Sure it’s created. I don’t think the distribution is correct with regards to who’s doing the creating.

b112 3y ago

That wealth is not sitting in a bank account somewhere. It is in the form of corporate ownership, stocks, it is part of the economy. Some of it is never raw cash. Are you purposing the governement take 99% of ownership of endless corporations? That's pretty much what would happen, if you taxed 99% of billionaire's wealth. And if you did that, who would the governement sell the shares to? Remember, you just taxes those nasty billionaires, taking 99% of their wealth, so there is no one to sell those shares to. And next year, there are no billionaires left. And likely the economy has crashed, because yeah, the government knows how to run large corporations well. All that "billionaire" means, is that the person directs private enterprise. Get over it. We need leaders, and they're it.

titzer 3y ago
Hello me from 2003. I would have written almost this exact comment twenty years ago. In the meantime what I've learned is that: 1. Billionaires have 10 fingers and 24 hours just like the rest of us. They are not superhuman, superintelligent, or even particularly good at anything. Many are on top of their organization simply by inheritance or successfully navigating internal organizational politics. 2. Greed is a real disease. It's a mental illness. We don't call it that anymore. But what would you call an obsession with acquiring thousands of times more wealth than is necessary to have a full and complete life? Many lifetimes!? There's some kind of serious pathology there. 3. Billionaires either inherit huge amounts of money or they create organizations that funnel money up to them. The day-to-day earnings of the organization are the operation of a huge pyramid of people who do real work. They're taxing the produced wealth of their org they sit atop of. 4. Most organizations can coast for months or years without any real leadership, but would sputter and stop instantly if the people at the bottom stop working. Our age's conceit is to think the guy with the rudder in the fog is the leader when there are dozens of slaves doing the rowing and fish are jumping in the boat. 5. Billionaires never get screwed. Ever. They have bad ideas all the time. They can literally fuck up until the cows come home and still get mega payouts and people still lionize them.
- jntvjnvutnuvt 3y ago
  You completely misunderstand where billionaire wealth comes from. They are billionaires on paper, not from funneling money from workers to their bank accounts.

WalterBright 3y ago

If all the wealth of the US billionaires was confiscated (all of it) it would fund the government for 9 months. And then what? Where are you going to get the money to fund the government? Countries that have tried confiscating all the wealth from their wealthy have made things worse for the rest of the country, not better. As for Musk, if he didn't make a lot of money, SpaceX never would have been possible. His wealth is all invested in his companies, and he uses it to create more companies.

aaomidi 3y ago
There’s a lot of actions that’s not just “confiscating their wealth”. For example, requiring employers over a certain revenue to have a workers council, and a seat at the board. Creating stronger union protections. Not weakening them. Requiring sick pay, paid time off, etc etc. Limiting the abuse of using contract workers to avoid doing benefits.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Other countries do that, which is why they have anemic economies compared to the US.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    While doing better on nearly every other social aspect. Also, the U.S. economy can’t be compared with anywhere else because we are the reserve currency. The control we have over our economy is literally not possible anywhere else. When we didn’t have this control, our economic policies led to the great fucking depression.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      > our economic policies led to the great fucking depression That policy was, specifically, tying the exchange rate of the dollar to gold while inflating the hell out of the dollar - Fed policy enacted in the 1914 Federal Reserve Act. This disconnect between the dollar's value and gold's value eventually caused a run on the banks which collapsed them, as you could buy gold for half price. The depression did not start to recover until the government halted gold purchases. > While doing better on nearly every other social aspect. Debatable. I've lived in foreign countries.