9 ms·

gestures at all of the billionaires

chungy 2y ago
I dare you to come up with a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets. They probably don't exist: "billionaries" are worth billions on paper, thanks to stocks, investments, real estate holdings, etc. All in all, billionaires are a bad example of holding legal tender, because that just doesn't happen.
- tonyhart7 2y ago
  "I dare you to come up with a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets." royal family kingdom of saudi arabia
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Yeah, but they accumulate dollars for a lot of very specific reasons.
    - ralusek 2y ago
      I think they were making a joke about "liquid" assets, i.e. oil is liquid.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets Lots of billionaires manage their portfolios conservatively. Your equating currency with liquid assets is unnecessary and tanks your argument. Almost nobody holds billions of dollars in legal tender other than those who have to, e.g. sanctioned countries and criminals.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- brokenmachine 2y ago
  The way I understand it, billionaires would hold it if they could, but then they'd actually have to pay tax when they spent it. This way, they get to control unlimited assets without paying any tax. Personally, I don't think that's so great "for the economy", because I actually don't care about the economy... I care about people, and having 500 billionaires owning everything and charging everyone to use it is not the economy I want for people. I'd rather that everyone pays tax, especially the super-rich.
  - thinkski 2y ago
    Why not work to become a billionaire, then donate your wealth? Or begin donating your earnings today? I would guess most people on Hacker News are in the upper decile of wealth globally — there are still billions of people living poverty. Feels like a fairer way to help people than trying to do it with other people’s wealth — the latter feels like hypocrisy.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - brokenmachine 2y ago
      >fairer way to help people than trying to do it with other people’s wealth That "other people's wealth" you're talking about is everyone's wealth. Billionaires stole the profits of our work from us, and they didn't do it fairly. I feel you underestimate how much a billion dollars is. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Nobody in history has ever worked hard enough to earn a billion dollars fairly. It's crazy to me that you'd defend these people who have corrupted and degraded the entire system - the government, the finance sector, the media - to only favor holding everyone else to ransom. Not producing but holding. Societal wealth stolen without paying tax to benefit society. People didn't choose this. I'm not starving, sure. And I'd be absolutely fine paying significantly more tax than I am now. But I'm not about to voluntarily donate while I am still forced to work towards retirement, and there are people controlling literally 10,000 times more assets than I am that pay zero tax. Do you not see the inevitable outcome of that? You and your children, and their children, will own nothing because the super-rich will outbid you and everyone else for everything. Food, houses, cars, travel, hotels, healthcare, medicine. EVERYTHING. You will be poor. The rich is a tiny club and you're not in it. Everyone, even the wealthy ones here on hn will eventually succumb. You will be outbid for everything. You will have to sell your house to afford necessities while all your work goes towards luxuries for oligarchs. There must be some mechanism to limit wealth or that is the inevitable outcome. Here's a little thought experiment... It's a hot day and everyone's thirsty. You have $9. There's a bottle of water on the table that you want to buy and the price on it is $10. I give you $1. You can almost feel your thirst satiated. Then I give the person next to you $1,000. How do you feel now? Well our current system is like that, but multiplied by 100. I do not agree that society should exist solely for the benefit of a handful of super-rich freeloaders. On the desert island, they would starve and/or be eaten. That's not my definition of a useful member of society.
- thinkski 2y ago
  Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway has over $300B in cash reserves, Buffett owns 15% of Berkshire and directs investments — he chose to park all that value in cash reserves, roughly $50B of that is his share.
  - nicbou 2y ago
    That's still shares of a company, isn't it?
  - nosefurhairdo 2y ago
    > While Buffett has stated that Berkshire Hathaway will maintain a permanent cash reserve of about $30 billion to fund potential insurance payouts, Bloomstran takes a more conservative approach and adds about $50 billion to that reserve level to account for a full year's worth of potential insurance losses. From this article in 2024: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-record-cash-pile-stock-market-crash-signal-berkshire-2024-5 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffe... There is additional context there explaining why Berkshire holding cash reserves is unique to their needs, and historically has only represented 17.5% of their total assets. Billionaires and large firms are not sitting on piles of cash Scrooge McDuck style, because holding cash is costly.
- heurist 2y ago
  There are early bitcoin holders who are now billionaires continuing to hold their highly liquid bitcoin.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Filligree 2y ago
A currency that encourages people to hold on to it instead of spending it is a disaster for the economy.
- brokenmachine 2y ago
  Have you seen the economy lately?
  - oblio 2y ago
    And how would Bitcoin make the economy better?
    - brokenmachine 2y ago
      The government couldn't constantly print more to hand to their mates, thus diluting the value of held dollars.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
coliveira 2y ago
People don't get rich holding currency. They spend it to invest in businesses, stocks, real estate, bonds, etc.
bruce511 2y ago
Billionaires hold very little legal tender. The term "Billionaire" refers to a person who has total assets over a billion. In most cases those assets are shares in some company (or companies). It's not like they have a billion in their sock drawer. By contrast, when at rest in my wallet, bitcoin is "dormant". It's not earning any interest and other not circulating in the economy. The only "growth" is capital growth. That growth is predicted on demand outstripping supply. Or on "bigger fools". When the fools run out you're left with tulips.
rsynnott 2y ago
Billionaires do not literally have big rooms full of money, like a common Disney duck-plutocrat. In general, no-one much is holding large amounts of _cash_/cash-equivalent, except to some extent for the likes of insurance companies, who are obliged to do it for risk management reasons.
- kdmtctl 2y ago
  ... and banks, of course.
robertlagrant 2y ago
> gestures at all of the billionaires They're billionaires because they own valuable companies, not because they have actual billions in the bank.

I dare you to come up with a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets. They probably don't exist: "billionaries" are worth billions on paper, thanks to stocks, investments, real estate holdings, etc. All in all, billionaires are a bad example of holding legal tender, because that just doesn't happen.

tonyhart7 2y ago
"I dare you to come up with a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets." royal family kingdom of saudi arabia
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Yeah, but they accumulate dollars for a lot of very specific reasons.
  - ralusek 2y ago
    I think they were making a joke about "liquid" assets, i.e. oil is liquid.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> a single example of someone that has a billion dollars in liquid assets Lots of billionaires manage their portfolios conservatively. Your equating currency with liquid assets is unnecessary and tanks your argument. Almost nobody holds billions of dollars in legal tender other than those who have to, e.g. sanctioned countries and criminals.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
brokenmachine 2y ago
The way I understand it, billionaires would hold it if they could, but then they'd actually have to pay tax when they spent it. This way, they get to control unlimited assets without paying any tax. Personally, I don't think that's so great "for the economy", because I actually don't care about the economy... I care about people, and having 500 billionaires owning everything and charging everyone to use it is not the economy I want for people. I'd rather that everyone pays tax, especially the super-rich.
- thinkski 2y ago
  Why not work to become a billionaire, then donate your wealth? Or begin donating your earnings today? I would guess most people on Hacker News are in the upper decile of wealth globally — there are still billions of people living poverty. Feels like a fairer way to help people than trying to do it with other people’s wealth — the latter feels like hypocrisy.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - brokenmachine 2y ago
    >fairer way to help people than trying to do it with other people’s wealth That "other people's wealth" you're talking about is everyone's wealth. Billionaires stole the profits of our work from us, and they didn't do it fairly. I feel you underestimate how much a billion dollars is. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ Nobody in history has ever worked hard enough to earn a billion dollars fairly. It's crazy to me that you'd defend these people who have corrupted and degraded the entire system - the government, the finance sector, the media - to only favor holding everyone else to ransom. Not producing but holding. Societal wealth stolen without paying tax to benefit society. People didn't choose this. I'm not starving, sure. And I'd be absolutely fine paying significantly more tax than I am now. But I'm not about to voluntarily donate while I am still forced to work towards retirement, and there are people controlling literally 10,000 times more assets than I am that pay zero tax. Do you not see the inevitable outcome of that? You and your children, and their children, will own nothing because the super-rich will outbid you and everyone else for everything. Food, houses, cars, travel, hotels, healthcare, medicine. EVERYTHING. You will be poor. The rich is a tiny club and you're not in it. Everyone, even the wealthy ones here on hn will eventually succumb. You will be outbid for everything. You will have to sell your house to afford necessities while all your work goes towards luxuries for oligarchs. There must be some mechanism to limit wealth or that is the inevitable outcome. Here's a little thought experiment... It's a hot day and everyone's thirsty. You have $9. There's a bottle of water on the table that you want to buy and the price on it is $10. I give you $1. You can almost feel your thirst satiated. Then I give the person next to you $1,000. How do you feel now? Well our current system is like that, but multiplied by 100. I do not agree that society should exist solely for the benefit of a handful of super-rich freeloaders. On the desert island, they would starve and/or be eaten. That's not my definition of a useful member of society.
thinkski 2y ago
Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway has over $300B in cash reserves, Buffett owns 15% of Berkshire and directs investments — he chose to park all that value in cash reserves, roughly $50B of that is his share.
- nicbou 2y ago
  That's still shares of a company, isn't it?
- nosefurhairdo 2y ago
  > While Buffett has stated that Berkshire Hathaway will maintain a permanent cash reserve of about $30 billion to fund potential insurance payouts, Bloomstran takes a more conservative approach and adds about $50 billion to that reserve level to account for a full year's worth of potential insurance losses. From this article in 2024: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-record-cash-pile-stock-market-crash-signal-berkshire-2024-5 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffe... There is additional context there explaining why Berkshire holding cash reserves is unique to their needs, and historically has only represented 17.5% of their total assets. Billionaires and large firms are not sitting on piles of cash Scrooge McDuck style, because holding cash is costly.
heurist 2y ago
There are early bitcoin holders who are now billionaires continuing to hold their highly liquid bitcoin.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Filligree 2y ago

A currency that encourages people to hold on to it instead of spending it is a disaster for the economy.

brokenmachine 2y ago
Have you seen the economy lately?
- oblio 2y ago
  And how would Bitcoin make the economy better?
  - brokenmachine 2y ago
    The government couldn't constantly print more to hand to their mates, thus diluting the value of held dollars.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

coliveira 2y ago

People don't get rich holding currency. They spend it to invest in businesses, stocks, real estate, bonds, etc.

bruce511 2y ago

Billionaires hold very little legal tender. The term "Billionaire" refers to a person who has total assets over a billion. In most cases those assets are shares in some company (or companies). It's not like they have a billion in their sock drawer. By contrast, when at rest in my wallet, bitcoin is "dormant". It's not earning any interest and other not circulating in the economy. The only "growth" is capital growth. That growth is predicted on demand outstripping supply. Or on "bigger fools". When the fools run out you're left with tulips.

rsynnott 2y ago

Billionaires do not literally have big rooms full of money, like a common Disney duck-plutocrat. In general, no-one much is holding large amounts of _cash_/cash-equivalent, except to some extent for the likes of insurance companies, who are obliged to do it for risk management reasons.

kdmtctl 2y ago
... and banks, of course.

robertlagrant 2y ago

> gestures at all of the billionaires They're billionaires because they own valuable companies, not because they have actual billions in the bank.