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Weird to see Graham take AOC's quote out of context: Graham: So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was im

Weird to see Graham take AOC's quote out of context: Graham: So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible. Per his link in the article: AOC: there is a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn

blast 4mo ago
What's inaccurate in how he quoted her? The context seems fully consistent with the quote.
- PunchTornado 4mo ago
  because "earning" meant something different in AOC' speech.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - twothreeone 4mo ago
    It's not the verb "earning" that's different, it's the (implied) noun it is referring to: "wage" (AOC) vs. "capital" (Graham).
twothreeone 4mo ago
Yeah he weirdly dodges it. Completely unnecessary too, because he could've just said something like "the average american male yields roughly 90k hours of labor over their lifetime before retirement, so earning a billion dollars only requires an hourly rate of about $12k - It's hard, but it's not impossible". Of course when you put it like that it sounds completely ridiculous :)
jarjoura 4mo ago
That billion dollars had to come from somewhere, and it definitely didn't happen from a single individual's hard work. A lot of people were involved in that over a long period of time. It's also weird to attach an emotional term like "earned" to that. You can say someone passively earned income, or an investor earned a return on their investment. That's clearly not the same meaning AOC implies when she uses it. So, yea. I'm pretty sure Graham and AOC are both talking past each other.
- WalterBright 4mo ago
  > That billion dollars had to come from somewhere When you create a valuable thing, you can use it as collateral for a loan. The bank literally creates the money to loan out out of nothing. When the loan is repaid, the money is destroyed. Think of a dollar bill as an "IOU $1" (which it pedantically is), and it'll make sense.

blast 4mo ago

What's inaccurate in how he quoted her? The context seems fully consistent with the quote.

PunchTornado 4mo ago
because "earning" meant something different in AOC' speech.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- twothreeone 4mo ago
  It's not the verb "earning" that's different, it's the (implied) noun it is referring to: "wage" (AOC) vs. "capital" (Graham).

twothreeone 4mo ago

Yeah he weirdly dodges it. Completely unnecessary too, because he could've just said something like "the average american male yields roughly 90k hours of labor over their lifetime before retirement, so earning a billion dollars only requires an hourly rate of about $12k - It's hard, but it's not impossible". Of course when you put it like that it sounds completely ridiculous :)

jarjoura 4mo ago

That billion dollars had to come from somewhere, and it definitely didn't happen from a single individual's hard work. A lot of people were involved in that over a long period of time. It's also weird to attach an emotional term like "earned" to that. You can say someone passively earned income, or an investor earned a return on their investment. That's clearly not the same meaning AOC implies when she uses it. So, yea. I'm pretty sure Graham and AOC are both talking past each other.

WalterBright 4mo ago
> That billion dollars had to come from somewhere When you create a valuable thing, you can use it as collateral for a loan. The bank literally creates the money to loan out out of nothing. When the loan is repaid, the money is destroyed. Think of a dollar bill as an "IOU $1" (which it pedantically is), and it'll make sense.