Seems logical if there was a law that the average worker had to be paid a percentage of what the top people get paid. I thought that Japan had something like this.
Forbes did the math once and determined that Smaug, a dragon embodied by greed and selfishness, is worth $62 billion. There are 17 people richer than him.
Smaug was shot in the heart and it was a morally good act.
I’d be willing to bet that Smaug caused less death and destruction than many (if not most) billionaires
Fyi that math was heavily contested, i agree with the sentiment but a literal mountain full of gold, assuming the market wouldnt crash, would make him the richest person on the planet.
We don’t actually know the size of the hoard, though. We know it’s big enough for him to sleep in it, and we know the Arkenstone was worth one share of it, but we don’t have specific numbers (at least, none I can see). Any valuation has to be an estimation, and any estimation will be contested.
Also, the value of gold today is 75 times that of what it was in the 1930s, which makes it even harder to put a price on Smaug’s hoard.
Regardless of the specific number, there is a certain level of wealth and greed that makes it morally good to shoot someone through the heart. Smaug is not the only one to have hit that threshold.
Bard the Bowman was to blame. He gave love a bad name.
Honestly, I try not to think about them. It’s an inherently selfish and self-serving class and they’ve got enough money to pay people to think about them, so I’m not going to do it for free.
They need to regularly take a shit, like everybody else. They just use more expensive toilet paper I suppose.
Except at their offices where they but the thinnest 1 ply air they possibly can.
Haha, those silly billionaires are just like me! Haven’t we all bought an election or two?
I’m hungry.
Used to think: wow they’ve got a lot of money. Untill I grew up and realised it’s not money they’ve got, it’s estimated net worth. It’s hard to turn that into cash.
If they got there by making a company that other people now value a lot: impressive.
If it’s a royal family member/inheritance/…, less impressive.
Overall: don’t think about it often.
Wealth is not the same as having cash, that is true, but it’s effectively the same thing. They have cash on hand for any immediate need but if for some reason they need 200 million, it won’t take them long to cash out stocks or sell some property.
Or, more likely, just borrow the money. Then they get to keep everything they have. They have plenty of stuff as collateral to secure it with.
Why would you want to turn ownership of a country-sized apparatus that acts solely in your interests into something as motionless as cash?
Untill I grew up and realised it’s not money they’ve got, it’s estimated net worth. It’s hard to turn that into cash.
I used to think that, too. But just because its not cash doesn’t mean it doesn’t still translate to wealth or power. They essentially park their money in investments, liquidate when they need to, but otherwise use their assets to extract further wealth exert further influence.
Oh, yes. But at a certain point it stops to make sense to count.
Baradar is the leader of the taliban. He can walk into any afghani home and take whatever and whomever he wants. No repercussions, no need for exchange of money. What’s his net worth?
At least, where I live, he isn’t allowed to take anything without a warrant. I value those things more: freedom to live, freedom to express, freedom to fart in front of the most of wealthy people.
Let others play their “maximizing net worth” game.
I think you might misunderstand me. I’m not saying that the only way to attain power is through wealth. Im pushing back against your idea that since an individuals wealth isn’t cash, it’s not worth accounting for. It may stop making sense to count, but only in the sense that it literally becomes incomprehensible to, and at that point it is long overdue to say it is too much. The vast power those people have is due to their net worth. Because someone else has vast power without the wealth doesn’t contradict that fact.
Also I don’t really see why you’re tying up your freedom with billionaires, as if it is a binary choice between billionaires and personal freedom or no billionaires and tyranny. That’s a bit of a strange equivalency you draw. In any case, and in practical terms, you* probably don’t even have the freedom to be in the presence of the wealthiest of wealthy, let alone fart in front of them.
*assuming you are not ultra wealthy or somehow related personally to a member of the ultra rich
Edit: in other words, billionaires don’t grant you your freedom – and their freedom to extract capital and accumulate vast amounts of wealth probably has little bearing on your right to your house or personal property. In fact, they are far more equipped to seize things like your land, your data, your means of subsistence, than you are to defend them.
Im pushing back against your idea that since an individuals wealth isn’t cash, it’s not worth accounting for.
I’m argueing that it’s a privilege that it can be accounted for. The power of wealth is limited, and doesn’t extend to limiting my freedom.
In many, maybe most, historical and contemporary societies, that’s not the case.
In fact, they are far more equipped to seize things like your land, your data, your means of subsistence, than you are to defend them.
The opposite, quite in fact. I still live in a country where there’s rule of law, and democracy. That shit rules 👍
I don’t think it’s a false equivalency: my point is, that fact that it can be accounted for is neat! What’s Ghadaffi’s net worth? It doesn’t even make sense to ask the question, as he can sentence thousands to death on a whim.
They’re a cancer on society.
Asking this on lemmy is like asking a pack of wolves if they enjoy the taste of lamb. You already know the answer you’re going to get…
Is ok to ask for an AMEN now and then.
I dont think about them
A billion dollars is a hard sum of money to wrap your head around. There is basically no ethical way to make a billion dollars. If you have a billion dollars it’s because you’ve stiffed a lot of people a lot of the value they created and kept it for yourself.
Even if they earned it ethically, they literally can’t spend this much money. They can’t spend the money fast enough.
They hold on to this much money to keep score.
This is exactly how I have always thought about it too. Pure greed. My father ran a company for 35 years and for 3 of those years he took either no payout or a very small payout so that he didn’t have to let anyone go. I asked him why he didn’t just downsize and he said that other people needed the money more than us. That’s how shit needs to be run. People centric not profit driven.
Unfortunately it is in human nature to compare oneself to other people, and becoming big in other people’s eyes is easiest when other people around you are already smaller than you.
This becomes truly predatory when you become the person deciding on other’s situation.
Do you know a single business where an employee makes more money than his boss? Because I sure know lots of businesses where employees posses much more knowledge or skill than their supervisor, yet none of them surpass them in earnings.
Though I have known business owners who have made less than their employees at times, it’s always been small 2-10 person businesses, and in a hard time when the owner was trying to weather the hard times with their own equity (ie paying the company to keep people employed). But that’s only a small amount of time, and never a business that the majority of people in the county knew the name.
As for businesses with shareholders. Hell no. Never would happen.
We should probably deal with them sooner rather than later
I don’t have an opinion on billionaires specifically. I don’t care if they take home a billion dollars. What I do care about is the ratio of top earner income with median income. It should never exceed 10-30%
Should, and reality are a couple orders of magnitude separated.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist; no one needs that much money. They should be taxed until there are no more billionaires.
In the words of the next post on my feed: Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew
Bill-ion-aires!
Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
There should be a hard upper limit on wealth somewhere around the $100 million mark.
An amount where you can still invest your money risk-free at ~1% above inflation and live a life of plenty without lifting a finger, forever.
Any property, company, or thing in general worth more than $100 million should never be owned by one person alone.
