just temporarily embarrassed billionaires, one good idea or lottery ticket from making it rich

Comments

• jdr@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Lots of American universities are named after the dudes who paid for the initially. I’m not saying I’d be proud to go to Bezos U (go fighting bald eagles!) but if it were free then you could hold your nose.

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  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There isn’t a university named after a rich dude that’s free. Most are very expensive to maintain the brand value of the family name.

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    • Darkaga@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and Penn are all free if your family makes less than $200k/yr. A bunch more are free at $150k and $100k cutoffs.

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    • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      MY BRAND

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  • curbstickle@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Those are all private.

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• BillyClark@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Strangely, I guess, if I try to imagine myself having one billion dollars, it’s just an amount of money that the only way I’d even make a dent in it is if I either was specifically making bad purchases or if I had lost my mind. (For example, just gambling it all away.)

  Even if you simply threw it in a normal index fund that isn’t focused on dividends, but growth, you might still make 1%, or 10 million a year in dividends. So just the dividends you accidentally make would let you live a very luxurious lifestyle.

  I could imagine having one billion dollars if it was just the worth of my private company that I didn’t want to split up or something like that, but otherwise, it’s really just too much money. I’d be donating to charities just to keep my net worth at a level that I could look myself in the mirror and not feel like a villain, and so I’d actually be in favor of things like wealth taxes. It would just make my life easier.

  I think people who imagine themselves as billionaires and are still stingy with money are either not accurately imagining that amount of money, or they’re too stupid to have any amount of money, or they’re villains, just like every billionaire today is a villain.

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  • PattyMcB@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The reason you can’t be a billionaire (not saying it’s a bad thing) is because you think this way. You’re not greedy enough.

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    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Maybe I should get my brains scrambled, could help with the greed issue.

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  • Tehhund@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Someone once suggested that if you become worth $1 billion, we declare that you win capitalism. We confiscate 99% of it and name a dog park in your honor.

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• nonentity@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

  Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

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  • Steve@communick.news ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I prefer “Financial Hording”
    It literally is a hording mentality. But because it’s money, people give it a pass.

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    • PattyMcB@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Hoarding*

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    • nonentity@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      A distinction sans difference, it’s neurotoxic however it’s labelled.

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  • chaogomu@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    ignoring all the evil shit, Christianity was created with prohibitions on greed and pride and such.

    Then in the early 20th century, rich assholes paid for a radio “preacher” to basically say that greed and pride and shit were fine and dandy. And thus was born Prosperity Gospel.

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    • nonentity@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Economics is the social control mechanism that filled the void vacated by religion after the enlightenment. A bunch of accounting rules cherry picked by the ruling class, protected from scrutiny, arbitrarily and inconsistently imposed on the masses, enforced by threat of violence.

      Finance is its mythology. Banks are its cathedrals. Financial institutions its churches. Economists its clergy. GDP its God.

      If religion is the opium of the masses, economics is their fentanyl.

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    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      “All the evil shit” basically comes around when somebody inevitably shows up and says:

      “Look, those books are a lot of words. You’re too stupid to handle such responsibility. You need me/us to interpret it for your busy, feeble little minds. Don’t worry God gave us special authority for some indiscernible reason so you have to listen to us. 😉”

      “Wide is the path to destruction” definitely comes to mind when it comes to people choosing the path of least intellectual resistance. (In the modern era, with reasonable literacy rates and unparalleled access to scripture.)

      Sorry I’m more trying to signal boost you here because you’re so right:

      Christianity practiced in earnest was a big time obstacle for the wealthy and powerful. They couldn’t stamp it out by force, so they do what they do with any culture: They stole it and sold it back in a way that glorifies themselves.

      Nothing is more opposed to Christ than the disgusting greed and nationalism displayed today. It’s disgusting.

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• Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Here we go again. No sources.

  According to his site:

  …senate.gov/…/sanders-make-college-tuition-free/

  It would cost $70B/year.

  According to this site, he makes about $9.8B/year, so even a 100% tax wouldn’t do it.

  The problem is how do you calculate his taxes? He’s already doing that and paying his $800 or whatever it is. So you have to make assumptions about how much you would tax at 4.7%.

  I therefore assumed this meant if his entire net worth were taxed at 4.7%.

  According to here which tracks it real time: www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/

  It’s currently $270B.

  $270B x 0.047 = $12.7B.

  So no, you couldn’t fund it just by taxing him 4.7%. I think we’ll need to create a special tax on billionaires to cover the rest.

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  • LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Wealth tax… It is extremely obvious that this would be a wealth tax.

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    • Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      And?

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  • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Currently, we’re subsidizing Bezos. US taxpayers are paying Amazon

    And currently, a few people, including Bezos, own more than does half of the US.

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    • Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yup and that’s probably the biggest injustice the world has ever seen. But that doesn’t erase the fact that Bezos, does not have an income or even a net worth of $1.5T, which is what it would take at 4.7% to make $70B.

      This meme could just as easily have said, for instance, that “just Bezos alone could personally fund this program for three years and he’d still be a billionaire. Imagine if we forced that on every billionaire.” It would still make a powerful point without spreading a lie to do it. Because if you think a whole bunch of people who saw this and didn’t fact check it AREN’T going to repeat it to other people, your kidding yourself.

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  • krisevol@lemmus.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Plus it didn’t explain were the money comes from. Bazos makes 80k a year, and his stocks go up in value which is why good net worth goes up. If we taxes his unrealized gains where the money come from?

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    • Narauko@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      We need a way to tax when stock valuation is used as collateral for loans and revolving credit, enabling people from Bezos to have paper income of 80K and realizing gains without actually realizing gains. A general wealth tax, especially on unrealized gains, is obviously dumb, but the ghost gains loophole needs to be closed.

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    • Diurnambule@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They have to sell part of there action. If I can’t pay a debt, can i tell them you can’t smake me sell my actions to reimburse my debt…

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  • Cheebus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    look man i’m all for math, and yep a lot of these social problems can math out pessimistically if we use our current economic model as the basis

    but the reality here is shits fucked, trillionaires should exist, and eat the fucking rich for once

    let’s do that for a change

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    • Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I don’t believe that vehemently disagreeing with the other side gives you a license to spread misinformation. It is my belief that if you have to lie to make your point, maybe you should reconsider your point. This is my belief whether it’s MAGA doing the lying or their opponents.

      AND just because I’ve pointed out that this meme is demonstrably incorrect doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with the sentiment. I just believe this administration and it’s followers are doing plenty of factually horrible things, there’s plenty of factually good points to make on that topic without having to resort to making shit up. Period.

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  • ProfessorProteus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    so even a 100% tax wouldn’t do it.

    Let’s do it anyway.

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    • Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Fuck yeah!

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  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Tbf 4.7% would still take is a long way, especially if colleges stopped being a “company” and didn’t inflate their prices in spite of student loan companies.

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    • Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      No disagreement there.

      My disagreement is with the meme and anyone who spreads it thinking it’s ok to lie to make a point.

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  • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    So, 370 million Americans would need about only 181 dollars a year each to have a good education?

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    • Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      You think 370 million Americans are all going to go to college?

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• uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yeah, now it’s too late. Taxing the billionaires will only be undone by them as they use their vast riches to influence elections and control governments. Today’s ultra wealthy has more wealth and political power than they have at any time in human history, and they are set on world domination (and enslaving the worker class until they can all be replaced with automation).

  We’re going to have to find a way to take all their ill-gotten gains. And rest assured, they will not relinquish it unless forced to do so. We’ll probably have to pry their lucre from their cold dead hands, and that of their heirs (and their heirs).

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  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Not to mention their influence on you.

    Hasan Piker is currently on the front page of twitch.tv, a website owned by Jeff Bezos.

    Yeah, now it’s too late.

    You feel this way because the influencers the billionaires recommend you watch have made you feel this way. You’re told by Jeff Bezos’ boy Hasan that liberals are the enemy so you will never vote for taxing billionaires. It’s only “too late” because you’ve been made to believe it’s too late. You need to stop listening to millionaires that are being promoted by billionaires.

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    • Jax@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Whoa whoa whoa there Space Cowboy - you’re speaking too much sense. This is Lemmy, we just shit ourselves petulantly here.

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  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s why they’re working so hard on militarizing AI. As they become more and more obscene, the risk of getting killed by their own private security gets higher.

    They want killing machines protecting them instead.

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    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Slaves that can’t rebel is the fucking dream for them

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• postmateDumbass@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Elon’s treason and corruption would be an easier case to prosecute and confiscate his ill gotten wealth.

  Especially with ICE and national security involved.

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  • Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Take back what is rightfully the American peoples’ money from Elon, Trump, and the rest of his lackies. Use it to subsidize college, housing, and healthcare.

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    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Seriously, would be near-utopia in like a year.

      Imagine all the JOBS that would “create” with so many public projects to handle all at once! Public transport! Healthcare! Education! USAID! Roads without potholes! Bridges not on the verge of collapse? Think of the dams!!

      Wow. Seizing the ill gotten gains of like 3 to 5 people would fix almost everything, and yet here we are. I truly can’t comprehend it…

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• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  But then they’ll get smart, and when AI has led to a permanent 65% unemployment rate, they will demand UBI, and take it from the Trillionaires.

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  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    AI is already keeping them from becoming smart. The majority of college students are having gen “AI” write their essays now.

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• DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I was at work, talking to someone my own income.

  I asked him to name some things that he’d buy with a billion dollars that he couldn’t get with $100 million.

  He couldn’t actually name one thing, but kept insisting that billionaires ’needed’ the money.

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  • Natanael@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Presidents.

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    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Funny enough I feel like presidents and other officials are shockingly cheap, monetarily, too.

      I bet you get a lot further simply with promises of access your network of other wealthy a-holes who are influential simply because they’re wealthy, and wealthy because they’re influential.

      Ugh. 🤢

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  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I mean he couldn’t come up with mega yacht?

    That gets you into the hundreds of millions. Bezos is estimated at 500 million.

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• InvalidName2@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Part of the issue here is that the damage has already been done. The taxes should have been in place a LOOOOOONG time ago to at least partially prevent getting where we are now. This is the equivalent strategy of running out the clock while you’re ahead. They’ve done that already. Focusing on the worst of the worst is a fool’s errand.

  Doesn’t mean we can’t update the rules moving forward, of course, but you’re going to find that your ideas are not as popular as you think if and when people realize they have to voluntarily make compromises. Amazon could be harmed, perhaps mortally, quite easily if everyone would stop buying from their e-commerce site and businesses would stop using their web services. Good luck with that. Walmart would cease to be a thing if everybody stopped shopping there. You know the song and the dance, but that shit’s not happening.

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• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  THIS math may not work, but there is math that will work.

  A good start is the America First Fund (irony intended), which is what we will use as seed money for the social programs that this country desperately needs to be able to compete with ever other industrialized nation.

  The American First Fund is where we will collect things like the tariff repayments. Why should those go to the government, when they were stolen from the Citizens? That money should go into the America First Fund. Any corporate fines collected because of their crimes against Citizens, should go into the AFF.

  And fines against corporations and Sociopathic Oligarchs should be increased enormously. The minimum fine for ANY infraction should start at $1 billion. Fines should hurt them, just like a $200 “rolling through a stop sign” ticket hurts Citizens.

  And confiscation should be on the table. Corporations are to be operated to benefit the American economy, and the Citizens. If you continue to operate your business to your personal benefit alone, at the detriment of society, your entire corporation will be confiscated, and operated as a non-profit to benefit society, with any excess revenues going to the AFF. And Oligarch families who find themselves destitute because their entire estate was confiscated due to their sociopathic behavior toward their fellow Citizens, will NOT be eligible for the AAF benefits funded by those confiscations. In the future, the only homeless people will be former oligarchs who have EARNED their homelessness.

  The America First Fund’s level will be mentioned nightly on the evening news. When the wealthy tune in to see what the Dow/ NASDAQ/ S&P were for the day, the rest of the Citizens can see where the America First Fund stands, and the wealthy will also see it, and know that their money could be removed, and added to it at any time.

  American Citizens should benefit by fines against corporations for abusing us, they shouldn’t go to the government to build more bombs or golden monuments, while we’re told there is no money for food or healthcare or education. Those fines belong to US, and the America First Fund makes sure those funds are spent on US, and not the Sociopathic Oligarchs who caused the fines in the first place.

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  • CascadianGiraffe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Nationalize corporate America. It’s really that simple.

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• gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  this is just an uninformed take. the reason why “taxing billionaires doesn’t work” is said by some people, is because there’s free trade and billionaires could just move their stuff abroad where it isn’t taxed. we need an end to free trade first before taxing wealth becomes feasible.

  it has nothing to do with “taxing my feelings of becoming a billionaire” or such

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  • nialv7@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    then let them leave and let them take their money with them. they don’t contribute to the society anyway.

    you are mistaking money for real resources. houses are built with cement, bricks, gravel, plaster, and labour. you cannot build a house with money. billionaire cannot take real resources with them. in fact if they leave they will stop hoarding resources and that will make our lives better, not worse.

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  • tburkhol@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If billionaires will relocate to reduce their taxes, why are all the tech CEOs still US citizens and not, say, Bermuda, with 0% income tax & 0% corporate tax?

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  • Steve@communick.news ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    US citizens pay US income tax, no matter where in the world they live.

    China makes foreign nationals pay taxes on any revenue that comes from China.

    You don’t need to end free trade.

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    • gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      yeah this is income tax. what about wealth tax?

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    • Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Honestly, to me this is a bad take because only a handful of nations in the world consider to tax their nationals when living outside of their borders.

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  • luokaton@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    no they won’t. they can relocate their asses, i guess, but the assets they actually make money on are not easy (often impossible) to move.

    tax the corporations.

    here’s how: youtu.be/f-oDDojrTcg?

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    • gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      but the assets they actually make money on are not easy (often impossible) to move.

      companies have been moved to china en masse since 1970 though

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  • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    In an ideal scenario, other countries would see our prosperous age after taxing our billionaires, and they’d want some of that sweet stuff so they’d do the same.

    All the billionaires would have to fairly pay back for the value people provided to make them so rich, or retreat to some uninhabited island somewhere.

    Either way we’d totally win lol.

    Then again, as an aside, did you know if you’re a U.S citizen and leave the U.S you’re still subject to income tax abroad? Isn’t that interesting?

    I seriously wonder if all these asshats would actually revoke their citizenship en masse to avoid taxes.

    …and then even if they did, we’d be rid of them so society would start to balance out again…

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  • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I think the one example of this actually happening was in London, and the billionaires who did leave did not actually contribute anything to the local economy: as many of the workers they employed as possible were migrants brought in or outsourced and they kept skimming profits off the top to hoard. The businesses they ran continued operating as normal even if some got sold off.

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• FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’m assuming this is about taxing his Net Worth and not his Income? Because most years they have negative income, and on some years they have like $30Bn which won’t be enough for free college.

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• Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  they account for unpaid trillions in tax avoidance schemes.

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• queueBenSis@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  because more education definitely would not increase someone’s chances of making more money

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  • Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I believe the 2nd part of the post is satire but i agree. The issue is that the more educated you are the more “”" woke brainwashed"“” (read: educated) you become, so conservatives naturally dont like colleges

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• Sirdubdee@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Tax the billionaires now so we all can be billionaires later.

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  • grimpy@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    fight them here so we won’t have to fight them over there

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• Prior_Industry@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If the countries that are a nice place to love all came round to rising taxes, then there would be nowhere for these billionaires to run too. If things get bad enough it might happen…

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• whereitsat@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  probably has more to do with people not wanting to see ‘lessers’ get ahead–those who put in less effort, minorities, etc.

  you can’t fight this with memes. it’s something that’s fundamental to american programming and not everyone sits on the internet all day reading this shit.

  look at the underlying messages put out in films and tv shows and popular media and it’s the same ambition and personal responsibility driven nonsense that it’s always been at the heart–only the most deserving should succeed.

  the conversation about wokeness and representation is just a distraction.

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• Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s okay we’re only gonna tax trillionaires, so the billionaires are okay

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• FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  One of the things that 'Muricans don’t seem to understand is that the most awful, the worst most humiliating and the most absurd reason that the civilised world sneers at them is because they chose stupidity and ignorance

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  • Dookieman12@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Lmao. Just ignore every poll that says a majority of US Americans want universal healthcare, higher taxes on billionaires, legal weed, green energy, EVs, and stronger labor laws and you’re absolutely correct!

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    • reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      if its really majority then things would improve, no? Politcans would get elected that make these things happen?

      Or if that majority is powerless to do anything, then they should cry out that america is not democracy so loudly that other countrys couldnt ignore it, provided that this majority actually cares and doesnt just wish things were better but conform with the regime and choose ignorance.

      Talk is cheap, actions are what matter.

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    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Lol right? Like seeing a kid getting beat up by a bully with an obvious born-with advantage and being like “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR THIS THO! YOU’RE SO STUPID AND AWFUL, KID!”

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