https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/22/world-will-have-its-first-trillionaire-within-a-decade-report-finds.html
In the last three years, the population of the super wealthy has skyrocketed in the U.S. and around the world.
That’s what people don’t seem to get: you can’t have extreme rich without having extreme poor. That’s a baked-in side effect of our current strain of capitalism.
“We can’t not have poverty, it’s just not biblical”
-paraphrasing this one idiot nationalist christian whose slimy name escapes me atm
No it isn't. There's nothing stopping us from, for example, growing our own crops and trading them to each other. And we can do that whether or not it's legal.
Point in fact, triggering them into outlawing something so harmless would kind of be the point. Then it would force a confrontation they would lose because so many people would be negatively affected -- especially the right wing which already does this in their rural communities.
🤔 Come to think of it, it might be one of the better ways to solve the problem than any other idea anyone has come up with...
Yes, I will start subsisting on my own crops that I grow in a rented 1 bed apartment that I pay £1500 a month for
You don’t have to grow your own crops. You could buy vegetables from a neighbor with a garden, or offer a service. The point is more about subverting the multinational conglomerate machines that drive our current economy
You actually do likely have enough space to have a vertical aeroponic garden, or at least a window box.
It's the only way we'd be able to organize and fight a revolution to get them off of our backs though.
Plus it can be decentralized so that they can't take it down by force.
I highly doubt that poverty will ever be eradicated, unless we do something like shoot billionaires into the sun once they reach a billion.
"Congratulations on reaching a billion dollars! Here is your reward, a one way trip to the Sun!"
Getting to the sun is actually really, really hard since you have to decrease orbital velocity by a ton. I think guillotines are a much more economical solution.
With that being said, I'm still onboard with giving it a shot in the name of science.
One way trip to mars.
They can have one inflatable habitat with life support, one years supply of food, and some staple crop seeds.
Use their billion to pay for the launch. Let the billionaires set up the colony or die on a cold barren planet.
Either way we’ve solved a problem.
Should just cap out. Like once you get to a certain point the rest of that money is a tax rate of 100% then that money goes into making things better for everyone or a ubi
Nah, I'd rather see something like:
"Congratulation, we have noticed that you are only earning money as a way to get a better highscore, this means that you gathering further wealth for your own sake is pointless.
This means that any further wealth you gather will be sent to the usefull projects and organizations where it can do the most good.
But don't worry, your wealth highscore will still be recorded as normal.
By reaching this milestone you can take pride in knowing that you have done amazingly well, and as a mark of this milestone, you will get a statue of yourself in the 'Hall of financial heroes' to truly know that you are a great person."
No need to waste their skills by killing them, just let them keep working doing what they love, but have their work benefit society instead of lining their own pockets.
You obviously need to stroke their ego and play them up as much as possible, but that is a small price to pay to keep the money train going into society.
You're right, why throw perfectly good billionaire meat into the sun? We can eat them at home instead.
Well, obviously we'd take their money AND eat them. Luckily billionaires are low in carbs.
Poverty will never be eradicated, what kind of nonsense is that? The poverty is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.
Right, I’m sure there’s actually plans to eradicate poverty… more likely there’s plans to eradicate the impoverished.
The current system we operate in requires poverty to function. It requires people to be desperate so that they work for the oligarchs and, it requires the absolute destitute to exist to serve as a warning to the masses. If poverty didn’t exist our capitalist world would simply create it.
Here's the full lecture by Michael Parenti if you're interested.
The means to solve it almost overnight are there. Homelessness and such are political choices more than anything.
If a dollar was deposited into you account every SECOND, it would take approximately 32 years to get to just one billion dollars.
Elon Musk has 180! And he's the SECOND richest guy on Earth. The richest being Bernard Arnault at 211!!!
It's absolutely grotesque to be this filthy rich.
Also, inb4 "It'S pApEr VaLuE, nOt ReAl MoNeY iN tHe BaNk". Who cares? You could sell it all and become an international hero by ending all famine, bringing healthcare to everyone and giving shelter to everyone who needs it.
To add to this, don't forget they can borrow against this paper value. Since it's a loan, they don't pay taxes on it.
I just had to do the math. If Jesus rose from the dead but then continued living as an immortal zombie, and he managed to squirrel away $250,000 a day, every day without spending a dime, he would just about have as much money as Elon Musk by now.
This seems like a great opportunity for some Supply Side Jesus! https://imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp
Scientist: poverty will be eradicated in 230 years
Internet: Actually, it's 229 years you libtard
It only makes sense that we collectively eat the first trillionaire.
Tbh I'd guess that it's unlikely that we'll have a trillionaires at all. Hiding wealth will become easier and easier and I don't think anyone wants that rep in "eat the billionaires" sort of public climate.
I agree about hiding wealth and all that, but is the public climate actually "eat the billionaires?" Because I basically only see that in left-wing spaces. Normies still seem to be doing a ton of boot licking tbh. I do live in a pretty conservative area though so maybe that's biased?
Speaking anecdotally, I'm pretty sure you're right on that one. In my circle of (millenial / lefty) friends it's basically seen as common sense. Among the average person I interact with, however, such as at work, it's seen as a fringe idea. And I'm not even advocating for eating them in the revolutionary sense - just taxing the rich in a way that doesn't allow any one person/family to horde egregious amounts of wealth to the point that they can unduly influence society with their power.
And I'm not even advocating for eating them in the revolutionary sense
I really thought you were going to go with "but in a culinary sense".
We should have eaten the first billionaire. If we stay eating people we definitely didn't stop as long as there are any billionaires.
Poverty will never be eradicated. At no point in human civilization have we managed to eliminate poverty, and as long as there are rich people needing to extract maximum profits from fellow humans there will always be poor people.
Poverty is needed for the rich to be rich. That's the basic foundation of the system. That was really a dumb report. Except the trillionaire-thing. We will witness that
Speaking hypothetically here, what if millions of people just decided that they weren't to go going to give money to rich people and then those people decided to go to that rich person's house. Could the problem be fixed quickly this way?
If even 10-20% of the workforce just refused to go to work until {list of demands} were met, most businesses and politicians would cave within days/weeks.
This is why it's important for capitalism to perpetuate poverty. If the majority had ample savings and were able to survive for months without a paycheque, they would be able to enact change comparatively easily and painlessly, they would be able to refuse and quit shit jobs, they would have time to invest in grass roots movements, campaigns, and protests.
We have far greater productivity than at any other point in human history and we still have tons of poverty, even in places like the EU and US. I believe we have the capability but not the willingness. Who's to say we'll ever have the willingness.
Sweet, I could be a trillonaire by the time poverty will be eradicated. All I have to do is save $498,500 every single hour until then.
That's ok. Just keep working hard at pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and I'm sure you'll get there eventually. Since you're so close, you should probably start voting against taxes on the rich now. That way you won't have to worry about the damn greedy welfare queens taking your hard earned money once you've made it.
Damn, really falling behind now. Gotta find a way to make up that 11,964,000 I'm short for the last day.
The kicker is this:
We use World Bank data27 to calculate the time needed to reduce (to below 1%) poverty at $6.85 a day. This is the higher of the three global poverty lines used by the World Bank; it is used because we believe it gives the most accurate picture of the numbers of people globally living in poverty.
I sure as hell could not survive on $6 a day - and we can talk about purchasing power, but resources have international trade prices and you're priced out of those resources if you're poor because of pecuniary externalities. At the current rate of wealth inequality growth, it will probably take so many years it might as well be "forever" to eradicate actual poverty and not the "at least you're not a slave" poverty definition they're using.
(note: I skimmed through it, so I could have missed something crucial)
That 229 figure is bullshit. Either all the impoverished will perish, be killed, or move underground into a less opulent/more satisfying culture where rat burgers reign supreme well before then or the real number is "fuck off you poor piece of trash."
As long as capitalism is the main system and governments fail to act on the abuse by the wealthy you are correct
Even in other systems... poverty serves to keep the underclass in line. It's hard to revolt when you don't have enough to eat.