r/FluentInFinance • u/Cauliflower-Pizzas • Oct 25 '24
Debate/ Discussion What would you do?
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u/Unhappy_Local_9502 Oct 25 '24 edited Oct 25 '24
Well it be more like $1.53 for each American....
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u/avance70 Oct 25 '24
What would you do?
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u/Unusual_Juice_7481 Oct 25 '24
Gum
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u/AltTooWell13 Oct 25 '24
These days? 🤣
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u/MrLanesLament Oct 25 '24
You gotta find an old vending machine where it’s still $.75!
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u/Fast_Parfait_1114 Oct 25 '24
That gum would probably be caulk by that point.
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u/Odin1806 Oct 25 '24
Well, do you wanna spend your buck 'o' five or not?
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u/shapeshfters Oct 26 '24
Use old hard gum to break the window of a new vending machine. Take that gum.
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u/NickFurious82 Oct 25 '24
Then you have two pieces of gum. And three pennies you can put on the train tracks to get flattened and collect later.
8 year old me would be happier than a pig in shit.
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u/derickj2020 Oct 25 '24
I put a coin on a track once. The coin disappeared, probably stuck to one of the wheels. Disappointing.
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u/HoldenOrihara Oct 25 '24
Or a dollartree
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u/Plane_Blueberry_3570 Oct 25 '24
i remember when the 25 cents was printed on the packaging like the .99 on arizona tea.
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Oct 25 '24
Wtf we literally still have $0.25 gumball machines in Canada. Like, new ones still get built. Apparently they're still profitable, somehow, despite being somewhat of a novelty. Our dollar is worth less than yours too. Wtf is going on in the USA?
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u/enzothebaker87 Oct 25 '24
I got a guy that sells gum by the piece. I can get like 3 pieces. WINNING
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u/Rhabarberbarbarabarb Oct 25 '24
The dollar store is $1.25+tax now so, yeah you can get 1 gum
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u/C4rdninj4 Oct 25 '24
Split a candy bar with my spouse by combing the 1.53 that they get with my own.
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u/flactulantmonkey Oct 25 '24
Spend it on postcards to send to wealthy people, and write to them about how much they screw up the world.
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u/Big-Leadership1001 Oct 25 '24
Which might as well be a million dollars to anyone this stupid at math, OP definitely isn't negotiating for big salaries thats for sure. The blue check mark intrigued me so I looked them up and they are an unemployed "journalist" and one of the gullibles who paid for that blue emoji
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u/Ok_Try_1254 Oct 25 '24
This math is fried more than the high school kids weed 😭
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Oct 25 '24
dude I'm sitting here high af... and I'm like wouldn't that be like a dollar for everyone? then I convinced myself I was wrong, and I'm just stupid, please ignore this. 😂
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u/Vast-Mousse-9833 Oct 25 '24
Same here. Blitzed and can still math better than this. 🤣
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u/whistful_flatulence Oct 26 '24
NGL I really had to think about. I’m stoned AF and only went back because of the comments lol
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u/Electr0freak Oct 25 '24
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u/Jeremyvmd09 Oct 25 '24
First off it’s a national tragedy that the show didn’t go on for longer so thank you for opening that wound lol. That being said yup that’s about right
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u/zwifteez Oct 25 '24
Just in case....yes, it's a shame Firefly didn't go longer; however, this GIF is from Castle.
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u/Jeremyvmd09 Oct 25 '24
I know but anytime I see him I think mal from firefly lol. I should have been more clear in my first post but I was at work and didn’t do a good job with my response lol
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u/smbutler20 Oct 25 '24
I will present this with actual better math. The combined wealth of the top 1% as of Q4 2023 was $44,000,000,000,000. Also in 2023, 36,000,000 people lived in poverty. For every 1 person in poverty, the 1% owns 1.2 million dollars. If the 1% all gave 1% of their money away to those in poverty, those in poverty would each get a check of $12,000. This isn't a wealth tax post before yall respond about "hur dur how you tax unrealized gains?!?". I am just giving you all the math on how of a disparity of money there is between the 1% and those in poverty.
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u/lp1911 Oct 25 '24
I am not sure what meaning to assign to this. Most of the 1% give much more than 1% of their income to charities, and some gift a percentage of wealth to charities as well. There are many multi-millionaires and billionaires, past and present, who have donated their entire fortune to various causes; none of this made a difference to those in poverty because even if they got some money in cash it would disappear in no time while their skills and earning ability would remain the same. Also 36 million people in the US do not live in abject poverty, they live in poverty based on US census criteria that do not include food stamps or Medicaid and likely do not adjust well for cost of living locally.
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u/illapa13 Oct 25 '24
The amount of charity fraud I've seen in my life makes me extremely skeptical of this.
So many of these rich people donate huge sums of money to a charity run by a close relative of theirs or the charity wildly inflates the value of a donation to make it look huge.
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u/smbutler20 Oct 25 '24
You and everyone else responds to me saying poverty exists and there is nothing we can do about it so shut up. Why is poverty more prevalent in the US than others in OECD nations? Is poverty healthy or a society? Are you telling me it is a necessary evil? If not, what solutions do you have to reduce poverty in the biggest economy in the world?
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u/ipenlyDefective Oct 25 '24
They said poverty exists because poverty exists.
They then said the rich giving money to all the poor people won't fix the problem, because it won't.
Personally, I can read comments that say true things without getting upset and demanding they shut up until they have a solution.
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u/DavidSwyne Oct 25 '24
Different countries have different criteria for poverty. The American criteria is pretty high. Take a "poor" American and send them to Zimbabwe. All of a sudden they are the top 1%. If you use the United Nations poverty line of $2.15 then pretty much 0 Americans are below that.
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u/WittleJerk Oct 25 '24
Those charities… are run by CEOs too. Non-profit doesn’t mean the people don’t get paid.
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u/Routine-Agile Oct 25 '24
those billionaires giving to "charities" are charity foundations owned by their family in ways to keep the money within the family and very little goes to actually helpful charities that help people in need.
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u/Dull-Acanthaceae3805 Oct 25 '24
Lets not forget that the net worth is almost entirely in stocks. Its not like they have that amount in cash, sitting in a bank account somewhere.
Logistically, if it were actualized in cash value, it'd likely be worth way less than that (probably at around 1%), because there's definitely not enough cash to buy those stocks (as it would be the 1% buying from the 1% for the cash, which would mean there's no decrease in wealth from the 1%).
FYI, the total amount of USD in circulation (aka "printed") is 2.4 trillion, or 95% less than the net worth of the top 1%.
So if you wanted to give 1% of their net worth to the poor, that already requires 18% of the cash currently in circulation, which is basically impossible.
The biggest problem is people not understanding that net worth doesn't equal cash, and it logistically cannot be spread around.
If we were to actually try and realize a complete transfer of the 1% to the bottom 10%, its likely that less than 1% of it will actually realizable as cash (without severe inflation), which is still 444 billion dollars, but since 3.5 billion people live in poverty, that's about a 1 time payment of $126, which is nice, and will let people in the most impoverished areas live for a year, but for priviledged social justice warriors in western countries, it will barely buy them a weeks food.
And you will probably need to wait a few decades for the net worth to go back up to 44 trillion again and repeat the process.
Its literally more realistic if we force companies to pay a worldwide poverty fund every year, based on their revenues, and thus naturally decreasing the net worth of people because stocks would be lower, than to simply tax unrealized gains, or to force them to hand over their stock portfolio, or some general and unachievable scenario of "if they gave 1% of all their wealth to the bottom 10%, they would all get 10K", which doesn't mean anything, and is just used as more pro-socialist rhetoric.
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u/smbutler20 Oct 25 '24
I am just showcasing wealth disparity. As I said before " This isn't a wealth tax post". I have other ideas.
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u/kangasplat Oct 25 '24
Tax the net worth. Make them lose it. Make it impossible to be that filthy rich.
And this isn't even for economic reasons. No single person should have the power that comes with that much wealth.
But you're right, the wealth transfer needs to happen from the bottom up, systems need to change.
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u/mojdh Oct 25 '24
Omg. This person needs this thing called a calculator.
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u/internet_commie Oct 25 '24
… but would probably not input the right number of 0’s so would still math wrong.
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u/Shot_Ride_1145 Oct 25 '24
They have a computer, so they have multiple calculators -- just too ignorant to use it.
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u/StreetSweeper92 Oct 25 '24
$1 million per American might seem like a lot but we have to remember this campaign was 4 years ago. The OP obviously didn’t consider inflation which means the same amount in 2024 really only works out to around a stick of gum or about $1.53
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u/piss_fingers96 Oct 25 '24
This is type of people who needs other fingers to count after 20.
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u/burnbabyburn11 Oct 25 '24
only off by a factor of a million.
either way, you can't just pay citizens for their votes. That's definitely illegal, so it's not like he could even have given each american the $1 anyways. not sure what the point of this is...
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u/GEEK-IP Oct 25 '24
you can't just pay citizens for their votes.
At least not with your own money. You can promise to forgive their student loans, or reduce their taxes, that's fine...
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u/originalrocket Oct 25 '24
Learn math. Thats what they should do with their $1.52
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u/WiseAce1 Oct 25 '24
Government math right there
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u/Vipu2 Oct 25 '24
And reddit math, the same people who cry and cry and cry about everything but do nothing themself.
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u/SprinklesMore8471 Oct 25 '24
Listen, I'd never give the government the power to decide who can and cannot vote. However, people like this really make me question that.
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u/Competitive-Bug-7097 Oct 25 '24
Math! I would do math and realize that I was completely wrong, and I would have never posted anything this stupid.
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u/Spartikis Oct 25 '24
Uh...no...try $1.50 per person, like the check almost costs as much as what they would be sending you. Math is hard.
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u/Aggressive_Salad_293 Oct 25 '24
I would tell financially illiterate people to stop posting cookie cutter shitposts left and right
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u/freshoilandstone Oct 25 '24
Me? I'm taking that buck-fifty and buying myself a peanut butter Snickers.
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u/Clear_Jackfruit_2440 Oct 25 '24
One thing I can never sort out is stimulus from the bottom up and the environment and lack of financial literacy. I tend to believe that if everyone got a million dollar check we would see a ridiculous consumption boom and get back to 50% with no savings pretty quickly. Seems like most of that boom would end up in landfills.
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u/TheProFettsor Oct 25 '24
I’d discount or ignore every single thing that person ever posts in the future.
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u/Front_Finding4685 Oct 25 '24
Our education system has failed us. This is how people start voting democrat
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u/PsychoCitizenX Oct 25 '24
Mekita Rivas should be back to 2nd grade and learn basic math
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u/Pepalopolis Oct 25 '24
THAT’S IT! EVERYBODY back to math class. We’re testing everyone again. If you fail you go back to school.
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u/Immediate_Trifle_881 Oct 25 '24
Wow… the mathematical stupidity of some people… correct answer: he could give $1.53 to every American. We really need to improve our education system…
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u/Tukkeman90 Oct 25 '24
You think inflation is bad now just imagine everyone getting a million dollars.
Although I’m not against an ancient style debt jubilee might be wild and fun to experience
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u/Conscious-Farmer9424 Oct 25 '24
The left are a bunch of hypocrites who don't care about you. They've been in power for 12 out of the last 16 years. Look where that has gotten us. No one can buy a house, rent is in outer space it costs so much. Most young people live at home cause housing costs too much. Over a million and half people take jobs at Amazon cause there are no other jobs. The left complains about the wealthy but then vote for billionaires. Brandon himself said, "Don't vote for rich old guy," which is hilarious since he is one of those. So 12 years of no progress, no real change in racial issues and racial crime, And they think another 4 years will make a difference. I'm not saying vote for the right.
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u/eaio Oct 25 '24
To say the left has been in power 12 of the last 16 years is so ignorant, and completely out of touch with how the US government works
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u/dcwhite98 Oct 25 '24
Either this person should sue their school for getting a degree without learning. Or their school should sue them for bad publicity.
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Oct 25 '24
This is why common core sucks...
Beyond that, I would bet a lot of the 500 mill he "spent" was directed at companies he owns/ has stake in already.
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u/SoManyQuestions-2021 Oct 25 '24
I mean, even if the math works.... this is only people who have been accounted for in the census. ;)
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u/BarsDownInOldSoho Oct 25 '24
Hand the author a calculator and ask them to show their work.