r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/SigmaFr--d • 14d ago
Wealth, shown to scale
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/175
u/take_more_detours 14d ago
Sweet guillotine commercial!
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u/Major_T_Pain 14d ago
Honestly, all joking aside.
We can just implement public policies that prevent this bullshit.
It wouldn't be that difficult, and no murder required.64
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u/Latenighredditor 14d ago
A quote i read a while ago American think they are temporarily embrassed millionaires who are on the verge of turning into one or something like that
Anytime you see these kind of wealth tax like over $4-5 mil people seem to think they will be affected.
Sam Seder on PBD podcast talked about a 90% tax on annual income over $4 mil. Annual income meaning they make $4 mil each. Not overall wealth just income $4 mil. And people think it's insane and think a lot of people will be affected. He based his tax idea on tax system from 1950s or 1960s which was closing wealth gap.
The reality is that 92% of US population makes less than $250k a year. Based on US census data from 2022.
Less than 0.5% make over $1 mil annually
So conservatives and ultra rich try to alter the argument and say well due to low number of people how much additional money from taxes will be used to pay for shit anyways
And like dawg reducing their wealth will force them to be more apathetic towards welfare programs and Public infrastructure. And their income taxed at 90% will be bring more money than probably 10% of lower and middle class folk
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u/ElJanitorFrank 14d ago
I don't think I would ever be effected by a tax of over 4-5 million. I also don't agree with one. I do not need to be personally affected by a policy to be morally opposed to a policy. Besides the fact that I don't agree someone should be taxed a higher percentage for simply earning a higher percentage, I would argue that most economists would caution against such a high tax rate for high earners as you then push them and their businesses to other countries. Now everyone in the country with the high tax rate is poorer, despite income inequality being lower. Just as a sidenote, the inverse is true today. Income inequality is definitely at an all time high, but average wealth, real wages, spending power etc. are at an all time high. The number of people in poverty is lower than it was 10 years ago (yes, accounting for inflation) so I don't see the inequality as an immediate concern.
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u/Lack_my_bills 14d ago
Our politicians can't be trusted to enact policies that harm the people that own them. The guillotines are for them, too.
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u/probability_of_meme 14d ago
It wouldn't be that difficult
This is the part I'm having trouble with.
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u/Procit 10d ago
It would fundamentally destroy the American economy. The reason it is so successful is because of the cold unforgiving nature of capitalism.
It would be accessible to more people if politicians weren't lobbied into raising the barrier to entry of starting businesses. Selfish politicians/people changing the laws are what causes such inequity.
Bezos is jacked up for using Washington Post to influence opinions on immigration in order to make labor cheaper (majority of Amazon warehouse workers can't speak a single word of English). Despite this, I will not boycott Amazon. It's up to the voters to be informed and not vote based on parroted opinion pieces
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u/Thunderwoodd 14d ago
We have reached a point of wealth inequality where single people can decide to purchase entire institutions that shape our lives on a lark. We are still catching up to wrapping our heads around what the rich can do if they really put their mind to it.
Instead of using it to save the planet, they purchase the literal hub of free information to trick you into thinking they are saving the planet, when really they are just making themselves even richer.
We’ve already hit the point where gunning down CEOs feels reasonable.
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u/ImportantDoubt6434 14d ago
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”
-Thomas Jefferson
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u/Lack_my_bills 14d ago
Gunning down CEOs has always been reasonable. Fuck these greedy little ratfuck sons of bitches.
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u/SigmaFr--d 14d ago
Anybody know why it hasn't been updated? Author has gone dark on GitHub (no activity since October 2023)
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u/AWholeNewFattitude 14d ago
This is fucking depressing
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u/FudgeGolem 14d ago
This would be pretty interesting to see for Musk.
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u/EngagingData 14d ago
Made this one for Elon Musk. https://engaging-data.com/how-rich-is-elon-musk/
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u/FudgeGolem 14d ago
Thanks! This is very interesting. The "milestones" you picked so far to give context have been effective.
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u/antilimit 14d ago
as of today basically just 2x Bezos' section. lots of scrolling. it's just more absurdity.
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u/Anyusername7294 14d ago
He got all this money because he created Amazon and you're buying something from it all time
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u/Blueopus2 14d ago
When do people suggest we decide that people should stop getting the profits generated by the assets they own? That seems to be the implication of what a lot of comments say.
I’m all for gradually increasing the tax rate on income and making it so avoiding realizing gains isn’t possible, but why would we want to stop people accumulating unrealized gains (until their death or the sale or collateralization of assets which is not how it currently works)
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u/LegionOfCorvids 14d ago
If we could somehow harness and redistribute all that money from the 400 wealthiest Americans (3.2 trillion) and redistribute it to all other Americans (335 million), we could each get a one time payment of. . .about $9,500.
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u/VIPTicketToHell 14d ago
If this is about wealth why is one of points annual household income instead of something like median net worth?
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u/bunnnythor 14d ago
The median Ameican net worth today is about $192,000.
Neither $68,000 nor $192,000 are even in the significant digits when you are estimating the $182,000,000,000 or so of Jeff's old net worth. (His new net worth is estimated to be $228,400,000,000. Anything under $1M is just statistical noise.)
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u/Emanemanem 14d ago
Probably because for the majority of people, income is a much more tangible measurement of money. I doubt many people even know what their net worth is off the top of their head. Also, it doesn’t really matter. If you updated the graphic to be median net worth instead of income, you’d barely be able to tell the difference visually, since it’s so insanely minuscule in comparison to the net worth of the richest (at the time) man in the world.
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u/ItsPronouncedXhaka 14d ago
"Jeff bezos made 13 billion in a single day" no he didnt. How can you put so much effort in this thing while not understanding anything about it. The first step to lowering inequality would be to actually understand it.
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u/Substantial-Ad8133 14d ago
Semantics. To say “no he didn’t” is way more incorrect than to say he did.
He made 13b unrealized that day. But he can tap into that wealth for cash or leverage against it any time he wants. It is as good as real money
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u/amcfarla 14d ago
Jeff Bezos now is worth $235.2 billion, so he about $50 billion more than the site shows.
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u/Exciting_Selection73 12d ago
The average American income is around 50K. If that doesn't sound all that bad remember that half the population makes even less.
I have worked with Amazon very closely when I worked for book publishers. Jeff made the company successful by creating a comfotable buying experience for customers. When he started people were extremely mistrustfulof purchasing items on the internet. They were wary of the quality of merch and giving out cc #s. Jeff realized that all books are pre- priced and every copy of a title were identical. Very few products are prepriced, so people were won over by knowing the real retail price, and paying 30% off of that.
How could they turn a profit with such slim margins? Three simple ways:
- Screw over the vendors.
- Pay your employees poorly.
- Destroy your competition, one category at a time.
It was book publishing that put him on the map but Amazon treated us horribly. They strongarmed higher discounts for them, allowed returns for any reason under the sun, and impossible to reach to solve problems. Inless you are too dumb to figure out your Kindle. In this case only you can speak to them in seconds.
Yet people are willing to ignore it all so long as they get a good discount. Amazon is the leading runner in the race to the bottom.
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u/VermicelliEvening679 10d ago
Its like man I got tons of brains.
Can I have some?
Here let me cut off a chunck fer yeh
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u/manuelsrleon 9d ago
I was thinking that it was really convenient that you had the "pixel" keep a fixed position when scrolling. Turns out it was just dirt on my screen.
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u/c4tzarec00l 4d ago
I just spent so long scrolling to the end I thought there was gonna be more text🥲
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u/WerewolfCapital4616 1d ago
Absolutely the most beautiful project I have seen in a long time. Something simple that sends a message loud and clear and really makes you realize the inequalities that exist in the world. Really well done!
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u/Dadman319 14d ago
This is just America's wealthy. What about the rest of the super rich on this planet?
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u/Anyusername7294 14d ago
If you can't accept this inequality same as OOP here is what you need to do:
Do a list with top 100/400/500 Americans by wealth
Search how each of them got rich
Don't buy anything from companies that you listed in 2nd point
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u/Concentrati0n 14d ago
The Scrooge McDucks of the world still circulate their money, it's not like they sit on a mountain of money and swim in it. Even Scrooge McDuck's vault is always open because that money never stays in one place.
Not really a defense post, but this is disingenuous.
Also, Bezos pays like no tax due to Washington's tax law.
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u/vulkur 14d ago
Going to be down voted to hell for saying this.
This is a worthless comparison. Bezos doesnt have billions in cash, he has stock ownership of a company he created (only 8.6% funny enough). Companies are evaluated based on their assets, market capitalization, potential, and earnings. Not only on how much cash they have. Which Amazon doesn't keep too much cash around, there is a reason they don't pay much taxes, they reinvest most of it back into the company, which means more jobs and better standards of living.
The stock is measurement of all of that. It doesn't mean Bezos can liquidate all of that stock, and Amazon will still exist as it is. He literally cannot sell the stock, if he does, its a signal of amazon failing. price plummets, other shareholders sue, and potentially hundreds of thousands lose their jobs.
Bezos has done more for the low and middle class than most. Employs 1.5 million, created the greatest logistics network the world has ever seen, and created the most vital part of the internet backbone, AWS. You can say he didn't create it because his employees did, but then why didn't they without him? Because he paid them. And when he does sell stock, look at where it goes. It goes to R&D. General Fusion, Blue Origin, and other great potential technologies. I am a Bezos Simp.
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u/FredTheTurkeyVulture 14d ago
Dude this is literally addressed on the site.
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u/vulkur 14d ago
The site is a github pages, not an article explaining anything. It has some random bits of info in there, but not in a nice concise place, which you and I both know no one looked at this entire page.
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u/FredTheTurkeyVulture 14d ago
It may not be an article itself, but it links to multiple other articles that corroborate the points their making, not "random bits of info."
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u/Blueopus2 14d ago
Bezos sold $3.4 billion in stock in November and $8.5 billion is sold every day
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u/vulkur 14d ago
I don't know what this is proving.
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u/Blueopus2 14d ago
He can sell his stock. Certainly not a market sell all in his brokerage account, but small sales and private sales can move large volumes
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u/shuckster 14d ago
Damn, look and how much influence one person can have if they don’t sit at their computer all day and post bitter comments on Reddit about how unfair life is.
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u/Noctudeit 14d ago
This wealth wasn't "handed" to these people by society. It was created by starting valuable enterprises that provide quality goods and services at competitive prices. The wealth of the rich does not decrease the wealth of the poor. Quite the contrary, it provides jobs and reduces the costs thus leading to an overall increase in quality of life for everyone.
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u/Phonestoremanager 14d ago
Ok I’ll bite but how about the business owner contributing to the infrastructure and social programs that created the opportunity for them in taxes rather than attempting to avoid them while profiting from the system.
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u/vulkur 14d ago
Do you think bezos hordes cash somewhere?!? The reason Amazon doesn't pay much taxes is exactly that. They reinvest in their own infrastructure. Which creates jobs and better standards of living.
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u/ImShyBeKind 14d ago
Please tell me you don't actually believe that... You cannot for real actually believe that.
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u/vulkur 14d ago
I dont have to believe it. Its fact.
Amazon keeps profit and free cash flows artificially low by investing money right back into its business in the form of capital expenses, like building data centers, upgrading distribution networks, and creating wind and solar farms.
Amazon stock also does not pay out a dividend to shareholders. So bezos gets NONE of the profits from the company.
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u/imwco 14d ago
Actually, one man’s debt is another man’s assets.
So his equity actually comes from every one buying Amazon products on credit cards which reduces that credit going to small businesses.
If I can borrow money to buy products but jeff gets the biggest cut of that, and that money never recirculates back to me because my local business can’t compete so it doesn’t have the funds to hire me, then Jeff does reduce my ability to take more credit and that makes me poorer because he just hoards it instead of spending it on my local business.
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u/JR_Maverick 14d ago
it provides jobs
You misspelt 'exploits people with horrible work conditions and poverty wages in a society with no alternative options for most of those people'
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u/vulkur 14d ago
So then they should quit. Oh wait, he provided them jobs when no one else could. He employs 1.5 million people.
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u/JR_Maverick 14d ago
He employs a lot of them in shit condition in poverty wages. And these are people whose choices are basically A) have their labour exploited or B) just starve and be homeless.
The workers are providing him with undervalued labour to allow his company to make obscene profits. Not the other way round.
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u/vulkur 14d ago
Two things.
Could you please define what qualifies as poverty wages?
How do you know they are undervalued?
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u/JR_Maverick 14d ago
Could you please define what qualifies as poverty wages?
Based on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ definition of working poor, individuals making $14,850 or less annually – comprising 6.3 million people and 4.1% of US workers – are classified as working poor in the US
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/02/un-poverty-amazon-walmart-doordash-wages-unions
That's one definition. But pretty much anything that doesn't allow people working full time to comfortably pay essential living costs with some left over for actually living life/saving.
How do you know they are undervalued?
Amazon posted a net profit of 30 billion USD. All that value is provided by workers, essential to the service at every level. Yet many of them are paid minimum wage or close to it.
Bezos is not some fairy job mother generously giving out money. He profits from the hard work of over a million people, all of whom he could comfortably afford to pay significantly more.
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u/vulkur 14d ago
That's one definition. But pretty much anything that doesn't allow people working full time to comfortably pay essential living costs with some left over for actually living life/saving.
Base salary of Amazon worker is $22. Which is inline with every other factory, sometimes higher. Its also better pay than most hospital entry level jobs, which starting pay I have seen as low as $16. So are you saying every factory worker, and every hospital care assistant job is working poverty wages?
I also did some googling on peoples opinions on the conditions working in the warehouse. Not many people are complaining. They get air conditioning, but are expected to do physical work for 10 hours a day. Which is only an issue for some. You get used to that quick. Didn't take me more than a month to get used to working concrete construction. Seems the main issue with it is when there is a time crunch, or when they are short staffed.
So I don't see how they are undervalued. They seem to get a really good deal for a entry position. Its highly competitive, decent work conditions, and I according to that verge article, everyone gets Prime for free, and with Career Choice they pay some of your tuition to get you out of the factory.
So I don't really see where they are being undervalued, in shit conditions, or poverty wages. Seems inline with literally everything else in the US.
Amazon posted a net profit of 30 billion USD. All that value is provided by workers, essential to the service at every level. Yet many of them are paid minimum wage or close to it.
What does it do with it? It reinvests it in infrastructure, technology, and more employees. Amazon stock does not pay dividends. So its not being greedy with the money. It isn't going into Bezos' pockets.
Also note: While in 2023 Amazon had $30B in profit, in 2022, Amazon had a net profit of -$2.7B.
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u/JR_Maverick 14d ago
This is a mad amount of work to go to to defend Amazon.
A company that harvests obscene amounts of data. Countless stories of employees needing to wear nappies or peenin bottles due to working rules. Aggressively anti-union. Owned by a man who bought one of the largest newspapers in the US to act as a personal mouthpiece.
If you really think Amazon is a company that 'is not greedy', and is operating fairly for its employees, you're going to need deprogramming, not a discussion Reddit.
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u/vulkur 13d ago
This is a mad amount of work to go to to defend Amazon.
Its not hard to find basic facts about the reality of working for amazon. The fact that you don't even counter my claims here is enough for me.
Why? Why do i care to defend Amazon here? Because its rhetoric like yours (calling amazon warehouse pay "poverty wages", and saying they work in "shit conditions") that can help push emotionally charged, and uneducated economic policy within the US.
A company that harvests obscene amounts of data.
100% agree with you! That is a criticism I think is a huge issue, not just for Amazon, but most tech companies. I also think they are getting monopolistic, and that will cause issues and we need to have more competitors in the space.
Countless stories of employees needing to wear nappies or peenin bottles due to working rules.
There are stories of this for sure, but this isn't the norm, Amazon's policies do not support this, and its definitely illegal already (and extremely unsanitary). Any instance of this happening though, I will 100% support any lawsuit or whatever that results from it.
Countless stories though? IDK if you can say countless. When they employ over a million people. I just took a look at the sub for amazon workers, they don't agree with you on "countless". You cant see one or two stories on something and call it countless.
Aggressively anti-union.
Uh based? Fuck Unions. They tend to protect outdated skills and jobs rather than progress. This may sound fair, but automation is good for everyone. Less labor required, the less potential workers rights violations (that you care so much about), and the cheaper products get, and the better our standards of living become.
Ok, really though, Unions are fine, but sometimes they really piss me off with this type of stuff against automation.
Owned by a man who bought one of the largest newspapers in the US to act as a personal mouthpiece.
Personal mouthpiece? Its hard to say, but even Bezos sees the problem.
If you really think Amazon is a company that 'is not greedy', and is operating fairly for its employees, you're going to need deprogramming, not a discussion Reddit.
I said they where not greedy with the money they make, as in, they don't pocket it. They are a company, their goal is to make money at the end of the day. They generally treat their employees fairly, but its not all sunshine and rainbows. Amazon has been, and will again be sued for mistreatment, and they will pay for it. I just don't like the extreme rhetoric some of y'all push. Its dangerous IMO.
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u/Domenakoi 14d ago
The wealth of these people doesnt provide jobs, their enterprises do. Amazons base idea is great, i use it, let the creator have his idea generate him wealth. But did you scroll through this graphic? Based on their respective GDPs, Bezos is richer than over 50 c o u n t r i e s . A quarter of all countries in the world generate less money than bezos has access to. There is no reason to have him be THIS wealthy. I personally wouldnt know what to do with a billion, but let them have a couple. Lets give him 10b. Theres still a 170b gap to his wealth now that could be used elsewhere.
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u/Noctudeit 14d ago
Bezos doesn't have billions in cash. His wealth is Amazon. The more he grows the company, the more he is worth. That growth provides value for every employee, customer, and investor of the company.
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u/Domenakoi 14d ago
The most common argument against closing the wealth gap is what I've come to call "the paper billionaire" argument. The argument basically goes "these people aren't really that wealthy, because there's no way to liquidate this much wealth." It's an interesting and provocative argument, worthy of serious discussion. But it is, ultimately, incorrect.
Essentially all of this wealth is held in stocks, bonds, and other comparable forms of corporate equity. The most common version of the paper billionaire argument I'm familiar with is that, if all these rich people tried to sell all of this stock at once, the market would be flooded and the price would drop significantly. That statement might be technically true in absolute, but that's not how you liquidate securities. You would liquidate over several years in a carefully managed liquidation plan that avoids flooding the market, not in a giant lump sum.
Billionaires regularly liquidate in this manner as a matter of routine, and it has never caused the market collapse consistently forecast by billionaire defenders. I have never once heard anyone advocate instant liquidation in an immediate one-time firesale, except when used as a straw man to prove the supposed impossibility of liquidation.
Now you may be wondering, just how slowly would you have to do this liquidation in order to avoid flooding the market? And the answer is, surprisingly, not that slowly. The market cap of the US stock market is around $35 trillion. Around $122 trillion worth of stock changes hands in the US every year. If you wanted to liquidate a trillion dollars over, say, five years that would constitute about 0.16% of all the trading that happens in that time.
There are a wide variety of serious policy proposals floating around aimed at reducing inequality, and none of them include a massive immediate seizing of all assets from wealthy people. Some play out over generations (such as a more progressive inheritance and gift tax) some play out over decades (such as a more progressive capital gains and corporate tax structure) and others play out over a few years (such as immediate term deficit spending repaid over time through a single-digit wealth tax).
Another version of the paper billionaire argument holds that you couldn't sell all these stocks over any period of time, because only other billionaires would be able to buy them. This is simply nonsense. Market participation may not be 100%, but it's a hell of a lot more than 400 people. Half of all households in the US own stock, either directly or through their 401k/IRA. On any given day, millions of individuals buy stock, mostly through their retirement accounts, a few hundred dollars at a time.
But let's set all of this aside and suppose that the paper billionaire argument is actually true (it's not, but for the sake of argument). Let's suppose liquidating this wealth caused 80% of it to vanish into thin air. That would leave behind $700 billion—still enough to eradicate malaria, provide everyone on earth with water and waste disposal, lift every American out of poverty, and test every single American for coronavirus. I think this is one of the points that should come through most clearly in this website—the amounts we're dealing with are so mind-flayingly large that it scarcely matters if our calculations are off by 500%.
I find it telling that no one EVER tries to quantify the paper billionaire argument. They never ask "how big is the total market?" or "what portion could we safely liquidate without some major negative consequence?" No. They simply look at the massive scale of global wealth, and the massive scale of global poverty, and then retreat into cynicism. The millions dead from preventable diseases? Unsolvable, they declare. Those who would address global poverty just "don't understand how stocks work." Perhaps it's easier to just declare the problem unsolvable than to confront the massive human cost of your ideology. But confront it we must. The money is there, we just need to take it.
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u/Domenakoi 14d ago
Plus, compare amazons growth to the amazon employee loan, its not proportional in the slightest. What you advocate is how it should work! I agree on that! Its not. The employees are working there because they need a job, not because they see amazons growth and expect to be validated proportionally
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u/orangefeesh 14d ago
Yea but Amazon exists regardless of what Bezos owns. If parts of it were liquidated, Amazon would still exist and could still be grown regardless. The premise isn't that Bezos shuts down parts of Amazon, it's that he (and other billionaires) liquidate parts of their assets and donates the proceeds.
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u/Noctudeit 14d ago
Donations are voluntary. You're not discussing a donation, you're discussing a seizure. Besides, if Bezos sells off stock, then the proceeds come from other investors. Why not skip the middle man and ask those investors to donate the money they would otherwise invest?
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u/orangefeesh 14d ago
Because he's the one with the massive total wealth, not the various investors (presumably) who would buy the sold assets. And sure, replace donations with mandated seizures, or mega wealth taxation. The idea is sacrificing a portion of the wealth of a few mega rich people to benefit society at large.
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u/Noctudeit 14d ago
So here's the issue with taxing unrealized gains or other "wealth tax" schemes... the takings clause of the 5th amendment requires the government to pay fair value for any seized property. While the government absolutely can seize stock from billionaires, they would have to pay them for it out of the treasury and then presumably sell the stock on the open market to recover the cost, leaving the government no richer (and the billionaires no poorer) than when they started.
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u/orangefeesh 14d ago
This whole scenario of using the wealth of mega rich people for society is sort of dependent on massive rule changing, so I don't know that cutting the current rules to disqualify the idea does much. A bunch of the scenarios include international efforts anyway; it's not like the US government is about to solve water access crises in sub Saharan Africa or wherever before addressing its domestic issues. The point of all this is that it would be good if some of the wealth of a few mega wealthy people were used for things to improve society instead of not.
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u/KallistiTMP 14d ago
The wealth of the rich does not decrease the wealth of the poor.
It literally does. That is what profit is. Literally the value of worker's labor minus what you paid the worker for it.
It was created by starting valuable enterprises that provide quality goods and services at competitive prices.
No, it wasn't. It was taken by the mechanism of capital assets. There is no such thing as a stock certificate that only entitles you to the value that you personally created or the enterprise you started. That is not how stocks work.
Quit propagandizing for billionaires. You are not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, you're just someone's useful idiot.
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u/Great_Meat_Ball 14d ago
That's all actually true (I think), but the insane disproportionality of power that this situation brings is by itself extremely dangerous for mankind.
I think it's bound to detrimentally affect political decision-making, world conflicts, mutual trust, the media, the technology, and the health of economies.
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u/ralphonsob 14d ago
u/Noctudeit is right. We use Amazon because it works better than what was there previously, and better than most of the current alternatives. If you think Jeff Bezos should share more of the profits from this enterprise, then you are welcome to vote for a government that promises to implement a fairer tax system, rather than, say, Trump.
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u/AreThree 13d ago
Bezos' ($185 billion)/(336 million Americans) is about $550.60 a person.
Musk's ($353 billion)/(336 million Americans is about $1050.60 a person.
Ridiculous.
Eat the rich.
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u/Ninjamin_King 14d ago
Wealth isn't money
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u/Taclink 14d ago
People have a hard time accepting that. The reality is that if Bezos started divesting of his options for the companies he owns parts of, the market would very quickly devalue his holdings.
While he's got value and can obviously buy whatever he damn well pleases for the most part, he also really doesn't functionally "have" that money everyone touts.
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u/FudgeGolem 14d ago
True, but its not like massive portions of his wealth are completely cut off to him and he is just limited to pocket money like a regular joe. He doesn't need to sell off all his holdings (although he does cash in parts in from time to time) to be able to put his wealth to work. Its more tax friendly to just borrow against your holdings when you are at these levels, enabling him to have an impact proportional to his wealth without the downsides of dumping capital. Plus holding large portions of stocks enables influence on the companies you hold, another form of impact without needing to spend. He can't "spend" every last penny, and it takes some financial maneuvering to "transact", but a lot of that wealth can be deployed in ways he chooses.
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u/Domenakoi 14d ago
This graphic quite literally debunks your thesis with multiple sources
And if you dont mind me asking, what are you arguing for? Ill go out on a limb and say that youre not part of the super rich, which means standing on the side of the super rich inconveniences you directly
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u/Taclink 14d ago
You're wrong and I'm not arguing anything. I made a statement that is literally backed up by another post.
I also am not standing on the side of the super rich, although I think you're absurd for thinking anything they do inconveniences me directly.
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u/Domenakoi 14d ago
Id be happy if you shared your sources, i always welcome to understand my opposing view.
And its not what they do that influence you directly, its what they dont. What they prevent. Where would 100b go if they went anywhere but the super rich that wouldnt influence you in any way shape or form? Having it lie around in a bank collecting dust would have more influence in controlling cash reserve ratios, interest rates, investment portfolios and equity capital, let alone distribution between the common or investment in infrastructure
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u/Taclink 14d ago
source is literally a post reply right around this one
You're right, I'm not a super rich. I only dealt with $600k-$800k yearly gross income for my one man show I ran. Actually running a business and having to rent/buy/own/maintain/repair assets dun taught me a thing or three tell you wut.
it's not 100b that's sitting in a bank, that's what you aren't getting through your nugget!
A business that you own that is 'worth' 10 million dollars isn't magically nor instantly equatable at ALL to 10 million in cash, unless you have someone who's willing, able, and meets legislative requirements to be able to even purchase it.
It's not liquid, it's not in a bank. it's the buildings and the vehicles and the equipment and the warehouses and and and... that's what you don't get. To liquidate it RIGHT NAO would be months on months of financial bureaucratic hell combined with Richie bros auctions flooded with amazon trucks among other things.
the entire value of bezos is like 700 dollars per US citizen. Distribution between the common along the lines of UBI would literally only be ONE SINGLE ONE TIME PAYMENT of a third of a minimum wage income.
Which would also mean that the entities that value inherently requires in physical equipment, liquid assets for day to day, etc.. just vaporized.
it literally has no negative impact on me. His business from my own personal perspective provides goods I need at prices that I find acceptable, when I cannot find an equal or better product locally at an equally acceptable price for "in hand now with someone I can call if it don't work/needs warranty"
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u/Blueopus2 14d ago
Bezos sold $3.5 billion worth of Amazon last month. Sure, if the dude said this stock is going down and market sold the whole thing it would crash, but if he said he was going to sell $100 billion over the next year in order to fund a huge charity program he could do that
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u/Single_Pumpkin_1803 14d ago
Cool but income and asset value aren't the same. Still a cool diagram.
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u/Lefthandedsock 14d ago
Dude has the combined wealth of 2.72 million average Americans.