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"Dragon gives away hoard after death. That will fix all the lives he ruined, right?"
How did he ruin lives? Didn't he mostly make his money playing stocks and investing in stuff?
Lemmy, in general, thinks anyone with money is evil, and their money was sucked from the teets of the poor. It's sort of annoying. Not just super wealthy people, either. If you have any sort of investment that increases in value over time, you're a bad person. That money should have gone to poor people, somehow.
Haha yeah all that money definitely came from nowhere and totally for sure isn't just stolen wealth from the working class.
Meh, that's an oversimplification. Mutual funds don't go around taking money from workers, but the tankies (and whoever else they can convince) think it's clever to go around saying that. Simple minds, maybe?
It's a complicated system, and I'd like to see a LOT of change. There has been a lot of change in some states, but it'd be nice to get the national minimum wage increased.
The wrong guy was voted in. Anti-union, anti-worker, anti-everything. Just a big piece of garbage.
It's just annoying that of all the solutions out there, Lemmy users somehow decided to latch on to "uhhh, stocks steal money directly from workers! How else would the stock price go up?"
He had nothing to do with stealing it, though. I had stock in AMD for a while and it made some money. Did that make the people at amd poor? In that company's case they would have filed for bankruptcy over 15 years ago. Investors kept the business alive. Same for Apple in the 90's.
Yes, all most really care about is making money, but that doesn't change if there is or isn't a stock market.
The money investors get, just by owning the stock, is produced by people working with the stuff the investors money bought. The money isn't supposed to go to "poor people somehow" it's supposed to go to the people doing the work.
Are the workers not poor? Isn't that the whole argument?
Anyway, maybe it's a mutual benefit. When people buy stocks, it's a quick infusion of cash to a company, and the company can then spend money on producing stuff, hiring people, etc.
Would you rather companies get loans from banks instead?
There are so many other solutions to low wages.
Yes the workers are generally poorer than the investors. But that's not the point here, the point is that it's in its essence an unfair system where you are forced to work for someone else's profit unless you are wealthy enough to yourself be an investor that can live from their investments returns.
Getting monetary benefits should come from work and not ownership.
Again, this isn't really about low or high wages it's about the extraction of money from the workers towards owners without any work being done by the owners.
The common image people conjure to justify this are the small shops built by someone and then being employing some staff. You must realize though that that isn't the biggest chunk of wealth and not the really problematic part of the system.
The biggest chunk of wealth is concentrated on a few percent of the population and it's mostly inherited not built up by themselves. And it's here where we actually see wealth being extracted from the workers.
He's given billions already.
if I take 100 dollars from you and give back 10 to random people, does that seem fair?
How did he take 100 from me, though? If I bought shares of Intel and made $100, how is it that I took it from you?
You pay taxes, they don't. Their risks and lifestyle are subsidized, yours isn't.
You are paying for his lifestyle and if you stop doing it the police come for you.
Also just wage theft generally.
Did he use his money to change tax laws? He didn't create the crooked tax system. You aren't going out of your way to pay more, either.
You know how rail workers get boned at every opportunity (no days off, shit medical insurance, etc.) Well its Warren Buffet doing the boning.
You know how people buying all the available housing so they can turn residential housing into profit machines via Air BnB et. al.? Well its Warren Buffet buying all the houses.
You know how companies lay off 10000 workers and then immediately give their CEO a 50 million dollar bonus? Well, warren buffet gets all that money, and it was entirely comprised of stolen salaries.
There's a ton of examples. But it is impossible to earn a billion dollars. It can only be stolen from someone else by not paying them a fair value.
None of that is Warren Buffet. You can't just say all stock holders are evil thieves. Stock holders are the reason many of those businesses exist.
Side note: did you actually know how much the rail workers were already being paid before the strike? It was better than most jobs by a fair amount. They didn't have sick time because it was already previously negotiated away for other things in a previous contract.
It is all warren buffet. who do you think owns the rail corporations lol. And yes, all stock holders are thieves if that is their only source of income. Those businesses should not exist.
Oh well as long as they're getting paid I guess that means its a-ok that they can never spend time with their family or ever go to the doctor! Its just grand that they are being worked to death in a dystopian capitalist hellscape! Think of all the money they'll never be able to spend!
Look. Like six dudes own something like 95% of all the wealth in the world. That's more than six billion people combined. (I made those number up but i brt its pretty close) With that kind of money we could solve all the problems of the world and have lasting peace, but oh no, we can't do that because the dragons have to have their mountains of gold.
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3
Yeah....rail workers average $74k a year and get 30 days vacation a year. What do you get?
*Edit:Also, I did a bit of digging. He does now own one railroad company. He only got it 14 years ago. He didn't make his money as one of the railroad tycoons.
I make 140k/year. I get 30 vacation days per year and can accumulate up to 75 days. Plus 2 weeks of sick time that doesn't roll over per year. Plus 2 personal days I can use whenever tf I want. Plus 1:1 comp time whenever i have to work overtime. I get a 1:1 employer match on my 7.5% retirement contribution and i have excellent health care. None of that includes my wife's income. And no this isn't a private sector job.
I found a way to cheat the system and man let me tell you this should be the minimum standard of living. What the fuck is the point of being the richest nation in the world if that entire wealth is held by six assholes.
Rail work is skilled labor. It is abhorrent they're making half of what I am as a desk jockey. They should be making at least twice as much as me, except Warren Buffet is stealing all that wealth for himself.
Yeah, must be great to be white collar. It took me loads of training and certifications and ongoing certs to make far less.
Thing is, corporations will and have always tried making as much as possible. That isn't Warren's fault. He just didn't do anything to fix it. The reason he and all these other billionaires can do this is because our shit government has undone taxes on the wealthy for the past 65 years. Our crooked government is to blame for the massive disparity. Not the guy who threw money at company's he thought would continue to prosper. He's just a symptom if he wasn't involved with paying off and bribing the government. No idea if he has or not, there.
So tax the fucking rich. You should be making at least as much money as me. It sounds like you are a skilled laborer, and that work has value. Value that your bosses and superiors are taking for themselves. If you produce goods worth 300k/year, don't you think you're entitled to 200k of that? That still leaves 100k for the company and operating costs. Why should the CEO get most of it? They're literally taking your money. Yes, its because the system is broken. But the fix is to tax the fuck outta the billionaires and use the government to redistribute that wealth through free health care, free education through college, and investing in our infrastructure like our power grid, water supply systems (remember Flint?), passenger rail, and investing in cities designed for humans.
We don't need to be a communist state like Russia or China. We can fund the whole thing with capitalism. We can even have an exuberant luxury class if we still want that for whatever reason. Taking away 90% of Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffet's wealth still leaves them the richest people in the world.
Capitalism is fine but has been allowed to run completely out of control to the benefit of a shockingly small minority of people.
I'm all for taxing the rich and universal Healthcare. As for money, it sadly won't ever happen in my timeframe. Been a firefighter and emt for over 15 years. The public wants their taxes low. If I were making 74k I'd practically feel like a millionaire.
OK first off thank you for everything you do for your community. First responders are criminally underappreciated. My uncle was the fire chief at the volunteer fire department across town, and I have heard lots of stories from him about how hard that job can be and how underappreciated they are by the town.
I stand by everything I said. You of all people should be making at least 150k with all the work it takes to become and stay certified (which should not cost you anything). You literally save peoples lives, that alone is worth the money. We can pay for that with a wealth tax on people like Bezos and Buffet. We don't need to tax the middle and lower classes, the billionaires already have all the money we'll ever need. Even for your town, no matter how small or remote. Seriously, check this link. The money is already there.
We can buy you the best gear, training, and equipment. These are not expenses like politicians like to tell us; they are investments in our community. And we use the government accountability office to make sure that money goes where it is supposed to and isn't embezzled away.
And it isn't like you're going to just sit on that money either. You'll spend it on goods and services from the people and businesses around you. Its a direct demand side stimulus. Everyone benefits.
You're right though. Probably none of this will ever happen. That doesn't mean its the wrong solution to our problems. I think a big reason for our current situation is just how much money flows through Washington. Its unacceptable that Elon Musk spent 145 million to win Pennsylvania for Trump, just like it was unacceptable for Harris to raise a billion dollars. Its unacceptable that our congress people spend most of their time campaigning for money instead of legislating, and its unacceptable that our supreme court justices (all of them) are accepting bribes. That money comes with strings attached, and they very rarely benefit working class folks.
And just for the record: I was enlisted for nearly a decade. I spent my 20s refueling aircraft on various air force flight lines, so I truly understand the struggle. When I got out it wasn't clear to me how I was going to be able to support myself. My situation has drastically changed since then, but I have been there. It fucking blows.
Thanks. Yeah, my best friend is now retired air force. I was going to join myself but I'm mostly deaf in my left ear so they weren't going to allow me to do a lot of the things I was interested in doing.
Yeah they're real picky about who they let in. I get it, but it also keeps a lot of people who would otherwise make good Airmen out.
Anyway I have two rules when posting here:
I uh... wasn't great about rule 1 here (sorry 😬), and I outright broke rule 2 at least twice. I'll leave these comments up for a bit then I'm deleting everything and this account.
It was nice talking to you. I hope your situation improves somehow. I'll be advocating for policies to help you, wherever you are. Maybe things will never change, but they'll definitely never change if we don't demand it.
A good example is wage theft. Employees are not paid the value they produce. Instead of bonuses or fair salaries the company gives out dividends, etc.