There's no self made anyone, there's barely even a self. All life exists in a complex web of dependence. We can't even digest food by ourselves.
Even our own shit isn't self made, let alone the ill gotten gains of a billionaire.
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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I'm still waiting for someone to self-brand as an "Ethical Billionaire." You just know someone will do it.
This was part of the issue people had with the "effective altruism" movement.
Nah that'd be to woke.
And we all know how billionaires react to wokeness.
Also I feel like Taylor Swift would be the one to pull that card.
At least Taylor Swift actually goes on tours and can be said to do real work. Bezos makes over $2,500 per second and does essentially fuck-all. Opinions about Taytay’s music aside at least she has a positive impact on local economies and her product is bought by choice.
Yeah but I feel like she'd be one of the first to defend her monetary status.
I've brought this up a lot lately but I liken her to the Beatles. The Beatles were being taxed at a 90+% rate. When they finally realized that they took it to court. The judge basically said "You were making so much money you didn't even realize you were being taxed. We're going to keep taxing you at the same rate and you can fuck off."
I could see Taylor doing the same thing if her tax rates went up to the level they should've been from the beginning.
Wow, awesome on that judge. TIL
Haha I didn’t know about that Beatles story but mad respect for the courts on that one.
I agree, she’d probably throw a bit of a fit, but at least we can consider her “working class” in contrast to the “owner class”. Like you say she should still be taxed heavily because obviously but at least she technically works for that money.
Like if any of the mega-rich CEOs was actually judged properly on the ability to do their job it’d be pretty clear that most of their decisions are bad for everything but their bottom line or actually made by lower paid employees. But take the money out of the Taylor Swift equation and at least she’s still going on tour and making music, albeit with a lot of production help and the like, but she at least does something.
She's also part of the owning class. Her real estate net worth is 150 million. Fuck her.
I’m still not sure which part of any of my comments said that she deserves to be obscenely wealthy to the point where she can have 150mil of real estate but go off I guess. I can see plenty of points where I agreed that she should have the tits taxed off of her, but…
Goes on tour in a private jet as the most pollutant individual human on the planet.
Let stop cherry picking billionaires to simp.
To clarify, I’m not saying it’s good but at the very least the money is earned because she does a thing and people get to choose to pay to participate in the concerts while no one is economically locked out of enjoying her music day-to-day.
In a situation where no billionaire can really be said to be ethical there is at least something to be said for the fact that she is, in some way, “working class”. She doesn’t sit around getting everyone to do every aspect of her job for her while she sits at home talking doing fuck-all. It’s fucked up that she isn’t taxed to hell and back like everyone else making that much money should be but it’s at least it’s fundamentally different.
First part fine. Yes nobody is forced to buy her music or strong arming an entire economy.
Second part is a whole lot of bull and is glorifying what little stuff she actually does. Oh look at her ride private jets and live a life of luxury while she spends a couple of hours singing between being carted off in a limo.
Calling celebrities “working class” is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read all day and I read a comment thinking that Trump would actually serve jail time.
Because we’ve decided that it goes “working class” > “Middle class” > “uppler class” which should already reveal the massive problem right there. In reality it’s either you work(or cannot for whatever reason and should be cared for by society) or you grift and act like anything heinous shit done is some sort of contribution to civilization.
Like it or not celebrities are still working class. They need to be taxed regardless of where their income comes from and yes, Taylor Swift doesn’t deserve private jet money or anything, but she can at least be said to work. It’s also true that the people who support her need to be able to afford their lives(I don’t know what they’re paid) and they absolutely should be getting a bigger piece of that pie.
she has a positive impact on local economies and her product is bought by choice
So says every parasite though.
Watching my grandmother die after being in assisted living, which cost about 250k/year, made me realize that millionaires are not really the problem. She saved for her whole life, sold her home and most of what she owned and she "scraped" together 2.5 million dollars. That's... like an incomprehensible amount of money to me. It's all gone, and she got to live the last ten years of her life with dignity.
Imagine that it costs 2.5M to live comfortably for the last ten years of your life. And then look at your bank account.
I can't even afford for this to be my last 80 years...
That article about the rich guy who became "homeless" to show how anyone could make a million dollars from nothing very easily, cheated, and still couldn't do it. 🤣
I keep coming back to that article when looking at the idea that rich people earned anything solely to their wit and entrepreneurial spirit. Despite the free healthcare, free RV someone let him stay at, hustling the free furniture people were giving away, he barely got 10 months in before he had to fall back onto his wealth fully again.
The whole "I'm a rugged individual" cliche would be hilarious at the owner's expense... if they hadn't propagandized the US, and increasingly the rest of western culture, to somehow unironically glorify the bullshit.
Personally I prefer the idea of living in a society and contributing to an aspect of it while depending on others for other things. I consider our-hyper-individualistic culture where we blame people who are hurting for that sweet dopamine hit of schadenfreude, and praise people who lie that their success wasn't a function of their society's infrastructure and socioeconomic birth lottery including access to receptive contacts with capital is the height of toxicity that hurts all but the small class of "winners" that considers avarice to be an aspirational character trait.
Plus you know, that whole "I'm a self-sufficient go getter" crap breaks down instantly when you realize almost none of them would be able to function without their legions of personal assistants doing everything short of wiping their asses for them
Self Attribution Fallacy
https://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy.
"But I'M the one who exploited the workers MYSELF."
Actually, never mind. They usually find someone else to do that for them anyway.
Re millionaires: I think that it’s probably time to update your understanding of a millionaire in the US in 2024. See that retired couple in sweatpants at the grocery store? They could easily be millionaires. See that farmer looking guy in line at the drive through? Probably a millionaire. GM line worker closing in on retirement… millionaire
A very large chunk of Americans will end up being millionaires by the time they get into their 50s and 60s. It just doesn’t mean what it used to.
There is a BIG gap between billionaires and millionaires. Becoming a millionaire no longer requires being born rich or getting some special deal. Just getting lucky enough to have steady work for 4 decades.
What's the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars?
About a billion dollars.
Household net worth by age Age of head of family Median net worth Average net worth Less than 35 $39,000 $183,500 35-44 $135,600 $549,600 45-54 $247,200 $975,800 55-64 $364,500 $1,566,900 65-74 $409,900 $1,794,600 75+ $335,600 $1,624,100
So not really the average or most. There is a huge chunk at the top bringing it up average is way different then median. Most people won't have enough wealth to be a millionaire. Most people in the USA will be lucky to earn 1-3 million in their lifetime but most of that gets spent on living as you can see by the table people are lucky if they own their home and have a bit leftover.
Don't forget the government bailouts
True and hate me for saying this. But also there is hard fucking work involved. But there's a big parachute but for a lot of successful people I met in life they had high demands at young ages.
In my university the top kids in the class were all rich kids with like 8 different things going on. They always had obligations like practices for national fencing teams or tennis or piano. They volunteered. They worked at their family business. They had a side gig hustling to get their feet wet in their own business.
Sure they had a lot of free time and safety but the successful ones also had like a manic drive to fill their time with things most don't.
I just want to point it out because before uni I thought it was just about being rich and having free time. Now I get that its those things and much more and our cultural bias could be hurting our own understanding of how we can succeed. Feels good to shit on the rich as spoiled trust funders. But also we are missing the real point I think by leaning into stereotypes
That is all fine and true, but I've known people who are struggling like hell to just stay afloat. I would say there may be a correlation between working hard and success, but I don't think it's the cause.
On the other side, it also brings a negative view to people who aren't successful as being lazy, when they could be working just as hard or harder.
It would be great if the only thing between someone and a better future was more effort, truly rewarding based on merit, but I just don't think that is the case.