Existing multibillionaires can share their billions with others. Make me a billionaire, Gary! Collecting more billions from hoi polloi: no way. All they do is scratch their own backs and circulate in the plutonomy.
60 percent of Americans can’t afford a minimum quality of life Gary, I think we should give the Democratic Socialist a chance. Billionaires had their chance, and less than a handful are decent humans (and the best ones are giving it away as fast as they can; Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott).
I have a question for the economists here. It might sound stupid and unrelated to this submission. But it is in some ways.
So assume a hypothetical case where there is a runaway inflation. Everyday things start costing thousands of dollars and buying stuff need cash to be shoved around on wheel barrows (this has actually happened in many places). Wages also inflate similarly.
What if the government decides to create a larger value currency denomination - say a 'Mega dollar' - and declare it (ie, a 'mega') as the new base denomination? Why wouldn't this work? (I presume it doesn't work, because I haven't seen it applied in practice.)
I'm not so sure that if we were to take all the wealth of the ultra-rich and redistribute it, that it would make that much of a direct positive impact on the rest of society. For one, most of their wealth is tied up in intangible assets like stocks - does it impact the economy if it just sits there and does nothing?
If you redistributed Bill Gates' Microsoft stock across the population, wouldn't that cause a commensurate rise in inflation as everyone uses their portion on things that they need? (Bill Gates has 500,000 times the median US net worth, but doesn't eat 500,000 times more bread or wear 500,000 times more kilograms of cotton than the average person).
In terms of actual physical things the ultra-rich don't really have that much comparatively than the regular person. Maybe they have a few mansions, yachts, helicopters - but given that there are many, many more poor and middle-income people than the rich, only a small percentage of the population could benefit (how many people can actually fit on Bezos' yacht, how many apartments could those mansions be easily converted into?).
There's probably an economic benefit from redirecting labour from things that the rich like but again, we're not quite at Ancient Egypt levels of large portions of the population building useless things for the super-rich, if you're a billionaire your workforce is probably working on something that makes money from people poorer than you. If you make the firms that build mansions pivot to building normal houses for ordinary people, I don't think that would result in all that many more houses being built.
That's not to say that there wouldn't be other benefits like removing their ability to influence public opinion through their money (although even without rich people there would still be individuals with disproportionate media influence), but wealth redistribution isn't the panacea that people claim it to be.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 24.0 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires
(“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”)
I guess that's where it ends for me.
Can't read any following twitter thread (if there is one).
Is there any indication what he thinks more billionaires should be doing that they are not already doing?
So assume a hypothetical case where there is a runaway inflation. Everyday things start costing thousands of dollars and buying stuff need cash to be shoved around on wheel barrows (this has actually happened in many places). Wages also inflate similarly.
What if the government decides to create a larger value currency denomination - say a 'Mega dollar' - and declare it (ie, a 'mega') as the new base denomination? Why wouldn't this work? (I presume it doesn't work, because I haven't seen it applied in practice.)
If you redistributed Bill Gates' Microsoft stock across the population, wouldn't that cause a commensurate rise in inflation as everyone uses their portion on things that they need? (Bill Gates has 500,000 times the median US net worth, but doesn't eat 500,000 times more bread or wear 500,000 times more kilograms of cotton than the average person).
In terms of actual physical things the ultra-rich don't really have that much comparatively than the regular person. Maybe they have a few mansions, yachts, helicopters - but given that there are many, many more poor and middle-income people than the rich, only a small percentage of the population could benefit (how many people can actually fit on Bezos' yacht, how many apartments could those mansions be easily converted into?).
There's probably an economic benefit from redirecting labour from things that the rich like but again, we're not quite at Ancient Egypt levels of large portions of the population building useless things for the super-rich, if you're a billionaire your workforce is probably working on something that makes money from people poorer than you. If you make the firms that build mansions pivot to building normal houses for ordinary people, I don't think that would result in all that many more houses being built.
That's not to say that there wouldn't be other benefits like removing their ability to influence public opinion through their money (although even without rich people there would still be individuals with disproportionate media influence), but wealth redistribution isn't the panacea that people claim it to be.
1. Give 99% of his billions to everyone.
2. Let anyone invest with VCs in private deals (remove the accreditation requirement)
He won't do any of that.