Should Billionaires Exist?

[King Ming]

Elon Musk perfectly illustrates OP's point.


Look at this fukking idiot. Billions of dollars and he is running around creating stupid ass trucks and rockets that dont even work. Meanwhile, people are starving and begging for food and shelter on the streets. And it's all under the guise that he's saving the world.


That's not even mentioning the billions Bill Gates has wasted on his bullshyt.

Most of these guys are fukking clowns who deserve almost none of the praise or hero worship that this country propagandizes you with.

its always some ill gotten riches.

In the mid 1980s, Elon Musk’s father Errol and a copilot were on their way to England aboard a plane they hoped to sell when they landed there.

They never made it to their destination. Instead Errol returned to South Africa with a half-share in a Zambian emerald mine, which would help to fund his family's lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers.

It was that lifestyle, Errol says, that turned Elon into the kind of merchant adventurer who would later break the rules of the motoring business with Tesla, then go on to change spaceflight with SpaceX.

Elon Musk's family owns an emerald mine in Zambia — here's the fascinating story of how they came to own it

 

[Reece]

People arguing billionaires shouldn’t exist while also wanting the products, services and inventions billionaires created 99% of which was motivated by the potential for financial gain. There should be higher taxes. Obviously. All this anti-capitalist talk is silly. I fukk with Sanders and Warren on some issues but I don’t need to have two spoiled privileged white folk riling me up when they living in luxury themselves due to the same economic system they’re crusading against. Bernie worth $2 million dollars. Warren has made $500,000 a year the last six or seven years based off her tax returns and grew up in a wealthy, blue blood East Coast Ivy League family. And...the wealth gap is relative. To someone living on $0.50 a day in Zimbabwe, Bernie and Warren are “billionaires”. Why shouldn’t they give up their wealth to them? Over there they eating mud and grass, and on a good day, rotten disease ridden meat. Why you need $500,000 a year when you can give away $450,000 and live off $50,000 to help out the poor Yea. I’ll wait on that. People drowning in debt in America, barely making over $35,000 and can’t pull together $400 for an emergency expense. It’s a bit ridiculous to have to listen to some old cranky dude worth $2 million acting like he’s in the same boat as you and not apart of the same class he’s attacking. Dudes always want to destroy the system AFTER they got their fortune Before they try to burn down the whole system they need to first try to make government spending more effective. Free college costs anywhere from $50 billion to $70 billion a year. We been wasting $100 billion a year since 2003 in mindless wars. That’s a huge slice right there. You decriminalize drugs and levy a tax and boom that’s another source right there to start paving the road for free college and free healthcare. There’s a hundred different tax loopholes they could close. Washington has some of the finest minds where it comes to economics, politics and the financial markets. There probably hundreds of ways to come up with a more efficient tax structure that could afford us the funds we need to create the social programs we want. All this anti-capitalist rhetoric is just the easy way out. And honestly like I said, I could do without the anarchist ideologies from millionaires who can go back to their luxurious lives when the cameras aren’t rolling

 

[Shogun]

Seriously?... being that successful is objectively immoral to you?

I didn’t say it was objectively immoral. I said “I think”, making it a subjective statement.

I also don’t see making money as a testament of character or morality.

 

[Nomad1]

I think the argument boils down to the amount of wealth it takes to hit a billi means someone somewhere is getting screwed over and the moralist point of view is that if someone is getting screwed over that said thing shouldn't exist.

I think the underlying idea is that if Companies owned by Billionaires are paying their fare share in taxes, paying workers a good wage, and adhering to environmental/social concerns in the right manner that they themselves would be forced to take lower salaries in order to keep that money in the business as profits would be down considerably. Sort of fulfilling a self-check in terms of there being no billionaires. What's happening now is workers are treated like shyt, the amount of tax money getting kept away from the government as these business/ people use every loophole is ridiculous, the environment is gonna boom, and society will collapse in a decade or two so ultimately one way or another someone is getting screwed over.

First paragraph sums it up perfectly, at least for me.
Someone along the line is getting screwed over, another is cheating the system, so on and so forth.
Just look at most of the billionaires today, they run companies that pay no taxes, don’t properly compensate workers, don’t give out benefits, ship jobs oversees.
No the world definitely doesn’t need billionaires.

 

[Nomad1]

People arguing billionaires shouldn’t exist while also wanting the products, services and inventions billionaires created 99% of which was motivated by the potential for financial gain. There should be higher taxes. Obviously. All this anti-capitalist talk is silly. I fukk with Sanders and Warren on some issues but I don’t need to have two spoiled privileged white folk riling me up when they living in luxury themselves due to the same economic system they’re crusading against. Bernie worth $2 million dollars. Warren has made $500,000 a year the last six or seven years based off her tax returns and grew up in a wealthy, blue blood East Coast Ivy League family. And...the wealth gap is relative. To someone living on $0.50 a day in Zimbabwe, Bernie and Warren are “billionaires”. Why shouldn’t they give up their wealth to them? Over there they eating mud and grass, and on a good day, rotten disease ridden meat. Why you need $500,000 a year when you can give away $450,000 and live off $50,000 to help out the poor Yea. I’ll wait on that. People drowning in debt in America, barely making over $35,000 and can’t pull together $400 for an emergency expense. It’s a bit ridiculous to have to listen to some old cranky dude worth $2 million acting like he’s in the same boat as you and not apart of the same class he’s attacking. Dudes always want to destroy the system AFTER they got their fortune Before they try to burn down the whole system they need to first try to make government spending more effective. Free college costs anywhere from $50 billion to $70 billion a year. We been wasting $100 billion a year since 2003 in mindless wars. That’s a huge slice right there. You decriminalize drugs and levy a tax and boom that’s another source right there to start paving the road for free college and free healthcare. There’s a hundred different tax loopholes they could close. Washington has some of the finest minds where it comes to economics, politics and the financial markets. There probably hundreds of ways to come up with a more efficient tax structure that could afford us the funds we need to create the social programs we want. All this anti-capitalist rhetoric is just the easy way out. And honestly like I said, I could do without the anarchist ideologies from millionaires who can go back to their luxurious lives when the cameras aren’t rolling

Billionaires shouldn’t exist, that doesn’t mean any of the things we enjoy today can only be enjoyed if an individual is worth more than 95% of the country.

 

[Atlrocafella]

Yes they should, we are a capitalist society and no one individual should be told how successful you can be. Once they tell you a billion is too much, they will tell you that being a millionaire is too much.

This is why Bernie and Liz ain’t winning shyt

 

[rapbeats]

… again, we enjoy the highest standard of living and fewer people are dying of hunger and sickness than ever before at a time when we have more billionaires than ever before.
Im slow though, and could be failing to understand/see what your saying.
Could you please explain how billionaires themselves have directly reduced the quality of life of Americans and/or harmed the American people by simply existing.

by not paying their employees a living wage. just because i see homeless dudes on the street walking around text messaging doesnt mean i call that a better quality of life that matters. thats the key. does it matter? NO.

20 years ago, homeless dudes wouldnt have means of communication like that. so sure you can say thats better. and i'm not talking about the crazy ones. so ask these people would they rather have facebook or a roof over their heads where rent was actually affordable?

I dare you. just ask them.

I'm watching my own city turn into a 2nd world Mega city. Where the rich have all the money to play and have all the fun in the city. while everyone else is out on the streets or living in their cars. again, i can see it with my own eyes. Sometimes I dont need the stats. Sometimes i can look out the window. I drive too da... far to work. so i go thru quite a few neighborhoods in my city/county = L.A. . and I've been here my entire life. I'm telling you right now without touching the stats there are more non crazy, non drug addicted people living in campers, their cars, in tents. then i have ever seen in the past few decades. one place i worked by the studios(Universal, etc) you would literally catch Agencies(actors/model) taking pictures under a fwy bridge because of the lighting. I saw this numerous times as i walked to work from the parking lot.
imagine this Dead.

I see 3 Hot a...Chicks dolled up, with a due with a giant camera and tripod. underneath a fwy bridge. literally right behind them are 3 homeless dudes sleeping. They have to be cropping ole boy out of the photo. I mean it was so bad one time. one of these cute ladies almost tripped over one of the homeless dudes. The least they could do is throw ole boy a hundred spot or something.

I was like wow we are all going to act like we dont see how crazy this looks?

Its next level bad. and because of the city i live in, we have the best weather and a lot of services for the homeless (but nothing permanent of course). so the entire US population of homeless people come here. where would you rather stay in december if you didnt have a home? L.A. or Detroit.

Its so bad they can no longer just sweep the homeless out of the nice areas and push them to the less nice areas. its too many of them.

Some of these super rich developers are developing ridiculous condos right in some of the mid range to low range areas. and then saying out of 100 units, 5 will be affordable housing. FIVE. so 5 working class people that aint balling will have a chance to live there, the rest have to be ballers from america or overseas ballers that buy up property and sit on it for their kids to come here and goto school or something.

straight up playground for the rich. This is not sustainable dead. You will have people in the streets rioting in a few more years if we keep going this route.

Walmart before bernie got on their heads were paying their employees at the stores less than a living wage. then they had the ordacity to tell them to go get in some social program to supplement that horrible wage. The walmart family has billions upon billions. they had to wait until old man bernie said something?

these people are using our roads to deliver their goods to their stores that are paid for by ALL of our tax dollars. they are telling their employees that are helping them make billions to go back to the tax payers and ask for some of their income to help them survive. how utterly ridiculous is that? if you dont think thats insanely unethical business practices i dont know what is.

 

[rapbeats]

Yes they should, we are a capitalist society and no one individual should be told how successful you can be. Once they tell you a billion is too much, they will tell you that being a millionaire is too much.

This is why Bernie and Liz ain’t winning shyt

only a billionaire or a dummy citizen thats been brainwashed to believe they will one day become billionaires when in reality the probability of that is like .00000000005 chance of it happening. clown sheep citizens being advertised to, by billionaires believing what they are selling.

When the country overall has this much money to throw around. you should not have droves of homeless kids, nor adults, running around your country looking like a 2nd or 3rd world country and shanty towns. when your country is this rich, you should not have places in your country where people dont have decent drinking water. that is some 3rd world ish. if you dont understand that, you're lost. and if you're lost aint no way a sane person should listen to you. You're praying Bernie doesnt win. but doing so is praying for your own demise, cause most likey you aint going to be a billi-goat in your life time. so you too can end up in one of those tents on the street.

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

First paragraph sums it up perfectly, at least for me.
Someone along the line is getting screwed over, another is cheating the system, so on and so forth.
Just look at most of the billionaires today, they run companies that pay no taxes, don’t properly compensate workers, don’t give out benefits, ship jobs oversees.
No the world definitely doesn’t need billionaires.

this still doesn't make the case the world doesn't need billionaires. if we fix business practices and all of a suddenly workers had fair pay, the majority of jobs stayed in the US, they had guaranteed retirement and health care and everyone played nice, there would still likely be enough profit/stock growth etc to create billionaires. so now what's the problem? why shouldn't they exist?

like i've been saying, the issue is the system we allow to stay broken for the 99%, not the fact that an outcome in system is insane wealth.

 

[Atlrocafella]

only a billionaire or a dummy citizen thats been brainwashed to believe they will one day become billionaires when in reality the probability of that is like .00000000005 chance of it happening. clown sheep citizens being advertised to, by billionaires believing what they are selling.

When the country overall has this much money to throw around. you should not have droves of homeless kids, nor adults, running around your country looking like a 2nd or 3rd world country and shanty towns. when your country is this rich, you should not have places in your country where people dont have decent drinking water. that is some 3rd world ish. if you dont understand that, you're lost. and if you're lost aint no way a sane person should listen to you. You're praying Bernie doesnt win. but doing so is praying for your own demise, cause most likey you aint going to be a billi-goat in your life time. so you too can end up in one of those tents on the street.

who says I’m trying to be a billionaire? I’m just trying to be as successful as I can be without anyone trying to put a CAP on what my potential ceiling can be.

millionaires and billionaires create jobs and opportunities for other people.

It’s funny that Bernie and Liz wants to use the resources of those same billionaires to fund their social programs. Where would they get this money if billionaires didn’t exist in the first place?

Bernie and Liz are not winning shyt, don’t get mad, get used to it

 

[Drip Bayless]

They should be taxed heavily
The exploitation of workers is bad enough, but when you consider that most of their wealth will never trickle down and they can maintain their status just by lobbying, the answer is obvious

 

[88m3]

I think they need to be turned into mulch

 

[Reece]

Billionaires shouldn’t exist, that doesn’t mean any of the things we enjoy today can only be enjoyed if an individual is worth more than 95% of the country.

Why would anyone create anything and go through the hell you have to go through to create a company if there’s no potential to get rich? You think people working 85 hours a week and sleeping five hours a night for the greater good How about we just raise taxes a bit and spend those tax dollars more efficiently and shup the fukk up about everything else.

 

[88m3]

Why would anyone create anything and go through the hell you have to go through to create a company if there’s no potential to get rich? You think people working 85 hours a week and sleeping five hours a night for the greater good How about we just raise taxes a bit and spend those tax dollars more efficiently and shup the fukk up about everything else.

Nah, lol. Nice try. We're going to turn them into mulch.

 

[Reece]

Nah, lol. Nice try. We're going to turn them into mulch.

The fukk kinda answer is that