• racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    This is a completely meaningless figure…

    I really hate when articles come out with this kind of data. Huge numbers like this without any context just mean nothing. Ok, 42 trillion$, how much money did they already have? How much percent did their fortunes increase? Is that more or less than inflation?

    It’s just a meaningless huge number that has no intention other than to shock, certainly not to inform or they would have given actually useful numbers that would actually let you have an idea whether it’s that bad or not…

    I hate that people keep falling for nonsens like this… Just post a huge number without any context or any other numbers needed to be able to make sense of it, and everyone is like “omfgwtfbbq, this is SOOOO bad”! Is it? It’s perfectly possible that this isn’t even enough to keep up with inflation, and they’re technically poorer, probably not, but we’ll never know from this useless article…

      • racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        Ah yes, i can’t critisize such stupid articles without opposing their message… I’d love more equality, and agree that something should be done about it.

        I just would love to see actually useful numbers that mean something when we make a fuss about it rather than useless info like this that is meaningless.

        How you interpreted my message as bootlicking is beyond me, but i guess you’re a youngling that interprets any critique as an attack?

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    The reason billionaires exist is because people like you and me are overcharged for everything we purchase so they can accumulate the surplus.

    The reason why we don’t do anything about it is because we evaluate that we get good value for our money in most situations.

    What is that evaluation based on? Our past experiences…

    But the only experiences we have to evaluate what our money is worth is us being charged enough that the rich people at the top accumulate an unreasonable amount of wealth.

    We never have an experience where those leeches at the top aren’t present to artificially inflate the price of things so we can actually realize how much we’re supposed to be able to get for our money!

      • Frog@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        And we are paying taxes. The only money they give to the government is directly to the pockets of judges and politicians to make decisions against our best interest and to make them richer.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        We wouldn’t be underpaid if things were priced according to their actual cost because the actual cost of things it’s based on the low salary that people make!

        • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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          2 months ago

          Yet we produce more than ever per hour. So by that account either prices should decrease over time to reflect that, or our wages should be going up. :D

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        6 for 75ct. Eurocent, so in USD it’s a whopping 81ct. Tax inclusive. Available in both scratchy and gentle.

        If supermarkets get away with charging those kinds of prices there’s two things to do: a) Raid each and every HQ to see whether you can nail them for collusion, b) price controls.

  • lnxtx@feddit.nl
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    2 months ago

    Tax Reform Act of 1986

    The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was the top domestic priority of President Reagan’s second term. The act lowered federal income tax rates, decreasing the number of tax brackets and reducing the top tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent.

    Name and shame: Ronald Reagan

  • uis@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Twitter mob: Protect rich minority at all cost! Feed the billioners!

      • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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        2 months ago

        Richard Nixon’s head : I promise to cut taxes for the rich and use the poor as a cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel!

        [audience applauds]

        Philip J. Fry : That’ll show those poor!

        Turanga Leela : You’re not rich!

        Philip J. Fry : But someday I might be rich, and people like me better watch their step!

  • blazera@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Its a built in feedback loop. Under capitalism, resources are distributed based on capital. But capital is a resource. So its naturally going to concentrate.

    We need hard caps on wealth

  • مهما طال الليل@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Taxes won’t fixe this, but an 18th century invention might.

    As long as the rich have the means of wealth generation they will always come ahead no matter how much you tax them. They will always buy back the system. Now if those means were somehow communalized then things could change once and for all.

  • aviation_hydrated@infosec.pub
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    2 months ago

    I think the idea of cryptocurrency is funny, since it’s just “I’m not playing your make believe money anymore, so we’ll pay our own make believe money since you are obviously rigging the system”. Kinda makes sense if adoption keeps up and the planet isn’t on fire

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      It doesn’t solve any of this. The people who invented BTC did not understand whay money is and how it works. Especially how it’s created. If we lived in a world with BTC alone and we’ve reached the point where no more BTC can be created while the world economy was growing, we’d keep creating money by reducing prices and using smaller fractions of BTC to pay them. Of course all of this would be much less practical than adding more units of BTC so if the world lived in this universe, a consensus would be reached to amend BTC to allow for further expansion of the BTC supply. And this doesn’t even touch the ability to create money via debt which doesn’t even require a currency.

      BTW I’m not saying crypto is useless. I think BTC for example will be with us for the foreseeable future but it would likely always be used as an intermediate currency that is then converted to one fiat or another through a floating exchange rate. The exchange rate would take care of the inherent problem I described.

      • aviation_hydrated@infosec.pub
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        2 months ago

        I think the creators had some knowledge of how currency worked, since there has been movements to make digital money in the cryptopunk scene for 20+ years before BTC. Also, you don’t need a degree to be an economist, a library card works just as good

        Having a fixed supply might reduce astronomical debts but still allow for smaller debts or ones that are collateralized. But yeah, day to day life would be drastically different. No credit cards for sure, but also no compound interest, because can’t have compounding interest on anything with a fixed supply or it will acquire all of the resource (or at least attempt to)

    • thejml@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Thing is, the poor aren’t running bitcoin miner farms. Crypto doesn’t change anything but traceability of the funds, letting the rich get even richer.

      • aviation_hydrated@infosec.pub
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        2 months ago

        Traceability might be nice since the black market is estimated around 20T USD. Cuts out bad actors which means no fraud, and no hidden inflation since we can see the quantity compared to USD which the Federal Reserve doesn’t even know

    • symthetics@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      But the ultra rich are actually playing with that too and fucking over every single person that invests thinking they’re going to be ‘financially free’

      Adoption will never happen because block chains are shit at everything except being a Blockchain.

      Let’s fix the system we’ve got instead of inventing a new one that’s worse in basically every way.

  • Intrama@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Perhaps my first controversial post here. Hmm. No, I’ll be decent. But seriously? Fuck the elites. Fuck them hard.

  • mle@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    I was asking myself, how much money do you need to have, to be in the top 1%?

    So for context, according to this article, you are in the top 1% worldwide, if your net worth is above ~872’000.-, that is 19 million US Americans.

    With 94’000.- you are in the top 10%

    • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      The top 10% includes the majority of people in the western world. We have been lied to by the select few above us that we have more in common with them than we do with the bottom 90% in the rest of the world.