Surprise, surprise!
I wonder where all that wealth would go if they suddenly died from accidents, and any potential heirs or next of kin also died.
Let’s give it a try
It would literally vanish. Wealth is not cash. If Amazon disappeared one day, not a single person’s (poor or not) bank account would get bigger as a result.
Murderous envy is all that’s thinly-veiled here.
not a single person’s (poor or not) bank account would get bigger as a result
Likely not, but I’d like to think the social reforms with an attack on the wealthy would bring some of our rights back and help with our standards of living issues our poor currently face thanks to the wealthy systematically disabling the things that brought prosperity and protected people. While you call it murderous envy, others might call it true social justice.
Killing people because you decided their stuff is valued too highly is not any kind of justice, no matter what kind of spin you put on it.
It’s not their stuff that’s wanted overall, to me it seems like hope is what’s in question here. They stand in the way of hope, voting doesn’t work, so I wonder if violent removal would.
They stand in the way of hope
Literally a nonsensical statement. Stuff overall worldwide is way better now than it was 100 years ago, and there were way fewer billionaires (even when adjusting for inflation) back then.
Stop making excuses. Nothing’s in your way other than your victim mentality.
Oh so medical bankruptcy isn’t a thing? Decline of ownership isn’t a thing? The unwinding of worker protections isn’t a thing? Shove off, bootlicker.
The top 50 billionaires could pool 99% of their wealth without it changing their quality of life at all, and have enough money to quite literally solve most of the world’s problems. We’re talking trillions of dollars that could be put to use for good.
They don’t because that’s not how psychopaths work.
and have enough money to quite literally solve most of the world’s problems
That’s true-ish from a strict finances perspective.
But consider the island of Haiti. We could “solve” the problem of chronic poverty on the island by simply showing up with boatloads of food and clothing and other consumer goods. But it would be a temporary fix, at best. A real investment - just on this tiny island - would mean large scale infrastructure improvements. And that takes an enormous amount of materials plus labor plus the logistics to move it all and assemble it.
What we’re describing isn’t strictly a monetary problem. Its an engineering - and, to a greater extent - economic organization problem. Showing up with bricks of cash would be less beneficial than dredging their harbors and building out new power plants and fixing all the damage done by the last big earthquake. And that latter bit requires real engineering, which requires education, which requires skilled professionals willing to bring Haitians in and train them in the work necessary to improve the island.
And while we probably could perform a project like this across Haiti, by employing the Billionaire Money + Excuse Unused Capacity of global industry, I question whether we could do it globally. Not without reorienting an enormous amount of our existing infrastructure towards these tasks.
When people talk about “market economy v command economy”, this is the kind of problem they’re really facing off against. Not just “how do we pay for food?” but “how do we organize the supply chain from the farms/fisheries to the dinner tables?”
We could “fix” Haiti’s problems with far less than we’re currently spending to control their population. But that would mean building large earthquake resilient housing, energy, and transport components. And those buildings would divert the labor supply from making cheap textiles and agricultural goods. And that would mean people who buy cheap from Haiti’s functionally-still-enslaved population wouldn’t get to 100x mark-up the end products when they were sold in the US at American retail rates.
That’s what we’re really discussing when we talk about “billionaire wealth” versus “solving the world’s problems”.
Do Haitians get to live for themselves? Or do they spend all their waking hours making life cheaper for other people?
Connect your circle of thought. If we buy Haiti a bunch of food and deliver it, we have created the jobs and infrastructure to solve the issue precisely in the manner you describe. We have redirected the economy to solve the problem. You seem to take issue with the idea that the solution did not arise from capitalist market forces. Well no shit, that’s kind of why we have the problem.
Most of the world’s major problems literally cannot be solved by an injection of funds alone.
I’m acutely reminded of when that guy said $6 billion would solve world hunger, Musk basically replied “prove how and I’ll give you the money right now”, and the response was a combination of impotent sputtering and backpedaling about how it would now help, but not solve.
Also, the majority of that “wealth” is a price tag, not cash dollars. If you bought a baseball card for $5 and it’s now worth $100, you didn’t create $95, you know.
Most of the world’s major problems literally cannot be solved by an injection of funds alone.
It’s about what that amount of money would go towards: education, healthcare, housing, food security, environmental protection, wildlife preservation, social programs, etc.
… how it would now help, but not solve.
We can solve these problems with targeted funding that gets to the root of the problem. For example, rather than simply distributing food, you educate and equip communities with the ability to grow their own. Even low-cost water purification in some parts of the world can make a massive difference to literally millions of people.
Lifting people out of poverty, even by having a universal basic income, would solve a ton of issues facing those populations: low education, poor health, food security, programs for kids/teens, more equitable transportation, etc.
We’re not talking about sending off grands for a few thousand dollars or even several million. We would have TRILLIONS to use towards implementing solutions. And that money would continue to come, because these rich assholes collect and hoard money faster than anyone can spend it.
Billionaire -> max 9 billions Multiply by 50 that’s a maximum of 450 billion dollars.
Trillion not reached.
YSK, the top five have over 150 billion to their name… each. The top guy has over 230 billion.
The top 50 combined have multiple trillions, and growing.
… 10 billion dollars is still a billionaire. Or is this a comment that nobody has 10 billion dollars?
Or is maybe this a misread of the OP? By “pool 99 percent of their wealth” they mean the other direction. As in the billionaires keep at most 10 billion and the rest goes to better the world.
So the word tenbillionaire and hundredbillionaire was just a meme?
Someone in another thread said something that resonated in me. Helps show how big a billion is…
One million seconds is a bit more that 11 days, One billion seconds is over 31 YEARS !
TIL: Everyone who has been alive less than 1 Billion Seconds and has over 1 Billion Dollars needs to have their wealth forcibly redistributed because you can’t even pretend they “worked for it”.
You didn’t earn a dollar a second, 3600 dollars an hour, starting the second you were born?
