• Brosplosion@lemm.ee
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    54 minutes ago

    Is this inflation corrected? Cause an arbitrary line across 7 years of inflation is gonna be crossed…

    • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      There are probably several Russian Oligarchs missing from this list because their wealth is mostly dark money. Rumor has it Putin is the wealthiest man in the world and has been for some time.

  • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    Looks like Sam Walton would be atop the list had he figured out immortality.

    Probably would top this list as the most decent person of the bunch too. He wasn’t a saint, but I haven’t seen evidence that he was rotten to the core, either.

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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    6 hours ago

    The overall average median lifetime earnings of $1,850,000 for men and $1,100,200 for women. Let’s just take the average and say an average American earns $1,475,100 in their lifetime.

    The important thing to remember is, in an unequal system where workers have most of the value of their work taken by a single person who the system disproportionately favors, that value is translatable to literal life. They are directly, inexorably going to die having had that value simply transferred to the other person or people who collect that value. Or put succinctly, they are giving up life, and the “owner” of the business is gaining the value of their life.

    Another note is that even though most valuations are stock, stock valuations do not exist in a vacuum. The stock market is the realizable increase in productivity value that we all collectively have caused.

    So based on that principle, just for fun, let’s convert these fortunes to human lives, to better understand just how much (economically-valued) life force these people have taken from people:

    Elon Musk: $262,000,000,000 = 176,259 American lives.

    Jeff Bezos: $208,000,000,000 = 141,007 American lives.

    Mark Zuckerberg: $203,000,000,000 = 137,617 American lives.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      5 hours ago

      To take that farther I wonder how many employees they have. How close is the ratio of workers to their life value obtained by the owner.

  • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
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    7 hours ago

    Billionaires are a political choice as much as homelessness. They are allowed to exist because nobody does anything about it.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
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    7 hours ago

    There was an article celebrating the fact that we’re on our way to having the first trillionare.

    I wanted to die. It’s so insanely fucking disgusting

    • Krono@lemmy.today
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      3 hours ago

      Yes he signed up to give his money away. To a charitable trust. Which he and his family controls. And can withdraw from at any time.

      It isnt a charity pledge, its a plan to avoid paying taxes.

    • Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 hours ago

      It’s all bullshit and marketing so people will regurgitate this lie. Everyone that says that puts it into a charity that they or their friends run.

      Their children get high positions that allow them to have high paying jobs from the start. They have huge political influence which helps them with their other companies.

      We need to redo our tax system and increase the top brackets. We also need to redo what is considered taxable and what can be claimed as a tax benefit.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Bill Gates a lying piese of shit? Who would have thought?

      I went out in the rain yesterday and I got slightly moist. More at seven.

    • pingveno@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      I’m not sure who is doing the calculations here, but the latest estimates I’m seeing for Gates have him down a bit for the year. He also is down after is divorce from Melinda, which included splitting off a good chunk of money for her own personal and philanthropic use.

      • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
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        3 hours ago

        Bill Gates signed his pledge more than 10 years ago. His wealth doubled in the last 7 years, meaning that he’s gotten average increases of like 10% per year.

        Mr. Gates, you’re going the wrong way!

        • pingveno@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Meh. Net worth can be volatile in the upper echelons of wealth. It’s often based on volatile assets. He’s still giving away plenty. I’m seeing a budget of $8.6 billion in 2024 for the Gates Foundation.

          Also, his wealth doesn’t need to be spent within his lifetime to remain true to the pledge. The Gates Foundation can continue functioning long after his death, much like other foundations like the Carnegie Foundation.