They've been allowed to game the system to hoard way more wealth than any single person should have been able to. They were supposed to pay their employees more, charge less to their customers or if all fails pay more taxes. But they didn't do any of that.

If this was a video game that would be called an "exploit that breaks the gameplay experience for everyone else" and it would have been solved in a patch. But to remain in the same analogy, they are buddies with the game developers so they're allowed to do anything they want. The only difference is that everyone in the country is forced to play this broken game as it is.

I've played fallout for more than 2 decades. How the fuck are we diving face first into every sci-fi dystopia at the same time? Like, there's hints of star wars, dune, fallout, 1984, the outer worlds, hunger games, Idiocracy etc. I'm hoping cyberpunk 2077 shows up and gives a sliver of a chance.

Musk does not do a space race. Not on his money, at least.

Instead, he does it on US taxpayer money, with billion-dollar contracts to get people to Mars by 2025 and other timelines like that. The government employee who approved one of the largest contracts to SpaceX quickly quit working for the government and now works... at SpaceX.

So you tell me, is Elon in a space race, or are the US taxpayers in a race to fund the billionaire?

No one should have enough money to purchase entire branches of government. Musk could give every member of congress 10 million and still be a billionarie many times over. That kind of wealth is not compatible with democracy.

These assholes get taxed 1-2% on their total wealth increases per year - and even that gets offset with their loopholes - meanwhile the average people pay anywhere between 30-50% of just their income (and that doesn't account for other taxes like VAT, property, vehicle and road taxes, and so on).

Seize their assets, fund NASA.

That's how you actually make America great.

90% should be the minimum after 1 million a year

It's not a policy failure at all. It's a systemic feature. Capitalism is dog eat dog until only one dog remains. If you want to fix it you need a new economic system.

It's a clear sign the government isn't, itself, spending enough on spaceflight and associated R&D.

Turning our next generation of economic and military supremacy over to the dipshit horn dogs that tanked retail sales and fucked up the post office seems like a huge mistake.

I say we put them all in a rocket and shoot them into space...

That's it. Problem solved.

I think we just need to send them into space... Forcibly. Permanently.

it isn't. it is an intended best case scenario for those invested. capitalism rewards trickery and thievery. excess wealth is part of its system dependent on class hierarchies. it was millionaires before billionaires and now we're about to have our first trillionaire. for fucks sake.

The fact that there are billionaires is the sign that they're not being taxed enough.

Massive infrastructure / R&D projects like a space race is actually one of the more productive ways that billionaires could use their money.

I don't even know who the first one is and I'm kind of afraid of finding out

If you've got money to waste on doing the same space shots that they've been doing for the last 65 years, just with newer technology, all while people in America are hungry, and suffering from lack of health care, then we should take away everything they own, and redistribute it to the people. We can even name each distribution after the benefactor. First we'll have the Musk distribution, then the Bezos, distribution, then the Ellison distribution, etc.

And their companies, primarily created and made profitable by government grants and tax breaks, belong to the American people, and they should be confiscated, and operated for the profit benefit of the American people. To make it fair, the billionaire, and his descendents, will always have an entry level job available, at entry level wages, but they will be treated like any other employees, and can be fired without rehiring privileges. They aren't entitled to any special treatment, other than a guaranteed job. After that, they have to behave themselves.

$999,999,999 is just fine though!

Stop focusing on an arbitrary figure and start focusing on a real progressive income tax with no loopholes or workarounds.

nor that they give a rat's ass about sustainability, humanity, earth etc like some of them like Elon claims

If there was a space race then you can guarantee that elon would want it out of the country.

I'm absolutely pro taxing billionaires. But this has been like that forever and they fill an ingesting financing nieche with their dick measuring contest of a space race. Somebody financed all the expeditions to the north pole for example. They finance exploration and science ands engineering that the public is not willing to, but personally in glad somebody does. Also industry brings arguably far less politics and other inefficiencies with it that public funding does. Look at how the NASA budget is cut every few years and how their funding is mostly squandered overfeeding some States industry so their senators get to keep their constituency happy. I'm not saying I particularly love that there are people getting richer by the second while doing fuck all, but I love that they have a hobby that arguably benefits humanity long term.