Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life!
we need to organize. seriously!
what's wrong with a billionaire having $1B worth of yachts, while the rest of us are struggling to feed ourselves? what's wrong with that?? (/s)
The French Revolution was a massive uprising in France from 1789 to 1799, driven by anger over inequality, heavy taxes, and the extravagant lifestyle of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The monarchy’s indifference to the suffering of ordinary people—while they lived in luxury—sparked outrage.
The revolution began with the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny, and led to radical changes: the monarchy was abolished, the king and queen were executed, and France became a republic. It was a chaotic time, with ideals of liberty and equality clashing against violence and instability.
In short, it was a dramatic lesson in what happens when leaders ignore the needs of their people.
It's gone from can't everyone just pay your fair share of taxes?
To can't we at least tax the rich?
How about just the 1%?
Ok..., how about just the 0.001%?
And then somehow conservatives leaders will convince a voter base to take to the streets with pitchforks and torches, claiming it's tyranny, then once they're elected, the leaders will still tax the fucking voter base.
I feel like numbers at this point just are pointless. It's like, can we use vocabulary that actually describes the situation instead of updating this every time the decimal point shifts?
Describing it in terms of wealth is kind of dumb. It gives the idea that the systems that caused this (Imperialism, colonialism, capitalism) are the solution. Like, the global South just needs "investment". The numbers are this bad because of a century of western "investment" in its exploitation the global South.
There isn't a number attached to this that somehow fixes the problem when we reach it. This is about what essentially amounts to slavery and subjugation of the majority of this planet. The language of these news articles is so passive. Like it's describing the amount of stars in the galaxy.
Guillotines are surprisingly cheap to build.
The implicit song here goes hard
.22lr even cheaper and less assembly required
Would need to be able to penetrate their thick skulls.
Maybe we should use a higher caliber bullet?
It penetrates and ricochets inside instead of exiting, makes for good brain jelly!
Remind me again how capitalism isn't the problem? lmao
Do you think in feudal times things were better?
Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is poor.
Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists. (G. K. Chesterton)
Yet fewer people are poor because we instituted capitalist policies. Moving away from mercantilism was a great idea and benefitted most to a greater degree than mercantilism provides. Now we need to move beyond capitalism to address the failures of capitalism.
Because of capitalist policies or because of advancements in science, engineering, and medicine culminating around the same time that just happened to coincide with capitalism's birth?
Capitalism only benefits capitalists.
Fewer people are poor despite the capitalists, not because of.
Their giant hoards of wealth exemplify how many more could have been pulled out of poverty in the last 100-150 years.
The previous poster is more or less quoting Marx and Engles who praised capitalism in the same way and for the same things, while suggesting it was time for it to be superceded in the same way.
Now I know that not everybody has read their work, but you sound like somebody who might be interested.
This seems not conducive to the common wellbeing of humanity I think.
People might think that the extremity is a good thing as it will force change, which may be true, but realistically the world will be in for an extended period of conflict/war/suffering first and that period will probably last the rest of our lives.
Boomers hit that sweet spot. Now they get to check out as things are about to get real bad. Not that boomers everywhere in the world had it good. But a lot of them did.
If you aren't straight, white or a man you are already suffering.
Boomers hit that sweet spot.
American boomers, maybe. The 60s/70s was real shit for most of the Third World.
Much of our modern Economic Anxiety driving MAGA and the reactionary insanity of our foreign policy is these same Boomers being forced to live in a world that isn't just the car dealerships in Detroit commanding the global economy.
For the 90s Kids, life outside the US hasn't been this good in a century or more. Whether you're in Bogota, Berlin, Beijing, or Bankok, it's a time of unprecedented plenty.
The fact that America isn't this shining city on a hill anymore is what Trumpsters find so galling.
For the 90s Kids, life outside the US hasn’t been this good in a century or more. Whether you’re in Bogota, Berlin, Beijing, or Bankok, it’s a time of unprecedented plenty.
In some places, like south america, things have not been that great since the start of a wave of right wing governments rising, unfortunately...
The fact is money is relative. $100k USD is a lot of money in New Guinea and is not going to buy as much in London. This is why it is perfectly acceptable for someone like Thiel to assemble a private army with his wealth while people starve because they haven’t worked the grind correctly like Musk, Thiel or the Mountbatten-Windsors have /s.
You had me in the first half...
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
60,000 is way to many. They need to be able to fit on a giga yacht.
And then we make an artificial reef out of it
Suck on that 0.999% of the 1%!
I started to feel that’s a mathematical issue, not an economic issue. Since the internet is a thing, a person’s influence and wealth can increase exponentially(benefiting from the networking effect aka power law), while the best tax law can do is still linear.
We need a tax law that grows exponentially. After certain points, it should collect almost 100% of the “controllable assets” (assets you can control, not necessarily owed).
But of course, we will never get it. People who have the will to climb the ladder tend to have less empathy for the masses, and they need to pay back to their stakeholders to help them get on top. It’s another paradox we need to deal with.
TBH the only thing that can fix humanity is extraterrestrial life lol.
I would call it systemic, in fact I'd argue it's the central flaw of capitalism (but one that imo can be mostly fixed with heavy regulation and taxes scaling to near 100% as you say).
When wealth = power, those with wealth will always attract even more wealth.
Does that mean, in a theoretical world where wealth is by all means easily distributed, you’ve got a mere 0.001% that could triple the per-individual wealth of half of the worlds population—if we just took theirs and passed it out?
I’ve heard philosophers say, it’s a figure of authority’s continuous responsibility to justify its existence. Given, wealth is influence and influence is authority, should we not audit cases where wealth is so concentrated and ask ourselves question like ”how is this contributing to the benefit of all?”
I’d.argue, we shouldn’t allow such concentration of wealth in the first place—meaning there should be a preventative plan that Just Works. This can be compatible with whatever else you want, free markets or not. Be it a stronger progressive tax or a cultural change toward worker collectives owning the means to production, there just shouldn’t be such wealthy entities.
The concentration on wealth leads to concentration of influence, meaning politics and media. We’ve had a shrinking number of independent major news organizations since the 1980s. A 1983 analysis showed that about 50 companies “controlled more than half” of U.S. media. Today, there are estimates of a handful of people owning the vast majority. Not to mention, they can apparently choose to purchase massive Social Media platforms (like Twitter) immediately before an election.
Right now, though, we have this problem where such silos already exist. They use their influence, vast as it is, to protect and enrich themselves—PACs, Super PACs, gratuities, lobbying firms, and more recently meme coins. All acting as a conduit to influence politics and legislation. We can’t make progress while these issues continue to stand in our way, can we? So, what do you do?
In the entire existence of humanity, class struggle still has yet to end.
That's a crazy stat if true, maybe we should just tax those people.
Its makes it sound like most people are lazy!
Wait.... most people are lazy... maybe thats why they arent successful?
/s btw...
One of these 0.001% is valve ceo that many here on lemmy praise.
Ah yes, because we should condemn people over a statistic, even when the things they do may actually warrant some praise.
Just reject fiat and create your own 🤫
Sorry to nitpick, but can someone pls explain how a specific subset of people collectively hold 3x(50% of humanities' wealth) - that totals 200% of a finite amount?
find the poorest 50% of the earth's population. determine their collective wealth
look at the wealthiest people on earth, and add them to a list from the top down, one by one. stop when you reach a collective wealth three times that of what you found for the poorest 50% of people. count how many uber wealthy people that was, and calculate what percentage of the population they are
Put a maximum net worth. Every dollar over it equals one punch to the kidneys.
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