“You can still be rich even if you’re not a billionaire!” Sure—and if you strip billions from someone like Jeff Bezos, he’ll invest less in building things that actually improve people’s lives. Amazon has done more for the average person than the government could dream of.
You may not like it, but humans respond to incentives—and money is a big one. If you mess with an incentive, you’ll get fewer things that change the world for the better. Especially when considering the state is really, REALLY good at one thing: wasting money.
The billionaires are gonna fuck you buddy, just not in the way you're hoping.
not even reagan was this stupid about it
How is executive pay an efficient allocation of funds?
Weird how the doge people found very little govt waste, isn't it? We're just spending what congress budgeted. And somehow, "the owner makes enough $ to have a private space program" isn't waste? Is a $500 mil mega-yacht waste, or efficiency?
bsky.app/profile/atru...
Incentives are fine. It’s the hoarding and exploitation. At least “wasted” money goes back into the economy and isn’t hoarded away for 100 years never to be touched by anyone.
Idk renting Venice for three days sounds like a fucking waste of good money and one hell of a way to piss off a lot of Venetians in a short span of time.
ask amazon drivers who have to piss in Gatorade bottles how these incentives are working out
💯 Or all the warehouse workers that died premature deaths due to "to-the-second" picking requirements that assumed that they were always operating at peak efficiency w/o regard to their humanity. Oh wait, we can't ask them because they're dead. Billionaires are behaving like slavers.
seriously, dude, fuck off into eternity just embarrassing to be out here caping for Jeff Fucking Bezos and whining about “the state” wasting money Jeff ain’t gonna see your posts
Incentives like jobs that pay for food and houses to live in? What if we incentivized 10,000 people with a life outside of poverty? What could they do to make the world better?
apparently the incentive is only applicable to the ruling class
it's so funny when capitalists and their defenders talk about efficiency as if it's entirely dependent on the ability of capitalists to hoard wealth. how convenient. capitalism is inefficient in so many ways except for increasing the wealth of captalists.
Would you work regardless of what you get paid? How one prioritizes different incentives may shift depending on one’s current economic standing but very few people are completely indifferent to monetary incentives.
we hear on one hand that people who work for a living should be content with what they are offered by the capitalists and that organizing isn't fair to them. on the other hand capitalists say they cannot function as society's geniuses unless they get to hoard ever increasing amounts of wealth.
it's funny how when you organize your society's production, resources and government around capitalists, then what the rest of us want isn't really a priority.
and what a mystery that these capitalist masters of the universe make friends with the fascists as soon as they see where the wind is blowing. how strange. how unfortunate for the rest of us, i guess.
At a certain amount, money loses all value. There is no way to spend it all. And unlike the robber barons of past, the current crop of parasitic vampires don't DO altruism. No libraries, colleges, museums. Just hoarding and corrupting politics. Sorry, Billy: you're out in left field & it is barren.
it was a lot harder for the robber barons to live in a separate world from the rest of us. there's something to be said for the understood threat
The political system also wasn't utterly corrupted by social media manipulation of public sentiment and outright bribery-for-votes by special interests. The barons knew if they didn't play nice, they'd lose their privileges. These twats know they won't. It's a problem.
Wow I never thought of this aspect until this moment. You are absolutely right.
it used to be that massive construction projects were funded by the wealthy; they don't even bother with that anymore. bread and circuses? forget that; get busy working, get busy dying.
The only wasted money, son, is whatever amounts someone is paying you.
> parasites paying dude for more propaganda i mean, from a societal perspective this is definitely a waste, but from the paying parasite's viewpoint this is exactly what they wanted
if you think governments are good at wasting money wait til you hear about rich ppl! but for real, the idea that rich ppl ought to be in control of allocating capital bc theyre good at it ignores the fact that becoming rich devalues money to you and you become MUCH worse at its efficient allocation
how come only billionaires deserve incentives? what if by removing some of a billionaires incentive we could provide incentives to MILLIONS of other people?
If you start off with the assumption that you do - that every dime the government spends is "wasted" - then of course private capital seems more efficient. But Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, etc could have never survived without heavy government subsidies and tax breaks. There's your government waste.
People with facts and statistics don’t need to write out a narrative for how they believe finances work. Do you even have an economics degree. If yes, burn it
NIH or Shkreli. The Binion Opinion is clear.
Incorrect.
Did the state waste $50 million on a Venice wedding, or was that Bezos?
Government is usually more efficient than private industry because 1) they don't need to produce a profit, 2) they have multiple incentives to make the best use of public funds.
Give me the money, I'll do it
You'd think with his billions upon billions of dollars he could find a way to at least improve the lives of the people who work for him so that they don't have to piss in fucking bottles. Jesus fucking Christ.
Yet every time we see this put into practice the #1 investment is stock buybacks. Unless the government is subsidizing a huge part of the project they aren’t building shit.
We just going to memory hole the 50's-70's when the richest people in the US were worth a fraction of Musk/Bezos/etc?(taking inflation into account of course)
LOL, yeah, you hear this argument a lot among stoned college freshmen in the Young Republicans club.
Yet somehow, we still had rich people, the country grew, technology grew, families were able to thrive during this time. I'm not arguing we go back to 90%, but the idea that if we tax billionaires at 40% or even 45%, the world will end is ridiculous.
If people want lower tax rates, stop fucking starting wars. Republicans want low tax and war. Republicans wanted low tax and Afghanistan, low tax and Iraq, now it's low tax and Iran. Wars are expensive. So fucking expensive.
Correct, the state wastes lots and LOTS of money on prisons, the police, and the military.
Brother, you really need to do more research. Specifically around American R&D funding for scientists who are very much NOT motivated by money (hint: Einstein). You might also take a side quest to research how Amazon's no tax advantage devastated brick and mortar businesses.
You'll never be a billionaire selling trash like this.
You provide no proof just your opinions
Just imagine what other companies could do with the same incentives if Amazon didn't use their consolidated power to stifle the competition and hoard all the money in some offshore tax havens.
Human innovation stops if Bezos has $1 billion instead of $200 billion. Good call. You're such a dipshit.
A scandinavian country went to a four day week and productivity increased. Well rested workers produce more.
So why can't we give those incentives to actual working people instead of ones who already have all the money? You're acting like things are good now and if we change it will get worse, it will get worse for the wealthy, but better for everyone else. Fuck you and fuck the rich
Amazon has done nothing of the fucking sort. JFC.
I'll never understand dick riding for billionaires.
this is fellatio
Why not both
Ass to mouth.
You never go ass to mouth.
Ass to ass
Human centipede ouroborus with Bezos
Looking like Yuzna's Society over here
Not sure if I want to look that up. Probably not.
Legitimately great movie! Body horror classic
It's an 80's movie I somehow missed growing up. I'll see if I can catch it
thank you for introducing me to it!
because he'd have to bend over backwards harder than he is with this bullshit?
(I'm sorry for taking your comment at face value since I think you were being cheeky) It's because in a lot of fundamental Christian sects (cult churches, usually NAR Evangelical), they believe in the prosperity gospel. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper... I can use my deep red family as examples.
You may not like it, but research shows that intrinsic motivation is far more effective and lasting than extrinsic motivators like money. I happen to know several MISERABLE, but wealthy, successful individuals. Money is a tool. It can be used for human benefit or destruction. Nothing more.
Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and mandatory childhood education policies changed the world for the better by an order of magnitude your incentivized individuals could never imagine, much less make possible.
You, fanboying a billionaire
The billions being wasted on AI by the private sector is just one proof of how the billionaires you idolize waste more money than the state could ever hope to.
Do u work for Amazon?
This trope to elevate capital is so tiresome. People do shit because that's who we are innately. Did the dude that invented the wheel only do so because it would make him a buck?
if we killed Jeff Bezos and spread his wealth among 1,000 strangers, we'd have 1,000 new millionaires and odds are pretty good one of them would be less of an shithead than Jeff Bezos
That's 1 billion. How much is he with
Not a trillion, so those 1000 would still only be millionaires.
I can't matherate or grammer
Except that’s the opposite of objective reality.
You're very naive if you believe that anyone got that rich in America because of an idea and gumption. Every single one of those people, even your idol Bezos received government subsidies and no bid contracts. Underpaying employees while working
them like slaves and exploiting tax loopholes that are unavailable to everyday folks all contributed to their wealth
100%!! And add to that publicly funded infrastructure, a publicly educated workforce, publicly funded, ....
Exactly right!! 🎯🎯
Tax loopholes don't appear out of thin air
Remember when Paul Ryan promised an overhaul of the tax code where we'll be able to file our taxes on a post card? 😂😂😂
you are a child and a dipshit, and though the former is forgiveable you're really leaning into the latter
So why don’t billionaires incentivize their employees with millions rather than just over minimum wage? Because those billionaires siphon money out of the economy into their pockets rather than invest in people.
yeah right fuck that we can strip all his wealth away and use it for good instead of allowing him to ravage the earth so he can have a third yacht
People still have issues with it, but to be a little fair Bill Gates, in response to DOGE & Elon, has at least accelerated his commitment to leave less than a Billion behind (which is still more than he had said in the past he would leave his kids though)
I understand the arguments it might be better if paid in Taxes, but that feels weaker to me when we have MAGA and DOGE cutting off all kinds of good uses for tax money
He attended bezo's wedding
Maybe he just never misses an Usher concert
Amazon has done jack for people. Other than fill their homes with junk.
I also find it fascinating that people are so eager to hand the Trump administration *more* money now. Like, has nobody noticed what they spend that money on?
I feel bad for you. You have such a shallow, meaningless view of value. Especially as it relates to what makes people truly happy & provides them joy. There are countless incentives in life that have nothing to do with money but you seem incapable of even thinking of them & def not considering them
bsky.app/profile/malt...
You’re right about people and incentives. But, by fairly taxing billionaires the “incentive” would just go to millions of other people. You would actually have a higher quantity of incentivized people with strong community bonds.
I’m sorry that your ideology is in conflict with demonstrated reality. Like, imagine writing this after witnessing the complete clusterfuck that is DOGE.
Democracy can’t survive massive wealth inequality. We’ve had very high marginal tax rates on the rich before, and the rich didn’t disappear. Now the 1% is so powerful and their greed and egos are so engorged that they’ve declared themselves gods, philosophers, and social engineers. Fuck ‘em.
money is a credit for owed labor, when you have more than you can spend in a lifetime it doesn't hit as hard as when you need it to make your rent or feed your kids tonight
It is not at all clear that the marginal incentivization value of a second billion dollars is the same as the first. Or greater than what other people would have done with the money. It's easy to assume it is, but the counterfactual is hard to analyze.
Above a billion, a lot of it is competitive, so a level playing field that happens to make it harder to get to a billion retains much of the same incentive structure. I mean, sure, you can buy a $500m yacht, but the marginal utility of that over a $100m yacht is .. well, I wouldn't know. :p
The super-rich are super-miserable for the most part. Their lives are pretty empty and none of them like each other, but they don’t have any other friends so they mostly just compete to see who can buy the biggest yacht and talk about how much money they spend.
During the financial crash they were buying bigger islands - it's the biggest show of "look how small my penis is" imaginable.
without billions in wealth one cannot capture the political system, which means one is subject to market competition, regulations that aim to protect public welfare and other such inconveniences. The poor billionaires *must* become gazillionaires or risk losing it all 🤓
That's not true. People do things when they have the opportunity to do them.
incorrect on all counts
You some kind of dumb fuck or just a liar?
You have the mind of a not particularly bright child.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, one year *after* Clinton raised taxes on the ultra rich and corporations. The idea that someone might think, "Oh, I won't try to start a company because I would only top out at a net worth of 200 million rather than 200 billion", is insanely divorced from reality.
Moreover is there any evidence that Bezos’ wealth ballooning over the last decade had anything to do with work *he* did? Incentives don’t matter when you aren’t even responsible for growing the wealth!
Exactly! These bootlickers act like Bezos is the one that's throwing packages over my fence.
You see, the reasoning is that if you take money away from rich people they will not work. If you take money away from poor people they'll be more productive. Maybe they can take all the money from the rich so that they'll be incentivized to work harder.
You misspelled greed.
He’s young and not yet wise.
You may not like it, but humans respond to incentives--and food (affordable grocery stores), shelter (affordable housing), and family (not getting deported by ICE) are the biggest ones.
So when did libertarians start simping for billionaires? Billionaires will be alright, kid. They won’t stop making money just because they pay their fair share of taxes.
So for you thinking is one of those things that other people do
What an absolute bunch of horseshit.
This is a truly awful take. It completely ignores the vast majority of human existence, where money didn't exist, yet somehow we survived, discovered, created, and spread our species across the entire world.
Lmao even one of the doge goons admitted that this was patently false. You’re full of shit. .
we invented everything from computers to space travel when we had a top marginal tax rate of 90%.
Und Almost everything was invented with government money but is being exploited pretty much without paying taxes that fund new research leading to new discoveries (which might create competition)
shut up shut up shut up
Wrong, idiot.
Wrong. It will spread the opportunity around. One thousand millionaires instead of one billionaire.
Bezos isn't the only one with rich parents who can fund his startup idea.
You want to talk incentive ... try watching a child die from hunger, exposure or preventable disease. That should be incentive enough for billionaires to PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE ... just like the rest of us do. All the money in the world won't help if there's no one left to buy your stuff.
“You may not like it, but I have an understanding of economics and psychology that couldn’t get me a passing grade in a high school class”
Once someone becomes super-rich the incentives become really perverse and counter-productive to society. They no longer have to tolerate people who disagree with them, leading to worse, more insular decision-making. They power that comes with money leads to actions to only protect their own power.
Setting aside Bill Gates, this generation's crop of vacuous self-worshipping billionaires have contributed nothing but cheap shit & chat, while stealing our creations, our data, our privacy, our money, & our rights. But now they're killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Ask Elon Musk.
Speaking of wasting money, Jeff Bezos just rented out the whole city of Venice for his second wedding.
You're not a very good journalist.
You're truly a fucking moron.
Oh no. Fewer penis rockets. Fewer space tourists. How will we ever go on?🙄
Lol, holy shit this one was funny. Who are you? I want to know how you got such a fucked up view of reality. I want to learn your understanding and use of logic and reasoning. It's simply baffling.
Do you know anything about government?
State should be doing good for the people, and that's called a SERVICE, which is not a waste of money
Thought, to be completely clear, view that USPS and other services should be revenue generating as if they are business, is not new, capitalists have been peddling it for decades Interestingly, they never held all services to that same standard, for example police and the army and ICE etc.
Willy Onion.
Sir, this is an Arby’s.
bunion.
oh man, where will we find big genius people who might know of other (even bigger - gasp!) incentives you fetus brained dipshit, lmao imagine believe this as an adult 💀
This guy gets it. Why is the federal minimum wage still $7.25 as it was when this was made 10 𝙮𝙧𝙨 𝙖𝙜𝙤 And why do "𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙧𝙞𝙘𝙝" avoid paying taxes? Some of them have more money than some small nations. Do fuck off!!
Rich people and the GOP are really good at wasting money. If the state is controlled by them, then there is a good chance of money being wasted. Not all states are that way though so your statement is false.
This is so embarrassing for you
Is this why governments use torture? Yes, it is fair.
Who gives a shit
And everyone else here has an incentive to stop coddling the super rich whose companies have taken everything. Our incentive is money too. Weird!
Amazon wouldn't survive without USPS Fact
And all other infrastructure, like roads.
Oh Billy
This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. There exist incentives besides just money and money ceases to be a good incentive after a point. And, you don’t even know how Amazon makes their money.
being good to humans and the planet is the only incentive i need and it's sad, pathetic, and repugnant that you think money should replace that
lol, I’m sorry man. But the “people will never start companies if they think they’ll never personally make $1 Billion” argument, is such a ridiculous claim Not a single person would stop what they’re doing while saying “well this isn’t worth it for a measly $875 Million”
I think they might. OTOH that's exactly the person we WANT to stop what they're doing!
You mean like building prisons in swamps? or a wall that won't do anything except fuck up the border?
or launching rockets so rich people can say they went to space while polluting the air with toxic shit? he's wonderful.
Almost as good as the suburban wastrel with a mountain of pointless shit in the garage (after a brief appearance on the porch)
Go back to your nazi audience on x, they appreciate your insincere bootlicking more.
Yeah, no-one would ever bother getting out of bed unless they could make at least $200bn. That's why only like two people in the entire world have a job WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
"Oh man, I was so ready to spend my entire life living in mansions and fucking supermodels in my gold-plated bedroom until I realised I'd *only* have enough unimaginable wealth for one lifetime. I guess I'll live in squalor instead."
“the state is really good at wasting money” is a wild statement to make in defense of a dude who just blew $50M on his second wedding
The state spends money efficiently. What you see as waste is a manifested obligation to serve everyone regardless of profitability. Corporations pick and choose their business and customers to maximize profitability. It's the responsibility of the state to provide unprofitable public goods.
No because corporations are about profit. Democracy is about looking after every person in our society. Very different goals and priorities.
Capitalism really is just a mental illness at this point isn’t it?
Norman Borlaug is credited with saving over a billion lives and get he did so without being a billionaire.
ohhhh you're a weirdo libertarian. I get it now.
I've said it for decades: you can tell that the government will never consolidate itself when during a bad economic downturn if it does that or if it borrows money until the economy improves. It always does the latter...
If you have $100,000,000, and your decisions in life are still motivated by acquiring money, that starts to seem like disordered thinking.
Honestly, my theory is that once you have that much, every single aspect of your life is taken care of and worry free. So the only real drive you have left is absolute power/control because there is LITERALLY nothing else to work for in life... 1/2
So you start coming up with reasons you could solve whatever. It doesnt even matter what it is and you're most likely wrong and how to do it. But who's gonna tell you no? But the one thing you need is more $, because you need to control the 5 remaining guys.
Source
Amazon n Microsoft running a monopoly is actually great! Lmfao. Monopolies are so great they are actually illegal but who's counting Lmfao
Everybody responds to incentives. Duh. It is about stepping on the working class on your way up. Do no harm. With your vast wealth, do no harm. That's it. Enjoy and work doing what you love. But don't allow the moc to take healthcare away so that you get a bigger tax break. Do no harm.
Bezos is using his money and influence now to get behind and support an administration that’s creating a militarized domestic police force and blow up the deficit with tax cuts and spending.
Bezos goes out of his way to pay his fair share of taxes. Imagine if he did. as Warren Buffet said, if every billionaire paid their taxes, then we could lower the tax rate and even eliminate some for lower income earners.
If you’d told any of those people 30 years ago that they could earn up to $1B but after that it would be, say, 95% taxed, pretty sure they would all have built the same businesses, but with a lot more profit shared with employees, charity etc along the way
every tech bro joining the DOGE to remove waste from the government has been surprised at how little waste happens in the government because their experience is based on how the multinational tech megacorps are run businesses that become too big to fail are infinitely more wasteful than any state
not only is eliminating the billionaire class generally good for humanity, it's fairly evident their removal is essential for a healthy market economy. Allowing anything to be so, so rich and powerful, such that parts of the business failing Doesn't Matter, perverts market forces all around it
Incentives seem to be almost no taxes, buying politicians for favorable laws/carve outs, and paying wages so low people need govt assistance. Some billionaires don’t fit that mode, but so many do.
I can’t think of any who don’t, if there were ethical billionaires they wouldn’t be billionaires. Just look at Craig Newmark and MacKenzie Scott.
I was thinking Warren Buffett who hasn’t to my knowledge been the same as Bezos and others.
Jimmy Buffet seemed to have managed it. But it's the very rare person who can do something which isn't viciously rentier/exploitative to get that rich.
Oh I think toppling, democratically elected, foreign governments is pretty damn bad
Buffett’s just more old school, more in the Rockefeller and Carnegie mold where he wants to be remembered as a philanthropist first and a rich guy second. Also being an investment banker instead of an industrialist or tycoon gives him a much lower profile than the Bezoses and Gateses of the world.
I could be wrong, but I haven’t read about Buffett trying to buy favor w politicians or ask for tax cuts like Silicon Valley. I think he’s even said the rich should be paying more in taxes and he’s happy to pay them. And he’s not out there buying lots of huge houses/yachts and underpaying workers.
He’s said a lot of crap, but his businesses are as cutthroat as any billionaires, with Burlington Northern as one example.
Investment bankers are maybe the most insidious rich people because they’re literally only in it for the money. There’s also a built-in firewall between them and whatever shady crap the companies they invest in get up to.
Well gosh if he just isn’t the golly gee darn nicest little investor in Auld Omaha
Commercial banks and investment banks need to be different animals again.
Ideally they’d cease to exist altogether, money is a purely human construct and only has value because we’re told it has value. It would be nice if we could just go back to the barter system.
He’s an investment banker, he has no workers to underpay because his companies don’t produce anything. The companies he invests in, on the other hand…
Buffett is actually a perfect example of how useless billionaires are. He talks a good game, but the only thing he’s ever really done is sit back and watch his money make more money. The world would be no different if he never existed.
Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett's company, has a HUGE number of employees. He has without a doubt made an impact on the world.
So, changes in regulations would mean less Epstein pedophiles like Bill Gates, and less Union Busting Sweat shop owners like Bezos? That is a net positive for the world, you know.
The idea that government wastes money, while the private sector spends it responsibly and in a way that benefits society is such stupid and plainly false propaganda that it amazes me people are still dense enough to fall for it.
Elon Musk blows up a rocket, doesn’t take the necessary time to fully understand the root causes, and then blows up another. Lather, rinse, repeat. … not at all wasteful 🙄
That government should be run like a business that must turn profit 🤬
IMO it says a ton about the privileges we have/had that the mechanisms in place seem that easy to replace, let alone make money off of it.
Meta/Facebook spent $100 billion on the Metaverse. Was that money well spent? Was society benefited by that spending?
We got legs!!
Nobody’s arguing against the idea of incentives. But people start companies because they think they’ve got an awesome useful product or idea—so much so that—secondarily—they’ll make a bunch of money as well. They can’t ever predict how much. Useful profitable work is the point, not billions.
Why is making the world a better place for everyone not a good enough incentive? Because for many people who made the world a better place, that was incentive enough. Why shouldn't we allow better people to make the world a better place?
If you think I'm making a subjective value judgment about who has better motives, so are you.
But you think that governments don't actually provide useful services, so you're not going to care. I know you have lots of bullshit arguments about why your libertarian nonsense makes more sense, but you're wrong, and I don't want to hear about why you're right, because you're not.
You can admit that you think greed is good, which is objectively wrong, or you can shut up.
I know this doesn't sound like rational argument, but I'm sick of that. Defend yourself, or stop. Stop assuming that wealth motivates people, and defend it, explain why it should be the case. I want to see a defense of billionaires that actually makes the moral case that they should exist.
Not the practical case, not the realist case, the moral case. Prove it. Show me a good reason why the worst instincts of humanity should be preeminent in our culture. Billionaires should not exist because they are evil. Prove that I'm wrong.
All you have to do is look around at the world we live in and make the case that we are better off with a few people being fabulously wealthy and most people struggling to survive. That should be easy, right?
It's a simple premise: there is much unnecessary suffering in the world, and if the system which allows for billionaires could get rid of it, it would have. Therefore, that system either cannot get rid of unnecessary suffering, and should be abandoned, or it doesn't want to, so it is evil.
Defend the very system that we live under, or admit that we should abolish it.
Your argument relies on assuming that the person you're addressing does not qualify as human.
The state is not really good at wasting money this is just objectively not true. Overhead costs on public services are lower pretty consistently.
if there's one thing (non-military) government agencies are generally good at, it's efficiency and beurocracy and there's a certain political establishment that hates that and tries to artificially inject waste and bloat into them to justify privatization.
the USPS could very well post profits some years if they weren't legally required in 2006 to start putting money into pre-funding the next 75 years of retirement plans, a thing that no other company or government agency has to do.
The USPS does not actually have to do that anymore, thanks to Joe Biden, along with..... wait for it.... Louis DeJoy. No, really! I was surprised too. The Postal Reform Act had a lot of great stuff in it. There could always be more, but it fixed the biggest problems.
spoken like someone that lives with their parents.
These ppl did do all these things but none of it turned out to be a net positive for humanity. None of it.
Billionaires waste money by hoarding it for themselves when others need it. They burn through planetary resources--which belongs to all living things in the truest sense--in a fruitless, soulless search for status and luxury.
Pick up a book on marginal economics. Any book is fine. Pick it up and read it.
Corporations are fantastic at wasting money. The just get to pile their losses and dept into shell corps to 'dispose' of them - and when they REALLY screw the pooch, remind me who has to bail out Wall St every time? That would be the taxpayers.
There's the little noted fact that Amazon blatantly violated antitrust and anti monopoly laws by intentionally operating at a massive loss in order to drive most of their competition out of business in order to monopolize the online delivery sector. So by 'innovate' you mean 'broke the law'.
Another person who thinks he’s so smart, showing how ignorant he really is.
Billy I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I've heard this before.
oh, I see. so those billionaires can hurt smaller business owners and their own employees, but that's ok. it's not ok to hurt billionaires' wallets though. if they truly wanted to 'change the world', they wouldn't be billionaires
Without capitalist innovation we wouldn’t have planned obsolescence and new and interesting forms of slavery
Greatest capitalist innovation in the last 2 decades: private equity
Private health insurance has entered the chat
or the frontal lobotomy
this might be one of the bleakest reminders on these replies but honestly OP could use one
Plus like, the sears catalog is from the 1880s, he didn't even innovate anything.
My childhood best friend’s dad got a literal donkey as a Christmas present ordered from that catalog as a child. Amazon can’t do that
quite literally the only reason why amazon took off is cause it offered the one thing sears refused to offer: online ordering it’s the same shit as blockbuster
and blockbuster got saddled with a billion dollars of debt by the private ewuity vultures who bought it. it wasn't allowed a chance to survive
Well, I’d argue that it was slightly more complicated than that but also due to antitrust stuff being hella weaker as of their founding and onwards, which had all sorts of spicy implications.
I mean holy hells AWS should have been Ma Belled a *while* ago, etc
Amazon, literally does price fixing and market manipulation.
Yes, they benefit from/abuse antitrust protections being weak right now.
The only reason Amazon survived the Dot Com Bubble was they took advantage of the tax breaks and subsidies routinely handed out to failing companies while they spent their first 20 years of business in the red. By every metric they should’ve gone POOF! back in 2003 with Pets.Com
Writing off shipping costs as marketing expenses was Deep Magic.
And his company was able to be in the red for so long in part because it was propped up by his very wealthy mother and step-father
They also undercut smaller businesses (and bought some of them out) bc they were ALLOWED to run at a deficit bc of subsidies. And Amazon exploita workers. And if you have many, many millions$, your money literally makes more money! He could be taxed a few mill a year & would still be a billionaire.
Bill Gates did the exact same thing building his empire, he was so notorious for buying and immediately killing smaller companies back in the ‘90s they made a joke about it on the Simpsons. youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE?...
did any one mention how he remained firm friends with Epstein up until his death?
Yeah, his wife mentioned it
Sorry, *ex-wife
Pretty solid episode
He was a villain for so long. Then he did the philanthropy grift to rehabilitate his image and it worked
Yeah, his “Foundation” is nothing more than a $90 billion tax shelter he uses to buy vaccine patents and manipulate poor countries’ healthcare systems.
not just healthcare! he also does it for agriculture—destroying self-sufficient agricultural systems and practices and supplanting them with unsustainable monoculture using GMO seeds that create neocolonial dependencies on the “West”
He also decided he knew everything about education and forced schools to adopt his pet policies, leading to results so bad that the Rand Corporation couldn't even support them in good conscience
Did work, though not on me. I worked for one of those companies (not that he bought, but that he squeezed by forcing manufacturers to always bundle his software so nobody else could compete). I loathe him, even if he says some decent things now.
He doesn’t even really say anything decent, he’s still the same giant piece of shit he’s always been.
He also sued the hell out of everyone distributing free software that did the same things that Microsoft software did. The irony is the free software was always better than Microsoft's paid versions because the freeware was programmed by passionate computer scientists trying to better the world.
They operated at a loss for years and relied on billionaire investors to keep them alive as they bankrupted their competition by keeping prices artificially low, then once the competition was gone they raised prices and monopolized the market
For the record, that's not why Blockbuster failed. Viacom bought it up, unloaded a ton of debt onto it, then spun it off into a stand alone company again. That new company was driven into the ground by Carl Icahn's meddling stopping them from fixes because he wanted a private equity cash out.
Am I the only person who feels that Icahn needs to be investigated for violations of RICO statutes?
The state waters far less money than these fucking corporations, clown. They also serve different functions.
what “incentives” do corporations have to not steal from their employees when they’re never held accountable for stealing from their employees ?
They can exist, they don't need to be billionaires. That's the point of the story. No hoarding money. The robber barons of the past spent their fortune instead of being taxed for it. We need a more aggressive tax code for billionaires. America grew when the upper tax rate was 90%.
where incentives end, manipulation begins. that's where capitalism operates.
You’re a moron.
Delete your account.
Bezos? Changing the world for the better? Amazon drivers were or are peeing in bottles because they get punished for being 5 minutes late. Its slave labor. He'd rather have robots and AI run the company and put everyone on the street to save more money to put in his vault.
My God, you are a needy little bitch.
You really need to take some college courses on economics.
The person who discovered i sulin refused to patent it because he felt it was too importanta discovery. Pasteur didn't hold out on sharing pasteurization waiting for a big payday. Prigress has never required massive financial incentive. Thats a lie billionaires tell to keep being able to hoard $
The typos are going to kill me. As is the autocorrect that seems to be getting worse.
And all of them got there by exploiting things that wouldn't exist in the first place without the state. The ports, road networks, etc Amazon needs to deliver goods: The state. The semiconductors and microchips Gates needed: govt funded research The internet for that search engine: DARPA.
You don't understand the government or how it works
LMAO... broken parts littering the ocean as another rocket for goes no where.. and another guy rents Venice for the weekend... Waste not.
And they say journalism is dead.
God bless, for someone who is claiming a lot of intellectual superiority, you lack creativity to imagine that capitalism isn't the leading edge choice. You're fucking GREAT!
Propaganda. Did Bezos waste any money? Hell yeah he did
Ahh there it is at the end. The libertarian delusion that the state wastes money, presented as a de-facto truth, while the hoarding, by individuals, of more money than they could spend in dozens of lifetimes is somehow useful. Spending money grows economies, not watching huge numbers grow huger.
The person who invented insulin sold the patent for a dollar to attempt to ensure ppl had access to this *lifesaving* thing. Bezos supports an authoritarian government willing kick 11 million ppl of Medicaid so he can avoid paying taxes on his 100 billion plus fortune.
[CITATIONS NEEDED]
I'm curious how much you've spent on that looks. Shilling for billionaires must help, but nothing will fix your soul
Hard to imagine having to live under an income cap of like half a billion smackers, I’ll admit. What’s the point of existence if you can’t even rent Venice for the weekend?
Humans respond to incentives, but the response is non-linear and heavily subject to diminishing marginal returns. In other words, it is folly to assume that if 100 million incentivizes some amount x of desirable things, then 200 million will incentivize 2x of desirable things.
He's not gonna fuck you, dude
I mean. Any more than he's fucking the entire planet.
Billy is too young to remember (and apparently to capitalism pilled to care) that tax rates before Reagan (?) were MUCH higher and there was even MORE innovation and economic growth. And Christian Nationalist oligarchs didn’t have enough $ to buy a government.
You are full of shit. You tell me to shut up and be happy with serfdom. While broligarchs steal taxes so I can suffer more. While broligarchs stand behind a christofascist kleptocracy with hands grasping for more, cash dropping out of their already over stuffed pockets. Get bent. #SerfsUp
sorry i'm not listening to a person who calls themselves billy binion
À billybinionaire is someone with a billion takes, all of them dumber than the last.
My only incentive to work is for the sheer pleasure of working 40+ hrs/driving an hour total to get there so my CEO can buy a private jet just for board members and major shareholders. I as a non billionaire do not need money or incentive to work! I have truly found nirvana. I am the best person.
Right, unlike super-geniuses such as Bezos and Musk, who wisely throw their -- and sometimes *our* -- money at their own dick rockets and nine-figure weddings.
Were you dropped on your head as a baby?
How do I incentivize you to make less shitty posts?
How do Ronald Reagan's balls taste?
Like embalming fluid. Yum.
Government also funded the research that created virtually every bit of the technology used to create those fortunes, created and maintained the secure and trusted financial system that allowed them to raise capital, the legal system that protects them, educated their workforce and customers, etc.
Trickle down has never, ever, ever trickled down, like ever.
The only reason Jeff Bezos had a chance at building an online bookstore and Sergey Bin could make a search engine was because the government spent decades and billions of dollars creating the internet
And Bezos’ dad gave him $250k
Thought it was more!
It certainly could be.
>Amazon has done more for the average person than the government... idk, man, the govt gets me clean water, electricity, police & fire coverage, vaccines, safe food & drink at restaurants & grocery stores, overtime after 40hrs, a safe workplace, I could keep going. Amazon is good, but come on.
Wasn’t there a Black Mirror episode where the last remnants of collapsed civilization are trying (but fail) to destroy the automated factories that continued to spew out products for long dead customers?
You are a fucking nitwit
Have you ever worked for Amazon? Bezos could well afford to pay his employees a decent wage & improve their working conditions.
He’s married dude
1. Improving other people’s lives doesn’t have to be the responsibility of one person. In fact it shouldn’t be the responsibility of just one person. 2. He’d have to do a lot less to improve the quality of other people’s lives if a lot of that money he had went to the bottom 50% of society.
Oh, did he build a guillotine? Is he going to do a demonstration for us?
He makes 9.6 Billion a year. If he was taxed down to making a tenth of that, would he not get out of bed for 96 million a year?
That’s quite the claim that has no datapoints to suggest this is the case. Jeff Bezos isn’t out there building power plants and curing diseases ffs. And lately, he’s using his vast fortune and control over media he owns to harm democracy.
Bezos invests in things that actually make people's lives worse - just ask the workers on pitiful wages, denied toilet breaks and banned from union membership.
So glad bookstores don't exist anymore
Huh?
Bezos put the vast majority of brick and mortar bookstores out of business
Which was not a good thing
Name one thing he's done for the average person.
imagine being this goddamned stupid
Their bold workplace innovations like "turning off air conditioning" and "peeing in bottles" are sure to catch on.
Ya,he gives so much to his workers! 👍🏼
And don't forget "making people stay at work when a tornado is coming"
Bezos isn't improving a goddamn thing, you fucking worm
I think it’s trying to communicate…
capitalism makes people think like serfs
Thats fucking insane. Most people went to public school. Are you saying Amazon has done more for most people than getting a k-12 education???
Well, which is it, Amazon or Bezos? They aren't the same thing.
do you imagine that domination over your fellow humans is what motivates most people to innovate and create
Amazon did no such thing, lol
Yes. We strip their billions as tax and use it to invest in the world in the way we as people think it's best (because democratic elections) to improve people's lives, instead of just this 1 person making the decisions.
@billybinion.bsky.social I can actually tell you exactly how he invested his personal wealth as a side project. It was to fund Blue Origin. I am quite confident that space travel is not a first level problem for the 7 billion inhabitants of this planet
Exactly, he even said "SPACE!" was the only way he could think of to spend his "Amazon lottery winnings"—where people could hear.
Subscribe & save Koolaid customer.
Lmao
Please Google last mile postal service
leftymathprof.wordpress.com/endcap/#top
Considering the govt paid for the research and laid the foundation for the internet, that’s, at minimum, very myopic statement Not to mention funding vaccinations, life-saving medical research, public education, space exploration, etc. But praise be! Jeff Bezos made it easier to get stuff…
I came here for the ratio and have seldom been so pleased
Amazon uses the roads the govt built You're just being purposefully stupid because people upset you
I’m an economist and there is very strong evidence that, at scale, this isn’t true. Higher marginal tax rates at that level of wealth do not substantially reduce investment. And there are many negative externalities of extreme inequality.
Given that America's strongest growth period coincided with some of its highest marginal tax rates, I think it's pretty clear that by themselves they do little to hamper investment and growth.
Not to mention that after all this time we really do know definitively that trickle down economics is not a thing and it doesn’t work
you don’t have to be an economist to know this is complete bullshit.
Bezos… Improve people’s lives…
Actually if you strip billions from Jeff Bezos, he’ll still have a couple hundred billion left.
People have died without basics because Bezos thinks he knows best. Billionaires are not reviewed through an ethics boards or ever taking responsibility mistakes. Professional folks know what the community needs. Not some white guy assuaging their guilt. They make choices & create real damage.
Amazon has done more thing to disadvantage, harm exploit other unformatate people who have to work with him. They have to wear diapers because toilet breaks aren't allowed. Look him up and read the damage that he has caused.
“You can still be rich even if you’re not a billionaire!” No shit, Billy. That’s the entire fucking point. You don’t need twelve lifetimes of wealth while half the damn country is drowning in debt and choosing between meds or rent. #EatTheRich #TouchGrassYouGhoul
And Bezos “investing less” is your idea of a threat? Oh no, not fewer warehouse death traps, pee bottles, and union busting lawyers! 😱 The only thing Bezos builds is a bigger margin between your labor and his yacht. #JeffNeedsMoreRocketsLikeWeNeedScurvy
“Amazon has done more for the average person than the government…” Oh please, you fucking twat—Amazon gave us next-day shipping and a culture of burnout. The government gave you fucking roads, water, air traffic control, FEMA, and your damn student loans. #LibertarianBrainworms 🧠🪱
This fucking bootlicker logic is wild: “Don’t tax billionaires—they might stop building things!” Cool. They can stop. They’ve built enough palaces and tax shelters. Let literally anyone else have a turn. #YouAreNotRichBilly #StopSimpingForOverlords 🛑🤑
Ahh yes, a trickle down economics argument. Solid ground you're standing on there
I agree people shouldn't just pile on you, but the problem is, your understanding of economics and even simply practical policy is just: wrong.
Treats faster
Whatever incentivizing role it may have had in producing innovation, this level of wealth concentration is producing worse outcomes with each passing year The DOGE debacle is what happens when you permit unchecked accumulation: a guy buys an election and installs himself at the levers of power
No it hasn't That's literally not true You have no clue what the government does Are you also someone who says this about SpaceX vs NASA
Amazon hasn't done more for the average prime member than the federal government has done for the average prime member over a similar timeframe. Your assertion is just some sloppy blurb from a Nordquist pamphlet. Don't tipe those out, just get more sleep and exercise and let those thoughts pass.
Trickle down… makes a comeback? I don’t like this 80’s reboot.
Bwahahahaha
The ignorance of this statement is bottomless. The civil servants of our government have literally saved millions of us from disease, poverty, death, wildfire, dying broke and alone. Bezos used *government-created technology* delivered via gov-built roads, to make shopping easier before others.
This is the dumbest thing I have ever read on here OR Twitter - congrats!
What this tells me is you have zero idea how business works.
Amazon’s business model—delivering stuff to homes—would not be viable without the roads the government maintains, or USPS providing “last mile” delivery in places where it’s not profitable to deliver. You know this.
You're deepthroating the boot so hard you're prolapsing
lol. 2014 called, they want their bad takes back.
if we threaten jeff bezos with becoming 2% less rich, he'll stop making bottles his employees need to piss in.
This has been proven wrong in just about every way it can be. I am so sick of this 8th grade understanding of the world.
You can't possibly believe your last sentence.
For example, Amazon takes online (government) orders that are quickly delivered on roads (government).
Some of you motherfuckers should have everything the govt has done that made the fucking world you live in stripped the fuck away from you so you can see how quickly your babysoft asses beg for someone to recreate it. Idiot.
I'd pay to see that.
Amazon has NOT done more than DARPA, you cunt.
DARPA is fucking amazing.
Well, was. Because I think the funding was cut.
For fucks sake, OF COURSE it was.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
lol
Amazon responsible for so many brick and mortar stores closing Jeff Bezos is destroying the American economy
⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️
Are you 12? Or do you just have the reasoning skills of a 12 year old?
If you're so confident, let's try stripping billions for a decade or so and see if, I dunno, Amazon totally collapses because one guy is only worth hundreds of millions instead of billions. Amazon existed before the $1B mark, I think it'll exist there again.
Also, I’m old enough to remember that we all got along just fine without Amazon. On balance, we would probably be better off without its competition-killing existence, in fact.
Another OBinion for the ages.. tell me what the difference is if we benefit from the investments of like 1,000 multimillionaires or just one large asshole like Bezos?
He’s not gonna fuck you Billy
I sort of agree with your overall point, but the last sentence here is fucking insane
ARE YOU REALLY THIS DUMB???
He's not gonna hire you as a personal assistant.
You’re a fucking idiot
lol
Just 😂 at the level of stupid here
How much pickling in propaganda does an American brain have to undergo in order to get a person to say something like "Amazon has done more good for the average person than the government"?
Seriously, how did you get this way?
I'd say, 250 years plus the length of time that the British Empire was around for.
rich people don't spend *their* money they spend *yours*
Read a book
Dog brain ⬆️
I wouldn't classify slave camps preying on the poor to deliver you the latest Alexa-controlled dog massage bed in twenty four hours an actual improvement to people's lives, Billy.
You still believe that shit lol. So wild
Billionaires don’t invest in that sort of thing. Amazon gets no money from Bezos, Tesla gets nothing from Musk. Corporations have their own money that they do stuff with, they don’t leave it with their dad’s for safe keeping
Completely lala thinking
Complete bullshit. Computers, the interstate highway system, GPS, medical advancements, drug and food safety were brought by gov’t, not f’n Amazon. They exploit them to enrich themselves and you get the advancement of getting your hair cream delivered to your door, next day.
Yeah making employees pee in water bottles does wonders for humanity.
He didn’t do anything that creative or valuable. Improved society in little to now way. Just figured out a way to make himself more money. That’s not valuable. We’d all be fine without Amazon. And certainly any number of people would’ve done anything he did because it’s truly average.
None of this matters when he has the power to dilute my vote. Fuck Bezos.
Taxes don’t disappear into thin air, they are redistributed into gov. programs that go towards the common good. So, instead of relying on the individual charity of a multibillionaire, which is not enough, government can afford to provide much needed services to its people.
Billy Binion has a silly opinion.
Fuck off. He can pay 80-90 tax like they did in the 50s and actually support the society that enables them. Him paying 10% or less. FUCK NO
Social security is more important for the average person than Amazon is.
They absolutely the fuck have not. Amazon doesn't exist without a government actually building a regulatory state that allows them to exist. Change your kneepads you rich prick cocksucker.
Amazon hasn't done shit for me except make me realize how many people value sitting on their sofas and getting cheap stuff delivered more than they value their freedom. I wish I would buy anything from him. No Amazon. No WaPo. I don't even go to Whole Foods anymore.
Perhaps there is a theoretical point where acquiring money is no longer providing extra human flourishing? Is this possible to critique as a libertarian?
No, The marginal utility of money is much lower to a billionaire because more money will not improve their lives. You will get much more investment out of multiple millionaires because they have more to gain.
This is the dumbest thing anyone has ever said lmao. Before did more for people than Medicaid and the military and the founders by opening an online store with someone else's money? Psychotic.
Amazon is getting worse all the time. Look around at all the enshittified tech companies, you couldn't be more wrong.
This, “The Rich will invest less!” argument has nothing backing it. And no, Amazon has not done more for the average person than the government.
The public transportation infrastructure that Amazon relies on, maybe?
🐎💩 He said the only thing he could do with all that wealth was build his penis rockets. He doesn’t do shit for us.
Do you think if the money is taken away, it just vanishes? Do you believe people just want to take all his money and burn it in a big pile like the joker? Hoarding wealth actively stagnates economies, as evidenced by every deeply unequal society. It doesn't get "reinvested" it gets hidden offshore.
Rich people buy existing businesses and fire people to put money in their pockets. The idea that jobs come from a job creator's brain is a myth and it's dumb as dog shit.
from the bin
he invests in cool stuff like making a museum into a house and building a noah's ark for himself and his servants
No, China has.
Wrong lol
Lol. The gubbermint brought us clean, chlorinated water; eradicated smallpox & nearly eradicated several other diseases; & banned lead paint. The gubbermint today makes sure the streets aren't full of rabid dogs & that you can read books for free, & that your house doesn't burn down in a fire.
bro things jeff bezos would do more to help people's lives than tax dollars rather than invent the Amazon Slave Ranch for his employees
Making this statement proves you are an idiot and invalidates you argument . I won't be reading any further. Good luck with your billionaire bootlicking you toady ass loser
Man, this is fuuuun reading the replies.🤣
I’d rather have universal healthcare than Amazon Pharmacy giving me a better price on meds.
Amzn has finished what the boxstores started - destroying main street business by shoveling slave made garbage at us, which has helped usher in a new guilded age & time of immense political instability. Not to mention the cost that On Demand delivery of every conceivable good might have on humanity.
"Jeff Bezos made goods cheaper & quickly accessible." ... by skirting regulations and abusing workers. Yes, please tell me more about how I can help slow down this sort of "innovation".
if amerzon and the federal government of the united states of america are somehow literally the only two possible options, something has gone horribly horribly wrong
Name one thing Jeff Bezos has actually created from his vast wealth that is a true revolution in our existence? Ohhh he made stores that deliver to you and pays people slave wages to operate. Wow, such progress.
You are not very smart lmfao.
Amazon could not EXIST without the government. Ya think those roads built themselves? Ya think the internet grew on a tree? Did Amazon birth all the workers who toil there? Provide their education and healthcare? Who created the dollars they trade in?
I see you're getting a lot of grief for this take. just wanted to say that you absolutely deserve it.
What fucking fish wrap newspaper pays someone as stupid as this guy to be a "journalist?" A high school freshman should not be this pig-ignorant, let alone an adult who writes for a living.
Did you get the taint before or after licking those balls?
You're incredibly stupid
“he’ll invest less in building things that actually improve people’s lives.”
I'd say you have a punchable face but by the looks of it many people have already been there done that
I dunno man, I innovated “urinate in a bottle” without any of the the wage slavery or union-busting
Honestly what was the last thing these tech dipshits actually came up with that advanced people's lives? Building out a network of gas burning vehicles operated by people on sub-minimum wage workers with no benefits just to get your treats delivered a few days earlier is not anything anyone needs
My man invests in garbage and his employees have to piss in bottles while driving What if the shit you said were based in reality instead of whatever the fuck this is
Amazon doesn't provide us with education, national defense, advances in healthcare...you're full of baloney.
Good. Let Bezos invest less. If he's leaving money on the table, some other capitalist will swoop in and claim it, no? Isn't that how you guys say it works? Cool rationality? Much better to have a thousand millionaires than one billionaire.
Hey quick question how many small businesses did Amazon kill?
Amazon and Jeff Bezos are a parasite on our economy. They don't pay enough wages, so we subsidize their employees with our taxes. Also environmental and financial costs of making it easy to buy plastic shit no one needs, and sucking money out of local economies. Amazon is a net negative for society.
"Amazon has done more for the average person than the government could dream of." Best place in the world to find cheap counterfeit crap.
so you think we should simply allow jeff bezos to hold the entire world hostage to his whims instead
It’s a plausible theory. Is there data to support it? I think it’s possible that there is some point where diminishing returns might kick in. For example, how much more innovation does society receive when income increases from 100 million to 1 billion? Or from 1 billion to 10 billion?
Him spending money on mega yachts, private plans and whatever the fuck else he spends his money on does not improve peoples lives. It mostly makes them worse.
Like what? ONE example.
If bezos had less money that means other people would have more money. Thats how a resource works. Also, he eats up the competition and has created an online marketplace monopoly. You’re just a shill. Eat shit
He's a moron, but this is like saying you love your first kid less after you have your second. Money is not a finite resource.
Money is not a finite resource - but it is absolutely a competitive one. If you and I each have 100 dollars we each can 'affore' 50% of the goods in the market. But if a third person enters and is given 900 dollars, you and can now only afford 5% of the goods in the market, due to inflation.
We’re all in the same market for resources that cost money. Money is backed by physical resources which in fact, are finite.
Obviously there are limits to physical resources - but the existence of billionaires absolutely makes the rest of us poorer, pricing us out of markets where they actually spend their money. Real estate is a big one, capital markets are another, and most crucially the political 'market'.
Im not the one you have to argue about with that point It’s impossible to have infinite money. It is finite at any given time. I know I’m not an economist but you cannot have more or less than something than in the present moment. You have what you have and it is evenly distributed or not
Sure. Nothing is infinite, period. But you can for example pump the value of some pointless imaginary asset to the point where it essentially renders all other avenues of achievement or incentive nearly irrelevant - and then a lot of people who work for a living starve.
Soooo tax the rich. Got it
It ain't a complex plan, it's true.
No one ever denied this. It is the absurd, "every dollar they have is one you don't have" and "money is backed by physical resources" that I object to. If you're going to argue that billionaires shouldn't exist, you should at least have basic facts correct if you want to be taken seriously.
It's basic math. There is no debating the fact that someone else having more money dilutes your buying power. If you don't understand how that works then any further economic discussion becomes a waste of time.
It's important because the mere existence of billionaires severely distorts the political system in ways that the existence of mere millionaires does not. It is by no means a stretch to say that their very presence is among the most severe problems modern society faces.
Most money in this day and age is not backed by a physical resource.
Money is not a finite resource, but I think it’s manifestly true one of the reasons that Bezos is a billionaire is because of how he has worked to keep money out of his workers’ pockets.
Sure. But the argument is was responding to was literally that me having a dollar more is a dollar less for someone else, and that's wrong. It's also the same zero-sum thinking that people use to argue against things like welfare, socialized healthcare, etc.
Yes it is exactly that way! At any given time there is a finite amount of money in the world and people who are poor have less access to said money. It’s not a stupid argument at all. You just bought into capitalism and you really do not understand the game monopoly either.
I didn't think this conversation could get dumber, but I was wrong.
Well with folks like you voting we’ll continue to have subscriptions for literally every human need. ✌️
because i am magnanimous i will give you what you seek: you stupid fuckshit
Who cares? If Bezos didn't have it, the workers would. And they would keep the business running. Because they *are*.
It doesn't matter if *he* invests less, because *we* can invest using the money we took off him.
do you have any idea how much a billion dollars is? how impossible it would be to spend that much money in several lifetimes, let alone one? my proposal: tax all wealth over $1 billion at 99% then throw billionaires parades and name schools after them. everyone will be happier that way.
That is not true, at all. These uber-competitive, smart, people aren't just going to stop. But just because they've been successful doesn't mean we bend over and let them fuck everyone else. If they decide to stop investing, some other smart person will come along and take their place.
he built amazon when the incentive was millions of dollars, it’s been progressively worse for customers with every billion dollars he’s made, hope that helps!
So you think Bezos will shut down Amazon if he gets taxed a bit higher? How delusional are you?
If you strip millions from workers pensions, they'll invest less in building things that actually improve people's lives.....
Amazon was built on systematic sales tax avoidance, union busting, public subsidies and exploitation of low wage workers. Part of what you are talking about is the will to do things that a lot of folks would just see as immoral.
Don't forget blatant and massive violations of antitrust laws.
Public subsidies are always a huge part of these guys path to claw their way to the top It’s become pretty apparent that musk never actually gave a shit about electric cars and fossil fuels. Tesla is his personal vehicle to siphon off public funds
And telling that Musk isn't one of the examples used here.
Not to mention enormous sales of fake goods. Funny how all the tech guys whose livelihood depends on the legal protection of intellectual property don't have a problem with that.
Amazon is used and has made things easier for average people but to say more than the government really glosses over everything the government does do for everyone. Take Amazon away and people will adjust. Take ‘government’ away and… lots of infrastructure will erode as well.
This is an insane thing to say.
Jeff?
lmao wtf are you even talking about
Oh my fucking god dude
The greatest contribution bezos ever made to humanity was getting divorced
Not having a prenup and getting divorced.
I'm quite impressed you managed to type this with one hand whilst furiously fapping over a picture of jeff bezos with the other
Are you 12?
🤔
how much did Amazon pay you to write this crap?
How’s that boot taste? Bezos workers pee in bottles and they have ambulances outside the warehouses because people fall out from heat exhaustion. But at least you got that gadget next day
If you strip the billions it will be invested, if you don't that prick will sit on it and use it as a weapon to attack ordinary people. Make the prick pay for the damage to the planet he has committed in full, then see how much he has left.
How much is the workplace piss bottle benefitting people's lives?
guys like this think it's good to outsource your problems to people who are lower on the economic ladder
Rich people will only innovate if you give them enough money to rent the entire city of Venice for their wedding. Poor people only innovate when you take away their bathroom breaks.
I liked Bezos before he met his recent wife , he wasnt such a show pony.You rarely saw him around , kept away from the glamour lifestyle of the rich and famous. I have a lot if respect for his first wife.
Bullshit.
Some people probably think it takes a lot of effort to be this fucking stupid, but for you it really doesn’t take any effort at all huh
Actually am not really sure that last statement is true. Doesn't the government run, like, the Social Security Administration? I believe they also beat the Nazis.
Billy Bunion
That is laughable. Bezos hires people to do that. Just as AT and T, where the transitor was invented, was not going to get "better" in 1947 by giving CEO Walter Gifford billions. That is just a dumb notion of the nature of investment.
Any history of technological advance shows zero relation between the outsize wealth of first starters and innovation. It doesn't exist.
🤣
Bezos doesn’t invest in Amazon to improve people’s lives, he does it to make money. Confusing altruism with profit will never not be weird.
