this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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I got into it with someone I worked with [who made exactly as much as me.] Asked what would someone buy with $5 billion that they couldn't get with $1 billion. He couldn't come up with something, but was still going to defend someone else's right to have it.
Twitter in about 6 more months?
Funny, but you have to admit it was low hanging fruit.
The lowest.
A small country
At the expense of giving 100,000 people a $1000,000 raise, which would massively stimulate the economy.
And those 100,000 people being the country's industrial elite, the raise being tax breaks for those people, and the country being USA.
You could run on a over the counter GOP ticket.
Yeah the conservative fine print is really becoming their front page material fast.
It's like, they don't have to cover it up anymore, decades of political brainwashing has gotten enough people on board with the original psychosis for them to just flaunt it.
Abortion access is really hurting them on that front.
It's all well and good to obsess over and villanise minorities like trans people that have no meaningful effect on conservative lives, but you start attaching a life-long responsibility to another human for an accident, and people aren't going to like it.
Well said.
I'm pretty sure it'd have the opposite effect but I'm no economist 🤷♂️
If you give a billionaire money, they basically throw it on the pile.
If you give the average American money - particularly the 57% that can't afford a $1k emergency, they'll spend it. That spending funds jobs, profits, and is re-spent again and again until it winds up siphoned off as shareholder profits and eventually added to the pile.
Yeah but if you flood the economy with money by giving everyone a million dollars then you'll have hyper inflation and the money will become effectively worthless and nobody will be better off.
This is one of the ways billionaires can control countries. They have so much money they can literally affect the value of those countries currency by buying and selling vast quantities of it.
Except we're not talking about the printing money - we're talking about the wealthy leeching off the labour of others while pulling money out of circulation, acting as a predatory handbrake on the economy to the tune of a billion dollars vs putting that money in the hands of the workers that created the value, who will also spend it in a more economically stimulative manner.
Everyone would be better off other than a very small few, who are functionally disconnected from the society they leech off in any case.
If you're going to just dump the money back into the system then you may as well be printing it. Money really isn't the issue here, it's the availability of resources. Money won't fix shit if the goods aren't available.
If the wealthy own everything what good do you think giving the poor a bunch of inherently worthless bunch of paper notes will do?
It's very clear you're not familiar with economic theory - that's not how any of this work in theory or in practice, (for one, you need increased money supply for inflation, which simply isn't a factor in this conversation), and the inequality is incredibly socially and economically harmful and unproductive. The inequality is one of the greatest predictors of criminality for food reason.
Pre-response edit: to put it a different way, you make the productive workers, who will be be more included to spend their money in a stimulative way the shareholders, also giving them greater motivation to be more productive. Instead, we're channelling the profits to uninvolved do-nothing drains on the economy, who take resources from productive workers, siphoning off the motivation to be productive, and pulling resources out of circulation, showing the economy. Owning shit isn't a job - there's no reason for it to be the only path to unreasonable wealth.
What's your solution - or is there not a problem?
I did state at the beginning that I'm "no economist" but I guess you didn't catch that 🤷♂️
Also looking back at what you wrote you weren't suggesting giving everyone a million dollars, but a hundred thousand people a million dollars. I would still think that would have some negative consequences for inflation, although it'd depend where we're doing this, what country, town city etc.
I don't understand how releasing that much money wouldn't count as an increase in money supply (even though it would be a temporary increase... Is that where you make the distinction?), but I guess even that much would be a drop in the ocean in most larger Western countries.
On top of all that as far as I'm aware the US and probably many other countries have been "borrowing" crazy amounts of money, to the point where I'm surprised the world economy hasn't completely collapsed by now, prices are certainly rising more rapidly than I've ever seen.
Other than the money give away I agree with what you've said in your last post for the most part.
Solutions, for where? The whole world? Honestly Western countries are mostly doing ok in the great scheme of things, could things be better, sure, but it seems a bit spoiled brat like to complain when the average world income is less than $10,000 a year.
One thing that I think would make a big difference worldwide (but will never happen) would be if people and companies weren't allowed to hoard real-estate and houses, or at least strong disincentives to limit such behaviour.
Being stuck renting especially with how rents are getting less and less affordable is pretty horrible, as is having to mortgage yourself up to the gills just to get a basic dwelling...
But yeah, no solutions here, as even good ideas need to be executed, and how are we going to do that???
Let me try a different approach...
If noone but an infinitesimal minority have any money, and prices are low, who benefits?
If that money is now distributed more equitably, people have more money and prices rise a little, who benefits?
Does creating and protecting billionaire dynasties to address cost of living and inflation seem like an effective strategy to you? Particularly when we look at the way those billionaires are currently causing serious damage to our democracy by using their wealth to pay politicians to represent their tiny minority over the interests of everyone else, leading to things like literal apocalyptic inaction on climate change?
Where did I say we should be protecting billionaires? We're on the same page for the most part (I think).
I'm just not for throwing the baby out with the bath water, which your first post about giving a hundred thousand people a million dollars seems like it might do, especially if done wrong... I live in a small city of 120k people, I can't imagine almost everyone here becoming millionaires overnight would be good for the local economy, especially for the 20k that got nothing. But hey I'm not an Economist 🤷♂️
The context here is a wealthy person having an extra billion dollars vs dispersing that money to workers. Yeah - we're broadly on the same page though, I think.
The exact split of the cash is a little beside the point - it's ultimately a question of whether the money should be consolidated toward the wealthy or distributed among workers (in reality, I'd argue that the bulk should go to building social safety nets for example). If you look at Australia's response to the GFC for example, putting more money in the broad population's hands meant that they had one of the shallowest dips and quickest recoveries in the world, and were recognised as having the world's best response. There's a reason stimulus checks were handed out through COVID - money in the hands of workers is generally good for the economy. There's plenty of historical case studies for this - including the old 90% top marginal tax bracket.
The only issue I can think of is that when people reach that billion, they'll just close up shop cause why continue if your revenue is limited to your spending habits. I'd want the answer to that question to be "out of the goodness of my heart" or "to help people" but I sadly don't think a lot of them would do so
Your commnet reminds be about a story I heard. A American guy graduated college and then volunteered to go out and do good in the world. After a year he checked in with some of his fellow grads and saw how much they were making. He did some calculations and decided that he should come back to the USA and get a job. He got a great job with a big salary, and by living frugally he was able to donate enough to support five aide workers.
That should be more common, especially among "Christians". But people rarely act altruistically. That's what makes it nice when they do.
Donate to Doctors Without Borders (or something similar) people. Charities have volunteers coming out their ears.