Sorry but anyone who has more than about 10 times the median income has already passed a point at which I can buy that their life's work was so hard that their wealth is justified. (Personally I would set this factor even lower).

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I haven't looked at all the data and whatnot but I imagine there are people who have millions of dollars that earned it honestly, 200 million is a lot but again I bet there are non horrible people that have that much

The reason people use 1 billion as an example is there is no good way to earn that much money, no one has ethically earned 1 billion dollars in any example I've ever seen at least, so it's a good baseline

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I see what you mean. And I want to point out that I agree: not all millionaires/billionaires/rich people are bad or evil people.

there are people who have millions of dollars that earned it honestly

I also understand what you mean here. This comes down to how you define honestly or ethically. Why I kind of disagree or have a problem with this is the following:

Let's take a person with 200 million Euros in wealth. Let's say they earned it with their work. They are 68 years old and started working at 18. Makes 50 years of labor. Let's break down this 200 million in 50 years:

It equals 4 million in 1 year.

Or 333.333€ per month.

Or (counting with 4.33 weeks per month) 76.982€ per week.

Or (counting with a 40 hour workload per week) a wage of 1924€ per hour.

This calculation does not include taxes, insurances, any kind of expenses like rent or food. This would just mean every cent ever earned went into the bank account.

I live in Germany. The average wage of a nurse (according to google) is around 21€ per hour. The average wage of a construction worker (according to google) is around 22€. Before taxes. Before expenses. Now, how exactly is the work of our millionaire worth 91 times more than the work of these people?

Now obviously this 200 million weren't just saved up. The person probably invested. Probably we are talking about a CEO here who created a company and he has put his earnings into ETFs or something. And you can argue about the societal value of creating jobs and there like. But 1924€ an hour (again, no expenses here) would be still needed to accumulate this wealth. This money comes from somewhere. From your client, from your workers who you pay 21€/hour (if at all), from resources like wood, yarn, beans, that you buy for cheaper than you sell them. How much of taking from others is ethical and honest and fair?

I live jn Germany. Maybe things go a bit different here. We have taxes and some social security. And I also understand that this is an innate problem or, neutrally put, feature of capitalism. Is there a good way to fix it? Is it exploitative, how much exploitation can we live with, where do we draw the line for "ethical"? Are investments ethical? (You give someone money to use and if he is successful, you get a share although you did nothing. Their employees did.) I'm not even sure how such a dissection would go and whether there is a neutral way to approach this and reach consensus. Anything more than a gut feeling of justice and injustice.

But for my personal gut, no person works so hard as to deserve 1924€ an hour - hell not even 190€ an hour - if people who work jobs that are essential make 21€ with no real chance of pumping up these numbers by staying in their vitally important job. No labor, no matter how qualified you are, should qualify you to possess these kinds of resources.

No one has single handedly grown and harvested the wood they used to make some furniture with machines they built from their own metal and sold them for a price that made them end up with this kind of money. And as soon as you outsource any kind of labor and there is a difference between what you get to keep and what your colleague gets to keep, we are in a position of inequality.

When the factor is so grotesquely high and your employees are dependent on having to work to survive while you are not, I would argue it isn't fair.

Millionaires and billionaires aren't rich because they are bad or dishonest people. They just used the system to their advantage. There is no fault in that. But man do I wish we had something better at hand.

I will end this way too long response with also pointing a finger at inheritance. Why does one person deserve to inherit thousands or millions or even billions from their parents, mostly with ridiculous taxation, while another is being denied this kind of liftoff because of their upbringing? I am not the one who chose my parents. Have immigrant parents worked less hard to survive and do I not deserve anything as a gift because they never became rich? Why do I deserve to get a shitton of money for being born to the right parents? At the same time, parents often work to improve their kids' life. So what? Take all the inheritance away, redistribute it? Is that fair? Is it fair that people can inherit houses from their parents while others will never be able to afford a small apartment even?

Wealth sucks.