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The only acceptable number, but not only in Europe, everywhere, is “0”.
And if you already don’t know why: a billionaire has way too much money and power, and can influence governments in their favor, creating unsurmountable inequality and subverting the system’s rules. Billionaires are the cause why capitalism is failing (and since no one can stop them now, it will completely fail, and will drag the environment, and human survival, with it).
Yes, but capitalism isn't failing: billionaires ARE capitalism
When I say capitalism is failing is because for it to work, it need rules (offer/demand, competition without monopolies, etc), that these billionaires have eliminated or subverted. They changed the game rules in their favor, and are now so powerful it’s impossible to stop them (non violently, I mean). I honestly think we just entered a dark era of humanity, one in which its existence is in question. And yes, I’m a pessimist, but I try to be optimistic with all my might, but everything I see or read prevents me from being optimistic.
When I say capitalism is failing is because for it to work, it need rules
Because it is unstable. It is much easier to disrupt the system than to balance it in a stable-like state against it's nature. Capitalism has gotten out of hand and will collapse sooner or later. And no: I am not a pessimist
It's quite easy to get rid of billionaires (raise taxes, they will move away), but it's a question whether it is really beneficial for the country.
they are free people. They can leave at any time. But the money and capital they own in the country must stay in the country.
Easy to say, difficult to do in practice.
Oh easy to do in practice, hard to do with politicians choosing what happens though.
Easy? Who’s going to raise taxes for them, politicians? The same politicians whose campaigns are financed by these billionaires? Whose reputation can be tainted by the media conglomerates owned by these same billionaires?
There’s no stopping them now, and I have no idea how this is going to end. Things happen too fast now. I fear for the future.
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You sound like you're one of the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" who doesn't understand that he's being defrauded.
You're a hooker thinking she's actually the pimp.
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Sure, we (that includes you!) are extorted into giving wealth to people who contribute nothing to society, but criticizing this is jealousy.
Just like slaves were just jealous of their masters, right?
To be slightly less cynical: look up how many empty houses/apartments there are in your country and then look how many homeless people there are. Chances are, the first number is larger. And now ask yourself: is that sane?
Or even more basic: why are we Westerners fattening, while other people are starving? Because there are some very rich people who profit from that situation.
BTW: you're oversimplifying the solution, to just "removing" billionaires. I assume, you're doing that out of mental laziness, and not stupidity. That interpretation, while being very literal, is an attempt to divert the discussion, a straw man. What is meant here is, changing the economic situation in such a way, that billionaires can't even exist. No one should be able to accumulate that much wealth, especially not if that wealth is purely extractive.
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That's not the point he was raising at all.
The world is provably (*) broken. Economically, environmentally. You name it. The system we have is unsustainable, and unsustainable means that it will be eventually unable to sustain itself and inevitably collapse. It is causing suffering to billions of humans and uncountable living beings.
And given what we know about most billionaires' personal lives, it takes a certain kind personality to be jealous of their miserable lives.
What you call jealousy has nothing to do with wanting things to change. Try compassion and empathy, tinged by fear.
Living up to your name. Keep it up, friend!
Not at all, you’re just projecting. And also not understanding what I’m saying or why. I know it’s useless, but find out what the New Deal was, when and why it ended, and what happened since. You won’t do it, but nobody can say I didn’t try to explain it to you. Cheers.
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Dude, please…
What you should be looking in the New Deal is the Revenue Act of 1935: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935. That kind of taxation was ended by Ronald Reagan, and since then, economy has shifted to the commoditization of everything that you can speculate with (housing, food, medicine, etc). Without limits, there’s been a polarization of wealth and a growth of inequality (see the Gini index, or even, the disparity in salaries).
It’s not about the rich. Nobody is against the rich, but the rich (and the system) need rules and limits, without it, you allow some people to amass so much wealth that the system starts to collapse.
See that I’m only talking about billionaires, not millionaires or wealthy people. These billionaires are the most powerful people in human history, and we don’t have a way to deal with them. We got rid of kings, and powerful individuals in the past when they tried to exploit populations, but we never faced people as powerful as these billionaires, so maybe we can’t put a leash on them. It’s a difficult challenge.
It’s funny you mention the Bible. If you are a religious person, I guess, by you attitude here, that you’d say to Moses “Oh! Stop bitching about the pharaoh! Just do your job and don’t complain!” Right?
Whatever…
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I think the better comparison would be the number of billionaires per capita. Say, per million people. Not that this isn’t a good infographic - keep the overall count. But include the per capita as a frequency-of-occurrence stat.
We need an EU wide 100% wealth tay for any wealth over say 15million€. I am willing to negotiate about the second number.
Tay them all!
So anyone who gets a certain amount of money might as well close all the companies they own?
Or give them to the employees or something. Probably 15M is a too low threshold to enforce that but it would work. It would basically distribute the wealth amongst the people who produce it
Maybe not 15 million, but let's say at 100 million you get a dog park named after you with a statue that says you won at capitalism
What do you mean by wealth?
I didnt knew this Graph but damn…
And this is why you could tax them at 80 or even 90% and they would still have more money than 90% of the rest of the population of earth.
That's a lot of food to eat. Better get started.
Trickle down economics works like a piñata. Once you break it open with blunt force, the stuff you want starts to trickle down!
blood?
blood.
Only 3 in Monaco ? *suspicious*
There’s some bookkeeping sorcery going on there, gotta be
Also: why’s it yellow? It’s got 3, so it should be green
It's marked as smaller than 3 and 3 upwards to ten. So color is fine
You've just described why it should be green, but then concluded yellow is fine…?
≤ vs <. ≤ means 0, 1, 2, 3; < means 0, 1, 2.
You've just described why it should be green
It should be green according to the scale. All other maximum/minimum values are debatable.
The other 2000 billionaires have their residence in Panama, their 5 parent companies in Seychelles and 10 others in Cayman Islands, which in turn own 100 subsidiary companies in Ireland and the Bahamas which in turn own 1000 subsidiary companies in the Netherlands and Delaware, which own and pay their butlers, cars, yachts and jets and on paper they themselves barely earn enough monthly themselves to afford 1 public toilet visit.
That’s a lot of guillotines
Even if we had to use a private submarine for each one it would still be worth it
Be environmentally minded please and follow the three R’s. In this case we simply reuse the same guilotine.
It would make more sense to use per capita numbers.
These are eatable numbers
Am I the only one who finds the color scheme unintuitive? (a comment more suitable for DataIsBeautiful, probably)
It's a barrier free color scheme. I like it tbh
Sorry, what is "barrier free"?
No barriers for handicapped people. In this case it means that people who can't tell e.g. red from green can still see the differences in this scheme.
It's a false friend/too literal translation from the German term "barrierefrei". The more common word in English would be "accessible".
Got it, thanks!
It’s important to remember that while all billionaires are bastards, some are just evil because they take value they neither earned nor need, meanwhile others got rich off being the family whose spat between cousins was WWI and are actively working to undermine left wing and pro equality movements literally today including conspiring to push bigotry towards lgbt people to distract from the class war
Is this based on nationality (defined as: has that nations passport) or billionaires actually living in that country? Because probably many billionaires don't live in their home country or pay taxes there
didn't know we had so many billionaires!
How the fuck is there so many and can we eat some?
can we eat some
You can try to eat just some, but you'll likely find that once they start to pop, you just can't stop.
Portugal's only billionaire might be Abramovich, who gained PT nationality through a very dubious program
