Are billionaires rich enough yet?

[Bomb#20]

So is it good or bad that one American has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion?

No one billionaire has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion. They acquired their wealth by creaming off the difference between the value others have created by their labour and what they have been paid for.

Do you have any empirical evidence that "value" is a thing any more than "qi" is a thing?

 

[Hermit]

So is it good or bad that one American has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion?

No one billionaire has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion. They acquired their wealth by creaming off the difference between the value others have created by their labour and what they have been paid for.

Do you have any empirical evidence that "value" is a thing any more than "qi" is a thing?

In empirical terms the value of a product is what consumers pay for it.

 

[Elixir]

your theory that the Chinese people are impoverished and it's only because they call people making over $2.30 a day non-impoverished that it looks like 99% are out of poverty, but back when 10% were earning over $2.30 a day, they weren't a lot more impoverished?

My how those goalposts can run.
Your theory is that the China model is good because it raised everyone “up” to the $2.30/day level of affluence, so we should emulate that model.
Got it.
Now you can reinforce that utopian vision by showing how the magnanimity of billionaires was an essential component in raising people from shit-poor to dirt-poor.

 

[Politesse]

Fred Phelps was a bigoted homophobe. I'm not. But that's irrelevant anyway. I haven't asked you to accept anything on my say-so.

And the difference between a bigoted homophobe and a bigoted billionairophobe is that the one has a theory for why his outgroup deserve to be hated, while the other has a theory for why his outgroup deserve to be eaten.

Billionaires are not a discriminated class.

Indeed, if you think that people who by definition want for nothing could be considered an object of discrimination because people criticize the social cost of their extreme wealth, the only thing you're proving here is that you have no idea what it is like to be in a discriminated class.

And as I have said, I don't give a shit about billionaires anyway. They are the symptom, not the disease.

 

[Bomb#20]

your theory that the Chinese people are impoverished and it's only because they call people making over $2.30 a day non-impoverished that it looks like 99% are out of poverty, but back when 10% were earning over $2.30 a day, they weren't a lot more impoverished?

My how those goalposts can run.
Your theory is that the China model is good because it raised everyone “up” to the $2.30/day level of affluence, so we should emulate that model.
Got it.
Now you can reinforce that utopian vision by showing how the magnanimity of billionaires was an essential component in raising people ... to dirt-poor.

Are you deliberately misrepresenting me, or did you simply not read the part of my post you snipped out, or are you a semiliterate? Is there some part of:

Quit poisoning the well. Who the heck said anything about gratitude or even suggested the billionaires caused the poverty reduction? The graphic, obviously, shows that poverty was getting better long before billionaires started popping up. My point in posting the graphic, obviously, was simply to refute Politesse's baseless claim that oppression makes billionaires. The correlation between billionaires and dropping poverty rates is due to their both being effects of the same underlying cause: the general progress in production and prosperity, which resulted from the general overall reduction in oppression in China, which resulted from the greatest gift Mao ever gave the Chinese people -- dying. Lack of oppression makes billionaires. Lack of oppression makes reduced poverty rates. Lack of oppression makes many good things.​

that's above your reading grade-level? Stop putting words in my mouth. I did not move the goalposts a centimeter. I did not suggest the China model is good. I did not suggest we should emulate it. I did not suggest billionaires are magnanimous. I did not suggest what the billionaires did in China was essential to making the people less poor. You did not have the slightest reason to think I suggested any of those theories. Every single thing you said about me, you made up from whole cloth.

My theory is that oppression is not what makes billionaires. The goalposts are exactly where they were from the get-go. If you have anything of substance to say against that theory, leave out your fantasies about whatever it is you wish I said.

 

[Bomb#20]

Fred Phelps was a bigoted homophobe. I'm not. But that's irrelevant anyway. I haven't asked you to accept anything on my say-so.

And the difference between a bigoted homophobe and a bigoted billionairophobe is that the one has a theory for why his outgroup deserve to be hated, while the other has a theory for why his outgroup deserve to be eaten.

Billionaires are not a discriminated class.

Indeed, if you think that people who by definition want for nothing could be considered an object of discrimination because people criticize the social cost of their extreme wealth, the only thing you're proving here is that you have no idea what it is like to be in a discriminated class.

Well (a) I said bigoted, not discriminated class, and the only thing you're proving is that you commit equivocation fallacies, and

(b) billionaires would be a discriminated class if public policy were up to people in favor of eating them, and

(c) bigotry is an intellectual and moral failing whether the object of one's bigotry is a discriminated class or not. Bigots making like their bigotry is okay because their outgroup isn't discriminated against are no different from the government including "non-state actor" in its definition of "terrorist" in order to give itself a rhetorical get-out-of-jail-free card.

... about billionaires anyway. They are the symptom, not the disease.

Countries with less than one billionaire per ten million people:

Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, Portugal, South Africa, Argentina, Vietnam, Colombia, Nigeria, Peru,
Nepal, Morocco, Belgium, Venezuela, Algeria, Angola, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Ethiopia​

Countries with over ten million people and no billionaires:

Congo Myanmar Kenya Uganda Sudan Iraq Afghanistan Uzbekistan Angola Mozambique Yemen
Ghana Madagascar North Korea Ivory Coast Cameroon Niger Sri Lanka Burkina Faso Mali Malawi Zambia
Guatemala Ecuador Syria Cambodia Senegal Chad Somalia Guinea Rwanda Benin Tunisia Bolivia Cuba
Haiti South Sudan Burundi Dominican Republic Jordan Azerbaijan​

Countries with more than one billionaire per million people:

USA, Germany, Hong Kong, Canada, Taiwan, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, Israel, Singapore,
Norway, Austria, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Cyprus, Monaco, St Kitts & Nevis, Barbados, Guernsey,
Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macau​

That's quite a disease to have.

(Main source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So is it good or bad that one American has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion?

No one billionaire has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion. They acquired their wealth by creaming off the difference between the value others have created by their labour and what they have been paid for.

They created that wealth by doing something better and creaming off a portion of the additional value they created. Remove the billionaire and the only ones who benefit are their competitors.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Since Mao's golden age of non-oppression ended, the amount of oppression in China must have been shooting through the roof.

They're pretty hard on dissidents, yeah. And currently committing genocide.

And they weren't hard on dissidents and committing genocide in Mao's time? What's the body count of the current genocide, and how many people did Mao murder? The theory that it's oppression that makes billionaires is without empirical support.

Disagree. Mao didn't commit genocide. Lots died under his watch but by incompetence, not intent.

 

[Elixir]

My point in posting the graphic, obviously, was simply to refute Politesse's baseless claim that oppression makes billionaires.

I’m sorry my fractiousness/sarcasm went over your head … tough medium.
I was saying that you failed spectacularly in refuting P’s point, What they did was to institutionalize poverty on a massive scale while making sure people aren’t quite literally starving. Max labor return for min food/shelter/clothing investment. A perfect formula for creating billionaires. When you realize that per your chart, forty cents an hour USD gets you well out of China “poverty”…

 

[Hermit]

So is it good or bad that one American has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion?

No one billionaire has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion. They acquired their wealth by creaming off the difference between the value others have created by their labour and what they have been paid for.

They created that wealth by doing something better and creaming off a portion of the additional value they created. Remove the billionaire and the only ones who benefit are their competitors.

They have not created that wealth. They and Musk's 100,000+ and Bezos' 1.3 million employees have created that wealth. I am not at all opposed to profit making. What I object to is the obscene imbalance of wealth distribution and the conditions the shop floor workers endure for wages that rarely rise above making ends meet.

 

[Bomb#20]

I'd like to address Mr. Bomb.

As I've stated before, a message should stand on its own merits. The TITLE of a message or thread can be just "click-bait." This is particularly true when the title is a question or not a complete sentence.
...
And I thought it interesting that one of the richest persons in Ivanka Trump's extended family was someone I'd never heard of. Am I poorly informed? I am curious whether other Infidels had even heard of Josh Kushner, but so far none has deigned to answer that simple yes/no question.

And, yes, at the end of the post I repeated the question in thread title: "Are billionaires rich enough yet?" It seemed a fitting way to conclude the message and provoke debate but is a question and should not be treated as a sentence in indicative mood.

Suppose somebody titled an OP "Are gays having enough sex yet?" Suppose she listed some famous gays and told us how much more sex they got than the average heterosexual gets. Suppose her list ended with Dugas, the Canadian flight attendant who said he'd had 2500 sex partners and who was rumored to be "Patient Zero" of the AIDS epidemic. Suppose she then capped her post with "Are gays having enough sex yet?"

Tell me you would not perceive such a post as homophobic.

I mention that some MIGHT advocate a tax hike from 30% to 32% and Bomb#20 feels it necessary to propose that I MIGHT favor confiscation!

That's not really an accurate description of how the conversation went. You left out the part where after you mentioned that some might advocate a tax hike from 30% to 32%, I said somebody may be advocating confiscation but that's not you. I only wrote the exhaustive case analysis because you said you didn't understand.

And, YES, I've seen message-board posts — though not here, thank God — where it is assumed that a small tax hike should be extrapolated at once to a 100% tax!

And I've seen message-board posts -- even on IIDB -- where people advocated a 100% tax rate.

And then, finally, I reveal my true thoughts:

Salvador Barios and his team found that countries that switched from a flat tax to a progressive tax experienced some modest positive effects on their economy:

THIS is the key point. Reducing income and wealth inequality is appropriate NOT because of any issue of "morality"; the reasoning doesn't use words like "deserve" or "greed." Reducing income inequality is good because it makes for a better happier society.

Um, statements of the form "X is good because Y" are raising an issue of morality. "Because it makes for a better happier society" is every bit as much an appeal to morality as "deserve" and "greed." Utilitarianism is a moral theory.

Read this carefully, Mr. Bomb. Does "Reducing income inequality" imply a 100% tax rate on billionaires? Do you agree or disagree with this statement by Swammerdami?

Which statement? The one that was a question, not a statement? Reducing income inequality does not imply a 100% tax rate on billionaires.

Are you asking me if I agree with "Reducing income inequality is good because it makes for a better happier society."? That's like asking if someone agrees with "Not killing people is good because it makes for a better happier society." It depends on which people you're killing -- not killing Russian soldiers probably won't make for a better happier Ukrainian society. The phrase "Reducing income inequality" intrinsically conflates two very different phenomena: making poor people richer and making rich people poorer. I've seen plenty of evidence that making poor people richer makes for a better happier society, but no evidence that making rich people poorer makes for a better happier society.

(It's also worth pointing out that people who use the phrase "Reducing income inequality" in political discussion typically conflate those two with a third phenomenon: making middle-income people richer at the expense of both rich people and poor people. Couldn't say whether Barios et al committed that one.)

Now please go back and re-read your responses to me and show me what comment by Swammerdami you were responding to.

Thanks in advance.

Post #1, post #15, and then the comments you addressed to me.

 

[Bomb#20]

And they weren't hard on dissidents and committing genocide in Mao's time? What's the body count of the current genocide, and how many people did Mao murder? The theory that it's oppression that makes billionaires is without empirical support.

Disagree. Mao didn't commit genocide. Lots died under his watch but by incompetence, not intent.

Well, in the first place, "under his watch but by incompetence" implies a level of arms-length-ness and a level of well-meaning-ness that isn't supportable. While the famine Mao caused that starved thirty-five million-odd people was underway, China was a net grain exporter and Mao refused foreign offers of food relief.

In the second place, Mao ordered millions of people to be executed as "landlords" or "counterrevolutionaries". He delegated this task to armies of underlings, and he set quotas for how many were to be killed. In places so poor nobody was a landlord, peasants were arbitrarily declared to be landlords in order to meet the quotas. There's no way policies like that wouldn't prompt local officials to take the opportunity to target whatever ethnic minorities they felt like getting rid of.

And in the third place, during the Cultural Revolution tens of thousands of people were murdered just for being Mongols. Looks kind of genocidal to me.

 

[Bomb#20]

My point in posting the graphic, obviously, was simply to refute Politesse's baseless claim that oppression makes billionaires.

I’m sorry my fractiousness/sarcasm went over your head … tough medium.
I was saying that you failed spectacularly in refuting P’s point, What they did was to institutionalize poverty on a massive scale while making sure people aren’t quite literally starving.

Um, no. "They" institutionalized poverty on a massive scale in the 1940s and 1950s. Some mostly different "they" started making sure people weren’t quite literally starving in the 1970s and 1980s, and started making baby steps toward deinstitutionalizing poverty on a massive scale.

Max labor return for min food/shelter/clothing investment. A perfect formula for creating billionaires.

The heck are you on about? You think Chinese workers didn't have to work long hours back when there weren't alternate employers competing for them? You think "min food" is now, and not back during the famine? They already had max labor and they had lower food/shelter/clothing investment in Mao's time. However oppressive China still is -- which is very -- the degree of oppression has plainly gone way down from where it was. So if oppression makes billionaires then why wasn't China making billionaires back when it had so much more oppression to make them with?

Oh, and see post #66. If max labor return for min food/shelter/clothing investment is a perfect formula for creating billionaires, then how the bejesus do you account for the observed pattern of which countries are doing the best and the worst at creating billionaires?

 

[Swammerdami]

Forbes shows 27 billionaires in Thailand but omits His Majesty, whose personal wealth is surely in 11 digits.

I've since learned that Monarchs are deliberately excluded from Forbes' List. Wikipedia offers, from a different source, a  List of royalty by net worth; and the present King of Siam does indeed occupy the #1 slot on that List. Eleven Monarchs are billionaires, or twelve if Elizabeth Regina's holdings are broadened to include those of her family members like the Prince of Wales. But I hope those who begrudge Her Majesty's wealth do bear in mind that she ranks behind Kim Kardashian and thousands of other billionaires!

On a more somber note, I repeat my request that those who choose to discuss my opinions do so by reading and quoting my actual opinions, which will be found in the indicative sentences I actually write. While I did not discourage political discussions, the question in the title was clickbait. My own views are somewhat more nuanced than the simplistic views imputed to me.

And I apologize if I've misused the word "morality." I always thought that it dealt with matters of good and evil, but now realize that it apparently can be applied also to matters of economic science, laws of nature like gravity, and so on!

 

[Bomb#20]

So is it good or bad that one American has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion?

No one billionaire has performed services for others that they appreciate more than $230 billion. They acquired their wealth by creaming off the difference between the value others have created by their labour and what they have been paid for.

Do you have any empirical evidence that "value" is a thing any more than "qi" is a thing?

In empirical terms the value of a product is what consumers pay for it.

In which case, the value of all the Teslas is what car consumers pay Musk for them, and the value of the labor Musk bought in the process of creating those cars is what the labor consumer -- Musk -- pays for it. Call that amount "X". Then figuring out a way to turn labor with value X into cars with value X+$230 billion is a service that Musk has performed for car buyers -- a service without which the laborers and the car buyers would never have cooperated on a get laborers to work on cars venture. And it's a service that has value $230 billion*, since that's what consumers paid for it. Your definition of "value" in empirical terms refutes your claim.

(* The $230 billion is of course just a verbal stand-in for whatever Musk's actual income is. We're only pretending it's $230 billion to simplify the discussion; the correct figure is far lower. His net worth isn't that high because people have given him that much; it's that high because people would hypothetically give him that much if he hypothetically gave them all his stock. Calling all that hypothetical money "income" is rather like saying a waitress has an income of $500,000 because that's what her unsold sexual favors would bring her if she hypothetically quit waitressing and became a sex worker, so her unsold sexual favors count as an asset that has appreciated to $500,000.)

 

[Bomb#20]

And I apologize if I've misused the word "morality." I always thought that it dealt with matters of good and evil, but now realize that it apparently can be applied also to matters of economic science, laws of nature like gravity, and so on!

You know the statement "Reducing income inequality is good because it makes for a better happier society." asserts something to be good, don't you? You know that "better" is the comparative form of "good", don't you? You know that "good" is a matter of good and evil and not a matter of economic science, don't you? If you had said only "Reducing income inequality makes for a happier society.", that might arguably* be a matter of economic science. The extra moral judgments you padded it with move it firmly into the moral realm.

(* Or maybe not. As noted upthread, "Reducing income inequality" contains a conflation, which scientific statements eschew. Moreover, a society is not a mind. An attribution of happiness to a non-mind is a metaphor, which scientific statements eschew. Any given change to a society will typically make some members happier and other members unhappier; to describe such a situation as "a happier society" is therefore an implicit judgment that the increased happiness of the former group is more significant than the decreased happiness of the latter group. If there is a way to make such a judgment scientifically, it has not been clarified. Unclarity is yet other thing scientific statements eschew.)

 

[Swammerdami]

And I apologize if I've misused the word "morality." I always thought that it dealt with matters of good and evil, but now realize that it apparently can be applied also to matters of economic science, laws of nature like gravity, and so on!

You know the statement "Reducing income inequality is good because it makes for a better happier society." asserts something to be good, don't you? You know that "better" is the comparative form of "good", don't you?

I fell down due to gravity and bruised my arms. Therefore that gravity was BAD, and therefore a matter of morality. You know that "bad" is the antonym of "good," don't you?

PLEASE! We're arguing pointlessly. I plan to desist now. Can you?

 

[Swammerdami]

Are billionaires rich enough yet?

No. They deserve better than a return of $5000 per second for the sweat of their brows. It's only fair, because in The Free World™ anybody could do that, but only the hard workers could be bothered to put the effort in.

The figure $5000 per second rather astounded me, so I checked your arithmetic. Elon Musk reported more than $26 billion in income in the latest year; these are not hypothetical dollars; they are the profit on actual shares of Tesla that he actually sold. Assuming wages are paid on 8/5 labor rather than 24/7 (and allowing for 22 days of vacation, holidays and sick leave) this works out to a net wage of $3850 per second. But this income was NOT subject to payroll tax withholdings so is equivalent to gross pay of about $4200 per second.

Rounding Mr. Musk's actual wage of $4200 per second all the way up to a humongous $5000 per second is the sort of anti-capitalist exaggerations which are rightfully condemned. Shame on you, Hermit!

(* The $230 billion is of course just a verbal stand-in for whatever Musk's actual income is. We're only pretending it's $230 billion to simplify the discussion; the correct figure is far lower.

Yes his income was only $4200 per second in 2021, and was much lower in previous years.

Calling all that hypothetical money "income" is rather like saying a waitress has an income of $500,000 because that's what her unsold sexual favors would bring her if she hypothetically quit waitressing and became a sex worker, so her unsold sexual favors count as an asset that has appreciated to $500,000.)

I remember that waitress! I went on a date with her and, after a very pleasant time, was taken aback when she insisted she'd need $50 to go all the way. She'd already teased me into such frenzied eagerness that I'd be able to endure only half a minute or so before la petite mort. She did lower the price slightly when I pointed out that her price worked out to $6000/hour, even more than Elon Musk's $4200.

Oh wait. Musk didn't make $4200 per hour; he made $4200 per second! People really love those EVs!

 

[Bomb#20]

Are billionaires rich enough yet?

No. They deserve better than a return of $5000 per second for the sweat of their brows. It's only fair, because in The Free World™ anybody could do that, but only the hard workers could be bothered to put the effort in.

You appear to be trying to mock somebody's position; but all you're actually doing is imagining what an opposing argument might look like if it were composed by someone who came to an opposing conclusion from yours even though he accepted all your unproven premises.

 

[Bomb#20]

Assuming wages are paid on 8/5 labor rather than 24/7 (and allowing for 22 days of vacation, holidays and sick leave) this works out to a net wage of $3850 per second. But this income was NOT subject to payroll tax withholdings so is equivalent to gross pay of about $4200 per second.

No it isn't -- actual gross pay of $4200 per second wouldn't be subject to much payroll tax withholdings either -- Social Security maxes out at $143K because Social Security benefits stop rising beyond that level. Social Security tax mostly isn't a real tax but rather a compulsory pension plan.

Rounding Mr. Musk's actual wage of $4200 per second all the way up to a humongous $5000 per second is the sort of anti-capitalist exaggerations which are rightfully condemned. Shame on you, Hermit!

Your plan to desist from arguing pointlessly sure lasted a long time.

I remember that waitress! I went on a date with her and, after a very pleasant time, was taken aback when she insisted she'd need $50 to go all the way. She'd already teased me into such frenzied eagerness that I'd be able to endure only half a minute or so before la petite mort. She did lower the price slightly when I pointed out that her price worked out to $6000/hour, even more than Elon Musk's $4200.

Oh wait. Musk didn't make $4200 per hour; he made $4200 per second! People really love those EVs!

I once played chess with an international grandmaster. It took him half an hour to kick my ass. Pretty good, huh? (Sorry, I forgot to mention, he was also playing against fifty other people in one of those simultaneous exhibitions.)

That waitress was good, sure -- but she was only doing one customer at a time.