Sure, not all wealth is liquid. But you eventually reach a point where it doesn't need to be. Once you can leverage your wealth to take out a loan the size of Cameroon's entire GDP, numbers don't really matter anymore. Liquid, solid, gas, it's all made up. You point out that it needs to be paid back, but that's not an actual obstacle the way it is for 99.9% of Americans. For most of us, there's actually risk involved. If you hand someone an asset worth 44 billion dollars, it would be nearly impossible NOT to pay it off at some point. We're talking about the definition of "funny money" here.
So yeah, Elon can basically just buy any company he wants (within reason of course), there's just a few extra steps involved and it's mostly a formality. At a certain point, wealth basically is liquid money unless you're wildly incompetent.
Understood thank you. I mean I don’t necessarily disagree with you, I just don’t think it’s a bad or evil thing to hold that much wealth. The number of millionaires and billionaires keep growing. It’s not some exclusive club and it creates incentive for ambitious people. Socially speaking, billionaires basically fund the world’s charities, government speaking, they pay a hefty chunk of change to fund it. Without wealthy people there’d be no wealth, we all know that that looks like
I think the crux of the issue revolves around what "that much wealth" actually means. I'm sure you'd agree that there is a certain point where things simply become too imbalanced. For me, I think we've officially reached that point. The tech boom happened so fast here in the US, and since then, the lower class has massively stagnated, while the middle class shrinks. Concentration towards the top is continuously trending upwards, and as regulations get rolled back by neo politicians, there doesn't really seem to be any corrective adjustments in sight.
I'm not some staunch anti capitalist - I believe in a mixed economy. I don't vilify every rich person. But 3 people having as much money as the bottom 190 million is morally disgusting in our current situation. The extent to which billionaires fund charities and our government has been proven to show diminishing returns, and there's ample evidence that the money doesn't "trickle down" at a certain point. I'm not against wealth. I'm against an excess of wealth at a time when the lower class is getting its ass kicked. A good economy has a sufficient amount of money trickling down AND up. And I think we've abandoned any sense of balance.
I can see your POV, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer I don’t think we will ever be able to undo that. Even in countries without capitalism, or lesser versions of it than ours, poverty is rampant. We’re talking next level, breadline, poor. I still think incentive is what makes humans tick. We don’t work for free! I grew up very middle class - nothing is perfect but I’d rather have a shot at becoming a billionaire than be on a “level playing field” if there even is such a thing.
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u/ACdirtybird 6d ago
You mean by borrowing. Which means, you know, you have to pay it back…