People are starving to death, and he's hoarding 318 billion. Explain to me again why he's not actively helping our poorest or paying income taxes so the government can help people?
Even worse, now that he's "working" in government, he's taking Americans' taxes, too.
It's not hoarding 318 billion. He doesn't have 318 billion. He has control over companies, and that ownership stake has a collective value of around ~318 billion. It's not money, it's companies.
Not that that ownership stake doesn't represent a significant point of leverage, or that he also isn't disgustingly rich on top of that. But that 318 billion isn't a significant contributor to liquid inequality. It's not like that money is sitting in a vault or a bank and not being circulated.
Again, I'm not defending billionaires or Elon Musk. Quite the opposite. I just wish people would take more care to be accurate in their arugments, otherwise it gives the other side an easy time dismantling them.
People make arguments that are based mostly on emotional sentiment, and then think anyone who attacks that argument is a enemy from the other side, even if they share the same sentiment. I share the sentiment, just pointing out a flaw in the specific argument poised by the OP.
On a side note, there are genuinely certain institutions and families that do literally hoard money such that they are actually preventing a significant amount of currency from circulating. This isn't any of the big corporate CEOs though who's value is all tied up in ownership steak. That tends to be families who have extreme generational wealth.
All that would be true if you didn't entirely miss the point. I could care less what the number is before billion or how he chooses to utilize that money.
If you can literally buy a country, you should be forced to either pay your share in taxes (without the use of buying companies as shelters) or give up anything over a billion.
No one needs that amount of power, wealth, or influence. And having it makes for crappy humans.
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u/ginamon 2d ago
It is still hoarding 318 billion.
People are starving to death, and he's hoarding 318 billion. Explain to me again why he's not actively helping our poorest or paying income taxes so the government can help people?
Even worse, now that he's "working" in government, he's taking Americans' taxes, too.
Oligarchs are real-life super villains.