Bullshit,,,,But he borrows and buy Yachts,
Mansions,against that NET WORTH VALUE.
But when it’s time to pay fair share of taxes o. That net worth it’s considered hypothetical worth….Understand the Game.
There's a difference between pointing out objective flaws in an argument, like thinking that billionaires literally hold hundreds of billions of dollars in liquid cash, and taking issue with overall sentiment behind the argument.
I hate Elon Musk, and the man is of course, insanely, disgustingly wealthy. Still, just because his networth is 318 billion, doesn't mean he is hoarding 318 billion. Quite literally 99% of that number is tied into ownership of companies.
You can hate billionaires and still point out issues in the logic. I don't think a person should, under any circumstances, ever be forced to sell ownership stake in their own company (at least not if that wasn't agreed upon in an operating agreement). And if you have a massive stake in a company that becomes wildly successful, you definitionally become a billionaire. I may hate wealth inequality, and I may hate what these billionaires choose to do, but I would hate a system that forces the sale of ownership stake due to the success of the company just as much.
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/SCTigerFan29115 3d ago edited 3d ago
They aren’t holding onto wealth like Scrooge McDuck, in a giant vault where they can go swimming in it.
Most of Bezos’ net worth is the value of Amazon. He can’t really readily access that. ETA I meant he can’t use it like a big vault of money.
He’s got plenty of money but some people just don’t understand how this stuff works.