Who hates billionaires? I do!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Certainly don’t hate them, I admire them and the notion that it takes money to make money is very true.

Consider Bill Gates. His company has created employment for many thousands of people and also created significant wealth for a large number of people who have owned the stock. These people in turn have most likely spent this money in one way or another helping all levels of earners in society. He has/is donating many billions of dollars to charitable causes.

If he had given away his first $1b none of that would be possible.

So, by keeping his $1b he has probably ended up giving back somewhere well in excess of $25b.

42

What bothers me is that they just don’t do it right.

I’m not talking about the foundations and the investments and the jobs that flow therefrom, I’m talking about being a FREAKIN’ BILLIONAIRE!

I read about one of the grandsons, or something, of one of the robber barons from the early part of U.S. industrialization (with terms like that who’s surprised that I don’t have a cite?) who used to eat at a restaurant quite often. He always got the same table. One night, a couple was seated at his table. The manager refused to move them.

He got on the telephone, bought the restaurant, had the manager move the couple, ate, and left the restaurant to the maitre d’ as a tip.

If, through some strange circumstance (probably involving quantum mechanics or reconfiguring the deflector shield array to emit a tachyon beam) I woke up with the same amount of money as Bill Gates has, I’d have a list of projects that would include the following:

  1. Give everybody five dollars. Everybody. The infrastructure alone would generate a lot of employment for a lot of years, and for every person who viewed it as a cup of coffee there’d be a dozen who would be able to buy a donkey, or a grindstone, or a wheelbarrow, or some other microcapital leveraged thing that would improve their lives immeasurably and start their dirt poor nation on the road to prosperity. Or they could buy beer. Serious economists would be hired to stagger the payouts so as to avoid global financial collapse.

  2. Rent the Astrodome, hire every working professional porn actor or actress, send out invitations, and host the largest orgy ever held.

  3. Set up organizations which would have enough money to send needy college students out into the streets of the world’s cities offering people nice home made sandwiches. Everybody who wants one gets one, no questions asked. Whether you forgot your lunch at home or haven’t had a home for years, you’d at least get a nice corned beef on rye.

  4. During the next Superbowl, one of the 30 second commercials you would see would be me, sitting in my underwear in an easy chair, drinking a beer and eating corn chips while I watched a football game. Why? Because I think it’d be a neat thing to do.

  5. It’s been long enough. I want a damn flying car. Make me one. None of this “hovering” crap either.

  6. A team of ex special forces operatives would be assigned, with total freedom from constraint on my part, to make sure that certain people never appeared in public without having a cream pie slapped into their faces. The list would be subject to review without notice.

  7. The “Million to One But It Just Might Work Foundation”, which would give money to lunatics. Maybe it’s another plan to draw energy from the quantum fluctuations of the cosmic sub basement, maybe it’s the next Pet Rock, maybe it’s a bit of stray mold that blew into the Petrie dish and turns out to kill bacteria pretty well. How will we know unless we try? I get 50%. It only has to work once and I make another bunch of billions of dollars.

  8. The “I Know What All Of Those Words Mean But Not When They’re In That Order Fund”, which would pay big bucks to people who aren’t able to get in under #7 due to the fact that they have actual academic credentials. This would support pure scientific research that had no immediate chance of showing a profit. You know, like the whole “I think blood circulates” thing, or the oft mocked “According to my calculations, the earth seems to be moving around the sun instead of vice versa” controversy. I get 50%. Once again, it only has to work once and I make a bunch of billions of dollars.

If it all goes to hell and every single thing I’ve ever put any of my money towards sinks like a stone, I still have that $5,000,000.00 each that I’ve sunk into international currencies, stocks, gems, precious metals, commodities, guards, guard dogs, defensible space, and shotgun ammunition to see me through to my old age and I will never, ever have to miss a meal or spend a night shivering.

That is how you be a billionaire.

There would also be a lot of debauchery, but I’ve left most of that out.

43

“Trickle-down economics” has always been a sneering dismissal of free-market capitalism by its more empty-headed critics, most of whom are outraged that the free market satisfies the public’s wants, rather than what the critic thinks the public should want. Long ago I decided to embrace the term and freely assert that,

Not only does trickle-down economics work, in the long run it is the only thing that works!

44

Couldn’t we try “trickle-up economics” for a change? It should work out the same way, theoretically.

45

Yes, it should. But it seems that most of those who have posted would rather keep the money in the hands of those who don’t need it the most.

46

Yep. And on the other side of the fence we have people who think that the world owes them something.

47

I like the fact that there can be billionaires. What if there was some legal limit, say 100 million dollars in net worth, that one could acquire? How the hell would that work, with the daily assayed value of holdings constantly swinging? And what would happen to the overage? Taken by the government to likely be spent on bad ideas?

No, let the occasional billionaire pop-up and spend it creating some jobs and new family wealth in arenas that the government wouldn’t visit on a vendor’s ticket. Or, piss it all away while paying people for the piss on the way.

48

Drink up, Johnny! You’re right!

49

So, presumably you’re a fan of Aussie billionaire Kerry Packer.

At a Las Vegas casino he became annoyed at a Texan oil millionaire who kept boasting about how wealthy he was. Packer asked him how much he was worth and the Texan replied “A hundred million dollars.” Packer pulled out a coin and said “Toss you for it.” The Texan walked away.

He and some friends went into a London pub to get a meal. The owner said that service was over. Packer said some sandwiches would be fine but the owner said the kitchen was closed. They went to a pub down the road. After the meal Packer tipped him 10,000 pounds on condition that he go and tell the other publican about it.

I don’t agree with the OP but one should be wary of crediting the rich for their charitable donations. Often they receive massive tax advantages and most are probably paying lower rates of tax than ordinary wage earners anyway. For example the executive staff of Microsoft, including Bill Gates, make most of their money selling Microsoft shares ( to lower taxes Microsoft pays no dividends ) at a total tax rate of 20%. The community may be better served by people paying their due taxes rather than donating what they choose to charity.

While eating in Sydney once he asked his waitress why she was working instead of being home with the kids. She replied that she had a mortgage to pay. His tip was a cheque to pay off the debt.

50

See? That’s what would be fun about being a billionaire: paying of random people’s houses and stuff.

51

I’d buy me a metro station.

They wouldn’t even have to name it after me.

52

How about if we just referred to billionaires as “financially obese”?

53

So, the government is the effecient means to determine need and the way to distribute the means to meet that need?

I highly disagree. Government is needed to do things that we as individuals cannot. I can’t get together the money to build the roads, but we all need them. I can’t enforce the laws we need, but we all need them.

If individuals would take care of the mentally ill, the homeless, the orphaned, IF THE FLIPPIN CHURCH WOULD REALLY DO WHAT IT’S CALLED TO DO, then the government would be out of a great number of its jobs.

I say this as Sunday-go-to-meetin church member. Way too many people just show up to a service and then go to work the rest of the week.

54

Here’s WHY we have billionaires… and have ALWAYS had some equivalent to billionaires, and always WILL:

Males of most species compete in some way for the opportunity to reproduce. This means competitiveness tends to get passed along to the next generation.
It’s mostly males doing this, because females are, biologically, a choke point for reproduction.

This happens for billions of years, and the lifeforms get very competitive. Eventually, some of them develop intelligence and tool-using ability, and they apply this to their competitions. A civilization arises. Many avenues arise for the competitive instinct, other than simply fighting over females.

As civilization becomes more complex, the nature of the competitions becomes more complex. The “prize” of the competition takes many names: wealth, power, fame, etc., but it all comes down to one thing: the ability to get, do, or make (for yourself) the things that others want for themselves.

The more power, wealth, or fame you have, the easier it is to get more, because you can manipulate your social environment more effectively.
And you DO… the competitive drive has no reason to stop at any arbitrary level, because there’s never been a level at which status is an evolutionary DISadvantage.
Notice that even the fabulously wealthy look for ways to lord their wealth over the less-fabulously wealthy.

Thus, we get billionaires, kings, dictators, cult leaders, etc. Inequality of wealth, power, etc. is as natural as breathing, eating, and sex.

If you create a new class of “wealth re-distributors”, all you have done is transfer the power to a new group, who will soon use it to enrich and empower themselves.

You can hate them all you want, but you might as well hate gravity for all the good it will do you.

55

You might want to pose that question to someone who through only being born, was placed into a position of extreme famine and poverty.

56

Ha, I like this term! And as we all know obesity is bad for you.

57

Pose what question? :confused:

58

I understand that life really sucks for some people, through no fault of their own.

The problem is that you actually think that people like Bill Gates are part of the problem.

Billionaires got that way because they came up with something that billions of people valued, be it oil, software, shipping services, or whatever. They didn’t just tumble over into it. They worked hard, and they got a little lucky.

You seem to think that if they would just give it all away, then everything would be better. Giving it all away would mean the dismantling of their companies, which give the jobs to the people who aren’t destitute. You seem to miss the point that billionaires’ companies are what are keeping many people from joining the class that you’re so concerned about.

I’m concerned about this class too. I just realize that if it weren’t for the services, products, and investments that billionaires provide, things would be even worse.

Also, I feel I need to reiterate: BILLIONAIRES DO NOT HAVE BILLIONS IN CASH. Please read that again. Their money is tied up in stocks, buildings, land, equipment, ships, trucks, etc. They could theoretically sell all of it for billions, but you can’t redistribute the wealth without killing the thing that created and continues to create the wealth.

59

Yes, the human race has some baboonish tendencies, which are expressed more powerfully in some than in others. However, we are human beings and not baboons. We do not have to set up our societies for the comfort and convenience of our baboons, in fact, most of the progress of civilization has been the story of our struggle with our baboonish tendencies.

Therefore even if humans have a drive to be the alpha male and use the mechanisms of society to make themselves alpha males to a ridiculous degree, we still have the option of discouraging those tendencies and encouraging better ones.

I do agree, and very much so, that any society that sets up its social organization without taking the underlying baboonishness of humanity into account is doomed to fail.

60

I understand that billionaires do not have billions of dollars in cash.

I understand that they didn’t just tumble into their money. But how hard a billionaire works versus how hard a poor person works just to stay alive day to day, now that’s another story.

I am not saying give all their money away, that we be ridiculous, but are the jobs that they are creating really helping those most in need? I say no. By virtue of the fact that there is still extreme death and poverty, this can’t be true. Why not help those people first? They are in dire need.

What could be worse? Millions of people all over the world are sick, hungry and dying.

Trickle up anyone?