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| Electronics whiz Elon Musk is now the world's richest person |
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| vad:
It is not that we have unreasonably cheap gasoline in the US, and you have unreasonably cheap electricity rates. The difference is probably due to redistribution through taxes and subsidies. |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: VK3DRB on January 09, 2021, 12:16:26 pm ---I personally don't think Musk is worth even 1% of his so-called net worth. However, the meritocracy system allows some smart people to amass such an obscene amount of wealth and generally pay minimal tax. Worth should be somehow based upon how you help others and mankind. You'd be blind Freddy to think Alice Walton, "worth" $54 BILLION, is not at least just a little bit greedy when Walmart only pays their cashiers a lousy $10.78 per hour. --- End quote --- Probably the actual wealth of Musk is like 1%. As others pointed out: if Musk dumps all of his Tesla shares the shares will be worth 0 the next day. Musk is Tesla and if he stops believing in it nobody does. He'll already have trouble unloading 0.1% of his shares. Also the worth of a person owning shares in a single company is highly volatile. IIRC Jef Bezos (Amazon) went from 200 billion to 150 billion. That is mostly due to share prices fluctuating. He didn't go to the casino and gamble it away. --- Quote ---Something is wrong when lowest paid workers can barely afford a decent meal for their kids or transport to get to work, whilst the super-rich are hell-bent on making more money than they know what to do with. Inequality is getting a lot worse in the US and other places (very evident during COVID-19) and I suspect this kind of greed might be a major cause of the civil unrest in the US. --- End quote --- That is not entirely true. A lot of wealth is invested in companies. Inflation makes sure that sitting on a stack of cash is making people poorer. Investing their money into the economy makes them richer. How well countries are run and taxed has a much higher influence. In some countries there are large groups of people which have no outlook at making a decent living due to lack of education and jobs. That is not just the case in the US but France is also a very good example. |
| vad:
Here is how Musk is going to spend all his money: “The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX plans to dedicate as much money as he can to colonizing Mars, and he's selling most of his material possessions in the process” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/worlds-richest-person-elon-musk-dedicate-wealth-mars-colony-2021-1%3famp |
| VK3DRB:
--- Quote from: BravoV on January 09, 2021, 01:41:55 pm --- --- Quote from: wraper on January 09, 2021, 01:37:59 pm ---Even communists in China understand that this does not work. --- End quote --- I guess the OP is an extremist, more extreme than China that he hates so much. :-DD --- End quote --- BravoV, your guess wrong. Probably unlike you I have studied Chinese history and I have worked in China. In fact I was part of a team that engineered the very first computer manufacturing plant in China. I have a plenty of Chinese friends. I don't hate China at all. Its regime is another matter but I don't want this thread to devolve into a political discussion that you seem to want to stir up. I am not a socialist by the way. There is nothing wrong with fairness and equality. Some of the super-rich say anyone can achieve whatever wealth they desire "in a free country". Some religious charlatans selling the prosperity gospel preach that God will make you rich if you ask Him (just give us your credit card details first though). In India people are destitute "because they were bad people in a past life" - a perfect excuse for the rich to ignore the poor. People brought up on the wrong side of the tracks or in the wrong country have the opportunities stacked against them. Musk may have been born poor, but he is one in a billion who has hit the jackpot though "merit". There is nothing wrong with becoming wealthy. What matters is what the rich do with their wealth. If it is just to hoard more loot (greed) by exploiting others, that cannot be good. If it is used to make the lives of others better (altruism) in a fair and just way, that is a good thing. Unfortunately most of the super-rich fall into the first category. Consider this example... a billionaire only buys two new pairs of jeans per year, and a poor person cannot afford new jeans at all. Now if the billionaire shared a small portion of his wealth to help uplift 1000 poor people (through responsible taxation and good government) so the poor people can now afford two new pairs of jeans per year, the number of jeans manufactured every year goes from 2 to 2000. The jeans business is now booming. Simplistic example, but it shows growing inequality actually impacts economies negatively. |
| wraper:
--- Quote from: VK3DRB on January 10, 2021, 12:56:58 am ---Consider this example... a billionaire only buys two new pairs of jeans per year, and a poor person cannot afford new jeans at all. Now if the billionaire shared a small portion of his wealth to help uplift 1000 poor people (through responsible taxation and good government) so the poor people can now afford two new pairs of jeans per year, the number of jeans manufactured every year goes from 2 to 2000. The jeans business is now booming. Simplistic example, but it shows growing inequality actually impacts economies negatively. --- End quote --- You are one of many people who do not understand that there are only so many goods produced. If you give free money away, what will happen is inflated prices, not increased production and all-embracing happiness. And all those rich people do not keep all their money in the bank or cash. That money is invested in something, to take it back, they need to sell something, like factory. And if sell, to whom? The same rich person who have their money invested in something. You can make some small group of people happy by giving the money away. But in no way it will work on large scale. BTW if you didn't know, there is way more money than goods which can be bought for it. If that idle money is released to "peasants" for immediate use, it will cause immediate money devaluation and thus burning of any monetary savings. |
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