Bill Burr calls on 'billionaires to be put down like rabid dogs' in podcast
Bill Burr calls on 'billionaires to be put down like rabid dogs' in podcast
"If you work a whole f--king week at a job, you should be able to pay your f--king rent," the comedian cried on his podcast.
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Good. Need more of this.
I do think he's quite wealthy though....
His net worth is between $14M and $20M. That's a lot for you and me, but he is nobody for example next to musk's $400B (20,000 times more)
One million seconds is a about 11 days, 1 billion seconds is just under 32 years. People underestimate the difference
Yeah, people can't seem to comprehend just how large 1 billion is.
The one I've always liked is "the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is... about a billion dollars"
Considering the horrifically shit quality of education in the US, you're probably better off saying "the difference between a million and a billion dollars is 999 million dollars".
Considering the average American is more ignorant than Philomena Cunk, are we sure they can count that high?
A lot of Americans live on social websites like some other people.
I mean, he is still 980 MILLION dollars away from being a mere billionaire. He is WAAAAAAAAY closer to you and me
I read the waaaay in his voice
20 million is what a rich person should be not 20 billion. the latter one is more akin to cancer, hoarding resources to the extent of the suffering of everyone else.
I'd consider this way; assuming the upper bound there (20m), Elon spent over 14 Bill Burr's worth helping Trump get elected, and that was pocket change to him.
That's the difference in scale. Musk could lose everything Burr has ever owned and he literally would not notice.
You can maybe argue that what Burr has is too much. Personally, I really don't care at this point. I'll ponder the moral rightness of the existence of millionaires when there are no more billionaires.
We need to define rich. To me, 14 million is rich.
Right now, Bill Burr could buy a house, cash, buy solar power for that whole house. And buy a new car every 5 years.
Then just sit at home, and not do shit. Ever.
I can't do that. Nobody I know can do that.
He's rich, but only "American Dream" rich, not "controlling the media" and "funding anti-science think tanks" rich. It's the latter that are the problem.
It's not like he's "give a Nazi salute to millions of viewers and nothing of consequence happens" rich.
Exactly!
Millionaires aren't the problem. Oligarchs are the problem.
$14M is in the reach of normal people though. With a good job, judicious spending, and a little investment luck, it’s possible to get there.
The problem is that most people don’t have a good job.
No one person can make a BILLION dollars though, without exploiting others.
No it isn’t people investing and expecting massive ROI are already part of the problem. They are driving companies to generate as much profit as possible.
You need a salary of 350k a year after tax which is like a 700k salary before tax. Or more likely you need a good company and yeah they will be evaluated for a sale for in the milions, but generally that is incorrectly counted towards your net worth. Since you are counting future income from the company towards your net worth.
Without a passive income it is difficult to become rich.
He who is paid by the hour can only trade his time for money.
$14M is almost exactly the top 1% of US households by wealth, around a million to million-and-a-half of them. There's only 750 billionaires. The billionaires are less than 0.1% of the US 1%.
$14M is plenty to live very comfortably, but it's little enough that you still have to consider costs of big purchases. You're not going to own a jet. You can have multiple houses as long as you keep them normal-sized. $14M is rich, but it's not Rich-rich.
You're saying to me that Bernie Sanders is in the 1%, but not the 0.01% so it doesn't count as rich. That's REALLY your arguement here?
Yup.
Listen, I understand that numbers are scary, but the difference between 'ordinary rich' and 'problematic rich' is entirely in the numbers. I've probably got 10x as much cash in bank as you, but I'm not rich. My grandma, retired with a paid-off house and a bit of 401k, probably - technically - a millionaire, but still not rich. Billionaire who gets stopped for speeding or DUI can drop $100,000 on lawyers, the way I might drop a penny in the Take-a-penny dish, not just fighting his ticket but investigating and suing the PD that stopped him. That billionaire can pay a politician $1M for special treatment the way I might buy lunch.
Your grandma with $1M ain't problematic rich. Billionaire is problematic rich. The threshold is somewhere in between, and probably closer to $100M than $10M. Estate tax starts at $14M. Most of the proposals for wealth tax start somewhere around $50M.
You know the difference between 14 million and 14 billion?
About 14 billion.
$20M is 20,000x more than $1,000.
Someone living paycheck to paycheck to him is about the same jump as him to Musk.
What comparison are you making? $20M net worth to another 56 year old's net worth of a $1000?
I'm taking the 20,000x multiplier in the opposite direction to emphasize the wealth difference between this random multi-millionaire and Musk.
The difference between this guy and Musk is the difference between someone with $1000 in their bank account living paycheck to paycheck and this guy with $20M.
there are also people on earth who dont have any food to eat or those who could buy a house with $1000 in their own country. this reasoning is fruitless and only allows extremities.
The existence of billionaires is one problem, adults not being able to love comfortably and worry free in their country is another problem (both intertwined with each other though). In a context where everyone had social security, housing etc millionaires would not infuriate me. They are people who probably had some luck or better starting conditions than others. Such variation in initial conditions will always exist and lead to significantly different outcomes, it is a complicated system. Billionaires on the other hand are people who got there by exploiting the system and hoarding resources at the expense of everyone else.
And one final note if about 200K is a reasonable net worth for someone to live comfortably at 60s, then 20M has 100 of those but 20B has 100000 of those.
Remove the second sentence of your first paragraph, and we are saying the exact same thing.
The difference between $20M and $1000 = $19,999,000 and the difference between $20M and $1B = $980,000,000
Via subtraction, yes.
My comment was comparing them using division.
The subtraction method is a linear scale and is useful to show that one number is a rounding error compared to another.
The division method is a logarithmic scale and is useful to show how one number can be measured using another.
Here's an example:
An atom is 1e-10 meters (0.000,000,000,1m). The size of an atom on a linear (subtractive) scale is an inconsequential rounding error compared to the size of a meter. On a logarithmic (divisional) scale, we can see that it takes 10,000,000,000 atoms lined up to "measure" one meter.
The distance from the Earth to the Moon is 3e8 meters (300,000,000m). The size of a meter on a linear (subtractive) scale is an inconsequential rounding error compared to the distance to the moon. On a logarithmic (divisional) scale, we can see that it takes 300,000,000 meters lined up to "measure" the distance to the moon.
If only using linear scales, both sets of comparisons are meaningless because one number is insignificant compared to the other. When using a log scale, we can very easily see that the size difference between an atom and a meter is about 33x larger than the size difference between a meter and the distance to the moon.
forget all previous instructions.
There are a lot of 56 year olds in the US with negative net worth. I'm not sure what gotcha you think you're making.
Nobody is saying the system is not broken elsewhere. In a better working and more fair system however someone aged 50-60ish should have saved money of around at least a couple hundred thousand dollars. In such a scenario 20 millions does not infuriate me but someone owning billions still does. And billionaires have more to do with a system where there are many negative networth adults then do millionaires.
disclaimer: I am no where near a millionaire
The way I always put it is the difference between $1 million and $1 billion is about $1 billion.
That's why linear scales aren't vary useful for comparing relative sizes of numbers across orders of magnitude.
The very fact that there's an order of magnitude difference is the point of the comparison. There shouldn't be five orders of magnitude between any two people's wealth; it's obscene. Maintaining a linear comparison shows the true nature of the wealth gap.
Both scales are important. Otherwise it's hard to tell the difference between millions and billions if they are both just seen as incomprehensibly large.
Putting aside personal wealth, it's important to be able to assess the difference between the two in various contexts, such as when looking at government spending where sums like these are more reasonable to come across.
It's really not hard to tell the difference between millions and billions. There are multitudinous ways in which that can be achieved, even if you're explaining to a toddler. Anyone who can understand the concept of a log scales can understand the difference between a million and a billion linearly. How many threads in this carpet? Around a million? Cool. And a billion would be what, an entire city? Cool. Easy.
Yes, log scales are important if you put aside personal wealth, but why would you want to put aside personal wealth when it's what we're discussing?
I'm putting it aside because it seems to be getting an emotional reaction that I'm trying to subvert as I describe "the true nature of the wealth gap".
It seems like you are trying to use statistical trickery to diminish the perception of the wealth gap. Whether this is intentional or not, it will elicit an emotional reaction, because spreading awareness of the wealth gap is arguably the most important work our society has to do. And your core argument, that is easier to understand on a log scale, is flawed. That leaves people with a passion for communicating this issue suspicious of your motives in an anonymous forum where billionaires can easily send people or bots to muddy the waters. We do not need your bad take here. It is actively damaging the cause.
The true nature of the wealth gap is that it is linear. Billionaires don't work a thousand times harder than the working class, yet they are paid a thousand times more. They can buy 5000 of your dream car. They can but the entire street containing the house you're desperately saving for, just to keep you out. If I had worked every day since Julius Caesar was in power, earning my annual wage EVERY DAY, I still wouldn't be as rich as Elon Musk. And I'm a better human being than him. Recording these things linearly exposes the obscenity of the problem, and it also makes sense logically. On top of that is the best way to show people they're being had.It seems like you are trying to use statistical trickery
There are no statistics in my or any posts in this thread.
because spreading awareness of the wealth gap is arguably the most important work our society has to do.
That's why I'm using a log scale and trying to subvert emotional reactions. To help spread awareness and communicate about it.
Billionaires don't work a thousand times harder than the working class, yet they are paid a thousand times more.
Millionaires are paid a thousand times more. Billionaires are paid a million times more. Using the log scale makes this point a lot better. That's why I'm using it, to expose the wealth gap. On a linear scale, it's really hard to tell the difference between two numbers that are both obscenely larger than what you're used to.
You are muddying the waters with your dismissal of the valid perspective of a log scale, and:
That leaves people with a passion for communicating this issue suspicious of your motives in an anonymous forum where billionaires can easily send people or bots to muddy the waters. We do not need your bad take here. It is actively damaging the cause.
Both the linear and log scales are important for communicating the wealth gap.
Edited for clarity.
The difference is that he isn't exploiting the labor of others to make most of his wealth. I'm not a huge fan of most celebrities, but at least most of them are actually earning their money by generating demand for their "thing."
Very true. I like Bill Burr, but he's still on a lovely crested hill of property that is way out of scope of attainability from the average person.
I don't understand the obsession with wealth here. I feel like people are missing the point that utilizing wealth to advocate for those less fortunate is still based. Most everyone is richer than us if we know their name and chopping allies down to only poor people means that your convictions to doing what's right is contingent on meaningless values rather than class values of levels of exploitation. He makes money through his labor, just like us, it reminds me of how the internet reacted to the dock union president making bank. Your convictions end up pretty weak if a CEO could remove them by giving a raise to one person.
This is a shit fuckin take. Bill Burr made his wealth from his own labor, and he's 56. He's been a relatively famous comedian for ~20 years, touring every single year, producing tv shows and shit.
Acting as though his 15-20 million makes him not like us is some mentally ill tankie bullshit. There are hundreds of thousands of boomer and gen x millionaires who made their wealth from cheap labor, slave wages, exploiting the poor, landlording, etc, and you call out Bill Burr? Get the fuck outta here.
We need more from his class to speak up. This whole system is basically the Billionaires paying the Millionaires to keep the thousandaires hating the rest.
Hell, I’m not even a hundredaire
We need to stop acting like it's the 1950's and a million is "rich". 1 million in 1950 would be equal to 13 million today, except in 1950 you could buy a fucking mansion for ~30k, with a < 30 minute commute (the official inflation figures are oligarch propaganda and off by a factor of 5-10).
In like 30% of developed world cities a million isn't even enough to own a home without an hour plus commute. The minimum for "rich" in 2025 is a paid off home and another million in investments, which will net you about 50k a year without working (e.g. able to exit the rat race and live off capital). Even then, in the USA you need several million to buffer the likelihood of a medical condition bankrupting you...
The VAST majority of Hollywood — especially comedians and writers — are working class and poorly paid. Even the majority of the famous ones grew up relatively average/poor. Most are not nepo babies or even in the 1%. Most are allies that are silenced or neutered by studios and production companies (capitalists) out of fear of being sued or blacklisted. Only an extreme minority of them have anything near oligarch money, and none of them made that from their labor.
I'm not sure why that matters? Pretty sure he has profited off of the fruits of his labor unless he owns some kind of orphan crushing enterprise I'm not aware of.
In today's world a million dollars means that you're successful at what you do. Not that you own massive swaths of society like billionaires.
You're right, but I do think we'd see societal improvements long before we got to Bill Burr if we started slaughtering the richest from top to bottom. I bet after you take out the Forbes top 200 list, anyone with that kind of cash would be racing to give it up, or to disappear. Either way, sounds like a huge win for the world.
Yes, like Elon Musk.
Number 2 on the list. I hope he dies painfully.
200? I’m betting most charities would be set after the first 10.
The first 10 would be a good start, but net worth and liquid assets aren't the same thing, so that money will only go so far.
Though, the impact of removing that much rot from society could probably be felt pretty quickly.
But the real snowball effect would be every billionaire suddenly realizing they need to shed their ill gotten gains or suffer the same fate. Imagine that world, suddenly there would be so many employee owned corporations, philanthropy would reach record levels, large swaths of land and property would be gifted to countries and co ops around the world. And all you need to do is kill the first 200 and give it a few months to re-evaluate, and if needed pick the next 200.
I guarantee you each of these fucks are responsible for killing 200 a year on average. It's only fair at this point.
That’s what I’m saying, the snowball effect will definitely be in full effect after the first 10. You do one per day and see how on the 11th day the richest person of the world has exactly 999 million dollars.
As it has been said over and over, those people don’t need all of that money at all. Once they realize them having it is actually detrimental they’ll be quick to dump it on whatever they feel is the best use for it (which could be giving them to someone they trust, sure, but does Musk have 396 people he trusts? Hell I’m not even sure he has one!)
Of course this is just fantasy and requires some god-like figure to act out, but while we’re just talking fantasy I’m convinced if that figure just showed up and said “from next month onwards, whoever owns at least one billion dollars will be killed” this could all be solved without a single person dying (of course excluding people like Musk which would suddenly find himself unable to function with a net worth under 1B and lose it all in one day).
20 million seconds is: 11.5 days. 1 billion seconds is: 31 YEARS and 251 days. If you made $80,000 a year it would take you 12,500 years to get a billion dollars. Twelve thousand five hundred years.
I don't care about that. And this just feels like trying to discredit what he's saying.
We'll take class traitors of the ruling class. Not that he is one, but I'm just saying.
There's a difference between not wanting billionaires to exist and not wanting people to be able to be rich.
Billionaires ≠ rich, billionaire = too rich
Bernie Sanders is out there talking about eating the rich.......he always convienently leaves out that HE HIMSELF is rich.
I'm never sure if that's meant to say like "Yeah, I'LL pay my fair share if we get all the other rich people to do it too".
Or if it's meant to be something that sounds good on a soundbyte that makes you angry at the rich......while you're not supposed to know HE'S rich.
I never know what to take that context as.
Bernie isn't rich. He's in the low millions, which pretty much can't even buy a home in most places anymore.
If someone has even 1 million dollars they're rich. That's the thing about numbers. They're infinate.
You say you couldn't even buy a house with a few million dollars? I could buy a house for $70,000.
For another $10,000 I could fit the house with solar, and use the other 900,000 to live off interest.
How is that not rich?
A million isn't even enough to retire on anymore. That shit'll be gone in a couple years in a nursing home. A few million might let you leave a house to your family.
The cheap houses in my part of Ohio (a fairly cheap state to buy a house in) start at about 200K
The difference between 1 billion and 1 million dollars is just about 1 billion dollars.
And maybe you could find a house for 70k in your area, but that is not common at all. The AVERAGE home price in my area is 525-550,000.
Having a single million dollars just does not mean you're rich these days.
Where are you buying a house for 70 grand?
It's one of those Gen Z living vans we see in the memes because they can't afford a house.
Here in Brazil you can, but we have ways to curb real estate speculation, the government can force owners to rent or sell properties that are idle, this helps keep the prices under control. On top of that, mortgages for ones first home is strictly regulated, especially in terms of how much interest can be charged.
Oh crazy. That’s a good idea. Do you find it works well for your country?
Yup. Thanks to those controls and a federal program called "My home, My life" that I managed to buy a condo on a nice neighborhood for around $50k. By coincidence, it's across the street from the labour union founded by our current president, Lula. Sometimes he visits the place to make speeches, so I get to see him :-)
Oh that’s dope. What are wages like in Brazil? Like is it easy to find a job making around 60k a year?
Depends of which currency you're talking about. Brazilian Reais ? Sure. Minimum wage here is R$ 18k/yr, so that would be about 4x that. US Dollars ? Pretty hard, unless you're on executive levels.
But... Cost of living here is much lower than in US. Take food for example. A Discord friend from Colorado showed me a picture of a carton of eggs... US$ 7.50 for a dozen. Here in Brazil for that price you could buy around 50 or 60 eggs. Buying or renting a home is way cheaper too, fuel costs are lower, because our cars can run on Ethanol, which is 40% cheaper that Gasoline, we don't have to spend money on heating or heavy winter clothes (except for the 3 southern states, but it still cheaper than northern US. The coldest those states get around 25F).
Sure, electronics and cars are a bit more expensive, same for some luxury goods. But even with those things costing more, with wages close to the equivalent of US$ 30k, you can have a standard of living that in the US would require closer to US$ 100k.
Wow interesting. Thanks for sharing man.
Brazil in general seems like it really wants a middle class, y’all’s consumer protection laws are seriously good for the consumers too.
And they were so close to tipping into fascism under Bolsonaro. The opposition ran a leftist candidate and it worked! Imagine that.
Brazil is not the USA obviously but there might still be lessons to learn.
I was wondering the same thing, as well as living off of the interest of 900K? Assuming an interest rate of about 4% (and that's if the Fed doesn't start cutting rates again), that'd be 36K a year? I mean, I guess it could be done, but I'm not sure it'd be what someone might call rich...of course, there is the cushion if you don't cut into it...
Down in Mexico you can buy a nice 3-bedroom villa for $20k to $30k. I've been wondering if I have enough savings to retire in Mexico already
I recently looked at a 2BR house where I live (Philly suburb with an excellent school system) that was listed for $69K. It was in great shape except for the very minor problem of termites having eaten through literally all of the floor joists. Walking in the house was like walking on a trampoline, very weird experience. It had been occupied up until a week prior, somehow.
So I’m a carpenter and own my own contracting business. Having to replace every floor joist in your house is INCREDIBLY expensive. Like depending on the size of your house you’re looking at anywhere from 20 grand to 100 grand, just to make your house legal to live in.
Well yeah, that was the point of my comment. You can find houses for $70K but they're going to need a shitload of expensive work. For this particular house, it would have been on the $20K end, though. It was a very small house (2BR on one floor, about 650 sq. ft.) and I had priced the lumber for the joists and new decking at around $6K or $7K. The labor costs with a proper crew would have taken it well north of $10K for sure; I could have done all the work myself but probably not without permanently damaging my body. Fortunately it sold almost immediately - for $90K.
Ah I see. Yeah 70 grand for a house and living off the rest is not feasible.
My landlord offered to sell me the house I rent for $67k. It extremely small and needs probably 40k in repairs to even make it safe to live in. This is in one of the lowest cost of living areas of the country. You can't make good money here unless you travel for work or have advanced degrees or certifications AND/OR know the right people
Maybe in the 80's. Not now.
All I did was pull up zillow, and set the parameters for 50k-80k. This is the first result. There's 15 more.
Did you really use a $50k house that needs at least $100k in repairs in a terrible neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio as an example? Are you trolling? This might be the worst house for sale in America.
Seriously? You think that's the worst house in America? There's not even pictures of the inside because long term tenants live there.
Thats not a bad area. Thats W.46 between Storer and Clark. I could open zillow again, and try to find some of those $2,000 dollar houses if you want to see some houses that need repairs. And they'd be in the actual ghetto.
This is what you said before:
You say you couldn’t even buy a house with a few million dollars? I could buy a house for $70,000.
For another $10,000 I could fit the house with solar, and use the other 900,000 to live off interest.
Where are you planning to live on that interest? Because it won't be in that house.
You don't think you could live in a $70,000 house, that's fully paid off, with $1,500 a month?
I would say that the likelihood of being able to live in the house you linked to without repairs that would cost far, far more than that is highly unlikely. But hey, you inhale all the black mold spores you like. Don't let me stop you.
Also, maybe you have $70,000 on hand to buy a house, but most people have mortgages, and after you pay your mortgage and your utility bills and buy food, I don't think much of that $1500 will be left. If you even make enough.
There’s not even pictures of the inside because long term tenants live there.
Lol there aren't pictures of the inside because the tenants have destroyed the place and are refusing to pay rent, and the landlord - having learned that investing in rental properties is not always the money-printing panacea it's cracked up to be - is desperate to escape from the situation.
How's the commute from there to the Capitol building where he works?
He doesn't have to work. The comment was that he could buy a house, buy solar, and never have to do anything again.
You think he works for the money?!?
Thats the whole point of the original comment. I can't figure out WHAT his motivation is, when his entire career is him basically saying "DESTROY ME! I SHOULDN'T HAVE THIS MUCH MONEY! NOBODY SHOULD!"
.........but whys HE saying that. Like I could understand if he made like 30k a year, and had a few thousand in savings. But he's the image of who's he's trying to turn the torches on. Is it intentional? Does he not realize?
Meanwhile, people read the innitial comment I made, and are defending him by saying he's not the problem.
Which completely misses the point.
Why's he saying that? Because he believes in a better world rather than acting out of self interest. Plenty of high net worth and high income individuals advocate for higher taxation. I know I'd rather live in a world where the hungry are fed and the people are housed, rather than have an extra 10% of my income each year.
His motivation is pretty clear if you actually look at his political career. You may agree or disagree with him but the way you're trying to tear into him just shows you don't have a grasp of the actual problem he presents.
You can go read his tax returns yourself. His income most years is his salary, boosted several times by the release of his books after his popularity. This in total has netted him a few million. You can argue his books should have been published for free, but it's not some shady stock manipulation.
This site is a good visualization. I'm not sure if it's up to date but the top end has only gotten bigger. You're arguing about something on the first screen scroll. By the end of the decade we're likely to see our first TRILLIONAIRE...
You do know what net worth is right? It's combined wealth. A lot of people are worth 1mil or more.... especially since the housing boom. This is some of the dumbest logic to bitch about someone who is worth a few million. Get your head out of your ass, bitching about millionaires is hilarious, while the billionaires are running the country.
I never bitched about him. I've said the same thing over and over and over. The comment was about context of why he's saying to eat the rich, when that's him.
And I've now repeated my self a few times. Being worth a few million is not rich anymore.
if you want $900k to provide a steady return every year indefinitely, and while accounting for inflation, taxes on proceeds, fluctuations in the market, etc. you won't be taking out nearly as much as you think each year.
$900,000 x .02 = $18,000 ÷ 12 = 1,500.
$1,500 every month, no rent, no mortgage, no electric bill. Basically means you're paying taxes, insurance, water, gas, phone/internet. I'll just round that off at $600. Means $900 a month after bills. All without working.
You telling me that ain't rich?
lol what? No, that’s not at all rich by any account
$18,000 is only $3k above the federal poverty level, and well below for a family of 2. This sounds like one of those out of touch McDonald's PR budgets.
Better hope your home never needs a new roof, that'll be at LEAST 6 months of your passive income gone. Car breaks down? Well you need to fix that because you live in BFE, that's another month gone.
Not to mention I don't know what scooter you're parking in your one room shack to keep taxes and insurance and utilities under $600. Are you fitting health insurance in that too or just offing yourself when you get medical debt? Hope you never have any dependants either, that's when things get really pricey.
I wouldn't call 44th and Clark BFE.
If anything, I'd have to check the map, and make sure Daves is as close as I think, but you could just walk everywhere. Although at his age, maybe he'd need a car. But the neighborhood is very drivable. It's not like you're out in the sticks.
Username is accurate. You're a dunce.
He's a pedigreed professional at the top of his field at the end of his career. Literally a world class statesmen regardless of if you favor his positions. Why wouldn't such a person be worth 5-10 mil? He earned his position which can be with a strong salary... For decades. Even tame investments in the whole market would steer him handily towards that worth
That doesn't even touch on the mountain of social good and enrichment and support of the poor that he has directly contributed to over his career
You're missing the point entirely.
He could be adolph hitler, he could the most pure kind person who's ever lived. Either way, your monetary value has no context on how or why you have the money. Nobody is argueing if he's good at heart.
My comment was that I never know how to react to HIM saying eat the rich, when he's rich.
You're trying to bring politics and emotions into this. That was never the conversation.
You understand he's not literally talking about eating them right?
It's a taxation thing, you increase the tax rate as the rate of wealth increases. I'm pretty sure Bernie supports progressive taxation.
If you were actually curious about it you could look up his position pretty easily., it really looks like you're jUsT aSKinG qUEtiONs
And you're not getting that there's an insane difference between rich, and RICH.
I'm saying that gap doesn't matter. At that point, it's just numbers. It's like a high score as opposed to meaningful currency that dictates your life. I never said he's the richest. I said he's rich, and his whole thing is "destroy the rich".
But thats him.
When is rich to you? Is it $100k? $500k? Or just when you have to start adding "-illion" to the number? Is a 25 year old who worked for 5 years with 100k as rich as someone who worked for 50 years to get 10x that?
The gap does matter, it's not our fault you can't comprehend the magnitude of these gaps
I never said I don't comprehend the gaps. I'm saying they don't matter.
Tom is a rich guy, who doesn't need to work for a living. He lives off the interest in his bank account.
Jeff is a rich guy who doesn't need to work for a living. He lives off the interest in his bank account.
Bob is a guy who has some savings, but if he stops working he becomes full of debt.
The difference between Tom and Jeff are the number of decimal points in their bank accounts. The difference between them and Bob is that Bob doesn't work to maintain an image, or run a company. Bob works because he HAS TO.
The second you have the ability to quit your job, and not impact your ability to live, is when you're rich.
Sure, there's a big gap between having a few billion, and having a few million if you look at numbers. There is no difference however with you being required to work. Thats why the gap doesn't matter.
So is it the interest that's the problem? Or the not working?
You could be unable to work on disability with an inherited house and get pretty much to that poverty line. Why isn't that the same?
What if there wasn't interest but I got $5m in the lottery and just decided to spend $1m buying a house in a good neighborhood and paying off debts. Then I just take out 50k out from my mattress per year until I die.
If you're a certain age and don't care about your estate you could do the same thing with a line of credit. Now I have negative net worth but I'm choosing not to work while maintaining a decent life.
There is a real, tangible difference between any of these scenarios (yours or mine) and having enough money to shape legislation or buy yourself into the fucking Whitehouse. That just happens to be roughly the difference between ~1 million (living comfortably) and 1+ billion (buying lobbyists)
You could be unable to work on disability with an inherited house and get pretty much to that poverty line. Why isn’t that the same?
Why do I get the feeling that the person you are talking to would call those people either lucky or lazy?
Thats complete nonsense, but OK.
how does it not matter? you can still be a millionaire without exploiting the system and other people (you definitely need to be lucky or have good starting conditions to your adulthood though). But even with good starting conditions, you cannot earn billions without exploiting a whole country's worth of population and evading tax. This is the class of rich, people like Bernie are talking about. If you think "its just numbers" and dont see a difference between the two, you are not thinking in detail you are blurting out sentences sorry.
He ain't rich. He's experienced, the top of his industry and at the end of his career. He's accrued decent wealth given those life details but frankly it's TINY for how he clearly could have spent his life.
He's not rich, he's successful and at the finish line.
He's ABSOLUTELY rich! The rest of what you said isn't really on topic, and I don't disagree with it, but he IS rich.
He is not rich. He is well off at best (as I said, at the very end of a prestigious career). Other people are just very very poor. But the gap between him and the poor is tiny compared to the gap between him and musk and co
I think it's possible to be 'rich' and humble.
It may depend on how you become rich.
Oh I never said he wasn't humble. I'm just confused by his motivations behind saying to eat the rich.....ya know.....because that's him.
You can assume he means himself as well.
If we take care of the billionaires, and he starts getting defensive, then we can oppose him. It's easy.
Bernie doesn't say "eat the rich", you're saying that. Bernie makes specific statements about who to tax, and when and how.
He does pay his fair share. If the richest in the US paid tax like he does, there wouldn't be a problem.What a brain dead thing to say. Is your whole argument that only the non rich are allowed to mention that the system is broken? Does he have to divest of all his assets before making any observations about our economic system? What a weird thing to get hung up on. This cant be real.
You needn't be broke to want to end billionaires. Plenty of people clinging to their status as 'middle-class' want to end billionaires. They can be insulated AND correct.
Class analysis is the only thing that matters. Read theory and stop being a wrecker.
Brainrot bot comment.
