I'm not going to argue that Taylor Swift doesn't deserve to be on the billionaire list somewhere, but if you were only going to include 4, why would she make the cut?
Insofar as Swifties need to be reminded from time to time that their favorite billionaire is still a billionaire, with all the problems that entails, I support reminding them, but Swift being put up as some major public enemy lately is weird.
Three of those billionaires made their fortunes by stealing other's work and exploiting other's labor. I might dislike Taylor Swift's music but it is her music and her work that made her a billionaire. When someone stole her work from under her, she re-recorded it from scratch and then put on the most profitable tour in history with each show being 3+ hours long.
I'm not a Swifty, but I also don't think she qualifies to join that evil as fuck trio.
Not close to as evil as the others for sure. But there's a lot of labor that goes into making music and into touring that she didn't do herself. Does all her talent make it right that she makes thousands of times more money per hour of labor as all those others?
Hey look everyone! This person's a billionaire apologist!
I'm (mostly) joking.
You are correct that she is not on the aame level as the others but as a billionaire and member of the ruling class T-Swizzle has an elevated responsibility to the rest of the world. Instead of helping she continues her massive destruction of the climate.Until she is leveraging her wealth to make positive change she does not get a pass.
Oh and buying carbon offsets doesn't count.
I quantify it as: Taylor might not deserve the guillotine, the rest inarguably do.
I'm not a fan of hers but they are still correct that she's not nearly on the same level as the others.
I agree with you, 100%.
Okay but it's not a 1 woman show. She has likely hundreds of people employed she would not have succeeded without, yet she's about 1b richer than those combined
She is known for giving these people bonuses that surpass anything I've heard about outside corpo management, though. The occasion that made the press mention 100k USD for truckdrivers for one tour and while I dont know how much a truck driver makes a year, it'd sure make my life easier for a couple of years.
Not saying she isn't good at making money, but I'd say the jury is still out on the issue of hoarding all of it for herself.
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Taylor Swift not like the offer from RCA so her daddy bought a record company?
Nah daddy already owned a minor stake in one, like 5%.
Her parents were rich but not billionaire rich.
Of all the things to be wealthy for, making music and brining people a little bit of joy ain't bad. Don't condone the jet or the lifestyle. But I don't think it's fair to lump her in with exon and zuk
The men in the picture are the top 3 of the latest forbes list, Tylor Swift is not in the top 2,500.
Yeah I'm not a fan of her private jet shenanigans or her music, but the other 3 also use private jets like it's going out of style, and are nowhere close to her when it comes to societal impact. If you wanted a 4th you can use one of our own billionaires from the old continent like Bernard Arnault (who is allegedly pals with Musk)
It's people's money that made her a billionaire, if she became a billionaire it's because everyone who ever paid for something that brought her money was overpaying. It's the same for each and every billionaire, even the ones you appreciate, you're paying too much for shit so they can have more money than they can spend in a lifetime.
"I got my money's worth!" Well no buddy, you only think so because there's always a billionaire at the top inflating the price of everything, your money is worth a lot more if they all disappear.
I guess that all the people who downvoted think that it's perfectly ok for billionaires to exist...
There’ll be a place for you in the gulag after the Revolution
Where Rupert Murdoch? I'd put him as even worse than Bezos.
Musk, Bezos and Zuck are just the most visible ones but by no means the worst.
It depends on where you are, of course. Here in the UK, the Murdoch press is a massive influence.
Alice Walton has more DUI's than one can count. Killed someone, another time drove into a ravine. Net worth: 71 billion.
She could pay a new person $50,000 for an 8 hour shift of driving her around for every living moment, and it wouldnt dent her money. Could have a "house for a ride" program where if you give her a ride she buys you a house. 10 rides that day? She'd still make money.
Koch family deserves to be on here too.
Replace Swift with Putin and I'm back on board.
"no no, my billionaire is fine. They are really different i promise"
She isn't "my" billionaire as I don't consume any of her content or really give a shit about her one way or the other but she does feel like a weird addition to the list.
Her tag seems to boil down to her private plane usage but is it really all that more than any other person in her income bracket? There are also a bunch of other billionaires listed by others that do a lot worse. He'll, even the other three listed are having greater environmental impact because of their company's pushes into AI and the data center requirements of those.
it's not about who she is. it's ridiculous to have her in this group. her plane is doing damage but it's nothing compared to multinational companies that do whatever the fuck they want with your air, land and water.
I get that tswift is a billionaire, but she doesn't belong in this meme.
Quit trying to equate her to the oligarchs. She hasn't demonstrated any of those tendencies.
Nobody should be a billionaire. There is no labor that can be done to become a billionaire ethically.
I agree with this take and upvoted you. But she is a billionaire, and also a genuinely good person who's supported her fans, the people that work with her, etc. I don't think there should be any billionaires, and I suspect TSwift would likely agree with that.
That's the difference between her and the actual oligarchs pictured. They're scum of the earth. She's guilty of wage exploitation, but capitalism is designed around that idea, so she's just playing the game.
She's not off the deep end like so many other billionaires.
There's shades of gray here. We can agree there shouldn't be billionaires on principle, and also agree that not all billionaires are using their ill-gotten wealth for pure evil, like the other 3 pictured in the "meme".
You can't abolish wealth, it's practically impossible. Instead, close the loopholes that make them that rich.
Nobody wants to abolish wealth. We want to abolish people hoarding it away from others who lack basic needs.
You can't get rid of hard work
It actually very much is, if you abolish capitalism and private property you outlaw capitalists.
there has to be some form of private property though, but how do you define the line? Maybe if you could claim stuff for varying amounts of time, be it hours or for your lifetime, but there would still need to be somekind of measure against hoarding and other abuse. Everything should still have value for this, but maybe it wouldn't need to be monetary value we currently have.
Economy also probably cant be completely removed but it doesnt have to be exactly like it is now where money controls everything. Maybe if every type of work had some kind value determined by something that benefits society as whole and as you work, you gain some kind of credits that can be used to lay claim on stuff. Stuff could also have different tiers based on how crucial they are for life so everyone would have access to at least basic food and shelter no matter what. I dont think people just not working if they dont die to hunger or exposure as result would be problem, as life where you dont do anything is hell unless you are so simple minded you wouldnt be able to work anyway.
Then there is matter of resource allocation, if everyone uses as much as they want everything will run out. But to regulate this there would need to be some kind of authority which could easily corrupt into mockery of itself.
It would be nice if there was some serious research on how to achieve something like this. We dont have to be slaves to wealth. At least i havent heard of anything like that. But i wonder if large enough portion of humanity is even capable of thinking like that.
Shoot them into the sun on a billionaire's space rocket!
space billionaires!
I think Bezos, Musk, and Zuck are each much more of a planetwrecker than Swift.
It took me way to long to realise that wasn't Bill Nye...
