7 years ago there were no billionaires worth more than $100 billion

But but but trickle-down economics /s

Billionaires are a political choice as much as homelessness. They are allowed to exist because nobody does anything about it.

They are allowed to exist because they can literally buy their own political system
- they can literally buy their own political system
  
  They already have.

There was an article celebrating the fact that we're on our way to having the first trillionare.

I wanted to die. It's so insanely fucking disgusting

- Dis pos rel'van to beltalowda intres
- How is space an adjective in the first one? Shouldn't it be a noun?
  
  These Anglo-Saxons again, putting random spaces into compound words.
Why would you go around celebrating untreated and ignored mental illnesses?
- "Because it gives clear and tangible power over people you think are beneath you, duh. Do you even capitalism, bro?"
Look at all our WONDERFUL job creators amassing their dragon hoards!
On the other hand, if we all work really hard, go the extra mile, burn the midnight oil... we can make it happen faster for that special someone.
We already have them. They live in Saudi Arabia. And maybe one in Russia.

It’s almost seems like the main thing you need to make money is money

tail -n +2 listAbove | cut -f 2 > DeathNote.txt

Don't forget you still need facial recognition data.

kamala harris' proposed tax on unrealized gains seems like a great idea rn

And that’s just the wealth that we know about

A boring distopia is already even a single person having more than a single billion.

Yup, there was that post a while back, like you reach a billion, you get a plaque that says "congrats you won capitalism" and then they start at 0 again
- Not even a billion, as soon as you're in 8 figures you have more than a reasonable person can spend in a lifetime. Cap it at 50 million, every cent more goes towards public infrastructure and welfare
  
  Or we could do away with capitalism entirely. Just saying
- For real, like Prestige in Call of Duty
- I think we need to return to some of the old Pagan practices, like if you became King, you were sacrificed to the gods exactly 1 year later, and a new King took power. I propose that once you hit 1 billion, you are sacrificed to Mammon, to go live with him in the Great Bank In The Sky.
It's inherently antisocial. You no longer have to play by the social contract with that kind of wealth/power.

It's a grave failure with our economic system that billionaires have been permitted to come about

The overall average median lifetime earnings of $1,850,000 for men and $1,100,200 for women. Let's just take the average and say an average American earns $1,475,100 in their lifetime.

The important thing to remember is, in an unequal system where workers have most of the value of their work taken by a single person who the system disproportionately favors, that value is translatable to literal life. They are directly, inexorably going to die having had that value simply transferred to the other person or people who collect that value. Or put succinctly, they are giving up life, and the "owner" of the business is gaining the value of their life.

Another note is that even though most valuations are stock, stock valuations do not exist in a vacuum. The stock market is the realizable increase in productivity value that we all collectively have caused.

So based on that principle, just for fun, let's convert these fortunes to human lives, to better understand just how much (economically-valued) life force these people have taken from people:

Elon Musk: $262,000,000,000 = 176,259 American lives.

Jeff Bezos: $208,000,000,000 = 141,007 American lives.

Mark Zuckerberg: $203,000,000,000 = 137,617 American lives.

just for fun, let's convert these fortunes to human lives

Muh capitalism
To take that farther I wonder how many employees they have. How close is the ratio of workers to their life value obtained by the owner.

That's 18 people who own about a tenth of the US GDP. Something needs to be done, and soon.

That’s 18 people who own about a tenth of the US GDP.

Okay, sure. But that's bad analysis. GDP is annual and net-worth is lifetime total. That's also global wealth, not US-domestic (four of them aren't even American).

Agree with the sentiment, but we should really be talking about global wealth not national income.

Something needs to be done

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done
- Well yeah it's not apples to apples, I was just going for another massive dollar amount that was recognizable to give a sense of scale.
Including 14 inn the US.
- How many security guards can one of these assholes have on duty at any one time?
  
  Dont y'all have assault rifles and semiautomatics on you at all times and you are all about being against tyranny? WHAT GIVES?

If my math is correct and we taxed everything over 100 billion at 100% we'd get over 900 billion in taxes. Nearly a trillion bucks if we limited these assholes to a measly 100 billion.

A trillion bucks, but not in cash; in shares of those companies. Try to sell it all for cash and you tank the share price. People lose their jobs, pension funds that own shares in those companies lose value.

That’s the trouble with taxing wealth. It’s not liquid like income. All that net worth is tied up in the companies and not easily accessed.
- I'd be okay with the govt owning shares, honestly. That way the public would get a voice in how these megacorps operate, and that voice would get bigger the larger the company becomes.

1% tax on all registered securities, payable in shares of those securities. The SEC just confiscates 1% of every position, and conveys them to an IRS liquidator. The liquidator sells them off in small lots over time, comprising no more than 1% of total traded shares. Securities with negative values are returned.

Once completely phased in, natural persons will be exempt on their first $10 million in registered securities. Corporate-owned securities will not be exempt: the are taxed from their first share.

We tax only the problematic portion of their wealth: their wealth-generating assets. We auction those assets off to the general public.

You sound like you know what you're talking about, and convey it with spectrum-like precision. I throw my hat and my heart entirely to making your dream come true. Hoo, hoo (hoo-oo-hoo)

Is this inflation corrected? Cause an arbitrary line across 7 years of inflation is gonna be crossed....

No, thats a good point because its not inflation corrected its just an archived page. A dollar in 2017 is worth 1.28 today. So yes, in today's dollars there would have been 4 people above 100 billion in 2017.
I don't think we had 250% inflation in the last 7 years

We certainly didn't have a 250% increase in wages or median wealth in the last 7 years

They are parasites and criminals
- These sorts of stats are misleading and can erode the footing of the argument you are making. Showing the numbers adjusted for inflation is damning enough.
  
  We've had around 60% inflation over the past seven years, does it explain all their increases? No.
  
  But not including that information and saying "but number is bigger!" Just makes your argument look weak when it could be statistically sound.

Guillotines. The only answer.

I think it should be legal to murder a billionaire. They either have to pay for private security they can't fully trust and always worry about being killed, or they can give away their money until they're under a billion.
Guillotine is such an offensive word. I like „social scissors“ better.
- Marketing Guy: "I've got it! "Prudent Pruning!""

Hey, look, I found the thing the US is still number 1 at!

There are probably several Russian Oligarchs missing from this list because their wealth is mostly dark money. Rumor has it Putin is the wealthiest man in the world and has been for some time.

How has musk maintained his companies’ valuations? Particularly Tesla.

Blatant fraud

Eat the rich!

I'll take a #8, with fries please..

But there's nobody to prepare the fries. The economy has transformed entirely to eating the rich...
"I'll have the veal. Sorry Timmy, blame your father, not me."

If only we could combine Jim, Alice and Rob into a single entity called The Waltronzoid, we could easily defeat all the other billionaires by creating a bazillionaire.

I think what's fantastic about it is of they acted just as crazy as the other billionaires like Musk and Bezos where they decided they wanted to go to space. Then we could make fun of people blowing up their Walmart brand space ship and be like "what did you expect?"

Socioeconomic weeds choking out the rest of us.

Utter ignorance is how we find ourselves with so many morons admiring the thistle in the garden for its pretty purple flower. While economists stand around debating the merits of these weeds by divining dogma to give meaning to weeds natural stubborn deep roots.

Wow! So things must have gotten a lot better for people over the last 7 years!

Right?

Ugh, I hate ladderboards for games with cheaters and exploiters on top. Where are the moderarors?! I demand a refund.

This is a list of people who's creations I'd like to avoid, if at all possible.

It's obvious for several people on this list, but how do I boycott someone like the Oracle guy? As a non-tech guy, it just seems impossible. I don't even recognize several of these people, tbh.

Didn't Bill Gates sign a pledge to give all of his money away? And he is billions richer than last year? Huh.

Yes he signed up to give his money away. To a charitable trust. Which he and his family controls. And can withdraw from at any time.

It isnt a charity pledge, its a plan to avoid paying taxes.
- Adam Conover video on the "Billionaire Donation/Charity" scam:
  https://youtu.be/0Cu6EbELZ6I
It's all bullshit and marketing so people will regurgitate this lie. Everyone that says that puts it into a charity that they or their friends run.

Their children get high positions that allow them to have high paying jobs from the start. They have huge political influence which helps them with their other companies.

We need to redo our tax system and increase the top brackets. We also need to redo what is considered taxable and what can be claimed as a tax benefit.
Bill Gates a lying piese of shit? Who would have thought?

I went out in the rain yesterday and I got slightly moist. More at seven.
I'm not sure who is doing the calculations here, but the latest estimates I'm seeing for Gates have him down a bit for the year. He also is down after is divorce from Melinda, which included splitting off a good chunk of money for her own personal and philanthropic use.
- Bill Gates signed his pledge more than 10 years ago. His wealth doubled in the last 7 years, meaning that he's gotten average increases of like 10% per year.
  
  Mr. Gates, you're going the wrong way!

Save me a teriyaki one

No Japanese on the list, but we could make some nice fois gras with Bernard I'm sure.

Purée them

Poseidon must be satiated

Oil princes are far richer than this

If you have a lot of money

~~you contributed a lot to society~~
you took a lot from society

If you're a successful businessman and you want to contribute, perhaps you could lower the prices of your products, perhaps you could give shares to your employees who do all the work. Not only is it efficient for them to have a stake in the company, it's also only fair. Not doing so is unfair. We won't celebrate your 'success', a successful thief is a thief nonetheless. You doing so-called 'philanthropy' won't do any good either. Money is power, you exerting your power over us isn't the moral thing to do. It's still wrong to the core. Sure, people voluntarily giving money to all sorts of causes is a beautiful thing, but only if money is reasonably distributed among people in the first place. If you take money from society on a large scale and then exert this power, than undoubtedly your views and interests are disproportionately represented. Your intentions are dubious, because if you intended well, why did you keep all the money and power for yourself in the first place? It's likely that you're a power hungry maniac. But even if you're somehow naively unaware of this and truly have the noblest of intentions with your philanthropy, then it's still a ludicrous idea that this would be an efficient way to distribute money. It's quite obvious that if everyone got a say in where the money goes, that the distribution of assets would better represent what society deems important. It's only logical that if you get to distribute the money, it will go to things you deem important. If you think that makes sense, it can only mean that you deem yourself wiser, more moral, than all of humanity combined. It means you are a narcissist. It's not unlikely that you are, people who are successful money-wise, often think that life it a money-game and they're the winning players. And they have won because they work hard and are clever. The thing is, life isn't a money-game, people have moral compasses and strive towards others goals than making money. And even if it was a money-game, you've not won because you're so smart and hard-working, it is in a very large part due to your luck. That's not an allegation, it's a logical fact. People don't have the same starting positions. Being a billionaire is morally wrong, even if you give all of it away later in life.

Looks like Sam Walton would be atop the list had he figured out immortality.

Probably would top this list as the most decent person of the bunch too. He wasn't a saint, but I haven't seen evidence that he was rotten to the core, either.

Yeah I was thinking those Waltons have more money together then even Musk.

Pardon my ignorance. I dont follow these kind of news. BUT, why the hell is musk is no 1? What has he done? Last i heard this manchild is running down twitter, tesla with cybertruck fiasco. Is it from spacex?

I mean, zuckerberg and bezos basically create meta and amazon.

He buys existing successful businesses (at the time,) then manipulates their stock price from Twitter.

When is it ever enough?

Well when paper money is continually speeding towards zero value, it's no surprise that the most privileged have an endless supply.

Well when paper money is continually speeding towards zero value

Time to start saving bottle caps I guess.
It's funny. I went to a libertarian convention and watched as the pundit they invited to ~~rant~~ speak went off about how US fiat money was worthless and who agreed and every hand went up. He pulled out a 20 and 'who thinks this is worthless' and every hand went up. Let's test this who wants this 20 and every hand went up. Dude tore up the twenty and may have ended his ~~rant~~ speech a dozen minutes early. Libertarian conventions used to be hilarious. Haven't been to one in a decade tho.
- The proof is in the pudding... we need more heroes like that.
Well when paper money is continually speeding towards zero value

Zeno's Monetary Policy

jensen's cool but the rest should get expropriated

I am super confused by this post.

Yes, there is a huge problem of equality in societies around the world.

I even posted an article here that was talking about how the difference in distribution of wealth among families in USA is huge.

Yet the existence of billionaires alone is not something surprising considering factors affecting the means of production, inflation and many other factors.

In order to be a boring dystopia, you need to list the top earners from the middle class or the poor to demonstrate your point.

Otherwise, this post is kind of meaningless, in my opinion.

Sorta harsh take, but I do agree that comparing these numbers with additional data would be helpful for establishing a clear understanding of income inequality. It seems this particular table was written for comparing differences in the shown group only.

7 years ago there were no billionaires worth more than $100 billion - today there are 18!