An interesting piece - IMHO the average person hears the word billionaire and stops listening after it.
The problem, or rather the narrative for the average person is we, I include myself here, think about our jobs + our salary VS billionaires jobs + their salary. If you work an 11 hour shift as a cashier, 6 days a week and you don't break even at the end of the month you are angry, upset and dispondent. You become pissed when you see the word "billionaire" because it is equals fucktons of money (based on our perceptions).
As you progress, learn more or even accept how the world works you understand hard work isn't a direct factor for wealth. You DON'T become super stupid rich by working yourself to death.
Not everyone does anyway. But because hard work = success and success = money is drilled into us on all fronts we think "fuck this billionaire on his private jet and his yacht - i work harder, why don't I have a billion dollars".
TLDR; lack of understanding plays a big part in our perceptions.
Thanks for waking my brain up, looking forward to more of your posts.
So few know the formula for getting rich. But it’s like a piece of data. Everyone could know it. The real tragedy is that we have this massively funded school system that’s not teaching the rules, skills, and formulas for succeeding financially in or capitalist system. It’s dumb. It’s such an easy fix. I think very few things should be mandatory in education, and this is one of them - and whoever created legacy standardized education left it out.
College educated American adults generally don’t know what “market cap” means or what T-bills are or what the Fed does
it’s laughable. Seems morally wrong to put people into a game without telling them the rules or mechanics.
I do wonder what will happen with the pentagon audit. On one hand it’s generally unpopular to cut military spending or go after the military industrial complex. On the other hand Trump has proven not to be beholden to the past.
The USAID exposé strikes me more as a political win than a material one. We’re not going to be able to balance the budget without dealing with the elephants in the room. Social security, Medicare, and defense spending are the biggest components of our federal budget and DOGE needs to look there if they truly want to have an impact.
On the billionaire piece, I just don’t understand why Social Security tax is capped. It seems insane that if I make 200k/year I pay the same amount into social security as someone making 5 million/year.
Meh. I think this argument sort of falls apart after some monetary threshold. That threshold is definitely under a billion dollars. There are plenty of valid points in this post but I don't think I'll ever stop believing there's a moral issue with people living in abject poverty, starving, unable to get basic healthcare, etc. while other individuals in the same country have more wealth than they could ever use in tens of thousands of lifetimes. And that's coming from a pretty amoral person. (me)
I'm not an economist but let's say the government goes for-profit which means it's goal is to maximize revenue & pay out dividends to shareholders.
Maximizing Revenue means hiking up taxes, prices for social programs like healthcare x education, etc.
Pleasing shareholders would be those who have the most money stake in the government which right now are tech companies, oil, healthcare, and pharma. Those companies get to decide how the government & will want them to benefit themselves so they can earn more money.
Sure citizens are shareholders, just like I'm a 0.000001% shareholder of a company stock but that doesn't mean I have the same level of authority or get the same benefits as larger share holders.
If the government becomes for-profit, you'd change its function drastically & consolidate even more wealth and influence to big business owners while the citizens you wanted to help get left behind.
The federal government is the largest corporation. It’s a corporation in the limit, with a monopoly on violence. The false axiom here is that the government’s only way of making money is taxing citizens.
Trump is aiming to make money via tariffs, a sovereign wealth fund, and the External Revenue Service.
The government has been run so poorly for so long as a wealth extraction mechanism from value creating citizens that it’s been normalized.
Taxes on consumption like a gas tax, tolls, alcohol/cigarettes tax make some sense.
But taxing citizen’s production - e.g. income tax is unnecessary
The desert shall bloom as the rose/
Abundant Fields of jellybeans/
And a mountain bike made of diamonds /
Amen
This sounds like my kind of Utopia!
An interesting piece - IMHO the average person hears the word billionaire and stops listening after it.
The problem, or rather the narrative for the average person is we, I include myself here, think about our jobs + our salary VS billionaires jobs + their salary. If you work an 11 hour shift as a cashier, 6 days a week and you don't break even at the end of the month you are angry, upset and dispondent. You become pissed when you see the word "billionaire" because it is equals fucktons of money (based on our perceptions).
As you progress, learn more or even accept how the world works you understand hard work isn't a direct factor for wealth. You DON'T become super stupid rich by working yourself to death.
Not everyone does anyway. But because hard work = success and success = money is drilled into us on all fronts we think "fuck this billionaire on his private jet and his yacht - i work harder, why don't I have a billion dollars".
TLDR; lack of understanding plays a big part in our perceptions.
Thanks for waking my brain up, looking forward to more of your posts.
You’re welcome
Thanks for the comment.
Wealth is really a knowledge problem.
So few know the formula for getting rich. But it’s like a piece of data. Everyone could know it. The real tragedy is that we have this massively funded school system that’s not teaching the rules, skills, and formulas for succeeding financially in or capitalist system. It’s dumb. It’s such an easy fix. I think very few things should be mandatory in education, and this is one of them - and whoever created legacy standardized education left it out.
College educated American adults generally don’t know what “market cap” means or what T-bills are or what the Fed does
it’s laughable. Seems morally wrong to put people into a game without telling them the rules or mechanics.
Long live Patriotic Millionaires.
I do wonder what will happen with the pentagon audit. On one hand it’s generally unpopular to cut military spending or go after the military industrial complex. On the other hand Trump has proven not to be beholden to the past.
The USAID exposé strikes me more as a political win than a material one. We’re not going to be able to balance the budget without dealing with the elephants in the room. Social security, Medicare, and defense spending are the biggest components of our federal budget and DOGE needs to look there if they truly want to have an impact.
On the billionaire piece, I just don’t understand why Social Security tax is capped. It seems insane that if I make 200k/year I pay the same amount into social security as someone making 5 million/year.
Yeah, agree. I didn’t know about the social security cap until recently.
I think the early small wins at the US Agency for Instituting Democrat stuff is the spark to light the movement
Meh. I think this argument sort of falls apart after some monetary threshold. That threshold is definitely under a billion dollars. There are plenty of valid points in this post but I don't think I'll ever stop believing there's a moral issue with people living in abject poverty, starving, unable to get basic healthcare, etc. while other individuals in the same country have more wealth than they could ever use in tens of thousands of lifetimes. And that's coming from a pretty amoral person. (me)
If money could solve the problem it would have.
The government is a trillionaire - why didn’t they solve the problem?
I feel like that's missing a ton of nuance.
The government and a business are not run the same.
The government is a nonprofit (kinda), but it definitely isn't for profit so approaching at it through that lens isn't useful.
Thankfully it appears to be shifting toward for profit that returns value shareholders, citizens, instead of just taking from them
I don't think that would be a good idea.
I'm not an economist but let's say the government goes for-profit which means it's goal is to maximize revenue & pay out dividends to shareholders.
Maximizing Revenue means hiking up taxes, prices for social programs like healthcare x education, etc.
Pleasing shareholders would be those who have the most money stake in the government which right now are tech companies, oil, healthcare, and pharma. Those companies get to decide how the government & will want them to benefit themselves so they can earn more money.
Sure citizens are shareholders, just like I'm a 0.000001% shareholder of a company stock but that doesn't mean I have the same level of authority or get the same benefits as larger share holders.
If the government becomes for-profit, you'd change its function drastically & consolidate even more wealth and influence to big business owners while the citizens you wanted to help get left behind.
The federal government is the largest corporation. It’s a corporation in the limit, with a monopoly on violence. The false axiom here is that the government’s only way of making money is taxing citizens.
Trump is aiming to make money via tariffs, a sovereign wealth fund, and the External Revenue Service.
The government has been run so poorly for so long as a wealth extraction mechanism from value creating citizens that it’s been normalized.
Taxes on consumption like a gas tax, tolls, alcohol/cigarettes tax make some sense.
But taxing citizen’s production - e.g. income tax is unnecessary
Billionaires especially make good lampshades.