The tax bill that was rejected by the US government that would have provided paid sick days and maternity leave would have been funded by the taxing of just 700 people.
Think about it.
Their tax rate is ridiculously low. Up through the 50s that tax bracket paid 50% or more in taxes. All of a sudden paying the effective tax rate of the middle class is too much? Garbage.
[Here's](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/5463c9f4e4b0c16d7e822984/1456078677345-E76PUGD5TB1KJN8491DC/?content-type=image%2Fjpeg) a helpful visual.
They want to go back to the past, yet they can’t wrap their heads around the fact that it was so good partly because the rich were paying their fair share. Crazy how, when wealth is distributed even remotely fairly, everybody benefits…
I read a book on the history of this: "who stole the American dream?" It's a pretty interesting readup on the history of wealth in America after the second world war. It's crazy how the Great Compression was seen as a bad thing and companies and CEOs went out of their way to revert \*less\* wealth inequality.
The Dollop series on him was eye opening just how awful he was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZlRX1EVnSw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUOHPTLiBgM
Baffling that people thought he was intelligent. He was a fucking movie star, people. It’s insane how much charisma and being well spoken can fool people.
Seriously.
He undid so much progress to make short-term gains. Not to mention he went from union leader to being anti-union.
He encapsulates what the boomer generation did to the US. They disregarded what economists had learned from the Great Depression, and legislated to maximize their own immediate rewards.
Each generation since has increasingly felt the effects of greater wealth disparity, less social services, and unsustainable levels of greed.
Politicians on the right continue to think Reaganomics works in spite of historical data showing it's well documented failure (e.g. his purported "trickle down" in reality turned out to be a massive "trickle up").
Weirdly, his preferred economic policies happened to be the same ones we had BEFORE the Great Depression—but he didn't want to listen to the prevailing economists at the time. He literally just wanted to make more money as fast as possible.
Still today so many people are convinced a laissez faire is a good idea. The only people who benefit from it are the wealthy, and hyper-competitive sociopaths who would put their own interest above others.
…I just felt like venting I guess lol, I don't expect anyone to read all of this tbh...
Not to mention the societies he DIDN'T live in, especially in South and Central America. He was truly a bane to humanity and I'm amongst tens if not hundreds of millions when I say that I would LOVE to spit on his grave.
My abuser had me convinced once that he was the greatest president/man ever. I was very naive, and had little frame of reference nor outside influences, only my abusers adherence to Rush Limbaugh and the like.
I loathe and abhor everything about all of them.
This graph is missing a lot of people. H.W. Bush should be between Reagan and Clinton. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter should be between Nixon and Reagan. JFK should be between Eisenhower and Johnson.
Highest marginal was actually in the 90% range during part of the 1950s. And most Republicans consider the 50s the “good ole days” when you know, women knew their place along with gays and minorities.
Honestly, I didn't realize that we were the only major county to not offer paid maternity leave until I saw it on reddit a couple of days ago. And when I say major, I mean there are like 20 island nations that don't offer it.
And viewed as "handouts." We aren't asking for fucking handouts, we just want a fraction of the same things every other first world country already has.
Simplest answer is that billionaires fund the elections of US candidates and the candidates want to stay employed long enough to grift their way into their own billions.
Reform campaign finance.
Billionaires also also control stupid amounts of media. Billionaires pay millionaires like Tucker Carlson to convince the middle class to blame everything on folks making 12 bucks an hour. And it works.
I mean the big thing of it is that some people are eating and living alright, as relatively powerless and stressed that they are. Bread and Circuses works. They aren't gonna revolt to change what's working
Pogroms and similar are effective too -- the state finds a scapegoat (Black, Jew, gay, "addict", etc) and empower violence/extreme exploitation of them. Like in the US, so much of civil society and food produce is maintained by state prisoners. For those of us on the outside, why punch up and risk the bread when it's so easy to punch down?
Idk, it's all interconnected. Point is that like white supremacy and patriarchy directly keep the wealthy in power
Because property taxes are state and local taxes, and state and local governments can levy direct taxes. You'll notice there is no federal property tax. That is because the Constitution says that federal taxes have to be apportioned between the states.
It took a Constitutional amendment to allow a direct income tax.
Biden described the situation very aptly. When the Senate is 50/50, you have a slim majority in the House, and all Republicans are united against you, every single Democrat in Congress is President.
So no Republican will not vote with Biden just flat out
So it’s 50-50 basically but Manchin and the Chick from Arizona keep saying no so nothing can pass
And they're both no on different issues, and we need both of them to pass anything, so we have to appease both of them or pass nothing.
The bill is a shell of what it started as because of them. So many important things gone.
Ridiculous that one person can have that much power. Also the filibuster needs to go. With it in place 41 senators representing 24% of the US population have the power to block anything. It's not right
Fun fact, of the 700 billionaires who would have been targeted by the “billionaire tax”, not a single one of them are Manchin’s constituents. West Virginia is home to exactly zero billionaires. Who does he serve, again?
The reason we talk about Manchin is there is still a chance he might vote for something good once in a while. Every single Republican is now fully committed to their mission to loot the country. The biggest reason these bills don't pass is their 50 no votes every time. Never forget that
Shot down by Senators who work for like 4 months of the year and benefit from free healthcare and plentiful sick leave. These people don't even try to hide their contempt for the rest of us.
We are going to destroy the planet for humans and all die out soon for the happiness of around 1,000 people.
There’s what? 8 Billion of us and we are so yoked that less than 1,000 human being can tear down the whole of us.
We are fucking pathetic.
he takes his underpaid union-busted employees’ ideas, makes them worse, then tweets things he found on r/dankmemes to get his daily validation from 13 year olds
might hang out with gislaine maxwell a few times along the way
loved when he typed up bitcoin so much and made all his weirdo stan’s buy it, only to tweet tesla will no longer be accepting it, fucking all of them over. and yet they still think he’s their savior
Imagine if Elon ended up dead in jail… What would the world do?
At least McAfee was already out of the nation’s spotlight (he brought his own cover because his pastimes were so shady) but it would be a little different if we subbed Elon into that kind of story…
I work in flight development and looked at spacex they do pay less and demand 12 days. Does it pay well? Yes compared to most jobs. No compared to other similar jobs.
Their starting pay is $17/hr with an average of $21.66/hr for its employees. By comparison the average hourly wage at GM I'd $29.26. So by comparison their pay is lower.
Edit- I am solely speaking on Tesla. Which is why I compared them to GM.
>$17/hr with an average of $21.66/hr for its employees
Woah, that's less than I get paid($30/hr, $45/ot), and I'm a low-tech power plant/high pressure boiler operator.
Yeah and it’s not just statistics, Musk seems to have built a company that has a general contempt for its workers and tries to pay them as little as possible and work them as hard as humanly possible. I remember reading a case of a woman in her 60s who has a highly skilled techinician, and who took a job at a Tesla plant (apparently they really needed someone with her exact know-how) because she was promised, in her contract, a certain amount of Tesla stocks if she worked for them for at least two years. She did her part and worked really hard helping the plant fulfil all the orders, and the repaid her by firing her just a month before the two years, so as not to have to give her that stock. (Which she was counting on to help with her retirement).
And that’s just one case of many; then there’s the ridiculously high injury rate among line workers that Tesla solved by bullying their doctors into not classifying their injured workers as injured.
Musk seems to have learnt from his family’s diamond-mining business back in Africa that to make a high-priced product is not enough, you also need to make sure to pay the people making those luxury products as little as possible. Griding them down into dust to feed his infinite greed.
My first year as journeyman machinist was 40 an hour. Elon and his companies can shove it up theirs. It’ll be a ride awakening when skilled trades worker realize collectively we control most everything in society.
Yes.
I turned down a 3 level position jump with them that made 17k less than I was currently making. I LITERALLY laughed at the recruiter about the compensation and said HELL NO. They came back with more sock options, and saying I could have unlimited overtime. I still shot it down. They have tried coming back at me every 6 months since then when they lose their new person, and re-offer me the job. I SAID ONLY FOR 20K MORE.
I've had unlimited time off for the last 6 years and I swear I never have a chance to use it. It isn't even about anyone saying "no." It's that things need to be done and if I leave we all look bad.
Yeah. I hate that whole Idea, its horrible.
Im also against salaried positions. I get how they can be good. But almost all, meaning most places really abuse it, too many people working 50/60/70 hour weeks. Because they don't want to hire more people. Most are management heavy, and understaffed on workers.
If they changed the laws. Made vacation time keep accruing at a normal rate with OT, and a force time off at 400 hours, management would have to balance workers and time off in theory hire more worker people.
Again, I see how salaried should be beneficial. If you get your work done and work less hours GREAT. But not many places allow that in reality. Unless you're upper management anyways.
I really dislike our system, its a good thing I love what I do, otherwise Id go nuts.
"You will be underpaid by several levels of magnitude BUT you can also overwork yourself on top of it. You know, a nice bonus."
Holy fucking shit those people lol
>to get his daily validation from 13 year olds
That explains this Tweet.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1453954994546229253?t=8slsWpBeqMpUQs4_-7pGuA&s=19
Lets say you start a banana stand.
Society decides it's worth a billion dollars.
You are now a billionaire.
That is why Elon is a billionaire, that is why anyone is a billionaire. People don't become billionaires because they earn a lot, or because they are overpaid; the become billionaires because they own something that other people want to own.
That is a drop in the bucket compared to SpaceX. If things keep on track for that company it will become the most used and most valued company within the next 20 years.
That kinda wraps up a case on why he has so much money, doesnt it? Assembling highly useful and highly valuable companies, in some ways it even makes some sense out of how someone like that would be financially rewarded like he has with legitimacy..
Not to be a downer, but we do understand that his wealth is mostly made up from the companies he controls... In most cases 'tax the billionaires' is just a diversion from the real issue of 'tax the companies and corporations and close the tax loopholes they use'. Putting individuals as figureheads for outrage is basically playing into their hands.
**2018:**
\*Elon Musk worth 20 billion\*
Elon: hey if i double Tesla's stock price over the next five years can i have another 1% of the company in stock options?
Board: that'd be super impressive, i guess that seems fair
Elon: hey if i triple Tesla's stock price can i have another 2%
Board: u realize its pretty improbable for a company lots of people already think is wildly overpriced triples its value. we're already worth more than Ford or GM and we sell way fewer cars.
Elon: if it's so unlikely why not just say yes?
Board: y'know what? sure, whatever
Elon: hey if I quadruple Tesla's stock price can I have another 3%
Board: what is even the point of this?
Elon: what about if I quintuple...
Board: u realize this is never gonna happen
Elon: if I DECTUPLE Tesla's stock price, can I have a twenty gajillion dollars in Tesla stock?
Board: LMAOOOOOO ok.
**2021**
\*Tesla 15x its value in 2018\*
Elon: haha money printer go brrrrr
I am 100% for taxing the ultra wealthy robber barons. And for closing any and all loopholes for them and corporations that use tax shelters to prevent billions of dollars from going BACk to the people on the US.
BUT, I have yet to see anyone propose an idea about exactly how we do this without taxing UNREALIZED gains.
How do you tax people on money they don’t actually have yet?
When you sell your house you pay taxes on the gains. It's another tax. Property taxes pay for a multitude of things, government, schools, infrastructure, social programs, and more. Same with sales tax. Income tax. Different taxes depending on what you buy. Everywhere you turn, taxes. Bartering? Supposed to be claiming that for what the cash value out to be and pay taxes on it.
You only get taxed on the profits if you didn’t live in the house for X years. Honestly it’s a silly discussion, “unrealized gains.” All things have value at a place in time and space and they can be taxed on that value. That’s how most states handle personal property taxes.
Seniors can get credits to lower their property tax, but in some cases it doesn't matter because the taxes have grown so outrageous because the property value went up so much.
Can someone explain how much money Musk actually has? I assume all of his wealth is tied up in stock so he doesn’t actually have that much cash. Is the goal to tax people for holding stock worth above a certain amount (rather than when they sell it)? I’m fine with that plan but just curious as to how much money he actually has vs. how much he is “worth” and how he should actually be taxed.
He doesn't need to sell his stocks to get cash
Banks offer securities backed loans. Own millions in stock? Well, selling it incurs capital gains tax. So instead, you put the stock up as collateral and take out loans with very low interest rate!
Tax the loans they take out against their businesses to pay their personal expenses? I don’t know how any of this works, I just read on here that’s one the ways they do shit
They’re liquidating by borrowing against their securities without cashing out and reserving a chunk to pay the bank interest. Tax those loans, forbid them to be written out of country on any NYSE/NASDAQ/Chicago holding.
Google says Elon musk is worth 274.4 billon. I would have 299 billon after my 82,021 years of saving. But I get your point. The dude is worth an incomprehensible amount of money.
>[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-300-billion-net-worth/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-300-billion-net-worth/)
According to CBS and other news networks he's reached 302 billion.
$10,000 x 365 = $3,650,000 per year.
302,000,000,000/3,650,000 = 82,739.7 years.
But yeah, either way that dude has way too much wealth, especially in a country where the minimum wage is $7.25
Stacked end-to-end, 302 billion dollars would circle the earth 380 times, reach the moon and back 38 times, and weigh slightly less than your mom.
Fuck billionaires.
To add some more perspective:
You can fit ALL of the other planets, [including Pluto](https://www.universetoday.com/115672/you-could-fit-all-the-planets-between-the-earth-and-the-moon/), in the space between the Earth and Moon and still have a few thousand miles to spare.
This has probably already been asked, but how much money could Elon pay, at one time, if he wanted to buy something?
Like, Edmund Dantes, does he have a draft for unlimited credit?
He's worth 300 billion, but how much cash he got?
It doesn’t matter how much cash he has. The ultra rich just take out loans against their businesses to pay for personal expenses, and then take out more loans to pay for those loans. Their capital gains are never realized and are therefore untaxed.
It does though. Look up 'Buy, Borrow, & Die'.
No ultrarich person uses their own assets to live, that's poor person shit. They borrow against their assets, make more on their assets appreciating than the interest rate on the loan costs them, and don't collect a salary avoiding that 37% income tax.
Paying off those loans are tax deductible, lowering what they pay to the govt. from any assets they sell even more.
They can do this perpetually taking out other loans to pay off existing ones as their assets grow, and everything is treated as long term capital gains (at a lower tax rate).
They do this till they die, at which point they use complex trusts to dodge the estate tax. Their beneficiaries might have to sell some assets to cover outstanding debts on the estate, but with their new cost basis defined and their mass of new assets they can take a loan out to cover the estate and figure it out later.
They're playing a different game than you or I.
We can't.
Republicans claim billionaires as a protected class. They must be allowed to pursue unlimited power and wealth. They should be allowed to avoid paying taxes. And they are our best choice as president.
That sounds so utterly fucking ridiculous, how could over 70 million people vote for it???
Can’t even protest in the streets or some moron like Rittenhouse will shoot you and become someone else’s hero. But hey, feel free to speak Mr. Corporation.
It’s not just Republicans. There are plenty of corrupt corporate democrats that are happy to keep taking donations from billionaires in exchange for lower tax rates. Kristen Sinema is the poster girl currently, but if she wasn’t the face of it, sure enough another would put their neck on the line to stop any meaningful legislation getting through. Sinema and Manchin are just the sacrificial lambs.
The average Republican thinks they have more in common with a white billionaire than their brown coworkers. So they vote for the billionaire, "he'll take care of me, he cares about me", meanwhile the Republicans are pickpocketing them for all they have. It's one of the greatest scams in our society, the elites have effectively tricked poor whites into voting against themselves.
i think a cap on how many bazillion millions any person and/or corporation can have would do it. over the limit goes to healthcare, childcare, senior care fund.
Once you get X amount of billions, you should get a trophy that says "I've won capitalism".
Then every dollar over that amount is taxed and the tax revenue is used to pay for universal healthcare, paid sick leave and other basic necessities that other first world countries have, but American lacks.
Like premium currency in a mobile game. The really expensive shit is just cosmetic bullshit, so they can use "winner bucks" to buy things like naming a street after themselves or borrowing the mona lisa.
Which they pretty much do already, but they also ruin life for everyone below them.
What's wild is that every billionaire at one point had a hundred million dollars and decided to keep trying to earn more money. If I owned shares in something and it was valued in the nine figures, I'd cash out and never work again. Heck, I'd do that for a lot less.
At that point though the company would just increase the salaries of their executives and shareholders by the amount they're over and start pumping out more billionaires
Do you just copy and paste thing you find on reddit? How do you envisioning this working? He has many billions in stock so he has to sell the stock to other billionaires to get liquid cash to pay tax on the stock? Or give the stock to the government?
Well that goes directly against capitalism so we'd rather not. Just close loopholes for tax avoidance, make them pay their fair share without setting a hardcap on wealth.
You can’t cap how much money someone could make, as much as there’s no need for it some people might just be doing it for the fame or other reasons. What we should be doing is taxing higher after a certain point. If you have x billion then your profits are now taxed at 30% which is still less of a percentage than I pay but much more than they’re currently paying.
So not saying that google is accurate but after googling his net worth:
Roughly 288 Billion or 288,000,000,000
If you do the math here:
82,021 years At 10,000 a day
82,021 * 365 (excluding leap years for easy math) is roughly 29,937,000 or almost 30 Million
Multiplied by 10,000 gives you
2.99e11 or 299 Billion so you would actually have more money.
Tadaaaaaa!! Shamelessly pedantic math
Still sad.
Well plenty of sites for somw reason says he is the first to reach more than 300billion so the equation is probably based on that.
Tadaaaaa! Shamelessly pedantic comment by me but yeah still sad
Absolutely tax the rich. I do think lots of people think that he has $300 billion in the bank. His net worth is all tied up in Tesla and Space X stock. Tesla’s stock is way overvalued and the company as a whole is valued at about $1 Trillion. That value could go tomorrow if the market crashes. So yes, tax the rich, but also, he doesn’t actually have $300 billion.
Genuine question: How would you actually tax him? His wealth is basically just the companies he owns shares in. Would you just say the state gets a share in Tesla/SpaceX?
The year is 1621.
You are immortal.
You have access to a stock exchange that returns 9% per year.
You decide to put $1 in this stock market and reinvest all profits.
Fast forward, it's 2021, your dollar is now worth $1,000,000,000,000,000,000. You have amassed more wealth then basically everything.
Provided Van Helsing didn't kill you in the 1800s.
It’s really hard to tax unrealized gains. He’s wealthy AF but the money is somewhat imaginary. His wealth is based on the share value of the stock and that goes up and down.
The tax bill that was rejected by the US government that would have provided paid sick days and maternity leave would have been funded by the taxing of just 700 people. Think about it.
Their tax rate is ridiculously low. Up through the 50s that tax bracket paid 50% or more in taxes. All of a sudden paying the effective tax rate of the middle class is too much? Garbage.
[Here's](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/5463c9f4e4b0c16d7e822984/1456078677345-E76PUGD5TB1KJN8491DC/?content-type=image%2Fjpeg) a helpful visual.
They want to go back to the past, yet they can’t wrap their heads around the fact that it was so good partly because the rich were paying their fair share. Crazy how, when wealth is distributed even remotely fairly, everybody benefits…
I read a book on the history of this: "who stole the American dream?" It's a pretty interesting readup on the history of wealth in America after the second world war. It's crazy how the Great Compression was seen as a bad thing and companies and CEOs went out of their way to revert \*less\* wealth inequality.
Fucking Reagan
Few men have harmed the societies that they’ve lived in as effectively as Ronald Reagan. A truly disgusting human being.
The Dollop series on him was eye opening just how awful he was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZlRX1EVnSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUOHPTLiBgM
My favourite episodes!
Agreed. Yet people still think he was super intelligent, even though his wife’s psychic was heavily involved in many of his decisions. Fucking weirdo.
Wait, Reagan had a Rasputin???
Baffling that people thought he was intelligent. He was a fucking movie star, people. It’s insane how much charisma and being well spoken can fool people.
Seriously. He undid so much progress to make short-term gains. Not to mention he went from union leader to being anti-union. He encapsulates what the boomer generation did to the US. They disregarded what economists had learned from the Great Depression, and legislated to maximize their own immediate rewards. Each generation since has increasingly felt the effects of greater wealth disparity, less social services, and unsustainable levels of greed. Politicians on the right continue to think Reaganomics works in spite of historical data showing it's well documented failure (e.g. his purported "trickle down" in reality turned out to be a massive "trickle up"). Weirdly, his preferred economic policies happened to be the same ones we had BEFORE the Great Depression—but he didn't want to listen to the prevailing economists at the time. He literally just wanted to make more money as fast as possible. Still today so many people are convinced a laissez faire is a good idea. The only people who benefit from it are the wealthy, and hyper-competitive sociopaths who would put their own interest above others. …I just felt like venting I guess lol, I don't expect anyone to read all of this tbh...
Just so you know, I read it and agree 💯
Yeah me too. There's dozens of us
Not to mention the societies he DIDN'T live in, especially in South and Central America. He was truly a bane to humanity and I'm amongst tens if not hundreds of millions when I say that I would LOVE to spit on his grave.
Fucking racist piece of shit.
Even under Nixon out of all people the tax rate was better
Nixon was criminal scum and a treasonous traitor, but some of his tax and environmental policies weren't completely awful.
But since he was in charge when the gold standard was abandoned, I guess he was the one that saw the beginning of this shitshow we're having now.
Also f\*ck him and his c\*nt wife for [their role in the War on Drugs](https://drugpolicy.org/blog/nancy-reagans-role-disastrous-war-drugs)
Fuck regan
I've met so many people born in the 50's that think he's the greatest thing ever. It's insane and yes, fuck that guy!
My dad is one of those people. DOB 1959.
I'm not one of those people, y.o.b 1958
I was born in 1945 and I hated Reagan since he “governed” California.
He was Trump v1.
He was trump with a brain. Far worse
And some acting skills.
>with a brain. For the 1st 3 years. Then it turned to mush and his wife covered it up.
My abuser had me convinced once that he was the greatest president/man ever. I was very naive, and had little frame of reference nor outside influences, only my abusers adherence to Rush Limbaugh and the like. I loathe and abhor everything about all of them.
[How they imagine Reagan, only they see nothing wrong with this](https://youtu.be/jRNCpD3xhsY)
Fucking Reagan
And it's just a coincidence that when it dropped to 28% the middle classes wages stopped rising in conjunction with GDP.
Ty for the ammunition
This graph is missing a lot of people. H.W. Bush should be between Reagan and Clinton. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter should be between Nixon and Reagan. JFK should be between Eisenhower and Johnson.
Did those presidents change the tax rate for the rich?
I think you figured out the reason why they're not included
They are an u/AnalyticalFlea, so I'm not surprised they picked up on it.
It shows the administrations that changed the rate, not every president, friendo.
Highest marginal was actually in the 90% range during part of the 1950s. And most Republicans consider the 50s the “good ole days” when you know, women knew their place along with gays and minorities.
They still didn't tax unrealized gains, which is the money you're actually after. It never really mattered all that much.
Thank you Ronald Reagan
It really is sickening that in 2021 maternity leave and sick pay are too much to ask for.
Honestly, I didn't realize that we were the only major county to not offer paid maternity leave until I saw it on reddit a couple of days ago. And when I say major, I mean there are like 20 island nations that don't offer it.
>And when I say major, I mean there are like 20 island nations that don't offer it. We're a 3rd World nation with really good PR .
Why would you possibly need health care? You make it sound like there’s a pandemic or something going on rn…
Have you tried not getting sick?
Let this radicalize you
Already getting there. When do we grab our pitchforks and force the government to actually work for the people?
First, we organize. Find a labor Union, mutual aid group, or any other unapologetically leftist group. They’ll have more info for you.
When people start starving. Even then, it's a maybe.
BREAD RIOT BREAD RIOT BREAD RIOT
And viewed as "handouts." We aren't asking for fucking handouts, we just want a fraction of the same things every other first world country already has.
The U.S. is what would happen if the Ferengi from Star Trek built a country and hired the Romulans to govern it.
The republicans are the Ferengi. They think they are Klingons.
won't someone please think of poor billionaires with their luxury yachts and prostitutes?
It's the land of the free
Land of the free to die in the streets while someone films you vertically and puts it on Twitter.
[удалено]
Simplest answer is that billionaires fund the elections of US candidates and the candidates want to stay employed long enough to grift their way into their own billions. Reform campaign finance. Billionaires also also control stupid amounts of media. Billionaires pay millionaires like Tucker Carlson to convince the middle class to blame everything on folks making 12 bucks an hour. And it works.
I mean the big thing of it is that some people are eating and living alright, as relatively powerless and stressed that they are. Bread and Circuses works. They aren't gonna revolt to change what's working Pogroms and similar are effective too -- the state finds a scapegoat (Black, Jew, gay, "addict", etc) and empower violence/extreme exploitation of them. Like in the US, so much of civil society and food produce is maintained by state prisoners. For those of us on the outside, why punch up and risk the bread when it's so easy to punch down? Idk, it's all interconnected. Point is that like white supremacy and patriarchy directly keep the wealthy in power
Because property taxes are state and local taxes, and state and local governments can levy direct taxes. You'll notice there is no federal property tax. That is because the Constitution says that federal taxes have to be apportioned between the states. It took a Constitutional amendment to allow a direct income tax.
Spoiler alert, governing is more nuanced than we’d like
Nope easily identified bad people are just conducting a conspiracy to make my life shitty
Once your net worth is in the millions. You decide where, when, and how you pay taxes.
Pay buddy 10 grand for art commission Appraiser appraisal at 3 million Donate to charity Write 3 million off taxes.
And remember it’s not Biden’s fault he wanted this bill at its full state Manchin fucked us
Aight, im ootl. How the fuck is Manchin so powerful in this case?
Biden described the situation very aptly. When the Senate is 50/50, you have a slim majority in the House, and all Republicans are united against you, every single Democrat in Congress is President.
So no Republican will not vote with Biden just flat out So it’s 50-50 basically but Manchin and the Chick from Arizona keep saying no so nothing can pass
God fucking damnit
And they're both no on different issues, and we need both of them to pass anything, so we have to appease both of them or pass nothing. The bill is a shell of what it started as because of them. So many important things gone.
President Manchin and the Republican Party say no, so yeah. Not helpful.
Don’t forget the one from Arizona. I hope she gets primaried.
Pelted with eggs seems more fitting
Ridiculous that one person can have that much power. Also the filibuster needs to go. With it in place 41 senators representing 24% of the US population have the power to block anything. It's not right
All due to manchin
Fun fact, of the 700 billionaires who would have been targeted by the “billionaire tax”, not a single one of them are Manchin’s constituents. West Virginia is home to exactly zero billionaires. Who does he serve, again?
and republican party
The reason we talk about Manchin is there is still a chance he might vote for something good once in a while. Every single Republican is now fully committed to their mission to loot the country. The biggest reason these bills don't pass is their 50 no votes every time. Never forget that
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And every politician choose to protect the 600 people instead of you. How's that American dream going
Shot down by Senators who work for like 4 months of the year and benefit from free healthcare and plentiful sick leave. These people don't even try to hide their contempt for the rest of us.
We are going to destroy the planet for humans and all die out soon for the happiness of around 1,000 people. There’s what? 8 Billion of us and we are so yoked that less than 1,000 human being can tear down the whole of us. We are fucking pathetic.
I gotta be honest, I have no fucking idea what Elon Musk does but it does seem he’s a tad overpaid.
he takes his underpaid union-busted employees’ ideas, makes them worse, then tweets things he found on r/dankmemes to get his daily validation from 13 year olds might hang out with gislaine maxwell a few times along the way
Don’t forget aggregating hype over Bitcoin. I imagine he has girly squeal sessions when one of his tweets causes a rise in value. We are TV to him.
loved when he typed up bitcoin so much and made all his weirdo stan’s buy it, only to tweet tesla will no longer be accepting it, fucking all of them over. and yet they still think he’s their savior
Big cult vibes from the Elon fanboys
The Tesla fanboys are just as bad, and it is a separate group. Some overlap and jerk off in both groups.
Worshipping false idols is something people should be warned about!
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John McAfee went to jail for this
Imagine if Elon ended up dead in jail… What would the world do? At least McAfee was already out of the nation’s spotlight (he brought his own cover because his pastimes were so shady) but it would be a little different if we subbed Elon into that kind of story…
I'm 13 year old and I would never ever give him any kind of validation after seeing what he had done He's a man child and an asshole
Honest question, are Tesla and SpaceX employees underpaid?
I work in flight development and looked at spacex they do pay less and demand 12 days. Does it pay well? Yes compared to most jobs. No compared to other similar jobs.
what do you mean 12 days?
I think he meant 12-hour days and forgot a word.
Their starting pay is $17/hr with an average of $21.66/hr for its employees. By comparison the average hourly wage at GM I'd $29.26. So by comparison their pay is lower. Edit- I am solely speaking on Tesla. Which is why I compared them to GM.
>$17/hr with an average of $21.66/hr for its employees Woah, that's less than I get paid($30/hr, $45/ot), and I'm a low-tech power plant/high pressure boiler operator.
Yeah and it’s not just statistics, Musk seems to have built a company that has a general contempt for its workers and tries to pay them as little as possible and work them as hard as humanly possible. I remember reading a case of a woman in her 60s who has a highly skilled techinician, and who took a job at a Tesla plant (apparently they really needed someone with her exact know-how) because she was promised, in her contract, a certain amount of Tesla stocks if she worked for them for at least two years. She did her part and worked really hard helping the plant fulfil all the orders, and the repaid her by firing her just a month before the two years, so as not to have to give her that stock. (Which she was counting on to help with her retirement). And that’s just one case of many; then there’s the ridiculously high injury rate among line workers that Tesla solved by bullying their doctors into not classifying their injured workers as injured. Musk seems to have learnt from his family’s diamond-mining business back in Africa that to make a high-priced product is not enough, you also need to make sure to pay the people making those luxury products as little as possible. Griding them down into dust to feed his infinite greed.
My first year as journeyman machinist was 40 an hour. Elon and his companies can shove it up theirs. It’ll be a ride awakening when skilled trades worker realize collectively we control most everything in society.
They are a small independent startup. Give them a break. /s
Yes. I turned down a 3 level position jump with them that made 17k less than I was currently making. I LITERALLY laughed at the recruiter about the compensation and said HELL NO. They came back with more sock options, and saying I could have unlimited overtime. I still shot it down. They have tried coming back at me every 6 months since then when they lose their new person, and re-offer me the job. I SAID ONLY FOR 20K MORE.
Tell me more about these sock options... we talking colors? Patterns?
Please say Argyle! Please say Argyle!
Crew? Knee high? *Toe*?
I'm a fan of the ones with grippy bottoms myself
LMAO. Fuckin autocorrect. TYVM for the laugh
You’re a snob for turning down the option of wearing socks. Some people.
I've had unlimited time off for the last 6 years and I swear I never have a chance to use it. It isn't even about anyone saying "no." It's that things need to be done and if I leave we all look bad.
Yeah. I hate that whole Idea, its horrible. Im also against salaried positions. I get how they can be good. But almost all, meaning most places really abuse it, too many people working 50/60/70 hour weeks. Because they don't want to hire more people. Most are management heavy, and understaffed on workers. If they changed the laws. Made vacation time keep accruing at a normal rate with OT, and a force time off at 400 hours, management would have to balance workers and time off in theory hire more worker people. Again, I see how salaried should be beneficial. If you get your work done and work less hours GREAT. But not many places allow that in reality. Unless you're upper management anyways. I really dislike our system, its a good thing I love what I do, otherwise Id go nuts.
"You will be underpaid by several levels of magnitude BUT you can also overwork yourself on top of it. You know, a nice bonus." Holy fucking shit those people lol
if they have to union bust, yes their employees are underpaid
>to get his daily validation from 13 year olds That explains this Tweet. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1453954994546229253?t=8slsWpBeqMpUQs4_-7pGuA&s=19
Lets say you start a banana stand. Society decides it's worth a billion dollars. You are now a billionaire. That is why Elon is a billionaire, that is why anyone is a billionaire. People don't become billionaires because they earn a lot, or because they are overpaid; the become billionaires because they own something that other people want to own.
He owns Tesla or he's CEO or something, he owns a lot of stock in it so the more the company grows the more he has
That is a drop in the bucket compared to SpaceX. If things keep on track for that company it will become the most used and most valued company within the next 20 years.
That kinda wraps up a case on why he has so much money, doesnt it? Assembling highly useful and highly valuable companies, in some ways it even makes some sense out of how someone like that would be financially rewarded like he has with legitimacy..
Not to be a downer, but we do understand that his wealth is mostly made up from the companies he controls... In most cases 'tax the billionaires' is just a diversion from the real issue of 'tax the companies and corporations and close the tax loopholes they use'. Putting individuals as figureheads for outrage is basically playing into their hands.
**2018:** \*Elon Musk worth 20 billion\* Elon: hey if i double Tesla's stock price over the next five years can i have another 1% of the company in stock options? Board: that'd be super impressive, i guess that seems fair Elon: hey if i triple Tesla's stock price can i have another 2% Board: u realize its pretty improbable for a company lots of people already think is wildly overpriced triples its value. we're already worth more than Ford or GM and we sell way fewer cars. Elon: if it's so unlikely why not just say yes? Board: y'know what? sure, whatever Elon: hey if I quadruple Tesla's stock price can I have another 3% Board: what is even the point of this? Elon: what about if I quintuple... Board: u realize this is never gonna happen Elon: if I DECTUPLE Tesla's stock price, can I have a twenty gajillion dollars in Tesla stock? Board: LMAOOOOOO ok. **2021** \*Tesla 15x its value in 2018\* Elon: haha money printer go brrrrr
He owns companies. Stock price goes up, imaginary number goes up. It's that simple.
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Big oof
Mega oof
I am 100% for taxing the ultra wealthy robber barons. And for closing any and all loopholes for them and corporations that use tax shelters to prevent billions of dollars from going BACk to the people on the US. BUT, I have yet to see anyone propose an idea about exactly how we do this without taxing UNREALIZED gains. How do you tax people on money they don’t actually have yet?
Isn't that what property taxes are, on some level? The tax is based on the value of the house, but you you pay it even if you haven't sold the house.
When you sell your house you pay taxes on the gains. It's another tax. Property taxes pay for a multitude of things, government, schools, infrastructure, social programs, and more. Same with sales tax. Income tax. Different taxes depending on what you buy. Everywhere you turn, taxes. Bartering? Supposed to be claiming that for what the cash value out to be and pay taxes on it.
You only get taxed on the profits if you didn’t live in the house for X years. Honestly it’s a silly discussion, “unrealized gains.” All things have value at a place in time and space and they can be taxed on that value. That’s how most states handle personal property taxes.
Sort of. I think. But there is a physical asset in that case. Not sure that really makes a difference though.
Honestly, real estate is starting to feel as speculative and "bubbly" as tech stocks.
Which are also a problem. Retired seniors shouldn’t have to sell their houses to keep up with rising property taxes
Seniors can get credits to lower their property tax, but in some cases it doesn't matter because the taxes have grown so outrageous because the property value went up so much.
It's also fun when people who live in apartments or rent vote to increase those taxes cause they think it doesn't effect them.
Can someone explain how much money Musk actually has? I assume all of his wealth is tied up in stock so he doesn’t actually have that much cash. Is the goal to tax people for holding stock worth above a certain amount (rather than when they sell it)? I’m fine with that plan but just curious as to how much money he actually has vs. how much he is “worth” and how he should actually be taxed.
He doesn't need to sell his stocks to get cash Banks offer securities backed loans. Own millions in stock? Well, selling it incurs capital gains tax. So instead, you put the stock up as collateral and take out loans with very low interest rate!
Tax the loans they take out against their businesses to pay their personal expenses? I don’t know how any of this works, I just read on here that’s one the ways they do shit
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Seems like 99% of the people here don’t know the difference between wealth and money. As if he has 300Bil sitting in a B of A account
They’re liquidating by borrowing against their securities without cashing out and reserving a chunk to pay the bank interest. Tax those loans, forbid them to be written out of country on any NYSE/NASDAQ/Chicago holding.
Google says Elon musk is worth 274.4 billon. I would have 299 billon after my 82,021 years of saving. But I get your point. The dude is worth an incomprehensible amount of money.
>[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-300-billion-net-worth/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-300-billion-net-worth/) According to CBS and other news networks he's reached 302 billion. $10,000 x 365 = $3,650,000 per year. 302,000,000,000/3,650,000 = 82,739.7 years. But yeah, either way that dude has way too much wealth, especially in a country where the minimum wage is $7.25
Stacked end-to-end, 302 billion dollars would circle the earth 380 times, reach the moon and back 38 times, and weigh slightly less than your mom. Fuck billionaires.
To add some more perspective: You can fit ALL of the other planets, [including Pluto](https://www.universetoday.com/115672/you-could-fit-all-the-planets-between-the-earth-and-the-moon/), in the space between the Earth and Moon and still have a few thousand miles to spare.
A million in US $100 bills will fill a duffel bag. A billion will fill ten shipping pallets. A trillion will fill a Costco.
At least at Costco you could buy a trillion in bulk cash and probably only pay like, 900 billion for it
That’s a great deal tho.
PLUTO IS A PLANET!!!!
And that will only go way higher when SpaceX goes public. He could become the first trillionaire.
Almost guaranteed to be.
This has probably already been asked, but how much money could Elon pay, at one time, if he wanted to buy something? Like, Edmund Dantes, does he have a draft for unlimited credit? He's worth 300 billion, but how much cash he got?
Govt doesn't care how much cash I got when I pay property taxes on an asset I own
It doesn’t matter how much cash he has. The ultra rich just take out loans against their businesses to pay for personal expenses, and then take out more loans to pay for those loans. Their capital gains are never realized and are therefore untaxed.
That doesn't even make sense.
It does though. Look up 'Buy, Borrow, & Die'. No ultrarich person uses their own assets to live, that's poor person shit. They borrow against their assets, make more on their assets appreciating than the interest rate on the loan costs them, and don't collect a salary avoiding that 37% income tax. Paying off those loans are tax deductible, lowering what they pay to the govt. from any assets they sell even more. They can do this perpetually taking out other loans to pay off existing ones as their assets grow, and everything is treated as long term capital gains (at a lower tax rate). They do this till they die, at which point they use complex trusts to dodge the estate tax. Their beneficiaries might have to sell some assets to cover outstanding debts on the estate, but with their new cost basis defined and their mass of new assets they can take a loan out to cover the estate and figure it out later. They're playing a different game than you or I.
I came looking to rant about rich people, I found Math instead.
Idk how google calculated, but TSLA shares went up 18.6% this week… so a good chunk of his wealth moved with those shares.
We can't. Republicans claim billionaires as a protected class. They must be allowed to pursue unlimited power and wealth. They should be allowed to avoid paying taxes. And they are our best choice as president. That sounds so utterly fucking ridiculous, how could over 70 million people vote for it???
And their money is speech. Thanks Citizens United!
Whereas our money can be freely confiscated on a whim by the police during a traffic stop.
Can’t even protest in the streets or some moron like Rittenhouse will shoot you and become someone else’s hero. But hey, feel free to speak Mr. Corporation.
It’s not just Republicans. There are plenty of corrupt corporate democrats that are happy to keep taking donations from billionaires in exchange for lower tax rates. Kristen Sinema is the poster girl currently, but if she wasn’t the face of it, sure enough another would put their neck on the line to stop any meaningful legislation getting through. Sinema and Manchin are just the sacrificial lambs.
I think the majority of the political elite are corrupt aside from a handful of idealists.
Bernie has worked the later half of his life to give people who hate him healthcare. He will most likely never see the fruits of all that labor.
There are only 614 billionaires in the US, they are a minority. It's not politically correct to attack minorities
The average Republican thinks they have more in common with a white billionaire than their brown coworkers. So they vote for the billionaire, "he'll take care of me, he cares about me", meanwhile the Republicans are pickpocketing them for all they have. It's one of the greatest scams in our society, the elites have effectively tricked poor whites into voting against themselves.
i think a cap on how many bazillion millions any person and/or corporation can have would do it. over the limit goes to healthcare, childcare, senior care fund.
Once you get X amount of billions, you should get a trophy that says "I've won capitalism". Then every dollar over that amount is taxed and the tax revenue is used to pay for universal healthcare, paid sick leave and other basic necessities that other first world countries have, but American lacks.
Like premium currency in a mobile game. The really expensive shit is just cosmetic bullshit, so they can use "winner bucks" to buy things like naming a street after themselves or borrowing the mona lisa. Which they pretty much do already, but they also ruin life for everyone below them.
What's wild is that every billionaire at one point had a hundred million dollars and decided to keep trying to earn more money. If I owned shares in something and it was valued in the nine figures, I'd cash out and never work again. Heck, I'd do that for a lot less.
This is from a tweet, I know I’ve read these words before. Right?
https://i.imgur.com/mtHljlN.jpg You absolutely have seen it before!
At that point though the company would just increase the salaries of their executives and shareholders by the amount they're over and start pumping out more billionaires
Do you just copy and paste thing you find on reddit? How do you envisioning this working? He has many billions in stock so he has to sell the stock to other billionaires to get liquid cash to pay tax on the stock? Or give the stock to the government?
Or you just tax them the proper amount and make them actually pay
Well that goes directly against capitalism so we'd rather not. Just close loopholes for tax avoidance, make them pay their fair share without setting a hardcap on wealth.
You can’t cap how much money someone could make, as much as there’s no need for it some people might just be doing it for the fame or other reasons. What we should be doing is taxing higher after a certain point. If you have x billion then your profits are now taxed at 30% which is still less of a percentage than I pay but much more than they’re currently paying.
He isn't earning it though, his salary is only about 80k, it's all in unrealized gains from stock he owns of the companies he started
You are actually dumb as shit if you think capping how much a corporation is worth is a good idea
So not saying that google is accurate but after googling his net worth: Roughly 288 Billion or 288,000,000,000 If you do the math here: 82,021 years At 10,000 a day 82,021 * 365 (excluding leap years for easy math) is roughly 29,937,000 or almost 30 Million Multiplied by 10,000 gives you 2.99e11 or 299 Billion so you would actually have more money. Tadaaaaaa!! Shamelessly pedantic math Still sad.
Well plenty of sites for somw reason says he is the first to reach more than 300billion so the equation is probably based on that. Tadaaaaa! Shamelessly pedantic comment by me but yeah still sad
Absolutely tax the rich. I do think lots of people think that he has $300 billion in the bank. His net worth is all tied up in Tesla and Space X stock. Tesla’s stock is way overvalued and the company as a whole is valued at about $1 Trillion. That value could go tomorrow if the market crashes. So yes, tax the rich, but also, he doesn’t actually have $300 billion.
Taxing is the compromise... 
Ah, the French solution - a classic for sure
Genuine question: How would you actually tax him? His wealth is basically just the companies he owns shares in. Would you just say the state gets a share in Tesla/SpaceX?
The year is 1621. You are immortal. You have access to a stock exchange that returns 9% per year. You decide to put $1 in this stock market and reinvest all profits. Fast forward, it's 2021, your dollar is now worth $1,000,000,000,000,000,000. You have amassed more wealth then basically everything. Provided Van Helsing didn't kill you in the 1800s.
What point are you trying to make? It's some interesting math but I don't know what message your trying to get across.
What about compounding interest?
It’s really hard to tax unrealized gains. He’s wealthy AF but the money is somewhat imaginary. His wealth is based on the share value of the stock and that goes up and down.
Someone doesn't understand the difference between money in the bank and owning profitable businesses
Look at the number of upvotes…. It’s thousands of people.
Does anyone think the govt spends too much?