Vast wealth accumulation is not particularly meaningful in society. The richest person on the planet could liquidate their holdings and still fall short of building a single large highway.
Someone(s) have sent out pro-worker messages to unsecured receipt printers connected to the internet
- Thread starter crimson5pheonix
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Lol. You were so close to making a good argument, but then couldn't fight the compulsion to defend the indefensible.
Elon Musk, as the richest person on the planet, has wealth of ~266 billion dollars. Depending on its location, a mile of highway could cost between ~8 and ~40 million dollars per mile. That means that going for the upper estimation of the cost of a highway, Elon Musk could build almost 9,000 miles of highway if he liquidated his holdings.
But that's not a hugely useful metric, really. The initial cost of building a highway need only be spent once, and the highway may then be in place for centuries, whereas people in the highest 1% of wealth may be making millions of dollars a day.
It's more useful to translate the yearly increase in their wealth to the wages of an essential worker, to see what good that money could do. So... between 2014 and 2018, Elon Musk's wealth rose by ~13 billion. So averaging 3.25 billion a year.
In 2019, the yearly wage for a nurse in the US averaged between 48.5 and 77 thousand, depending on whether they were registered nurses or licensed practitioners (that excludes nursing assistants, who earn significantly less).
So, Elon Musk's increase in wealth alone between 2014 and 2018 could fund almost 17,000 nurses, if we go for the highest wage for a fully registered nurse.
Well, I don't know about that. In the UK, a motorway (usually three lanes either way) costs about £30 million per mile. So if someone liquidates $100 billion (£70 billion), that suggests that they could build ~2100 miles of motorway in the UK. Which means they could replace almost the entire UK's motorway infrastructure.
Just for giggles, let's do some more fun with numbers:
If we were to take only 25% of Elon Musk's wealth now and never tax him another penny, we could every single year until the end of time:
1. Provide 322,815 cost-free annual scholarship to the average community college
2. Pay 43,181 nurse's salary (at 77k apiece).
3. Replace 83 miles of highway (at max cost of 40m per mile). This increases to 302 miles of highway if we use the average of 11m per mile).
4. Provide SNAP benefits for 27.89 million Americans
5. Provide free Pre-K education for 376,898 children
edit:
Sources
Elon Musk net worth
Average CC attendance cost
nurse salary
highway cost per mile
Pre-K Ed Cost
SNAP cost
If anyone is looking to do their own fun math times, simply take 25% of Musk's net worth and multiply it by a conservative annual investment rate of return of 5% to find the annual perpetuity payout. That's your slushfund to then use for whatever you want to pay for each year.
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I had a brain fart and the actual SNAP number would be ~2.33 million. I forgot to annualize the monthly benefit's cost. Forum is being weird when I try to edit the post though....
In which way?
266,000,000,000/4*.05/40,000,000 = 83
266,000,000,000/4*.05/11,000,000 = 308
The low-end average for return on investment.
The idea is that the government could take that money, invest it, and use the dividends in perpetuity
Oh, I see. I'd managed to completely miss that from the initial post - my bad.
literally not everyone does work at present and a significant number of them live much better than the workers already. and do you know how they're allowed that? because others are compelled by threat of homelessness, starvation, and all manner of other discomforts.
The problem with these calculations is that they are based in the assumption that the government is building them. Elon Musk would need to acquire the land first, which is itself a nearly impossible endeavor without the power of eminent domain. Additionally, if Elon Musk attempted to liquidate $266 billion in stock, the value of those stocks would plummet, then another 10-20 percent would go directly into taxes, and he'd be lucky to have $100 billion at the end.
Regardless, your math has demonstrated my example of a highway is the right scale for this analysis, whether it would take all or half his wealth is really not that important.
You need to step back and consider the world without trying to put dollar values on everything. Having a single child has more impact on society than a big pile of money. That's just the truth.
Nobody is compelling anyone with discomfort. Reality presents those discomforts, and our current system allows people to escape them. You are just so, so backwards.
So we just take the wealth away from corporate owners... so that we can invest it in those corporations... and make extra money perpetually... by selling things to the rich people whose wealth we're taking. Perpetual motion machine, economics is solved forever. Bingo!
I'd suggest the problem that needs fixing is that they are able to make so much money in the first place.
Things will still get invented, stuff will still get made, investment will still occur, but the wealth is better distributed across the population.
They're public roads, are they not?
There you go with Danth's law again.
Moving the goalpost.
No, under the current system, most of the incentive to work is to not be starving and homeless.
That's weird, 'cause if you average out the number of kids my parents have vs the number of parents, they come out to about 1 apiece, but they definitely don't have the same societal clout as your average wealthy senator, let alone the people who bribe them