Funny events in anti-woke world

TheMysteriousGX

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Billionaires literally cannot understand the idea of "enough". The rest of us, if we managed to scrape together a few million bucks, would fuck off and spend the rest of our lives in comparative luxury- but people like Musk and Bezos can't do that; they can't feel comfortable until they have everything.
Far as I can tell, they're hoarders. They just hoard something that's (barely) socially acceptable
 

Absent

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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has given an award to actor Steven Seagal for international humanitarian and cultural work, a state decree published on Monday showed.

Reuters reports the decree said the 70-year-old actor had been given Russia’s Order of Friendship. There was no immediate reaction from Seagal.

The decree mentioned Seagal’s work as a special representative of Russia’s foreign ministry for humanitarian ties with the United States and Japan.

Seagal, a frequent visitor to Russia, backed Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 as “very reasonable”, joined a pro-Kremlin party in 2021, and visited a Russian-controlled part of eastern Ukraine last summer, where he met with a Russian-backed separatist leader.
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The Rogue Wolf

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The argument for lower taxes might stand that more income for investors supports more investment supports more technological advances and productivity increases.
I've seen that argument trotted out a lot over the decades, and it hinges on one fantastic (as in "related to fantasy") belief: That the rich are just aching to create jobs for their "lessers", and it's only government interference holding them back.

It's bullshit. The rich want the maximum return for their money, so that they can get more money as fast as possible. It's no coincidence that the biggest era of growth in the United States also saw some of the highest tax rates on wealth; the rich, knowing that their money would be taken if they just sat on it, instead invested it into people, plant and product, knowing that it would still bring them more profit. But then Republicans concocted their stories of the benevolent rich and twisted tax laws to "let the rich keep more of their hard-earned wealth". What followed was entirely predictable: Workers' compensation flatlining while the rich vacuumed up all the wealth they could.
 

Ag3ma

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I've seen that argument trotted out a lot over the decades, and it hinges on one fantastic (as in "related to fantasy") belief: That the rich are just aching to create jobs for their "lessers", and it's only government interference holding them back.

It's bullshit. The rich want the maximum return for their money, so that they can get more money as fast as possible. It's no coincidence that the biggest era of growth in the United States also saw some of the highest tax rates on wealth; the rich, knowing that their money would be taken if they just sat on it, instead invested it into people, plant and product, knowing that it would still bring them more profit. But then Republicans concocted their stories of the benevolent rich and twisted tax laws to "let the rich keep more of their hard-earned wealth". What followed was entirely predictable: Workers' compensation flatlining while the rich vacuumed up all the wealth they could.
I have mixed feelings on the matter of investment. Firstly, I think the basic concept of investment to improve production is true, if that's where investment goes. However....

Investment in new technology can be problematic because (in terms of automation, for instance) it might actually drive workers out of relatively well paid jobs and into less skilled, lower wage work. In a similar vein, workers can be canned to move production to lower wage companies - and if instead cheap labour is utilised, there is less incentive to improve productivity. On the bright side, in all these situations, the product should become relatively cheaper (assuming the same quality). In the UK, investment money has heavily poured into property, just making land/homes really expensive and delivering no productivity at all (although of course it's been great for the asset wealth of homeowners, of which I am one). And of course, all the money that gets spent on share buybacks (concentrating ownership and wealth). For much of the West as well, why invest in people? That's what immigration is for: just attempt to entice the country's share of the world's best minds.

I tend to agree that the low tax, low salary (at the poor end) regime since the 1980s seems to have delivered us mostly just persistent, aggravating poverty; increasing wealth gap and social hostility; and increasing political and social dominance by the economic elites and away from the general public. As is oft said, class war is already happening, and the rich are winning it.
 
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Thaluikhain

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Billionaires literally cannot understand the idea of "enough". The rest of us, if we managed to scrape together a few million bucks, would fuck off and spend the rest of our lives in comparative luxury- but people like Musk and Bezos can't do that; they can't feel comfortable until they have everything.
Yeah, sometimes I wonder why billionaires don't spend their money on something worthwhile instead of just amassing riches, but if they were the sort to do that, they'd not have become billionaires.

Odd that it's socially acceptable to kill dragons and take the gold they've hoarded, but...
 

Trunkage

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I have mixed feelings on the matter of investment. Firstly, I think the basic concept of investment to improve production is true, if that's where investment goes. However....

Investment in new technology can be problematic because (in terms of automation, for instance) it might actually drive workers out of relatively well paid jobs and into less skilled, lower wage work. In a similar vein, workers can be canned to move production to lower wage companies - and if instead cheap labour is utilised, there is less incentive to improve productivity. On the bright side, in all these situations, the product should become relatively cheaper (assuming the same quality). In the UK, investment money has heavily poured into property, just making land/homes really expensive and delivering no productivity at all (although of course it's been great for the asset wealth of homeowners, of which I am one). And of course, all the money that gets spent on share buybacks (concentrating ownership and wealth). For much of the West as well, why invest in people? That's what immigration is for: just attempt to entice the country's share of the world's best minds.

I tend to agree that the low tax, low salary (at the poor end) regime since the 1980s seems to have delivered us mostly just persistent, aggravating poverty; increasing wealth gap and social hostility; and increasing political and social dominance by the economic elites and away from the general public. As is oft said, class war is already happening, and the rich are winning it.
A business owner may need to have workers to be successful. This is being forced on them due to the needs of the business. This is not them 'wanting to make jobs.' No business owner wants workers. They cost money and are hard to deal with

I don't know where this idea of rich people wanting to help workers came from. Personally, I blame Selma Hayek (see the quote on the last page)

Billionaires understand this and do everything they can to mitigate the cost and having to deal with them. The best way is to take rights away. A normal business owner will (at least try) to treat workers as people

(Massive generalization alert)
 

Absent

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Yeah, sometimes I wonder why billionaires don't spend their money on something worthwhile instead of just amassing riches, but if they were the sort to do that, they'd not have become billionaires.
It's actually verified in the world of charity. French comedian Michel 'Coluche' Colucci, who set up an institution of free food for homeless people (which survived him to this day), pointed out that their donors are people who have just enough money to not be poor, but not enough to be rich. He added "Rich people don't give, that's why they're rich !". And I got a similar testimony from people who go door to door for various humanitarian causes. They don't bother with rich neighborhoods, because those are "impossible to sensitize" (the french verb "sensibiliser" is the word/concept we use for "raise awareness, generate solidarity, etc").
 

tstorm823

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I've seen that argument trotted out a lot over the decades, and it hinges on one fantastic (as in "related to fantasy") belief: That the rich are just aching to create jobs for their "lessers", and it's only government interference holding them back.

It's bullshit. The rich want the maximum return for their money, so that they can get more money as fast as possible. It's no coincidence that the biggest era of growth in the United States also saw some of the highest tax rates on wealth; the rich, knowing that their money would be taken if they just sat on it, instead invested it into people, plant and product, knowing that it would still bring them more profit. But then Republicans concocted their stories of the benevolent rich and twisted tax laws to "let the rich keep more of their hard-earned wealth". What followed was entirely predictable: Workers' compensation flatlining while the rich vacuumed up all the wealth they could.
Don't worry, taxes on personal wealth accumulation were replaced with taxes on corporate success and payroll. That's the same thing, right? (It's not, it's not the same thing at all.)
Yeah, sometimes I wonder why billionaires don't spend their money on something worthwhile instead of just amassing riches, but if they were the sort to do that, they'd not have become billionaires.
That last part isn't a fair assessment. Nobody has ever become a billionaire by "amassing riches". People become billionaires by owning companies that expanded exponentially. The only way to realize those gains is to sell all or part of the company. The person with the dragon-like hoarding instincts is the one who sold of their company for a few million so they could sit on it. The person who left their money in a company that they thought was worthwhile is the one who becomes a billionaire.
 

Buyetyen

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That last part isn't a fair assessment. Nobody has ever become a billionaire by "amassing riches". People become billionaires by owning companies that expanded exponentially. The only way to realize those gains is to sell all or part of the company. The person with the dragon-like hoarding instincts is the one who sold of their company for a few million so they could sit on it. The person who left their money in a company that they thought was worthwhile is the one who becomes a billionaire.
This does not mean that billionaires do not have the dragon sickness, dude.
 

Ag3ma

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Now I'm interested in what he'd consider 'disagreement'...
I strongly suspect that what it means is that Adams's publisher and agent announced their decision to drop him and declined to debate the rights and wrongs of his statement. This implies that he was perfectly reasonably explaining some sort of deep truth that people secretly agree with, but are too afraid to say so. The reality is that his publisher and agent understand that there's no point arguing with a crank about his bullshit. As said, this is hardly the first time, and they'll know what kind of guy he is.

One might also note that Twatburger Supreme has also decided to get involved. I particularly note the sentence: "It was also reported that Musk deleted a tweet in which he responded to a comment from Adams about his comic strip being dropped, saying, “What exactly are they complaining about?”"

I guess he bothered to check (or someone told him), and Musk suddenly realised his tweet looked really, really bad.

 

Chimpzy

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Ah yes, paying in stock. Great option for a private company losing money.


Also, apparently some 1800 employees left out of 7000. Tho that number is of course a stopgap on the way to 1337, then 420, and eventually 69. Please like Elon.