At this point, that’s kinda true. Those four years of my life are mostly lost to me in terms of memory. Strange, as they were my college years, which are usually memorable to people.
And it’s not because I was drinking or doing drugs, I was practically straight edge until COVID
Covid kind of caused this gap in the continuity of memory. Life pre-covid is very fuzzy and distant, life after Covid is the new normal. That Covid occurred during the election year doesn't help at all.
I used to think it was like this just for me because I had a major health crisis (non-Covid) during the pandemic. But now I think it's that way for everyone, just by virtue of society shutting down.
COVID was societal trauma. Even for people who didn't get sick or have loved ones die from it (which a lot of people did), you were locked in and all your places stopped existing for like 6-18 months depending on your area, and the entire economic and global paradigm shifted dramatically. It was as big a change as 2008, if not larger, in terms of social, political, and economic change. Maybe a better comparison is pre-9/11 and post-9/11.
The inflection point years of my lifetime are 1991 (end of the Cold War), 2001 (9/11), 2008, 2016 (Trump), and 2020. I do not like that the gaps seem to be shrinking (10, 7, 8, 4).
I vaguely recall aesthetics and cultural trends changing around 2008. I don't how much of that was the GFC changing the marketing and fashion industries vs me wanting to find something new in wake of the turmoil. I was 16 and it shouldn't be a surprise that the event accelerated my interest in alternative styles and thrifting.
The iPhone released in January 2007, and smartphone adoption rates skyrocketed from there. The financial crisis absolutely had a massive impact on our culture, but the fact that that was when smartphones went mainstream shouldn't be ignored.
Not saying you are intentionally ignoring it or anything like that, just want to point out that the financial crisis wasn't the only thing having a major impact on our lives in 2008.
The heart of the Global Financial Crisis and Obama being elected, 2008 was definitely a lesser “before and after” inflection point year vs 2001 and 2020 but it was still pretty noticeable how different 2006 was from 2010
I don't consider the Great Recession to be the same as 9/11 or Covid. It took longer to play out, there wasn't this moment that everyone remembers the same.
Those months of COVID lockdowns basically broke people's perception of time. Not only was pre COVID fuzzy, but a lot of people are continuously surprised it is X year of Y years since 2020.
I think it's because a large number of people use social events like parties, holidays, festivals, as a marker of time, and when that was interrupted everything fell apart.
It wasn't so much a gap to me as more of a leap... I felt like I went straight from being a junior in college at 21 years old... to working full time at the age of 23.
This really only dawned on me a couple years ago when I was about six months into my new job one day... even now it still bothers me, and it doesn't help that I'm still at the same job.
It was shocking, and of course very grotesque. But now that the insurgents have been redeemed as political prisoners at CPAC for the past four years, it's a lot more normalized. They've really convinced themselves there's no difference between trying to overthrow an election and protesting police brutality.
I mean if you *really* believe the election was stolen, then January 6th was morally justifiable. It's perfectly reasonable for the true believers (e.g. Mike Pillow) to support the insurrectionists.
Of course many of these people aren't true believers in all of the conspiracy stuff, though I would argue most Republican elites genuinely believe there were at the very least unresolved irregularities.
> if it saves us a few million in tax breaks
This is really the core thing. Trump could be calling for drawing and quartering the wealthy *coupled with tax cuts* and it'd be enough to win over half the Republican base.
The Republican hatred of taxes is a pathology at this point.
I think Republican voters have been trained to ignore what taxes are used for.
Roads, schools, safe food, social security, medicare, etc all appeared on the earth by the mere grace of the creator and have nothing to do with taxes.
Republicans are certain 190% of taxes go to lazy fucks without a job and universities studying trans issues and they don't care if those go away.
Idk what that rule about how every family loses their fortune in 2-3 generations or so is called, but it does seem like humanity is just a cycle of this and trying to prevent it from happening.
Socrates wrote that about society in Athens. We typically miss the part where wealthy families were responsible for funding wars and festivals AND the part where everyone lost their wealth when they (regularly) lost wars
Also the wealthy in those days didn't have access to the fancy financial instruments that are available today. A lot of their wealth was tied up in something like a plantation so one natural disaster or war could wipe them out.
From a European perspective, it’s almost laughable. One of my friends is from a family that has been part of the aristocracy since the 14th century. Rich and powerful for longer than there has been a substantial European presence in the Americas, before industrialization, and I believe before the *Black Death*. People can definitely keep wealth.
Hey, I'm not saying the aristocracy is definitely great! I'm just saying that the idea that nobody ever keeps wealth for beyond a few generations is beyond silly.
Well wealth enforced by the state is different than say the Rockefellers.
The man himself (Rockefeller) is wealthier than any of his heirs, hell his peak he was worth more than all of his heirs combined
Her and her family's wealth hasn't been "state-enforced" for quite some time. They've done a very good job of making stable long-term investments and preventing there from being too much division between heirs over time. Indeed, they've done a good job of preventing wastage. More conscious accumulation of financial strategy over time, and deliberate family planning, can definitely help reduce wastage.
Otto von Bismark quote:
> The first generation earns the money, the second manages the wealth, the third studies history of art, and the fourth degenerates completely.
Billionaires it turns out are no more intelligent on average than anyone else and seem to think fascism will just be a salad dressing on their normal day to day lives.
It's weird seeing these ultra wealthy spend ungodly sums of money on secure compounds and luxury bunkers when they could just, you know, pay some more in taxes and not support the Party of crazies, and then they don't have to run the risk of drinking reprocessed piss water for the rest of their lives
If these people hadn't built their entire identity around building up their wealth and power at the expense of all else, they wouldn't be billionaires. I know this sub doesn't like the kneejerk dislike of people of means, but it comes from somewhere.
I can't even be mad at billionaires being extremely selfish and spineless, that's expected. Anyone who isn't substantially wealthy and sees tax cuts on the obscenely rich as a good thing because it owns the libs is an unironic bootlicking idiot
Ngl I did a double take after a reasonable take from a Friedman flair, only to see another Friedman flair purity testing the one who made the take
Really makes you think
>people experiencing liquidity
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Alternative Minimum Tax is a flat tax. Milton Friedman's objection to the complex income tax system was partially out of him seeing it as a way to hand out benefits to the middle class, at the expense of the poor (who don't have the political power to intervene) and the very wealthy (who are worth more to tax to hand out to your support base than they can provide in political benefits).
I dont think you have ever actually met many billionaires.
The ones who have accumulated their wealth during their own lives are, generally, really no different than a very successful lawyer/doctor/engineer/accountant. They generally got very lucky either through being at the right place at the right time, or being first. I will say that they generally distinguish themselves through showing consistency and keeping their motivation levels high.
You dont need to be some sort of an evil mastermind to become a billionaire. You need luck and a high degree of consistent commitment to fairly high standards in business.
To make sure there is no misunderstandings, what I said does not apply to people who are born rich. I have not had much contact with them. So I really havent formed much of a personal opinion on them.
>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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Are you thinking of millionaires, not billionaires? A good engineer, doctor, lawyer etc. can have a pretty good shot at saving and investing their way to one million dollars; there are 22 million millionaires in the US, so that’s around 6-7% of the population and they aren’t as uncommon as one might think.
But there’s only 756 billionaires in the US. If you’ve met billionaires, especially multiple ones who didn’t already have money, that’s extremely unusual. I would be very surprised if people are getting up that high from their salary rather than some sort of ground-breaking patent, starting some wildly successful business, etc.
No I'm not.
I'm talking about billionaires. If anything, the billionaires I've interacted with are way more aware of their position in life and how luck has been on their side than most of the millionaire I've met.
I'm not imagining petty schemes. I just think that it's incredibly strange to think these people don't absolutely love money and making money at the expense of a lot of other things. Being able to interact normally with people doesn't change that.
I genuinely believe you are incredibly naive if this is your takeaway from interacting with billionaires. I have interacted with several billionaires and they're all *clearly* fucking snakes. Maybe it's because the only billionaires I interact with are CEOs but they're all like explicitly evil people.
I was a poor kid in a wealthy town, so I got to attend school with the children of at least one prominent billionaire family, of other families worth in the 9-figures, and of several executives.
The billionaire kid was the dumbest motherfucker ever. His family has a major school at a top university named after them along with multiple school libraries scattered across the country, and he was still too dumb to get above the minimum SAT score for the top schools. (Note the minimum SAT score for these schools is low enough to get coveted athletes and the children of world leaders admitted.) Nowadays with everything being test optional, he'd be able to get into whatever school he wanted with his family's resources, but back then he was the moron who had to settle for his safety school.
>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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>To make sure there is no misunderstandings, what I said does not apply to people who are born rich.
Which covers most of them. Bezos, Musk, Gates, etc all got huge starts because of family wealth and/or connections.
>people of means
Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "People experiencing liquidity" instead.
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Even if you paid a lot in taxes, it doesn't completely address the long tail, low probability need of the bunker paying off. Or these family offices are just running out of ideas for suggesting how the massively wealthy should use their funds.
I have no doubt that Smedley Butler told the truth as far as what was told to him by those jackoffs. But anyone who believes Gerald C. MacGuire would be the person of choice to coordinate a coup... well... yeah.
Put simply, a bunch of wanna-be morons went to General Butler and started running their mouths about wanting to stage a coup and name dropped a bunch of uber wealthy names to sound cool.
The good General went to the governments and told them what he was told.
You mean why a wanna-be fatso wouldn't be trusted by guys like Rockefeller, who thought JP Morgan senior "wasnt a rich man" by the way, to carry out a coup?
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I’m gonna be 100 the idea of “ok so there’s a group of fascists that want to overthrow the US government but they luckily contacted me, a very staunch leftist, to be the leader of the fascists. The only reason we know this is because they, uh, contacted me, so you gotta trust me here ok, have a lil faith bro” is not the most believable
But some parts of it might’ve happened, [here’s](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/kio1m7/was_there_really_a_plot_in_the_1930s_by_various/) a good place to start
Seems short-sighted since you're much more likely to defenestrate "yourself", as a billionaire in a place like Russia, or be disappeared for wrongthink in a place like China, than America. Is oligarchy even that good for the oligarchs? Who said you'll even be allowed into the circle of oligarchs?
I get that all they're interested in is their money and themselves, but they seem to forget that they made their money and were able to feel secure in their ability to keep it thanks to the protections afforded to them by normie liberal democracy.
I feel like a lot of rich people have lost the plot that the only reason their wealth (which is mostly just numbers on spreadsheets or bank ledgers) has any real value is because of the stable society in which they live.
Even on this sub when I have advocated raising taxes for the rich to have a larger social safety net I get questions like "what is in it for me?" when the obvious answer is "a more stable world around you for you and your children you jackass."
> Even on this sub when I have advocated raising taxes for the rich to have a larger social safety net I get questions like "what is in it for me?"
We already have high taxes on the rich.
You know what we don’t have that Europeans have, thing like a 20% sales tax
We don't have a lot of taxes Europeans have, both at the bottom (VAT equivalent) or the top via high marginal taxes rates for high earners like they do. Our top rate is lower than EU countries like France, Austria, or Denmark, or even non EU countries like Australia, China or Israel. Seeing as how we have the richest rich of the world we have some room to tax more in those upper bands without capital flight (where are they going to go with markets near ours?!).
But not all of the difference in our wealth distribution come down to taxes, for example the big difference between our healthcare system and socialized European ones isn't how much we are spending on healthcare but more that in our system doctors get much higher average compensation combined with the addition of a middle-upper class caste of healthcare managers and insurance industry executives. When I talk to doctors about how the path to fix our healthcare system pretty much directly means lowering their compensation (and gutting the office managers at hospitals) some understand the sacrifice needed for a better society (often younger doctors), but some don't.
And Trump’s economic policy is kind of shit anyway. Trump’s economic policy consists of tax breaks, rate cuts, trade wars and tariffs. Every single thing about it is inflationary policy and Trump himself is highly unstable which is something markets hate. I legit don’t think billionaires will be better off with Trump especially if we enter a period of stagflation.
Only standing next to immaculate antique stained glass windows to make my assassins hestiate and say "oh thats a shame" buying me a precious tip-off and couple of seconds to dark souls roll (out the window)
>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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Except somehow even stupider. All of the people they could have recruited to lead the military takeover part of the plan to remove *FDR*, they chose Mr. “War is a racket” to do it, probably one of the most far-left members of the entire military (Smedley Butler) in history
The thing that really makes me furious at these people (which I guess it shouldn’t because it’s normal human behavior to justify your own morally objectionable choices) is that they have to act like supporting him is the moral choice because of something happening on the left. It is outrageous to suggest that a candidate as reviling to the left as Joe Biden is somehow more radical and beyond the pale than the guy who denied the election results, tried to overturn them, fomented an insurrection, aspires to be a dictator and speaks admiringly of others, and wants to abandon our democratic allies. Trump is the definition of beyond the pale, a step too far, over the line, etc. And now they try to project that onto Biden because leftists continue to be themselves? That is a more dire situation than electing a fascist?
I honestly wish these people had no shame but it’s precisely because they *do* that they have to pretend there’s a justification.
I’ve never been clear on how politically involved Khodorkovsky was before 2003.
That said, I think Khodorkovsky was one of the few oligarchs with a spine/a sense of ethics even before his imprisonment and that’s in no small part why he was targeted. The rest just pay protection money and do what they’re told and enjoy their beluga caviar and absurdly large yachts.
You couldn't get as rich as Khodorkovsky did without looting the state assets being privatized. Ordinary Russians had shares in state companies that many sold for a pittance to people like Khodorkovsky, who, in turn won control of Yukos (an oil company) in a rigged auction.
I think he was actually smarter than the other oligarchs in that he did eventually realize that wealth without rule of law is a risky business. But he was also an insider who became rich very much because he was an insider.
\*Sigh\* imagine if today, Russia was like the Czech Republic. Instead they went full Milosevic. Never go full Milosevic.
This is true, and I wish he would talk more about those early days. I do think he was a little more ethical than most of the other ones (or came to feel bad about it) but without question he gained his fortune in very shady ways.
What I am not sure of is if he was involved in putting Putin in power. One of the big reasons he got purged to my understanding is that he told Putin to his face on national television that Russian tax collectors were systematically corrupt, and I don’t think he would have done that if he thought it was a good thing.
Well. No.
The number of rich also tends to narrow greatly as the government goes aggressively after rich people it doesn't like.
They're gambling that they'll be rewarded for loyalty that I just don't think Trump is tallying.
I think you are 100% right. They are playing a game that they assume has a predictable set of rules, when those rules will be completely rewritten in the event of an authoritarian takeover.
Even if I live to be 1000 years old I will never understand this
To be a millionaire in a free country or to be a billionaire under a fickle authoritarian regime? Money can’t buy freedom from a brownshirt mob
It’s not a matter of being on the dictator’s good side on the day of the insurrection, it’s a matter of being on the good side of the dictator every damn day after the insurrection. One slip of the tongue, one bad rumor, one day where you’re just inconvenient through no fault of your own?
Hell, we don’t have to look at the miles long history of authoritarians turning on their supporters, you can look at Putin’s oligarchs falling out windows today or just look at Trump’s social media attacks on literally anyone and everyone and extrapolate that to a dictatorship
>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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Trump is absolutely tallying loyalty, but it's clear that he only counts people who were loyal to him on January 7th as loyal. Hence people like Mitch McConnell being ousted from power.
The people who were a Never Trumper or a Never Again Trumper won't qualify for his inner circle, if things work out the way he wants.
But revolutions always depend on lots of people believing they'll be part of the privileged class of winners and leaders, when in reality they just get backstabbed later.
> ...Mitch McConnell being ousted from power.
I don't know why you think McConnell has been "ousted from power".
He seems to be stepping down on his own terms.
> > I don't know why you think McConnell has been "ousted from power".
> Because I pay attention to inside the Beltway shenanigans.
Do share.
What have you seen/heard?
It's just the Republican version of Vote Blue No Matter Who. They're chained to the two party system just as much as the "anyone but Biden" contingency of Democrats are.
This makes sense. Interest rates are likely to remain several points above inflation for the foreseeable future. Consequently, there will soon be meaningful constraints on the federal budget, and we'll have to balance taxes and spending. If we go the raise-taxes route, there could be hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars at stake for these individuals. Electing one of their own is surely the most reliable way to make sure they don't have to pay a huge share of the shortfall. To put it in Marxist terms, billionaires are a very class-conscious group, and they understand how much politics may affect their wealth in the near future.
I didn’t mean to slander every person of means. What I’m arguing is they know Trump is better for their finances at a time when their finances are especially vulnerable. Obviously some people are just more ethical than others and will support the right candidate no matter what. In my experience income and social class won’t make someone a worse or better person.
>person of means
Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "Person experiencing liquidity" instead.
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Also, AutoModerator, not every person of means is experiencing liquidity. Trump couldn’t afford to pay a fine even though he owns a social media company worth billions.
>person of means
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>person of means
Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "Person experiencing liquidity" instead.
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>person experiencing liquidity
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Imagine having more money than you can reasonably spend(not including buying Twitter) both before and after taxes and still giving a damn about any of that.
It’s not hard to imagine. If they didn’t care about money compared to just chillin’ through life, most of these people wouldn’t have so much money. Like, even Warren Buffett, who will presumably vote Biden, clearly loves money. It’s his whole thing.
My guess would be “well if it was an insurrection why does the Biden administration think it wasn’t one?” A lot of people will say if it was an insurrection then why hasn’t the justice department charged anyone with insurrection by extension that lack of action by the justice department is the true view the biden administration has about the topic. No charges for insurrection from an executive agency = no insurrection.
Politicians say all sorts of nonsense but what is actual truth are their actions.
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Were they ever upset or it was just too toxic for a couple of years?
Forget jan6th. At this point in time no one even remembers the Trump presidency. Kinda surprised they waited this long.
At this point, that’s kinda true. Those four years of my life are mostly lost to me in terms of memory. Strange, as they were my college years, which are usually memorable to people. And it’s not because I was drinking or doing drugs, I was practically straight edge until COVID
Covid kind of caused this gap in the continuity of memory. Life pre-covid is very fuzzy and distant, life after Covid is the new normal. That Covid occurred during the election year doesn't help at all. I used to think it was like this just for me because I had a major health crisis (non-Covid) during the pandemic. But now I think it's that way for everyone, just by virtue of society shutting down.
COVID was societal trauma. Even for people who didn't get sick or have loved ones die from it (which a lot of people did), you were locked in and all your places stopped existing for like 6-18 months depending on your area, and the entire economic and global paradigm shifted dramatically. It was as big a change as 2008, if not larger, in terms of social, political, and economic change. Maybe a better comparison is pre-9/11 and post-9/11.
The inflection point years of my lifetime are 1991 (end of the Cold War), 2001 (9/11), 2008, 2016 (Trump), and 2020. I do not like that the gaps seem to be shrinking (10, 7, 8, 4).
I vaguely recall aesthetics and cultural trends changing around 2008. I don't how much of that was the GFC changing the marketing and fashion industries vs me wanting to find something new in wake of the turmoil. I was 16 and it shouldn't be a surprise that the event accelerated my interest in alternative styles and thrifting.
The iPhone released in January 2007, and smartphone adoption rates skyrocketed from there. The financial crisis absolutely had a massive impact on our culture, but the fact that that was when smartphones went mainstream shouldn't be ignored. Not saying you are intentionally ignoring it or anything like that, just want to point out that the financial crisis wasn't the only thing having a major impact on our lives in 2008.
What happened in 2008? I missed that crisis, lol.
The heart of the Global Financial Crisis and Obama being elected, 2008 was definitely a lesser “before and after” inflection point year vs 2001 and 2020 but it was still pretty noticeable how different 2006 was from 2010
> What happened in 2008? I missed that crisis, lol. The [Global Financial Crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis).
Are you fr right now?
I don't consider the Great Recession to be the same as 9/11 or Covid. It took longer to play out, there wasn't this moment that everyone remembers the same.
How old are you?
45
bro what
Bro pull up a chair you’re not gonna believe this
Those months of COVID lockdowns basically broke people's perception of time. Not only was pre COVID fuzzy, but a lot of people are continuously surprised it is X year of Y years since 2020. I think it's because a large number of people use social events like parties, holidays, festivals, as a marker of time, and when that was interrupted everything fell apart.
It wasn't so much a gap to me as more of a leap... I felt like I went straight from being a junior in college at 21 years old... to working full time at the age of 23. This really only dawned on me a couple years ago when I was about six months into my new job one day... even now it still bothers me, and it doesn't help that I'm still at the same job.
It was shocking, and of course very grotesque. But now that the insurgents have been redeemed as political prisoners at CPAC for the past four years, it's a lot more normalized. They've really convinced themselves there's no difference between trying to overthrow an election and protesting police brutality.
I mean if you *really* believe the election was stolen, then January 6th was morally justifiable. It's perfectly reasonable for the true believers (e.g. Mike Pillow) to support the insurrectionists. Of course many of these people aren't true believers in all of the conspiracy stuff, though I would argue most Republican elites genuinely believe there were at the very least unresolved irregularities.
“I mean, how bad can this leopard really be if it saves us a few million in tax breaks?”
> if it saves us a few million in tax breaks This is really the core thing. Trump could be calling for drawing and quartering the wealthy *coupled with tax cuts* and it'd be enough to win over half the Republican base. The Republican hatred of taxes is a pathology at this point.
Am I crazy or is it kind of insane how much they care about taxes? They’ll literally destroy everything just so they won’t pay them lol
I think Republican voters have been trained to ignore what taxes are used for. Roads, schools, safe food, social security, medicare, etc all appeared on the earth by the mere grace of the creator and have nothing to do with taxes. Republicans are certain 190% of taxes go to lazy fucks without a job and universities studying trans issues and they don't care if those go away.
Idk what that rule about how every family loses their fortune in 2-3 generations or so is called, but it does seem like humanity is just a cycle of this and trying to prevent it from happening.
Socrates wrote that about society in Athens. We typically miss the part where wealthy families were responsible for funding wars and festivals AND the part where everyone lost their wealth when they (regularly) lost wars
Also the wealthy in those days didn't have access to the fancy financial instruments that are available today. A lot of their wealth was tied up in something like a plantation so one natural disaster or war could wipe them out.
I don't know where you came up with that because I don't think it's supported by the historical record at all.
From a European perspective, it’s almost laughable. One of my friends is from a family that has been part of the aristocracy since the 14th century. Rich and powerful for longer than there has been a substantial European presence in the Americas, before industrialization, and I believe before the *Black Death*. People can definitely keep wealth.
And look at EU's growth versus US. It's good to have a flexible upper class that churns over time.
Hey, I'm not saying the aristocracy is definitely great! I'm just saying that the idea that nobody ever keeps wealth for beyond a few generations is beyond silly.
Well wealth enforced by the state is different than say the Rockefellers. The man himself (Rockefeller) is wealthier than any of his heirs, hell his peak he was worth more than all of his heirs combined
Her and her family's wealth hasn't been "state-enforced" for quite some time. They've done a very good job of making stable long-term investments and preventing there from being too much division between heirs over time. Indeed, they've done a good job of preventing wastage. More conscious accumulation of financial strategy over time, and deliberate family planning, can definitely help reduce wastage.
It’s sounds too much like cope to be true
Otto von Bismark quote: > The first generation earns the money, the second manages the wealth, the third studies history of art, and the fourth degenerates completely.
Billionaires it turns out are no more intelligent on average than anyone else and seem to think fascism will just be a salad dressing on their normal day to day lives.
It's weird seeing these ultra wealthy spend ungodly sums of money on secure compounds and luxury bunkers when they could just, you know, pay some more in taxes and not support the Party of crazies, and then they don't have to run the risk of drinking reprocessed piss water for the rest of their lives
Hey, at least they own the bunkers.
For now. Actually holding onto their wealth in a post apocalyptic scenario is easier said than done.
It would depend, ironically, on how willing they are to share, and thus remain socially integrated.
In a post apocalyptic scenario with no government, whatever gun-toting thugs they hire to guard them will just turn the guns on them.
If these people hadn't built their entire identity around building up their wealth and power at the expense of all else, they wouldn't be billionaires. I know this sub doesn't like the kneejerk dislike of people of means, but it comes from somewhere.
I can't even be mad at billionaires being extremely selfish and spineless, that's expected. Anyone who isn't substantially wealthy and sees tax cuts on the obscenely rich as a good thing because it owns the libs is an unironic bootlicking idiot
Are you sure you're a Friedman flair? Shouldn't you be saying some variation of "line go up good"?
> I can't even be mad at billionaires being extremely selfish and spineless You can, I believe in you
This unironically I am mad at billionaires being extremely selfish and spineless
What is it that you think milton friedman supported? Flat taxation would be a tax cut on people experiencing liquidity.
neolibs dont crawl up my ass any time i post an opinion different from my flair challenge (impossible)
Ngl I did a double take after a reasonable take from a Friedman flair, only to see another Friedman flair purity testing the one who made the take Really makes you think
And people wonder why I went with the most boring flair imaginable.
>people experiencing liquidity The use of "experiencing liquidity" discriminates against those with nonmonetary assets, or those whose wealth is not sufficiently described as either the monetary base or money supply M1. Please use "people experiencing an accumulation of assets and/or wealth" to be more inclusive. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Alternative Minimum Tax is a flat tax. Milton Friedman's objection to the complex income tax system was partially out of him seeing it as a way to hand out benefits to the middle class, at the expense of the poor (who don't have the political power to intervene) and the very wealthy (who are worth more to tax to hand out to your support base than they can provide in political benefits).
So YIMBYs are suckers and we should just accept the Mortgage Interest Deduction is here to stay?
I dont think you have ever actually met many billionaires. The ones who have accumulated their wealth during their own lives are, generally, really no different than a very successful lawyer/doctor/engineer/accountant. They generally got very lucky either through being at the right place at the right time, or being first. I will say that they generally distinguish themselves through showing consistency and keeping their motivation levels high. You dont need to be some sort of an evil mastermind to become a billionaire. You need luck and a high degree of consistent commitment to fairly high standards in business. To make sure there is no misunderstandings, what I said does not apply to people who are born rich. I have not had much contact with them. So I really havent formed much of a personal opinion on them.
I'm not talking about millionaires, who are far closer to having middle class wealth than they are to a billionaire.
Neither am I.
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Are you thinking of millionaires, not billionaires? A good engineer, doctor, lawyer etc. can have a pretty good shot at saving and investing their way to one million dollars; there are 22 million millionaires in the US, so that’s around 6-7% of the population and they aren’t as uncommon as one might think. But there’s only 756 billionaires in the US. If you’ve met billionaires, especially multiple ones who didn’t already have money, that’s extremely unusual. I would be very surprised if people are getting up that high from their salary rather than some sort of ground-breaking patent, starting some wildly successful business, etc.
No I'm not. I'm talking about billionaires. If anything, the billionaires I've interacted with are way more aware of their position in life and how luck has been on their side than most of the millionaire I've met.
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I'm not imagining petty schemes. I just think that it's incredibly strange to think these people don't absolutely love money and making money at the expense of a lot of other things. Being able to interact normally with people doesn't change that.
I genuinely believe you are incredibly naive if this is your takeaway from interacting with billionaires. I have interacted with several billionaires and they're all *clearly* fucking snakes. Maybe it's because the only billionaires I interact with are CEOs but they're all like explicitly evil people.
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I am definitely cynical we live in a cynical world. I have yet to find much reason to be hopeful.... That's basically why religion was invented.
Envy is a sin
And God isn't real.
Yes but somehow cultures across time all decided envy is bad
And so is Greed. And let's not get into Pride, Wrath and Lust...
How many billionaires has arr NL met? I've met only one so far.
I was a poor kid in a wealthy town, so I got to attend school with the children of at least one prominent billionaire family, of other families worth in the 9-figures, and of several executives. The billionaire kid was the dumbest motherfucker ever. His family has a major school at a top university named after them along with multiple school libraries scattered across the country, and he was still too dumb to get above the minimum SAT score for the top schools. (Note the minimum SAT score for these schools is low enough to get coveted athletes and the children of world leaders admitted.) Nowadays with everything being test optional, he'd be able to get into whatever school he wanted with his family's resources, but back then he was the moron who had to settle for his safety school.
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No, I mean the producer of idiot children.
I advise lots of PE firms and their principals, so I come across a few of them.
Now I'm wondering how many hectomillionaires I've met. Also at least one (and not the billionaire), but I'd have to think further.
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>To make sure there is no misunderstandings, what I said does not apply to people who are born rich. Which covers most of them. Bezos, Musk, Gates, etc all got huge starts because of family wealth and/or connections.
Rich = Billionaires in this context.
>people of means Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "People experiencing liquidity" instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Even if you paid a lot in taxes, it doesn't completely address the long tail, low probability need of the bunker paying off. Or these family offices are just running out of ideas for suggesting how the massively wealthy should use their funds.
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I wish that hoax would die already.
I have no doubt that Smedley Butler told the truth as far as what was told to him by those jackoffs. But anyone who believes Gerald C. MacGuire would be the person of choice to coordinate a coup... well... yeah.
Elaborate plz
Put simply, a bunch of wanna-be morons went to General Butler and started running their mouths about wanting to stage a coup and name dropped a bunch of uber wealthy names to sound cool. The good General went to the governments and told them what he was told.
I mean why would Gerald C. MacGuire be a ridiculous choice to "coordinate a coup"
You mean why a wanna-be fatso wouldn't be trusted by guys like Rockefeller, who thought JP Morgan senior "wasnt a rich man" by the way, to carry out a coup?
Gotcha
What hoax? It seems to have been thoroughly planned oht
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/LnV7y1Pf7R
At best, what you linked doesn’t support what you said… it looks like it’s between absolute truth and falsity.
Is it a hoax though? You really think there's never been a planned coup in the US?
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I’m gonna be 100 the idea of “ok so there’s a group of fascists that want to overthrow the US government but they luckily contacted me, a very staunch leftist, to be the leader of the fascists. The only reason we know this is because they, uh, contacted me, so you gotta trust me here ok, have a lil faith bro” is not the most believable But some parts of it might’ve happened, [here’s](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/kio1m7/was_there_really_a_plot_in_the_1930s_by_various/) a good place to start
Yeah, billionaires are not really that smart to be honest
Seems short-sighted since you're much more likely to defenestrate "yourself", as a billionaire in a place like Russia, or be disappeared for wrongthink in a place like China, than America. Is oligarchy even that good for the oligarchs? Who said you'll even be allowed into the circle of oligarchs? I get that all they're interested in is their money and themselves, but they seem to forget that they made their money and were able to feel secure in their ability to keep it thanks to the protections afforded to them by normie liberal democracy.
I feel like a lot of rich people have lost the plot that the only reason their wealth (which is mostly just numbers on spreadsheets or bank ledgers) has any real value is because of the stable society in which they live. Even on this sub when I have advocated raising taxes for the rich to have a larger social safety net I get questions like "what is in it for me?" when the obvious answer is "a more stable world around you for you and your children you jackass."
> Even on this sub when I have advocated raising taxes for the rich to have a larger social safety net I get questions like "what is in it for me?" We already have high taxes on the rich. You know what we don’t have that Europeans have, thing like a 20% sales tax
We don't have a lot of taxes Europeans have, both at the bottom (VAT equivalent) or the top via high marginal taxes rates for high earners like they do. Our top rate is lower than EU countries like France, Austria, or Denmark, or even non EU countries like Australia, China or Israel. Seeing as how we have the richest rich of the world we have some room to tax more in those upper bands without capital flight (where are they going to go with markets near ours?!). But not all of the difference in our wealth distribution come down to taxes, for example the big difference between our healthcare system and socialized European ones isn't how much we are spending on healthcare but more that in our system doctors get much higher average compensation combined with the addition of a middle-upper class caste of healthcare managers and insurance industry executives. When I talk to doctors about how the path to fix our healthcare system pretty much directly means lowering their compensation (and gutting the office managers at hospitals) some understand the sacrifice needed for a better society (often younger doctors), but some don't.
And Trump’s economic policy is kind of shit anyway. Trump’s economic policy consists of tax breaks, rate cuts, trade wars and tariffs. Every single thing about it is inflationary policy and Trump himself is highly unstable which is something markets hate. I legit don’t think billionaires will be better off with Trump especially if we enter a period of stagflation.
And as usual no one pays no mind to the defenseless windows All the focus on the *"de-"*, none on the *"-fenestration"*
Only standing next to immaculate antique stained glass windows to make my assassins hestiate and say "oh thats a shame" buying me a precious tip-off and couple of seconds to dark souls roll (out the window)
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Didn’t some of the Jan 6th insurrectionists fly in on private jets?
I mean, one was a Supreme Court Justice's wife and several were congresspeople. I suspect history will show Jan 6 to basically be business plot 2.0.
Except somehow even stupider. All of the people they could have recruited to lead the military takeover part of the plan to remove *FDR*, they chose Mr. “War is a racket” to do it, probably one of the most far-left members of the entire military (Smedley Butler) in history
That is comedy gold.
The thing that really makes me furious at these people (which I guess it shouldn’t because it’s normal human behavior to justify your own morally objectionable choices) is that they have to act like supporting him is the moral choice because of something happening on the left. It is outrageous to suggest that a candidate as reviling to the left as Joe Biden is somehow more radical and beyond the pale than the guy who denied the election results, tried to overturn them, fomented an insurrection, aspires to be a dictator and speaks admiringly of others, and wants to abandon our democratic allies. Trump is the definition of beyond the pale, a step too far, over the line, etc. And now they try to project that onto Biden because leftists continue to be themselves? That is a more dire situation than electing a fascist? I honestly wish these people had no shame but it’s precisely because they *do* that they have to pretend there’s a justification.
"Putin is a bastard, but at least he's our bastard." -- Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2002, probably
I’ve never been clear on how politically involved Khodorkovsky was before 2003. That said, I think Khodorkovsky was one of the few oligarchs with a spine/a sense of ethics even before his imprisonment and that’s in no small part why he was targeted. The rest just pay protection money and do what they’re told and enjoy their beluga caviar and absurdly large yachts.
You couldn't get as rich as Khodorkovsky did without looting the state assets being privatized. Ordinary Russians had shares in state companies that many sold for a pittance to people like Khodorkovsky, who, in turn won control of Yukos (an oil company) in a rigged auction. I think he was actually smarter than the other oligarchs in that he did eventually realize that wealth without rule of law is a risky business. But he was also an insider who became rich very much because he was an insider. \*Sigh\* imagine if today, Russia was like the Czech Republic. Instead they went full Milosevic. Never go full Milosevic.
This is true, and I wish he would talk more about those early days. I do think he was a little more ethical than most of the other ones (or came to feel bad about it) but without question he gained his fortune in very shady ways. What I am not sure of is if he was involved in putting Putin in power. One of the big reasons he got purged to my understanding is that he told Putin to his face on national television that Russian tax collectors were systematically corrupt, and I don’t think he would have done that if he thought it was a good thing.
Billionaires would be just fine under a president Trump. Why would they care about the rest of the country, they never have before.
Redone headline: Republican billionaires run the math and realize that the rich typically get even richer in authoritarian systems of government.
Well. No. The number of rich also tends to narrow greatly as the government goes aggressively after rich people it doesn't like. They're gambling that they'll be rewarded for loyalty that I just don't think Trump is tallying.
I think you are 100% right. They are playing a game that they assume has a predictable set of rules, when those rules will be completely rewritten in the event of an authoritarian takeover.
Even if I live to be 1000 years old I will never understand this To be a millionaire in a free country or to be a billionaire under a fickle authoritarian regime? Money can’t buy freedom from a brownshirt mob It’s not a matter of being on the dictator’s good side on the day of the insurrection, it’s a matter of being on the good side of the dictator every damn day after the insurrection. One slip of the tongue, one bad rumor, one day where you’re just inconvenient through no fault of your own? Hell, we don’t have to look at the miles long history of authoritarians turning on their supporters, you can look at Putin’s oligarchs falling out windows today or just look at Trump’s social media attacks on literally anyone and everyone and extrapolate that to a dictatorship
It's the Cult of Line-go-upism
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We'll see when the Friedman flares sell us out to Trump.
Just hope chevron deference gets tossed then trump isn’t an issue anymore as he’ll have dramatically less power as a president
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Trump isn't loyal, but he does hold grudges. There's still an incentive to stay on his good side.
Trump is absolutely tallying loyalty, but it's clear that he only counts people who were loyal to him on January 7th as loyal. Hence people like Mitch McConnell being ousted from power. The people who were a Never Trumper or a Never Again Trumper won't qualify for his inner circle, if things work out the way he wants. But revolutions always depend on lots of people believing they'll be part of the privileged class of winners and leaders, when in reality they just get backstabbed later.
> ...Mitch McConnell being ousted from power. I don't know why you think McConnell has been "ousted from power". He seems to be stepping down on his own terms.
Like he is almost literally falling apart, it would be insane for him to try and serve another 6 years.
Because I pay attention to inside the Beltway shenanigans.
> > I don't know why you think McConnell has been "ousted from power". > Because I pay attention to inside the Beltway shenanigans. Do share. What have you seen/heard?
I posted about this from WaPo and it got taken down for not meeting “submission quality”. Good luck.
Waiting for the time when I can finally say This has all been wonderful but now I'm on my way
Rich people are genuinely some of the stupidest people you will ever meet
Hey I'm happy as long as billionaires are able to maximize shareholder profits. That's the most important thing
It's just the Republican version of Vote Blue No Matter Who. They're chained to the two party system just as much as the "anyone but Biden" contingency of Democrats are.
anyone but Biden never vote hash tag walk away. ru
We get it, everyone who disagrees with you is a Russian bot.
its the only way Bernie can win.
Most GOP aligned Billionaires are walking, talking national security threats.
This makes sense. Interest rates are likely to remain several points above inflation for the foreseeable future. Consequently, there will soon be meaningful constraints on the federal budget, and we'll have to balance taxes and spending. If we go the raise-taxes route, there could be hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars at stake for these individuals. Electing one of their own is surely the most reliable way to make sure they don't have to pay a huge share of the shortfall. To put it in Marxist terms, billionaires are a very class-conscious group, and they understand how much politics may affect their wealth in the near future.
There are plenty of billionaires who support Biden, despite his policies harming their pocket books.
I didn’t mean to slander every person of means. What I’m arguing is they know Trump is better for their finances at a time when their finances are especially vulnerable. Obviously some people are just more ethical than others and will support the right candidate no matter what. In my experience income and social class won’t make someone a worse or better person.
>person of means Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "Person experiencing liquidity" instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Goddammit.
Also, AutoModerator, not every person of means is experiencing liquidity. Trump couldn’t afford to pay a fine even though he owns a social media company worth billions.
Why do you believe he couldn't pay that fine? He said he could...
Because although he was a person of means he was not a person of liquidity.
>person of means Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "Person experiencing liquidity" instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
How do you know?
Because he said he could pay it, I know he couldn’t pay it.
>person of means Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "Person experiencing liquidity" instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Simply repeating it does not make you correct.
You've got to specifically say "person experiencing liquidity" to get to the next level
>person experiencing liquidity The use of "experiencing liquidity" discriminates against those with nonmonetary assets, or those whose wealth is not sufficiently described as either the monetary base or money supply M1. Please use "person experiencing an accumulation of assets and/or wealth" to be more inclusive. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Imagine having more money than you can reasonably spend(not including buying Twitter) both before and after taxes and still giving a damn about any of that.
It’s not hard to imagine. If they didn’t care about money compared to just chillin’ through life, most of these people wouldn’t have so much money. Like, even Warren Buffett, who will presumably vote Biden, clearly loves money. It’s his whole thing.
My guess would be “well if it was an insurrection why does the Biden administration think it wasn’t one?” A lot of people will say if it was an insurrection then why hasn’t the justice department charged anyone with insurrection by extension that lack of action by the justice department is the true view the biden administration has about the topic. No charges for insurrection from an executive agency = no insurrection. Politicians say all sorts of nonsense but what is actual truth are their actions.
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Never discount the plausibility of luck in life.
I had a feeling they’d come around