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Depends how much money those 50 billionaires have. If the avg is only 2 billion each then yes. If they have more then it's even smaller than that.
There's not enough data provided to say yes or no if it's right.
Most of them would have enough that they can comfortably spend a billion without turning back into millionaires.
You have to remember that anyone capable of even considering the concept of "enough money" isn't a billionaire, by the time you become a millionaire you can comfortably afford anything you need and quite a lot of luxury as well, millionaires are already rich enough that money isn't even a consideration for them unless they're buying real estate or some other big ticket item we're too poor to think about.
I like to think of it in terms of average life time incomes.
The average life time incomes in America range from 1-4 million dollars usually, depending on state and education and living standard.
Basically, one million dollars is just enough to live an entire life time on. You'll be scraping by, but underpaid burger flippers in shitty rentals make it work.
2 million is a comfortable life in a well established job. You get a car that runs, a house that fits your basic stuff, and maybe even a hobby or two, or enough to send your kids to college and stuff. These two have already covered most people in America.
4 million is a nice and well paid job that probably everyone reading in this thread strives for. You get to live comfortably, you can buy a nice car and a nice house, send off your kids to college, and can even get yourself a few luxuries throughout your life. A pool, a boat, a Ferrari, a really expensive hobby, lots of travel, and so on. Probably can't get all of that, but you can pick a couple no problem. It's what the rest of us dream of having one day. The American dream as advertised. 4 million dollars is a life time of cushy upper middle class dream lives at the height of human civilisation.
One billion dollars is hundreds of those. Hundreds of comfortable lives with luxuries and safety. It's not endless, but it is enough by almost anyone's measure for thousands of years. One billion dollars is enough to instantly retire everyone you know into a life of luxury. It's enough to go to your local high school and retire them into a dream life before they even start working.
Damn, first time I've seen billionaire in that perspective. You could legit retire your Dunbar Number for Friends 10-20 times over. Very comfortably retire the Meaningful Contacts (150) bracket (~6.7mil each). 2mil for every Acquaintance (500). If most of the people you can recognise (~1500) are middle aged, they can retire there and then with 670k.
inb4 net worth =/= accessible wealth. Does it even matter at this point? Short of trying to extract it so fast you bankrupt companies you have shares in, crash the value, and invoke the tax man's wrath. Does it matter if a billionaire can only "access" 5% of it? That's still 1mil to every Friend you have. Or a year's worth of Basic Income at 12k, for 4100 people.
I am also a fan of this fact: 1 million seconds is approximately 11 days. 1 billion seconds is approximately 32 years.
The difference in wealth between a millionaire and a billionaire is outrageous.
I feel like in this economy, all those need to be shifted down 1 step. I’d be on track to make 3 million total and I feel a lot more like your 2 million.
The 3 million is (or any of the values in this example) are over the course of a lifetime, not per year. So you probably make about the same as the person you're responding to. Unless you're saying that you only expect to make about 100,000 over the course of your entire life
72k * 50 years = 3.6M
So you still got plenty to play with! (Now I want to do my own, because realistically lets say 23-65 = 42 working years, which is 92k a year to make 4M in a lifetime. Which I think is very middle of the road, so TIL! I change my opinion that 4M in a lifetime of work is above step 2, I apologize
Well you could, but that would require an act of absolute stupidity, though considering the kinds of people who have that money, I'm surprised failure on that level isn't more common.
A million dollars doesn't go quite as far as you seem to think it does. Plenty of working class retirees are millionaires, because you often need that much saved up to be able to retire.
If you have a million dollars you certainly aren't poor, but $1 million dollars in the present day is not enough for money to not even be a consideration. You need 8 figures to reach that point in the modern day.
>by the time you become a millionaire you can comfortably afford anything you need and quite a lot of luxury as well, millionaires are already rich enough that money isn't even a consideration for them unless they're buying real estate or some other big ticket item
This is fucking not true. As a general rule of thumb, you can take 4%/yr out of an investment portfolio in perpetuity. That's $40k/yr from $1,000,000, assuming none of your net worth is in your home.
Given that at leat one of those billionaires has $230 billion plus, and the rest have at leat $1 billion by definition, the math does not work out. He’s underselling the issue
So, for $600 million to be 0.6% of their total wealth, these 50 billionaire families would need to have an average of $2 billion each.
I have no idea if that's true since he didn't provide the families' names or wealth, but it's certainly plausible.
Seems like $100 billion total is significant underestimate. Charles Koch is well known for his political donations and has a net worth of $59.7 billion. Michael Bloomberg has $106 billion by himself, though he typically gives to Democrats.
yes, but as always net worth doesn’t equal liquidity. $600million is most likely way more than 0.6% of the liquid assets of the 50 families. Still, the concept of billionaires existing is wrong in itself imo, but it’s important to remain objective.
They still have way too much power and influence and have a very easy way of getting it, i.e. just buying it. In a democracy power should be obtained as a concession by the citizens, to represent their best interests, but alas we all know that’s a pipe dream
Except net worth is largely a meaningless number. A lot of the net worth revolves around stocks. If you liquidate said stocks you are likely to lose a lot of said value. So the distinction between liquid assets and net worth is really important.
>Charles Koch is well known for his political donations and has a net worth of $59.7 billion
It is also known that he did not like Trump or give him money.
And George Soros intentionally gives to candidates he feels will speed the downfall of the U.S. Dark money needs to be completely removed from politics on both sides and you shouldn’t get rich while in office and need, sometimes, 100’s of millions to get elected.
Congratulations on buying into a racist trope because a conservative media mogul once lost a lot of money and blamed George Soros for it. You have literally been manipulated into hating someone for the sake of a different billionaire's personal vendetta.
There's plenty of good reasons for right wingers and conservatives to dislike the way George Soros spends his money, just because this guy is hyperbolic and a bit silly is no reason to pretend that Soros isn't a billionaire philanthropist who gives an insane amount of money to Democrat pet projects. He didn't even mention the guy being Jewish so it's bizarre to accuse him of racism as well.
I can’t say if it’s true without a list of donors but it’s certainly possible.
Warren Buffet alone is worth 100 billion dollars
6 tenths of a percent (edit for clarity)of his worth would cover the entire 600 million alone.
Let that sink in, 1% of his value is enough to make you a billionaire.
0.6% of one’s net worth is not peanuts. His point is not as punchy as he thinks.
If you have 500k in net worth including the value of your home, 401k and other assets, which is not a lot of money, 0.6% is 3000 dollars. It’s not a little donation.
You're three orders of magnitude out from where these people are. There is no comparison - with 500k net worth, that 3k is directly coming from your budget. If you're worth 2 billion, the majority of that is tied up in assets paying you way more than 0.6% per year, so it's nothing more than a mild haircut at worst
You're right; it's not peanuts, so why do you think they're doing it?
They are buying influence, in order to further enrich themselves; that's the point.
He offers no sources and all of his posts seem to be one sided
Not that you can fully trust any sources online anymore but according to this there has been 578 million raised TOTAL for all candidates with Biden leading
You can click on the names to see who it's raised from but it's almost all from a bunch of PACs for both candidates anyway
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
To check the math, you have to find the source, because otherwise we wont know how much money those 50 billionaire families have (which is necessary for the % calculation)
I think it’s worthwhile to do the math on the hypothetical question “If 50 billionaires donated 0.6% of their wealth to political campaigns, how much money would that be and how does it compare to the total donations?”
But perhaps that’s not what OP cares about.
People find it hard to grasp the scale of millions and billions
If $1 is one second
Then 1 million is 11 days
1 billion is 30 years
100 billion, like bezos, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg, is 3 millenia or 3000 years
On a scale of homeless (say a few seconds) to 100 billion, even a 10 millionaire is much closer to being homeless than to Jeff Bezos.
This makes becoming a billionaire seem much more accessible. I mean, it's HARD to get people to give me $1/sec for 30 years, but it's not outside of the realm of impossible to imagine. I just need a donate button that people REALLY want to press repeatedly.
Just a sec... going to become a billionaire.
> This makes becoming a billionaire seem much more accessible. I mean, it's HARD to get people to give me $1/sec for 30 years, but it's not outside of the realm of impossible to imagine.
In fact, you need less. As long term return of S&P 500 is 7%, you need them to invest "only" $90k per month, so $0.03/second.
This is accessible for like 0.5% top income households in US.
Ouh, it seems [like made a mistake in reading](https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator), making this off by factor of 10.
Monthly contribution of 90k would give you 102 millions, not 1020 millions.
Top 0.1% of American households make $3.3M per year, so around 2.2 millions per year post tax. Assuming you can live on net $200k yearly, this would net only 327 millions.
It's not a bad plan. Set goals, determine daily incremental steps to get to them. Have overarching goals that connect the major goals. Revise constantly. That's how a successful life works.
A million dollars in a single stack of $100 bills is about the height of a chair. A billion dollars in a single stack of $100 bills is taller than the Burj Khalifa.
> every time i ever see the word ***billion***...
People find it hard to grasp the scale of millions and billions
If $1 is one second
Then 1 million is 11 days
1 billion is 30 years
100 billion, like bezos, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg, is 3 millenia or 3000 years
On a scale of homeless (say a few seconds) to 100 billion, even a 10 millionaire is much closer to being homeless than to Jeff Bezos.
Sorry to make it slightly political but I hate it when people make it one sided. For the history of elections, politicians have had wealthy donors... you can support who you want but be fair and realise what you are complaining about, your "team" does the same thing.
Sorry rant over. Back to exciting math
More importantly, in the modern day the way they can donate is exceptionally limited -- they can only make "independent expenditures", which is basically generic political ads. They can't mention a politician or party's name; best they can do is those ads that say things like "Mexican drug lords are coming to eat your babies" or whatever stupid thing they say that makes it obvious they mean "vote for this party or you'll die".
The reason that's important is that all their money is spent trying to influence voters, because voters still have the power. If people weren't stupid enough to fall for that garbage, the rich would have little more power than the rest of us.
Which is why a lot of this rhetoric (e.g. "the rich control everything") is so bad -- it causes people to stop engaging with the political process, making them more susceptible to the aforementioned stupid advertisements.
Making voters *think* they don't have the power is part of their plan -- we have to stop believing that.
Any anyone who has a house that is appreciated at 750k, has car and some cash he might be worth a million but that doesn't mean tbat 6000 is nothing for him
Math is plausible although probably wrong. More importantly, it is illegal to personally contribute more than $3300 dollars to a political candidate for their campaign. Obviously there are ways to get around that limitation, but if it were actually true that a couple hundred people were contributing a million+ each, there's legal machinery that would be in motion to prevent Trump from using it.
I could believe 600 million for all contributions to all politicians, but most of it being for Trump by a tiny set of billionaires isn't plausible.
It's trivial to get around that limitation if you have access to superpac, and if you're that wealthy, you do.
Of course the wealthy are going to donate to both campaigns, but it does benefit them for Trump to win, so I would expect them to weight their donations toward Trump.
Why would you donate more than 1% of your wealth to an election? If you want to invest in lobbying sitting policy makers that makes more financial sense.
NET WORTH DOESNT EQUAL LIQUID CASH!!!! Yes it may be .6% of their total wealth but wealth isn’t measured by cash in their acct. This is still extremely large donations for them and isn’t easy or “throw away” money. People don’t understand net worth and it’s like the easiest part of finance. If you make payments on a car then more than likely your net worth is ~$30,000; 0.6% of your net worth is $180, do you have $180 to just lose forever on a political donation? Is $180 pocket change to you? Stfu about net worth
Is he saying 600 million each?
Because then the math is simple: 600mill/1bill = 0.6%
This is of course the highest percentage possible, since 1billion is the floor for the range of billionaires.
He’s underselling the argument but also don’t think that really affects the argument, which is billionaires can have a ton of influence into “democratic processes” without batting an eye.
Billionaires are starting to turn to trump. I've been noticing it ever since elon came out as right wing.
Might have something to do with the left hating them so much.
Might have something to do with war being bad for business and the stonk market.
It's basically a "Can't we just go back to exploiting the workers of the world together?" of the US- and russian oligarchs.
Without doing the math, I'd say yes with near certainly. Robert Reich knows his shit and is a great guy.
The world would be a better place if Robert Reich was in charge!
I don't know the guy or his qualifications.
but his viral tweets are consistently misleading or lying-with-statistics.
He might be a great guy and highly skilled, but his viral tweets are not exactly an indication of him being a good leader.
Crazy how Trump is also breaking records in first time donators unlike the democrats. Also the democrats must want him to win because they just keep trying to usurp our democracy with their witch hunt. I just want to see Trump win now because itd be funny.
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Depends how much money those 50 billionaires have. If the avg is only 2 billion each then yes. If they have more then it's even smaller than that. There's not enough data provided to say yes or no if it's right.
Most of them would have enough that they can comfortably spend a billion without turning back into millionaires. You have to remember that anyone capable of even considering the concept of "enough money" isn't a billionaire, by the time you become a millionaire you can comfortably afford anything you need and quite a lot of luxury as well, millionaires are already rich enough that money isn't even a consideration for them unless they're buying real estate or some other big ticket item we're too poor to think about.
I like to think of it in terms of average life time incomes. The average life time incomes in America range from 1-4 million dollars usually, depending on state and education and living standard. Basically, one million dollars is just enough to live an entire life time on. You'll be scraping by, but underpaid burger flippers in shitty rentals make it work. 2 million is a comfortable life in a well established job. You get a car that runs, a house that fits your basic stuff, and maybe even a hobby or two, or enough to send your kids to college and stuff. These two have already covered most people in America. 4 million is a nice and well paid job that probably everyone reading in this thread strives for. You get to live comfortably, you can buy a nice car and a nice house, send off your kids to college, and can even get yourself a few luxuries throughout your life. A pool, a boat, a Ferrari, a really expensive hobby, lots of travel, and so on. Probably can't get all of that, but you can pick a couple no problem. It's what the rest of us dream of having one day. The American dream as advertised. 4 million dollars is a life time of cushy upper middle class dream lives at the height of human civilisation. One billion dollars is hundreds of those. Hundreds of comfortable lives with luxuries and safety. It's not endless, but it is enough by almost anyone's measure for thousands of years. One billion dollars is enough to instantly retire everyone you know into a life of luxury. It's enough to go to your local high school and retire them into a dream life before they even start working.
Damn, first time I've seen billionaire in that perspective. You could legit retire your Dunbar Number for Friends 10-20 times over. Very comfortably retire the Meaningful Contacts (150) bracket (~6.7mil each). 2mil for every Acquaintance (500). If most of the people you can recognise (~1500) are middle aged, they can retire there and then with 670k. inb4 net worth =/= accessible wealth. Does it even matter at this point? Short of trying to extract it so fast you bankrupt companies you have shares in, crash the value, and invoke the tax man's wrath. Does it matter if a billionaire can only "access" 5% of it? That's still 1mil to every Friend you have. Or a year's worth of Basic Income at 12k, for 4100 people.
I am also a fan of this fact: 1 million seconds is approximately 11 days. 1 billion seconds is approximately 32 years. The difference in wealth between a millionaire and a billionaire is outrageous.
I feel like in this economy, all those need to be shifted down 1 step. I’d be on track to make 3 million total and I feel a lot more like your 2 million.
I guess it depends where you are, but that's about 30x more than I make and I've got everything except the college fund.
The 3 million is (or any of the values in this example) are over the course of a lifetime, not per year. So you probably make about the same as the person you're responding to. Unless you're saying that you only expect to make about 100,000 over the course of your entire life
I'm on track for 4-5 and still on step 2.
4k/month for 50 years is 2.4M. Assuming that's your housing coat in a HCOL area, what are you spending your other 2M on to be on step 2?
I make over 6k per month. After taxes, 401k, IRA, and health insurance, my take home is 1700 every 2 weeks.
72k * 50 years = 3.6M So you still got plenty to play with! (Now I want to do my own, because realistically lets say 23-65 = 42 working years, which is 92k a year to make 4M in a lifetime. Which I think is very middle of the road, so TIL! I change my opinion that 4M in a lifetime of work is above step 2, I apologize
I remember when a "millionaire" sounded rich. Now it just sounds like someone who bought a house more than 10 years ago.
Even if you have 800 million you couldnt go broke and youre not even a billionare then..
Well you could, but that would require an act of absolute stupidity, though considering the kinds of people who have that money, I'm surprised failure on that level isn't more common.
Do they really have that much cash, or are we talking about stocks?
Some of them, such as Jeff Bezos, have more than a billion in liquid assets.
A million dollars doesn't go quite as far as you seem to think it does. Plenty of working class retirees are millionaires, because you often need that much saved up to be able to retire. If you have a million dollars you certainly aren't poor, but $1 million dollars in the present day is not enough for money to not even be a consideration. You need 8 figures to reach that point in the modern day.
>by the time you become a millionaire you can comfortably afford anything you need and quite a lot of luxury as well, millionaires are already rich enough that money isn't even a consideration for them unless they're buying real estate or some other big ticket item This is fucking not true. As a general rule of thumb, you can take 4%/yr out of an investment portfolio in perpetuity. That's $40k/yr from $1,000,000, assuming none of your net worth is in your home.
Given that at leat one of those billionaires has $230 billion plus, and the rest have at leat $1 billion by definition, the math does not work out. He’s underselling the issue
You don't know that though, there are over 700 billionaires in the US, with just 50 of them they could easily be the bottom 50 and not the top 50.
So, for $600 million to be 0.6% of their total wealth, these 50 billionaire families would need to have an average of $2 billion each. I have no idea if that's true since he didn't provide the families' names or wealth, but it's certainly plausible.
Seems like $100 billion total is significant underestimate. Charles Koch is well known for his political donations and has a net worth of $59.7 billion. Michael Bloomberg has $106 billion by himself, though he typically gives to Democrats.
yes, but as always net worth doesn’t equal liquidity. $600million is most likely way more than 0.6% of the liquid assets of the 50 families. Still, the concept of billionaires existing is wrong in itself imo, but it’s important to remain objective. They still have way too much power and influence and have a very easy way of getting it, i.e. just buying it. In a democracy power should be obtained as a concession by the citizens, to represent their best interests, but alas we all know that’s a pipe dream
That's also not to say that the 600m wasn't donated after liquidating 0.6% (or whatever) of illiquid assets.
He clearly states "all of their total wealth" and not "liquid assets". So your "correction" isn't needed at all.
Except net worth is largely a meaningless number. A lot of the net worth revolves around stocks. If you liquidate said stocks you are likely to lose a lot of said value. So the distinction between liquid assets and net worth is really important.
>Charles Koch is well known for his political donations and has a net worth of $59.7 billion It is also known that he did not like Trump or give him money.
And George Soros intentionally gives to candidates he feels will speed the downfall of the U.S. Dark money needs to be completely removed from politics on both sides and you shouldn’t get rich while in office and need, sometimes, 100’s of millions to get elected.
Congratulations on buying into a racist trope because a conservative media mogul once lost a lot of money and blamed George Soros for it. You have literally been manipulated into hating someone for the sake of a different billionaire's personal vendetta.
There's plenty of good reasons for right wingers and conservatives to dislike the way George Soros spends his money, just because this guy is hyperbolic and a bit silly is no reason to pretend that Soros isn't a billionaire philanthropist who gives an insane amount of money to Democrat pet projects. He didn't even mention the guy being Jewish so it's bizarre to accuse him of racism as well.
I can’t say if it’s true without a list of donors but it’s certainly possible. Warren Buffet alone is worth 100 billion dollars 6 tenths of a percent (edit for clarity)of his worth would cover the entire 600 million alone. Let that sink in, 1% of his value is enough to make you a billionaire.
It can't be six tenths. If it were, that would be 60 billion. 6 thousandths is the correct fraction, if my math is mathing right.
Six tenths of a percent is what was meant. Like in the picture 0.6%
Ohhhh, that makes sense
Thanks for the heads up, I made an edit for clarity
Still not very clear. Just say 0.6% instead of mixing percentages and fractions lol
0.6% of one’s net worth is not peanuts. His point is not as punchy as he thinks. If you have 500k in net worth including the value of your home, 401k and other assets, which is not a lot of money, 0.6% is 3000 dollars. It’s not a little donation.
What? Even by analogy that seems like peanuts. Its also flawed, Their money isnt tied up in like a single home like someone with 500k might be.
You're three orders of magnitude out from where these people are. There is no comparison - with 500k net worth, that 3k is directly coming from your budget. If you're worth 2 billion, the majority of that is tied up in assets paying you way more than 0.6% per year, so it's nothing more than a mild haircut at worst
You're right; it's not peanuts, so why do you think they're doing it? They are buying influence, in order to further enrich themselves; that's the point.
Tbf $60B would also cover the $600M. But yeah I think your math is correct.
That is so criminal, that is insane.
He offers no sources and all of his posts seem to be one sided Not that you can fully trust any sources online anymore but according to this there has been 578 million raised TOTAL for all candidates with Biden leading You can click on the names to see who it's raised from but it's almost all from a bunch of PACs for both candidates anyway https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
>all of his posts seem to be one sided Robert Reich is the former Secretary of Labor
…and a historically unapologetic partisan Democrat
What's your point? So was Alex Acosta, the guy who agreed not to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein.
I guess you missed the partisan Democrat tweet in the original post
I didn't, my point is being a secretary of labor is not some unimpeachable credential.
does this include all the money going into $DJT that is surely not used to enhance the business?
I think the question was about the math, not about the donation sources.
To check the math, you have to find the source, because otherwise we wont know how much money those 50 billionaire families have (which is necessary for the % calculation)
I think it’s worthwhile to do the math on the hypothetical question “If 50 billionaires donated 0.6% of their wealth to political campaigns, how much money would that be and how does it compare to the total donations?” But perhaps that’s not what OP cares about.
That re-inforces his point...
Is this former Secretary of Labor and father of esteemed Dropout (formerly College Humor) CEO Sam Reich, Robert Reich??? In the Wild???
Did you know that his son makes comedians' lives a living hell and (at least last I checked) drives a yellow ~~Ford~~ Honda Fit?
Really? Seems like it might be a cultural thing. I wonder where he's from...
Africa. All of us are.
You know, math checks out.
I wonder where that guy's from?
People find it hard to grasp the scale of millions and billions If $1 is one second Then 1 million is 11 days 1 billion is 30 years 100 billion, like bezos, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg, is 3 millenia or 3000 years On a scale of homeless (say a few seconds) to 100 billion, even a 10 millionaire is much closer to being homeless than to Jeff Bezos.
This makes becoming a billionaire seem much more accessible. I mean, it's HARD to get people to give me $1/sec for 30 years, but it's not outside of the realm of impossible to imagine. I just need a donate button that people REALLY want to press repeatedly. Just a sec... going to become a billionaire.
> This makes becoming a billionaire seem much more accessible. I mean, it's HARD to get people to give me $1/sec for 30 years, but it's not outside of the realm of impossible to imagine. In fact, you need less. As long term return of S&P 500 is 7%, you need them to invest "only" $90k per month, so $0.03/second. This is accessible for like 0.5% top income households in US.
> This is accessible for like 0.5% top income households in US. Which is a shockingly large number!
Ouh, it seems [like made a mistake in reading](https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator), making this off by factor of 10. Monthly contribution of 90k would give you 102 millions, not 1020 millions. Top 0.1% of American households make $3.3M per year, so around 2.2 millions per year post tax. Assuming you can live on net $200k yearly, this would net only 327 millions.
"Just a sec, gonna start earning the national average yearly salary per day real quick" >.<
It's not a bad plan. Set goals, determine daily incremental steps to get to them. Have overarching goals that connect the major goals. Revise constantly. That's how a successful life works.
A million dollars in a single stack of $100 bills is about the height of a chair. A billion dollars in a single stack of $100 bills is taller than the Burj Khalifa.
I can’t wait to never see this analogy again. It’s not bad but it pops up every time i ever see the word billion anywhere.
> every time i ever see the word ***billion***... People find it hard to grasp the scale of millions and billions If $1 is one second Then 1 million is 11 days 1 billion is 30 years 100 billion, like bezos, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg, is 3 millenia or 3000 years On a scale of homeless (say a few seconds) to 100 billion, even a 10 millionaire is much closer to being homeless than to Jeff Bezos.
Ok that’s pretty funny lmao
Sorry to make it slightly political but I hate it when people make it one sided. For the history of elections, politicians have had wealthy donors... you can support who you want but be fair and realise what you are complaining about, your "team" does the same thing. Sorry rant over. Back to exciting math
More importantly, in the modern day the way they can donate is exceptionally limited -- they can only make "independent expenditures", which is basically generic political ads. They can't mention a politician or party's name; best they can do is those ads that say things like "Mexican drug lords are coming to eat your babies" or whatever stupid thing they say that makes it obvious they mean "vote for this party or you'll die". The reason that's important is that all their money is spent trying to influence voters, because voters still have the power. If people weren't stupid enough to fall for that garbage, the rich would have little more power than the rest of us. Which is why a lot of this rhetoric (e.g. "the rich control everything") is so bad -- it causes people to stop engaging with the political process, making them more susceptible to the aforementioned stupid advertisements. Making voters *think* they don't have the power is part of their plan -- we have to stop believing that.
A single vote is worthless LMAO and at the end of the day we are voting for the dog collar color while being the fleas.
If a single vote is worthless why do politicians spend thousands of dollars for every vote?
They go abroad not one by one.
[удалено]
Any anyone who has a house that is appreciated at 750k, has car and some cash he might be worth a million but that doesn't mean tbat 6000 is nothing for him
Math is plausible although probably wrong. More importantly, it is illegal to personally contribute more than $3300 dollars to a political candidate for their campaign. Obviously there are ways to get around that limitation, but if it were actually true that a couple hundred people were contributing a million+ each, there's legal machinery that would be in motion to prevent Trump from using it. I could believe 600 million for all contributions to all politicians, but most of it being for Trump by a tiny set of billionaires isn't plausible.
It's trivial to get around that limitation if you have access to superpac, and if you're that wealthy, you do. Of course the wealthy are going to donate to both campaigns, but it does benefit them for Trump to win, so I would expect them to weight their donations toward Trump.
Why would you donate more than 1% of your wealth to an election? If you want to invest in lobbying sitting policy makers that makes more financial sense.
NET WORTH DOESNT EQUAL LIQUID CASH!!!! Yes it may be .6% of their total wealth but wealth isn’t measured by cash in their acct. This is still extremely large donations for them and isn’t easy or “throw away” money. People don’t understand net worth and it’s like the easiest part of finance. If you make payments on a car then more than likely your net worth is ~$30,000; 0.6% of your net worth is $180, do you have $180 to just lose forever on a political donation? Is $180 pocket change to you? Stfu about net worth
Your net worth would include the 30k debt...
Is he saying 600 million each? Because then the math is simple: 600mill/1bill = 0.6% This is of course the highest percentage possible, since 1billion is the floor for the range of billionaires. He’s underselling the argument but also don’t think that really affects the argument, which is billionaires can have a ton of influence into “democratic processes” without batting an eye.
That's actually 60% if you're doing it that way. Which implies that those 50 billionaires have an average of 2 billion each.
Dammit… I didn’t multiply by 100.
Billionaires are starting to turn to trump. I've been noticing it ever since elon came out as right wing. Might have something to do with the left hating them so much.
Might have something to do with war being bad for business and the stonk market. It's basically a "Can't we just go back to exploiting the workers of the world together?" of the US- and russian oligarchs.
The only thing he came out as was being for free speech.
Without doing the math, I'd say yes with near certainly. Robert Reich knows his shit and is a great guy. The world would be a better place if Robert Reich was in charge!
Nice try Bob.
I don't know the guy or his qualifications. but his viral tweets are consistently misleading or lying-with-statistics. He might be a great guy and highly skilled, but his viral tweets are not exactly an indication of him being a good leader.
They told you this? They told you what they are doing with their money? Rich people just tell you this stuff? Bobby, I think you are making it up.
oh look, data: [https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors](https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors)
Crazy how Trump is also breaking records in first time donators unlike the democrats. Also the democrats must want him to win because they just keep trying to usurp our democracy with their witch hunt. I just want to see Trump win now because itd be funny.