Money, money, money. The artificial middle-man of questionable value that we kill each other over. This is getting embarrassing already. Universal basic income. No-one should lack food, warmth and shelter nowadays, at the very least. Watch progress take off when everyone has a full belly and hope.
I’d hate to be the soulless fool who downvoted you
Thank you. Idk if this will be beneficial to my emotional wellbeing or not so I will likely forget about it
Probably just a McMansion guy with dreams of a superyacht. /s
The problem here is not her message, it is how the headlines present it.
She is not saying that having a billion dollars is wrong per se in a vacuum. she is saying how you go about getting a billion dollars in the real world is what makes it wrong.
That distinction is far too subtle for the average voter. She is talking about the rules of chess while ~50% of the country barely knows how to play checkers.
The better thing to focus on for people is probably the methods by which billionaires go about making their money more so than the specific amounts of money they end up with because of it.
Even leaving out the context, wealth-hoarding has severe negative side effects.
Well, nothing is wrong in a vacuum because there’s nothing there to be right or wrong, but having a billion dollars is wrong per se, because no one person, no matter how brilliant or diligent, can actually do something that is worth one billion dollars.
Also, I don’t think individuals should have the amount of power that comes with that much wealth.
Whatever AOC! It’s super easy, barely an inconvenience, to do. Over the span of a 40 year career you simply need to earn $25,000,000 on average each year without exploiting labor, committing fraud, violating antitrust, cheating investors, market manipulation, stealing, or any of the other ways billionaires became billionaires.
The real story is that having a billion dollars and not aggressively using your wealth to fix the problems in the world/society makes you a monster. Full stop.
The word “billionaire” exists because “slave owner” had a negative connotation.
I like the way both of those words sound, right before the new industrial revolution begins churning out freshly sharpened guillotines.
In both cases, the people rejoice and get a free ball to kick around.
That sounds like a really good way to break a foot. Heads be heavy af, yo. Stay safe
Steel-toed boots are ideal for that purpose, and others too.
It’s big that she said this. It’s a big political risk.
It’s common knowledge here, but certainly not everywhere it needs to be.
Nah. They are few. We are many.
They own all of the media. I guarantee that the propaganda machine has started up against her already.
The propaganda machine includes this very article. It’s already been going since her first primary run, and it will continue churning the propaganda against her out.
What shitty media do you read?
There’s dozens of amazing independent news outlets in the US.
I am of course referring to mainstream media that reaches the plebs. The ones who don’t exist terminally online and consume their information through all the small media outlets that are prolific here. People who watch NBC, CBS, and ABC and who regularly consume Fox News and CNN as their primary news source. Those are the people that are getting a 24/7 fire hose of misinformation about her.
I’m pretty sure those people are so old that they hardly count as existing
There are dozens of us. Dozens!
Yeah, and there’s only a few corporate ones. We have more independent news orgs in the US than corporate ones
But in terms of reach, Fox News and conservative talk radio trump them all.
You have more access than most people in the world to firearms. Glass bottles are cheap, and gasoline, while increasing in price, is relatively still inexpensive
You’re just one plane ticket away! Surely that won’t stop you from showing us how it’s done.
good luck
Oh, okay. You’re doing all you can, yeah? Not at all mistaking cowardice for helplessness? Nah. Couldn’t be. Weird how your whole country dined out for a couple centuries on the myth of being REALLY good at fighting tyranny against great odds. It’s almost like you made it your entire deal and used it as a cudgel against those who suggested you weren’t living up to your stated ideals. Huh.
You could at least get your own country to stop using the US dollar, stop trading with the USA, stop buying weapons from the US at least, and stop training with the US military. That would help a LOT.
But, instead you’d rather enable the USA. Disgusting.
It’s a plane ticket for either one of us, and since you’re the smart one with all of the solutions, you should of course lead the way. Like you said, glass bottles and gasoline are cheap, and so are plane tickets, so hop on the plane and SAVE THE WORLD.
Or… just sit on your ass and tell other people what to do, while your own country enables the USA. You’re doing all you can, right?
No, keep going.
Keep getting defensive and illustrating exactly why they’re steamrolling you. Don’t stop. It’s already clear enough to me, but I think it’s useful that other people see the mindset that’s keeping US liberals from stopping MAGA.
Your country probably bought into that lie.
And by the way it was and is Boomers who pushed that. 🤷♂️ We’re just along for the ride here.
The capital class wants to divide the working class.
Creating generational divide is one way.
You have way more in common with your grandparents than with a billionaire.
Big media calling her a communist is all it needs to destroy a candidate in Murica.
Here’s the relevant quote from the article:
“You can’t earn a billion dollars,” Ocasio‑Cortez said. “You just can’t earn that. You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth. But you can’t earn that.”
If you pay any of your employees a non-living wage you’re not “earning” your billions. You hire someone you’re expecting them to show up, but also be well rested, hydrated, clothed, physically healthy, mentally fit, and motivated. They can’t be all of those things if you’re not compensating them well enough and providing them the flexibility life demands. If your employees depend on government services just so they can show up to work then it’s the taxpayers that are padding your pocket, not your own “hard work”.
Not arguing against you, just using your comment as a jumping off point:
If you are part of the owning class, you aren’t “earning” your wage. You are skimming the surplus value created by your employees and calling it “profit”
Capitalism not only encourages exploitation, but requires it. The whole purpose of capitalism is amassing capital, maximization of profit, and the way to do this is through taking the surplus value created by employees.
For example, when a car is created, raw materials go in and are assembled (at least in part) by people. The value created by turning those raw materials into a car is created by the employees that turned it into a car. The difference between the fair market value of that car and the raw materials put in is the value added by the worker.
If we were to actually pay these workers what they are worth, by the value they added to that car, there would be no profit. But because capitalism incentivises maximization of profit, the owning class pays you a wage that is always less than that value added, and they have incentive to make that wage as small as you are willing to take, after all, you can’t build the car yourself because you do not own the means of production
And therein lies the fundamental problem of capitalism. He who owns the means of production has the power.
Editing to add: If the workers owned the means of production, then there would be no reason for the owning (billionaire) class to exist – because they don’t actually do anything, they just own things.
Poverty wages are not evidence of a broken system, they are evidence that the system is working exactly as intended. We need an economic system that does not incentivize profit, period.
deleted by creator
How about Taylor Swift? By all accounts she pays her employees very well. I realize as with any rule there will be exceptions, and I’d say there are a few. Very few.
She’s not Mother Teresa, but not an absolute monster either, and just barely a billionaire. Most of that billion is intangible assets, she doesn’t literally have $1 billion in her bank account.
It’s hard to hate or speak against someone like that when they’re so insulated and it’s not clear how much class consciousness they even have. At the same time, someone like that could obviously do more.
Most of Taylor Swift’s wealth comes from the record label, not her employees’ labor. UMG certainly is a mega corporation that monopolizes the industry and is valued at tens of billions of dollars currently.
This is exactly why I don’t like this hard “billionaire” line. Because it detaches the argument from how they amassed their wealth and instead focuses on “they’re wealthy so it’s bad”. I don’t know enough about Swift to know if she in the socialist sense “earned” her wealth, but let’s say that she did. Let’s say her labor is that valuable and within the framework of of what she can reasonably influence she hasn’t deliberately exploited anyone for her benefit. If she put in the labor and walked away with a billion, what is wrong with that? Are we supposed to virtue signal and claim that she should’ve gone above and beyond to make sure every penny was ethically obtained? Are we supposed to perpetuate the capitalist misinformation that socialism is when you’re not allowed the fruits of your labor is it makes you too rich?
And are we also supposed to turn a blind eye to all the investor leeches who do no actual labor but take a profit margin from the labor of others? You know, as long as their wealth stays below a billion. Are you some kind of an ethical capitalist if you give away every penny that would make you a billionaire?
Yes, the vast majority (if not all) billionaires haven’t earned their billions but I think we should be emphasizing how they made their billions instead of the fact that they have a billion. It’s far more important to get rid of the leeches than it is to get rid of billionaires. Even if there aren’t any ethical billionaires getting rid of them isn’t going to get rid of all the multi-millionaires who are doing the same horrid shit.
If your scenario were true then we need to change the system, or how we teach our children what is right or wrong.
If I was Taylor Swift in your example, I would split all of the money with everyone who helped put my shows on, since its literally impossible for me to do it alone.
Part of the problem is that people see Taylor Swift as a one person act, when its hundreds. This puts her up on a pedestal, and everyone else is forgotten.
Taylor Swift isn’t THE problem, but she is absolutely a symbol of the problem.
Even if you could, you shouldn’t want to.
This is the problem that needs to be fixed. As long as we embrace greed we will be ruled by it.
Power. The more you have, the others have less. You are more special with each billion extra.
I just don’t get the point. Felon and bozos have more money than they’ll EVER be able to spend. What is the point of hoarding even more? It makes no sense. I just don’t get it
The hoarding becomes the point. It’s a form of psychosis.
I think at a certain point it becomes about power and money is just a way they measure it
Agreed, it is impossible. Hedgies should be immediately punished and pay reprimands for the rest of their lives
You can’t move up that high financially and be a honest person. Some people do get lucky by having a great idea or business model at the right time. What keeps them there is they can look around at others struggling and justify “I deserve this more.” Than continue to exploit as much as they can to keep it.
i think notch is the epitome of “getting lucky”. He made a game he loved, MS bought it for billions and now he’s sitting pretty doing whatever the fuck he wants.
I can think of one guy who deserves to be a billionaire and it’s the guy who invented a commercially viable blue LED.
But he’s not.
Because billionaires robbed him.
This woman for president, enough is enough!
100%, although I think I might rather see her take down Schumer for his senate seat and then become majority leader…
The irritating thing is that the voting population is, on average, stupid, easily led, and anti woman. She would not fair well no matter how good she’d be in charge because brown woman bad or something equally idiotic. We’re nothing if not committed to shooting our own feet and wondering how it happened
Bruh, at this point, what the fuck are we gonna do? Just put up our own, inferior slightly less racist white old aristocratic man we ordered off TEMU? Even if we win, we lose.
I think radical is the way to go. We cannot let what happened to Bernie happen again. I’m just saying, I’m not sure she’s ready for the office of POTUS yet, maybe she needs more experience, but while we keep vetting and purity testing, the right just go “HERE’S ADOLF HITLER, EXCEPT HE IS ALSO GERIATRIC AND SUFFERS FROM ADVANCED DEMENTIA” and the people are like “FINALLY!”
I’m not saying she shouldn’t run. She’d be my most likely vote assuming some unicorn progressive candidate doesn’t show out of nowhere. It’s just irritating as fuck that she’s fighting from behind purely because she’s not a rich white dude
Don’t forget the “id vote for her but she’d never win” crowd
If people say they’d vote for her and don’t during the primary, they’re fuckasses and can be called out as such. Also the people who vote for her specifically because she’s a woman of color. Her skin color and gender are not important. Furthering progressive ideals of “kids and poor people not dying”, “healthcare should be between the person and their medical team, not including insurance and landlords”, “not having to choose between eating, seeing a doctor, and housing/utilities”, and so forth.
Is she perfect? No but the enemy of good is perfect so we need to push for progress, not perfection. We also need to be aware of how any chosen progressive candidate will be maligned and be able to combat it. The red scare is still a factor in today’s time as are racism, misogyny, and toxic masculinity. People automatically shut down upon certain words or ideas without listening to the actual content being said. There is no trying to understand, only soundbites and tweets and headlines.
Anyway, back to point. She’s a hard sell to the average idiot. Doesn’t mean we can’t try though. The opportunity is there to push for more progressive movement
|Her skin color and gender are not important.
Means she got experience being a minority. Know what I’m saying? If she says “I care about your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”, I’m more inclined to believe her than when an obese 86 year old billionaire in a brown shirt says it, you know. Except, the obese 86 year old billionaire in a brown shirt would never even say that, so…
I mean they are not important in and of themselves and should not be used directly as a reason to either support or dismiss her. I’d’ve thought that was obvious by context of literally everything else I said.
Don’t support a person because of their skin color, sexually, or genitalia situation. Support a person for their actions, beliefs, and intentional associations. Yes, their skin color, upbringing, etc affect these things but that is not the same thing.
All those Gabe lovers will tell you otherwise.
Edit: see. There they are.
The thing with having a billion dollars is that you don’t earn it, you divert part of the economy of a given sector into your wallet. I don’t know whether Gabe did this dishonestly, but clearly part of the whole gaming industry lands in his bank account… In his case, maybe the biggest gap is a gap of taxation…
I don’t know whether Gabe did this dishonestly,
Gabe made his billions by violating the First Sale Doctrine which was ruled by the Supreme Court and passed into law over a hundred years ago.
He was one of the original tech bros: Let’s do something illegal and add “on a computer” to the process to claim the law doesn’t apply.
I use Steam, but I’m well aware that I used to be able to buy old video games at a huge discount before Steam sidestepped the law with “it’s not a game it’s a steam key”.
Interesting!! Good illustration of my point, I think… Basically yeah, he created the circumstances needed to funnel into his own account basically everything that would have been the whole secondary market for games?
Come to think about it, if Bill Gates did that, oh boy we wouldn’t hear the end of it. If Jeff Bezos, it’d be rightfully put up there along with removing 1984 copies from libraries. Okay, get this, the Xbox 1 was panned before launch because it tried to get rid of the used games market, way after half life guy successfully did it.
These double standards are killing me.
I’d rather GabeN has the money than Musk. Ideally neither would.
They’re not as bad as Taylor Swift fans when you point out she is a billionaire.
I’m going to guess the fediverse has more Gabe fans than Swifties.
That’s probably a solid guess.
I’m not a fan exactly, but I often see people use her wealth to make other criticisms about her like, “She’s not an artist, she’s a product.” It’s a criticism I never hear people make about male artists, and of all wealthy pop stars, she deserves SOME credit. She pays her stage crew well and takes time at every show to recognize them. She has writing credits on all her songs. She endorses Democrats for president (yes, at the last minute, but it’s more than most celebrities do.)
See, you’re already defending the billionaire. I will say she is an extremely talented artist. Like you said she writes her stuff and for others. She 100% deserves the fame, the accolades, and wealth, but nobody should have that much wealth. Nobody. I always hear the same things about her paying her stage hands and performers well, as well as giving them generous bonuses. Meanwhile she still was able to become a billionaire, she’s abusing someone. A lot of it is her abusing her fans. Her latest album had something like 27 different versions on launch. If you wanted the complete album you had to repurchase it several times and from different stores. That’s straight up predatory capitalist behavior. Not to mention the cost of a ticket to a performance…
Contrast that with someone like Bad Bunny. He stayed in residency in Puerto Rico making much less money than he could have if he toured. He reserved a certain number of tickets per performance for locals. He did these things specifically to allow his Puerto Rican fans to afford and have the opportunity to see him.
I can’t take Gabe lovers seriously, either.
yeah, but he’s a GoOd BiLlIoNaIrE
see. There they are.
See, I tried to start something on purpose and then that happened! It’s these other evil people who are the problem!
Deal with the top 100 billionaires and Gabe will quitely donate out of the class with Taylor Swift and a few others
Who the fuck is Gabe?
He owns a little known gaming platform called Steam
The owner of Valve and therefore Steam.
Steam is a typical middle man business taking 30% (unsuccessful games) to 20% (extremely successful games) from the overwhelming majority of all PC game purchases.
Not selling on Steam is basically financial suicide for game devs because Steam is a quasi monopoly. Most PC gamers only buy there (rather than on a dev’s own site, GOG, Itch or anywhere else). So game devs pay the Gabe toll - just like almost all phone app devs pay the Apple and Google tolls.
Eh, gotta be pragmatic.
Is it wrong for people to have that much wealth? Yes. Is it inevitable for it to happen in the current world? Yes.
At that point I’d rather GabeN have control over the PC Games market than say, Microsoft, because we can see the result of their work.At that point I’d rather GabeN have control over the PC Games market than say, Microsoft, because we can see the result of their work.
Centralized money and power in one person is ALWAYS a bad thing, even if they are smart, benevolent, and generous. Even if the results in this one instance are ok, they are part of the same system that allows for all of the other oligarchs and capitalists to have obscene unitary power over people. We shouldn’t ever allow the values and whims of one person have sway over millions. Period.
And Gabe is a human being. He will age and retire. Or he will die. His views may change. Then what happens? History is full of successors to kind just kings being cruel and unjust. Being ok now is not a guarantee of the future. Better to get rid of the system than to prop up the occasional good guy of the system as an example of it working.
Yeah sure, that has nothing to with what I wrote tho.
Want to stop allowing “the values and whims of one person have sway over millions.”, get rid of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Microsof-CEO-du-jour. Can’t? Well then the guy selling games and loot boxes isn’t really a good consolation prize, especially when the consequence of removing him is reducing support for alternative operating systems and limiting the freedom of millions, to replace it with an unknown.Want to stop allowing “the values and whims of one person have sway over millions.”, get rid of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Microsof-CEO-du-jour.
& Gabe the tech monopolist. He’s a perfect match for that list.
I agree some billionaires are worse than others. Also, it’s the accumulated wealth that is wrong, not the accumulator. We don’t have to send them to the guillotines — though by all means convict them and punish them for crimes their wealth has made them immune to.
That would leave GabeN in charge of stuff, just with less money to throw around, while others might need a head basket — metaphorically speaking. I’m not down with the death penalty, though I shout louder in some cases than others.
She’s not wrong.
Since billionaire don’t have a billion dollars she is literally right as well.
What do you mean?
I mean billionaires have stocks that are worth a billion. They don’t have a billion dollars. So you are essentially taxing money that doesn’t exist. So where does the money come from?
You tax the money they borrow against their stock holdings as income, and allow them to deduct money used to pay back those loans. You could also tax a percentage of their wealth, which they can pay by selling some stock.
So you want every billionaire to have to sell stocks every year, on evaluations they don’t control.
Guess you want everyone 401k to go belly up which stocks crash, and products become more expensive because companies will just pass the cost down to the consumer. The money cones from somewhere, and it would be the buyers of these stocks. Which is us.
I couldn’t access the site with protonvpn but removepaywalls fixed it.
