Having billionaires just shows that taxes aren’t high enough
Aren’t properly bracketed* or properly incentivized for the less wealthy*.
Taxes at this moment are more than high enough for lower to middle class, but that’s the class who can’t spend millions in tax write offs through charity and ‘expenses’ or hire financial advisors and managers. Also the class who sees the least return on investment through federal tax usage despite making up the most of collection.
Make the government fear your anger again.
Im not sure she’s worked 600x more so far in her 19 year career than the average American does in their entire lifetime.
Average American lifetime earnings: 1.7 million
1 billion is 588 times more than 1.7 million.
I don’t think we’re all equal, or that we all deserve equal wealth, but I think it’d be more just if our income was dependent on how hard we work, and not how the market values the type of work we do.
Sorry, that’s not good for me. Work means 100 different things and can’t always be measured by “how much you do.”
When the amount of money a person exceeds the benefit they can possibly receive is when society needs to intervene. Money is a social agreement and does not belong to any one person. If we had a cap it would disallow people to exploit others and would give more people opportunity to max out. There could be exceptions and permits for distribution purposes but otherwise if the cup never overflows it will never trickle down.
Both your points are valid.
Paying by market value is inevitable in a functioning market economy, but we should balance it out with progressive taxes.
I bet she’s worked 600x harder than Jeff Bezos
Income being dependant on how hard we work instead of the type of work is a waste of resources though. The goal of economic systems is to allocate our limited resources to our unlimited desires as efficiently as possible.
Some usage of resources are more efficient than others. Capitalism says that peak efficiency can be reached by letting supply and demand dictate the price. Other systems have other methods.
Your proposed system values 1 hour of shoveling the same as 1 hour of moving ground with a specialized machine, which makes no sense since the latter produces much more value with the same amount of work. I’m also assuming that amount of work = hours spent doing that work, but how else would you measure it? Any other measuring system is as subjective as 1 hour of Taylor swift = 1800 hours of average american.
There’s no way to gauge how hard people work.
The Hard Times: Progressive White Women in Shambles After Taylor Swift Becomes Billionaire
Good for her. She didn’t mistreat thousands of warehouse employees or spy on and manipulate three generations with social media to do it.
I’m okay with her being the exception to the rule, as long as she doesn’t turn into a monster.
It’s not hard.
You can’t reach billion dollars without exploitation
She didn’t mistreat thousands of warehouse employees or spy on and manipulate three generations with social media to do it.
Maybe, but most music industry jobs are kinda shit same as any other job. The people that help set up the stage, the people working on her makeup, costumes, the people working in the labels, cleanup crews after concerts, people doing marketing/promotion etc. they all contribute to her success. Sure it’s overall probably a bit less exploitative than Amazon warehouses but exploitation still happens.
You don’t make a billion dollars on your own.
I’d be curious to hear an actual Marxist analysis of Swift’s relationship to the means of production because it’s clearly different than the owner of a company.
For one, Swift is actually a major contributor the production and is actually necessary unlike CEOs. She also doesn’t have control of the stadiums that she performs at, so it’s harder to say that she’s profiting off of their surplus labor.
While it’s true that she obviously couldn’t do this stuff alone, I’d like to see an analysis sketched out for celebrities or prominent athletes in general.
Damn, lots of people made good points.
I guess I was just engaged in wishful thinking.
On the flip side, who is benefitting from her billions, other than herself and her immediate family?
While billionaires are scum, a good chunk of their money is tied up in businesses that keep tens/hundreds of thousands of people worldwide employed.
I like Taylor Swift, but I don’t know her well enough to know if she actually is the exception to the rule. None of us do. The real question is “what does she need $1b for?”
I mean, you also have a point.
I’m gonna side track a little, but it’s actually super cool how many people we meet these days that are more class conscious. I feel like when I was younger people instantly idolized the rich for no good reason.
I forget what podcast was, maybe Cognitive Dissonance, but the hosts were talking about extreme wealth, and made an argument that maybe society should cap that shit. So, for example, if you make a billion and 300 million dollars a year, that 300 million automatically gets transferred to government social programs to help the community around you. It seems harsh at first, but when you stop to consider how much a billion dollars is, and how it’s basically impossible to spend that much money, and just having that much money automatically generates millions more for you everyday, there’s no point to having more than that. There is no thing you can buy that costs more than a billion dollars, unless you’re buying up entire companies. Doing something like that would act as a breaking mechanism to prevent run away wealth disparity like we have now.
Imagine living on a planet with millions of people struggling day to day with bare essentials like food and water and also having people that own enough money help millions. Why is it ok to hort wealth while you could easily help a lot of people? Like dont get me wrong, Taylor Swift is a cool artist not doing anything considered wrong by society. I simply find it odd to see people literally starving or freezing to death outside in the winter while they could be helped and no one bats an eye.
Oh I think you totally have a point. Came across this post in the main feed. The moral thing for her to do would be spend a shit ton of that wealth helping people in need. I was just commenting about how it’s nice for someone to end up rich without being a complete piece of crap to get there.
Hmm I bet she has her own clothing line.
/s?
Oh no, I don’t really follow her that much. Is there some horrible thing I don’t know about? Man, I was just hoping for one semi decent celebrity.
Its impossible to make that much money with out exploiting the labour of workers
Oooft this is spicy 🍿
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I’m betting these comments are going to get spicy
Yes, it’s true, people who love Taylor Swift, love Taylor Swift. I hope this wasn’t too confusing for you.
I’m a swiftie posting in a swiftie community. 💅
oh yeah? name all of her unreleased songs then! 🔫
Jeff Bezo’s honking laugh.
One of the things you’re all forgetting is that she’s a billionaire because of her catalog and music and stuff. She does not have a bank account with $1,00,000 sitting in it. I’m not saying billionaires should or shouldn’t exist, just reminding you that the valuation comes from intangible things that don’t have that value unless they’re sold to somebody. Her music is only worth what somebody wants to pay for it, if she even wants to sell it in the first place.
No billionaire has a billion in their bank account. It’s all stocks and other assets.
That is my entire point. She doesn’t have a billion dollars to give out because she doesn’t actually have a billion dollars.
She doesn’t have $100k in lakh notation?
Most billionaires make their fortune exploiting people. Taylor has employees, song writers, producers, PR, etc, but I doubt any of those people feel exploited.
You could stretch it to say she’s making money off the predatory scalper economy run by Ticketmaster, but unless she’s buying and reselling the tickets herself, that’s a bit of a stretch.
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Do you actually think Taylor Swift opens her bank account and sees $1,000,000,000 in checking? The overwhelming majority of her wealth is tied to her owning her own catalog of music, which can either be licensed out or earn money directly through streaming/sales. Is she obscenely wealthy? Yeah, absolutely. Is it possible for her to “cut” her money up so that everyone who helped her gets an equal share? No, we’re talking about very illiquid assets, not a cookie cake your mom brought in to share with the class.
Here’s an article about how she was one of the first people in Hollywood to meet SAG-AFTRA Union demands in order to release her movie, including things like higher pay and better residuals towards crew with streaming.
She could transfer the IP rights of the song to a company, and then evenly distribute shares of that company to everyone who ever worked with her.
That’s not an unreasonable point, but we don’t actually know the distribution of income. We know she isn’t busting unions at her record label or exploiting slave laborers to play bass on her albums. Her success is a direct result of her effort, her performance, and her creativity. Nobody does it alone, but nobody is claiming she’s acted unethically (that I know of, but I admit I don’t really follow her in the news).
I could be wrong. Maybe she’s a horrible person when you get to know her. We do know that Jeff Bezos is a horrible person.
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no one knows if bezos is a cunt excpet people close to him. the reason we know he is a cunt is the fact he is a billionaire.
We do know that Bezos is a cunt based on his track record on business practices and employer policies.
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All billionaires make their fortune exploiting people.
I think you’re right for the vast majority of billionaires, but I don’t see how Taylor Swift exploiting people.
Taylor Swift makes 2,300 times the salary of the average person in the music industry. Her team generates vast amounts of money and she gets nearly all of it.
By sucking so much wealth out of the economy. By owning so much while there are people working three jobs to make rent. You don’t have to actively club baby seals to profit from a predatory system.
I am a big fan of hers. But the way she exploits people is that she sells 3-5 copies of basically the same album but there are differences in art and Color or maybe one extra song that compels some fans to actually buy all of them. And sell honestly terrible merch through her store at a premium that they will also pay gladly for. It’s market manipulation and she is winning that game. She’s very good at capitalism but she seems to treat her staff well. Well enough in proportion to her? No probably not, but in proportion to the rest of the billionaire club’s employees, yeah.
I’m afraid you’re pissing into the wind with this one, this crowd just wants to rage about billionaires, and nothing will get in their way.
All cops are bastards, all rich people are bad, and nuance is dead.
Not really, many people believe that wealth generated by workers should be distributed amongst those workers proportionally to their contributions. Especially in the music industry workers get very little pay for the amount of money they generate for the companies they work for. Taylor Swift also profits from this inherently exploitative construction.
Taylor swift is the star of the show, the entire reason the whole event exists. Of course she’s the one making the most money.
You guys are cooked.
Ok? How does that contradict my statement?
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Taylor swift is the star of the show, the entire reason the whole event exists.
Really difficult to understand, isn’t it?
For me it’s not how she got it, it’s how she’s using it. So far, we have yet to really see her use a meaningful chunk of her money. We’ve seen her do some basic sums to local food pantries and charitable stuff here and there, but I want to see her spend an actual percentage of her fortune towards something good.
Things like helping stop climate change (after she has used that private jet so much and her tour releases a ton of emissions), donating more to LGBTQ+, or the biggest one, using her money to invest/start up her own label/rival to Ticketmaster.
The label one is important, as labels are seeing what she has done to recover her masters and are trying to stop other artists from doing the same. She could start her own label redefining the rules for musicians, and not only would it help but it would also make her even more in the long run.
One swiftie’s opinion
It’s not about how they got it. It’s about amassing it.
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I thought we were talking about the meme.
But, yes, acquisition (and how) of money is an arguably more important focus than amassing wealth that is wasted on and cannot possibly be a need of a single person.
To put into perspective, a few years ago I managed a workforce that cost ~$2.1B annually in wages, ~17,000 staff. The workforce comprised of four hospitals, dozens of aged and community care homes and clinics, mental health and suicide prevention support services, and dozens of community outreach services such as temporary housing, clothing and furniture donations, etc. It serviced the whole state and parts of the country.
This is what can be done with a certain single person’s money. By all means have them enjoy their wealth, but at a certain point, I can’t fathom what good amassed wealth is doing for anyone, including the individual.
Good billionaires:
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This is totally uncalled for. Please don’t have this mindset jeez.
What’s totally uncalled for is the fact that billionaires exist in the first place
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There are no good billionaires.
The only good billionaire is a dead billionaire
Only if their money is inherited to charity, otherwise still bad billionaires.
Nah, there are some sketchy charities out there
Mandatory charity (tax) to be spent on a democratically decided issues. Now that’s a feel good story
Democratically decided issues (bombing some random school in middle-east)
