cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35971063

Pope Leo said “we’re in big trouble” when it comes to the ever-widening pay gap between the rich and poor, citing Elon Musk, who may be on course to become the world’s first trillionaire.

Leo made the remarks while criticising executive pay packages during his first interview with the media.

Reflecting on why the world was so polarised, he said one significant factor was the “continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive”.

“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving … 600 times more [now],” the pontiff said in excerpts of the interview conducted by Elise Ann Allen, a senior correspondent with the Catholic newspaper Crux as part of a forthcoming biography.

Earlier this month, the board of the electric car maker Tesla said it had proposed a new trillion-dollar pay package for Musk, its chief executive and largest shareholder, if he hit targets set by the company.

Outlining the incentive package, which is unprecedented in corporate history, in a stock market update, the company said: “Yes, you read that correctly.”

The pope, who turned 70 on Sunday, has so far shown to be much more low-key than his predecessor, even if they shared similar progressive political views.

Francis often clashed with the US president, Donald Trump, over his hardline immigration policies, while Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, also criticised Trump’s policies on his X account before becoming pope.

  • Hector@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    I would hope the pope might also be somewhat concerned about the whole Nazi thing. Not very Catholic those Nazis. I understand he cannot say that though because Nazis are so popular right now.

  • hansolo@lemmy.today
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    5 hours ago

    Y’all - if you looked at the original “Trillion dollar offer” it’s effectively somewhere between impossible and a hallucination. It requires increasing Tesla sales by a factor of 11 and selling 1 million Optimus robots which aren’t even commercially available for sale. Even Yale called it stupid.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Unless Musk already knows that the Trumpistanian Christian fascist kleptocracy is already planning on buying all cyber trucks for a premium, and contracting 1 million Optimus kill bots to conduct their mass murder.

        • Hector@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          You pretty much have to be a millionaire to afford all of the things our parents and grandparents got on Modest wages. Doctors and dentists and optometrists, house repairs and or skyrocketing rent.

          Of course a million dollars is nowhere near enough to pay for medical treatment that used to cost a modest amount of your wealth. $1 million would be nowhere near enough to pay for cancer treatment. But now that private equity and hedge funds are involved they extract the life savings of people for medical treatment.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          7 hours ago

          pretty much, upper middle class. its when you get past 10million+ in spending power is where it sets it apart from millionaires.

      • Carighan Maconar@piefed.world
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        8 hours ago

        I did a lot of thinking about this over the years (not the youngest one anymore) and I will say that I think my personal limit would be at ~10 mil. Beyond that, I fail to comprehend what amount of money I have. I can comprehend 1 mil, which means I can use in excess of that in some capacity, even pointlessly.

        But 10 mil? That stops being an amount of cash, it’s just “Me rich nao”.

        • blattrules@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          Yeah, that’s the number I came to also. At that point, you don’t have to work anymore and can mostly just live very comfortably off of the interest. There’s no way you’d catch me still working if I had that much saved.

        • FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.com
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          7 hours ago

          Yep

          I have been reasonably wealthy before, and it was through a lot of luck with plenty of shitty, long hours

          But the only way I could have gotten more was by shitting on people, and that’s not something I’m willing to do

  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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    6 hours ago

    I will never endorse catholicism, but this seems to be one cool pope. Actually preaching what the Bible (well at least the NT) teaches.

    Also Fuck Elon. He just wants to make headlines with superlatives, but he & his companies are already on the long way down. Prove me wrong.

    • Hector@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      The last Pope was good as well. I wonder what the last time in history there was a pope that can be considered good before francis?

      Francis by the way is the name the previous Pope took on being elected Pope, named after sanctified religious guy from Italy that is the patron saint of animals and nature. Actually a pretty cool guy. I’m not Catholic either though.