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.
There are no ethical billionaires
Millionaires, sure, to a point, but billionaires, absolutely not
What about Eron Wolf, the founder of the FUTO foundation?
What about Brian Acton, the CEO of signal?
Sheeeeiiiiiit… In this garbage country, millionaires are pretty much the living wage peoples
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. $1 million would be nowhere near enough to pay for cancer treatment. But now that private equity and hedge funds are involved they extract the life savings of people for medical treatment.
pretty much, upper middle class. its when you get past 10million+ in spending power is where it sets it apart from millionaires.
I did a lot of thinking about this over the years (not the youngest one anymore) and I will say that I think my personal limit would be at ~10 mil. Beyond that, I fail to comprehend what amount of money I have. I can comprehend 1 mil, which means I can use in excess of that in some capacity, even pointlessly.
But 10 mil? That stops being an amount of cash, it’s just “Me rich nao”.
Yeah, that’s the number I came to also. At that point, you don’t have to work anymore and can mostly just live very comfortably off of the interest. There’s no way you’d catch me still working if I had that much saved.
10s millionaires, hundred millionaires are up there with billionaires. the low-millionaires not so much.
Yep
I have been reasonably wealthy before, and it was through a lot of luck with plenty of shitty, long hours
But the only way I could have gotten more was by shitting on people, and that’s not something I’m willing to do
What about Notch, the creator of minecraft?
Google “Notch, the creator of Minecraft”
?
Eh, Notch hasn’t really shown to be that positive a force in the world.
Did he do something bad or just haven’t done enough good? I don’t really keep up with him.
The far right guy?
I don’t really keep up with random people’s politics, and I suppose anything short of a communist is considered far right in these circles, but putting aside the idea that anyone who doesn’t support collectivism is a devil incarnate, what’s unethical about making a game and pawning it off to M$ for a billion $?