- cross-posted to:
- GenerationZ@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- GenerationZ@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47196787
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Sometimes it’s misinterpretation. When a post attacks something - doesn’t have to be billionaires, it can be anything - calling out a sloppy argument or a low-effort anger dump doesn’t go well. In a crowd full of pitchforks and torches, if you aren’t jumping up and down waving pompoms for the attacker then anything you say is going to be taken as defending the target - you’re an apologist or you’re a shill for Evil. Supposedly we’re all about Justice, but if the accused is a known Bad Guy the crowd doesn’t really GAF if they’re innocent in this one case, they’re guilty anyway and holes in the argument don’t matter. If your own sense of justice doesn’t let you go along with the angry mob always being right, you’re better off just staying out of those threads.
Some people have the mindset - “If we take money away from billionaires now, then I’ll have less money when I become a billionaire in the future!”
There are some people who are just wired to submit, and there are a lot more of them than you would think. I don’t know how to explain it, but I know some otherwise really awesome people, smart in most ways, but happily submit themselves to authority time and time again; despite it burning them over and over.
A lot of lemmy and reddit comments are written by bots or marketing companies. Theres a whole industry of companies that sell the ability to influrnce others’ opinions. Both political and via comments on products.
There is a strange phenomenon that some people really love following orders and they really love a simple worldview. Someone tells them that Elon Musk is a genius and that makes them happy so they believe it even when they see him not being a genius. And you can’t fix that with facts because it’s a mental block that they have.
Some people are more predisposed to value order and stability, which I get it. Life is ultimately rudderless and has no direction. It brings an existential dread for many to think that we are all ultimately free individuals. As Albert Camus puts it: we are condemned to be free. Some people have a stronger fleeting and listless feeling, and fear of the unknown-- but it is the endless possibilities of choices leading to the unknown results that they actually dread. So, I think some people want assurances; and they think they could get it from following an authority figure. This stems from our pre-historic evolutionary past that if you are not a leader type and either/or not part of a group, it could reduce your chances of survival.
It is, it’s a weird mental wall that you hit time and time again with these people.
Keep asking the why, and eventually they shut down. Once they get to where they need to think critically you can just see the brain turn off behind their eyes. It’s baffling.
I think a Disney song might explain some of it…
- You! (Whoop dee-wit) I wanna be like you (hap du hoowee-doo) I wanna walk like you (chuu) Talk like you, too (chuu) (We-be-de-be-du-wu) you see it’s true (shubbedey-du) Someone like me (scubey-dubey-dubey) Can learn to be Like someone like me (take me home, daddy!) Can learn to be Like someone like you (one more time!) Yeah, can learn to be Like someone like me Zi-de-da-bapp bapp bada dodel-dad’n dad’n dad’n dad’n dad, eh Ah-babba di-di-dibbi-di Now, I’m the king of the swingers Oh, the jungle VIP
I read that in Louis Prima’s voice
‘some people’?
As if the vast majority weren’t glazing ‘Papa Elon’ and brilliant Bezos, etc not so long ago.
While anyone could see what awful people they really were.Hypocrite libs and their selective memory.
Now they’re crying about something they helped create.Because they’re fucking stupid.
alot of propaganda, especially how movies and shows glorify being rich, plus als in irl, its a plus if worship white ones.
This meritocracy bullshit is the equivalent of peasants who believed God appointed their monarchs.
Milord, that one stole thy crops! His greed betrays him, for he steals for his family too! Stone him, for he seeks to usurp you, milord! Perhaps, by thine benevolence, thou wouldst find it pleasing to reward thine loyal subject for defending your crop and your honor! I only seek to humbly serve milord and his Holiness!
They are stupid. They dream of being one with no hope that they will even be a millionaire. They are stupid and that is all it is.
Because they hope to become one of them
Or at least an “Uncle Tom” who will receive preferential treatment
I’ve heard this a lot. I cannot think of anyone who actually thinks they have a shot at being a billionaire. Maybe a shot at winning the lottery, which is still crazy, but the taxes are predetermined for that so it’s not like they’re going to increase on a winner after they’ve won and already paid. There’s always the steady drumbeat of “taxes are evil” from everyone living in a fantasyland that modern civilized life will continue without them.
IMO it’s more of a fear thing. We’ve been told they’re the “job creators” or whatever (even Musk has only created 100k jobs out of 163 million jobs despite being the richest person in the country). You’re already getting their “preferential treatment” and people are afraid they’ll withdraw their favor, as meager as it is, despite the damage they do to everything else.
Nah, the aspiration isn’t so much that people think they could be billionaires, merely that anyone could be. It creates a social bond between the working class and billionaires, it dissolves the identity divide for the working class. Working class people think “they’re hard workers just like me,” while billionaires use their identification as working class to selectively absolve themselves of the responsibility they have.
Americans are stupid, hateful and willing to shit all over each other if they think they will personally benefit, even if know it is only temporary
Selfishness is baked into what passes for culture in that backwards dump
I was having a chat with a friend recently about the cost of living in the UK. I mentioned one issue is the wealth inequality and billionaires are the problem.
“If we do a wealth tax they’ll leave!”
Sent this link https://equalitytrust.org.uk/evidence-base/billionaire-britain-2025/ to explain how a large proportion of billionaires just extract wealth.
Not entirely sure they were convinced. They have the mentality that billionaires create jobs for everyone and are super hard workers that worked their way up.
I don’t want to just sit back and call people who look up to billionaires idiots. I want to be able to have strong compelling points to make them change their mind.
If you do a wealth tax, they would absolutely leave.
Let them.
You can’t tax them at all if they leave. Forget wealth tax, you won’t be getting any taxes.
Dude…just google it, it’s a myth. The people that want you to believe it are the ones thaf benefit from you believing it.
Heck, look at the interview Bezos just did. Notice how there wasn’t even the possibility in his worldview of him being taxed more. Meanwhile, he lies about how much he pays and parrots the cherrypicked statistic of 40% of income taxes are paid by the top 1% of income earners. Guess what Bezos is? Not one of those. He takes an income of 80K, a little above average in terms if income earners. His wealth isn’t taxed while he does fuck all and his employees toil away and he generates wealth off of their labor.
Shit, in America alone the top marginal rate was over 90%. They’re still here.
This also misses the point that the level of wealth consolidation is a failure of the system to provide for its people. They shouldn’t exist in the first place.
And they should be happy that most people are saying to tax them more. But these dipshits equate that to terrorism and racial slurs, so yeah, let’s see just how deluded they are and just how much pain the people can put up with.
I want a source that says that billionaires would remain in countries even when taxes rise.
😮💨
A literal book of research published from Stanford
https://www.sup.org/books/sociology/myth-millionaire-tax-flight
While everyone seems aware of a handful of high-profile millionaires decamping to low-tax states for tax reasons, in truth few move in response to state tax rates. Young examined tax data from every millionaire in the United States over thirteen years. He found that, even over that long time horizon, only 0.3% of all millionaires, on net, moved to a lower tax state. A larger share—about 2.5 percent-- move from one state to another each year, but most do not migrate for tax reasons.
Millionaires are not very mobile, and when they do move across state lines, taxes play a small role in the decision. Tax-induced migration among millionaires is not zero, but it is fairly close to zero.
https://ips-dc.org/release-wealth-expands-after-higher-state-taxes-on-high-income-earners/
Two years into Massachusetts’ millionaires’ tax and a higher tax rate on $250,000 in capital gains in Washington state shows that the millionaire class grew by 38.6 percent in Massachusetts and 46.9 percent in Washington, respectively. Their wealth grew by more than $580 billion in current dollars in Massachusetts and $748 billion in Washington state between 2022 and 2024.
Wealth flight fears are misguided. The number of wealthy individuals and their cumulative wealth grew after the enactment of higher taxes on high earners in Massachusetts and a progressive capital gains tax on high-wealth Washingtonians.
And when it comes to the followup argument of “bUt It DoNt BrInG ReVenUE” it was largely not due to flight but instead from exemptions and tax breaks and poor policing of taxes on said wealthy individuals and being generally too broad and policy in place making those who were highly mobile to move.
And some lessons from Norway who have had wealth taxes since 1892, and by which they implememted a 37.8% wealth tax if you do choose to leave. If you really want the parasites to stay, make it worth their while, they only know how to speak money after all. After bleeding our system dry and profiting off of our labor and tax dollars through subsidies and utilizing our public services to pay workers less, it’s the least they can do for us allowing them to exist in the first place.
https://www.aol.com/articles/analysis-norways-wealth-tax-trades-050140872.html
I’m not saying that people would leave to boring states just for tax benefits. I’m saying that people would leave to different countries.
I don’t understand how Norway implements it’s wealth tax.
If you’re not willing to read and understand then your opinion is worthless, we have no reason to listen to someone so malignantly uninformed. You ask for sources, implying there are none, then when shown you backtrack and ask questions that the sources themselves answer.
Continue aiding Trump and the billionaires, I’m sure if you work hard enough you’ll be one one day.
Good.
How?
They are a menace to society and there existence is an embarrassment.
Does kicking them out of the country cause them to cease to exist?
If everyone does it, yeah. Kinda.
Agreed. Capitalism cannot be brought down without global unity.
I don’t want them here, ideally they would pay a crap ton of taxes or rot in a cell, and stop buying out the legal systems.
Agreed but unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal world
And then what? If they want to take their wealth with them they’d need to sell up, so the job creation would remain, the assets would remain, possibly the currency would be slightly weaker, and so importa would be slightly more expensive, which would encourage the local economy… What is the awful outcomes you’re imagining from the ultra rich leaving?
Not if you have a 38% exit tax like Norway.
Damn! I didn’t know there was actually a solution to the Marxist problem of capital flight!
The obvious solution is to simply not allow the capitalists to take anything but the clothes on their backs as they flee for their wretched lives
Unfortunately that’s not possible unless the state seizes their assets.
Oh nooo…
The last time a country seized the assets of the wealthy, half the world declared war against it. Be careful what you wish for.
Yes, that’s sort of what I was getting at. Historically speaking there’s no good examples of asking capitalists nicely for things being a productive strategy.
Which is good, as they would then not be extracting wealth from where they left and money can once again circulate how it should.
Lol billionaires extract wealth from every single nation.
Then maybe we should tax the fuck out of them across the board.
Good luck convincing all countries. (Most countries are class traitors)
Did you not read the comment you’re responding to? Them leaving would be a good thing dumbass
Explain how, smartass.
Try reading the article linked in the comment you were responding to you fucking moron
The article doesn’t explain how kicking them out would be a good thing you fucking imbecile.
It explains in great mathematical detail how they cost more than they’re worth, fucking duh, learn to read
You can’t blame billionaires for people continuing to think that GDP benefits them.
