I am put off by the judge ruling against it because “it’s unfair to shareholders”. It’s unfair to a lot of people, especially in the wake of layoffs. If the law does not protect the basic necessities for working Americans, then the law needs changing.
How many of Elon’s workers could get paid a living wage for that $56bn? If he passed it up could he stop trying to oppose unions and make some life-changing concessions for his employees?
Even putting that aside, how is that money going to change Elon’s life? As in the daily experience of what he eats, vacation opportunities, housing, etc? Because money is kind of like water - it’s incredibly important if you don’t have enough, but once you have more than you could use the only reason to keep hoarding it is restricting others’ access for pride, greed, or leverage (i.e. purchasing influence).
I’m not even as far left of center as I probably sound. I believe that different economic classes should exist or people aren’t motivated - you need to pay surgeons well in order to get enough surgeons. However, “the floor” should be raised to ensure housing/food/utilities security at the cost of “the ceiling” being lowered (or existing at all). Oxfam says a wealth tax of 5% on multi-millionaires/billionaires would solve world hunger in 10 years, lift 2 billion out of poverty, and much more. As of 2023 the bottom half of the USA, as in about 170ish million citizens, only have access to 3% of America’s wealth while the top 10% control just over 66% of wealth. Deals like this, coupled with the mass layoffs across multiple industries, is only making that obscene inequality worse.
Raise the floor too high and suddenly nobody needs to sign up to be a murderer for hire to go to college. Suddenly people who actually know how the sector functions can create their own firms. Suddenly the idea of an industry being to big to fail and getting a bailout every decade isn’t as necessary. Suddenly your carefully protected tax shields aren’t quite so effective.
Edit: Holy crap, I need to confess I misread your post and replied as if you were making a completely different point. That is my mistake, full stop, and after re-reading your reply I can only assume I likely confused you and others.
Any extreme is bad, that’s true. But there’s a lot of room in between current affairs and the situation you’re describing I should have read that more carefully. Many of the happiest, healthiest nations on Earth (prime example being Nordic nations) have a model featuring government intervention in the economy and strong social nets while still being capitalist.
How many of Elon’s workers could get paid a living wage for that $56bn?
There are 140,000 employees, so each one could get $400,000. That is WAY more than a liveable wage. He could give every single person in his company $200,000 and STILL have $28B leftover for his bonus. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a billion, and I’m a pretty imaginative person who makes a lot of money. If someone said to me, “I can give you $56B, or I can give you $28B and 140,000 other people $200,000. You choose.” I would gladly give all of those 140,000 people handjobs by me personally along with that $200k. It might take awhile to give all those handjobs, but I’d commit to it for $28B.
It would take 972 days of 12 hours per day giving 5 minute long handjobs. Roughly 3 years of indentured servitude to get $28B. Worth it.
This news is frustrating:
I’m not even as far left of center as I probably sound. I believe that different economic classes should exist or people aren’t motivated - you need to pay surgeons well in order to get enough surgeons. However, “the floor” should be raised to ensure housing/food/utilities security at the cost of “the ceiling” being lowered (or existing at all). Oxfam says a wealth tax of 5% on multi-millionaires/billionaires would solve world hunger in 10 years, lift 2 billion out of poverty, and much more. As of 2023 the bottom half of the USA, as in about 170ish million citizens, only have access to 3% of America’s wealth while the top 10% control just over 66% of wealth. Deals like this, coupled with the mass layoffs across multiple industries, is only making that obscene inequality worse.
Raise the floor too high and suddenly nobody needs to sign up to be a murderer for hire to go to college. Suddenly people who actually know how the sector functions can create their own firms. Suddenly the idea of an industry being to big to fail and getting a bailout every decade isn’t as necessary. Suddenly your carefully protected tax shields aren’t quite so effective.
Edit: Holy crap, I need to confess I misread your post and replied as if you were making a completely different point. That is my mistake, full stop, and after re-reading your reply I can only assume I likely confused you and others.
Any extreme is bad, that’s true. But there’s a lot of room in between current affairs and
the situation you’re describingI should have read that more carefully. Many of the happiest, healthiest nations on Earth (prime example being Nordic nations) have a model featuring government intervention in the economy and strong social nets while still being capitalist.And still being some form a republic/democracy.
I’m a republican and I strongly believe if the people want and it’s constitutional, it’s fair game
I also believe in regulations to avoid mega corps.
I also support rules are publicly traded companies and wages.
It’s been disappointing how many people, not politicians, have bought into we should let companies do anything they want.
There are 140,000 employees, so each one could get $400,000. That is WAY more than a liveable wage. He could give every single person in his company $200,000 and STILL have $28B leftover for his bonus. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a billion, and I’m a pretty imaginative person who makes a lot of money. If someone said to me, “I can give you $56B, or I can give you $28B and 140,000 other people $200,000. You choose.” I would gladly give all of those 140,000 people handjobs by me personally along with that $200k. It might take awhile to give all those handjobs, but I’d commit to it for $28B.
It would take 972 days of 12 hours per day giving 5 minute long handjobs. Roughly 3 years of indentured servitude to get $28B. Worth it.
Not if you jerked off 4 people at a time.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Not if you jerked off 4 people at a time.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.