Now I need to do the math on space karen/ henery ford 2.0 aka Mr my autism makes me prone to outbursts of fascist apologia.
I did the math recently and if you took the assets of the wealthiest 1% and divided only half of it amongst the remaining 336.3 million Americans it would be a check of approximately 68,000 for every man woman and child and those bloated blood sucking leaches would still have an average remainder of just under 6 million dollars each.
I got into an argument years ago with someone who appeared to start on the conclusion that co-operatives must be bad and tried to work backwards from there.
There was this notion that it was somehow unfair for one delivery driver to earn $1,000,000 and another to earn $10,000 just because they worked for different companies, since it was mostly the efforts of other people in the company that gave it its value. He wasn’t able to then take the tiny extra step required to apply the same logic to CEOs and shareholders.
I realized there’s a kind of proximity bias; billionaires are so far removed from our lives that we just accept their existence as part of how the world works, whereas if a regular employee like us is getting something we’re not then the jealousy becomes palpable. It’s the same thing that drives hatred towards minorities and immigrants.
He’d have to give them this as equity in the company, he’s not liquid for that amount. None of the “richest Americans” have near the amount of wealth they appear to have.
This is what people mean when they say workers should own the means of production tho
Musk paid $44 billion in cash for Twitter. Billionaires only have wealth on paper until they want to buy a company, then magically they have the cash.
It’s my understanding that Musk borrowed heavily from investors for that cash.
Buy, Borrow, Die strategy.
-
Buy something that potentially increases in value (real estate, companies, stock etc)
-
Borrow money against the appreciated value of step 1, this borrowing in not taxable.
-
Die and leave assets to whoever and never pay tax on the assets.
-
It’s called leveraged borrowing, it’s how the billionaire class pays for things. The banks typically give them super low rates and generous terms on these types of loans.
So what Elon did was took a loan against his assets, Tesla stock, at a low APR with very loose repayment terms, then paired that with money pledged by a few other minority investors and that’s how he was able to quickly come up with 44 billion to buy Twitter.
Yeah and a lot of that came from other investors
Other investors that will be coming to look for their investment money
https://youtube.com/shorts/J3UVMlDUFkc
You need this guy on YouTube. He’s excellent at shedding light on this stuff. He has stuff for lobbying, aipac, billionaires, rfk, private equity, and more
IIRC they basically use some of their shares like a credit card, since the value of their shares keeps appreciating the interest is much easily paid off
Musk paid very little for twitter. He paid $0 in real money. He traded (iirc) like $13b of Tesla stock. The rest was filled by Saudi investors and western banks, who were greatly encouraged to own and control one of the primary modalities of communication in the 21st century. Either way very little actual cash transferred hands
he’s not liquid
Who gives a fuck? Wealth is wealth and his equity is his security for the low to zero interest loans from where all his spending money comes.
None of the “richest Americans” have near the amount of wealth they appear to have
Again, yes they do. Illiquid wealth is still wealth and is the basis of rich people getting to spend as much as they want with little to no risk compared to people who DON’T have a dragon’s hoard in stock for the above infinite money exploit to work.
This is what people mean when they say workers should own the means of production tho
Nah, when people say that workers should own the means of production, they’re talking about ACTUAL ownership, not bonuses from the owner.
No, they’re saying they should own the means of production. Which in the modern context means equity in the company. All 876,000 employees could be given a 105,000 bonus in terms of stock and then they’d own Amazon equity, done
So THAT’S where you want the goal posts now?
Equity isn’t the means of production. The means of production are what produce the products and services, not what produces the capital. What you’re talking is the means of profiting.
If you were talking about a financial company where wealth for the sake of wealth IS the only product, you’d be right, but Amazon isn’t that.
Except that shareholders vote on the board of directors, who make decisions like hiring and firimg the CEO, executive compensation, and overruling executive decisions. It’s two levels of indirection, but in the end the shareholders DO control the means of production.
There are exceptions to this when thete are multiple classes of shares - one voting and one nonvoting for example. This doesn’t apply in Amazon’s case that I can see.
There are no goal posts here. The workers can’t own the machinery in modern times because American companies rarely manufacture anything so they they own stock. Instead of jeff bezos and a small handful of executives (plus uninvolved “shareholders”) owning the bulk of the amazon the workers own the company. I don’t get why this is hard for you to understand and why you are making strange semantics arguments to defend the right of billionaires owning an obscene amount of wealth.
I don’t get why this is hard for you to understand
I understand perfectly fine, I’m just pointing out the fact that you’re wrong when conflating the means of PRODUCTION with the methods of wealth accumulation in a company that actually produces nonfinancial goods and services.
to defend the right of billionaires owning an obscene amount of wealth.
I would never do any such thing. Billionaires shouldn’t exist and in fact neither should the stock market.
That’s not really how that works. Sure, it isn’t liquid, but you can still borrow against it, and you don’t pay tax in this like you would if you sell. That’s how the wealthy can still buy things without having to pay any reasonable amount of tax.
And if amazon gave their employees stock options (like they did at one point) the employees could also borrow against it. But amazon stopped doing that once they reached a point where their employees were impacting their bottom line. They now rob their employees of that option to entrench wealth amongst the elite
The Behind the Bastards episode about him is really mind blowing. Like, he sucks way more than you could ever imagine. When I was in college, Amazon was the company that you could get used textbooks from. Now they’re the default web shopping platform.
Anybody saying that co-ops don’t work or whatever should check Mondragon which thrives in thoroughly capitalist Spain.
The consumers have to use their brain when they use their money. Cooperatives are very big in Denmark.
Unfortunately Americans using their brain when they purchase something means they are looking to maximize their quality to cost ratio. I do this all the time when shopping for automotive tools. Lots of companies sell what is more or less the same exact quality product made by the same exact manufacturer. And if you peruse amazon(so hard not to even send traffic their way) you will find the same item sold by say matco, cornwell, mac or bluepoint rebranded in different packaging for 15-25% the price asked by those other high end brands. And in some instances i have seem people open up the product and find it is packaged with the more expensive brand name logo on it. So when 50% of Americans earn $42,200/year($20.29/hr) or less and when you remove the highest earning 10% from the data set then the average wage in the USA is $58,000 ($28/hr) American’s known only one way to shop smart and that is look for the best deal and ignore the ethical implications because most of us can not afford to figure this into our shopping habits.
And this is compounded even more so by the reality that us yankees are being lied to by the financial institutions at the helm of our societal machinery. Inflation statistics are wildly skewed to reduce the possibility of the working class rioting and fomenting a revolution so the passive income stream for the ultra wealthy will continue to flow.
The world bank and international monetary fund who’s inflation calculations are regurgitated to us hu the FED and all of Wall Street- they use consumer price index to figure inflation statistics and CPI is flawed in multiple ways but the most important of them being that CPI does not account for the devaluation of a currency due to the increase in circulating currency supply as well as leveraged national debt/ deficit, and these 2 factors are the primary driving force of inflation. And if you even mention the fact that the price of gold foes account for those two factors then youre called ridiculous and a few will try to spew out a ton of nonsensical economics information at you but all you need to know is that in the 172 years of the US dollar as a standardized currency the price of gold only fluctuated ≈95% from $18 to $35 (and the bulk of that was when FDR had to take drastic measures to save the economy after wall street malfeasance that caused the Great Depression which was mild in comparison to the last 40 years of fraud by wall street so FDR made it illegal to hoard gold and bought up the majority of the supply at $20.67/ounce to store in the newly built fort knox and when his administration was certain they had the majority of the supply they revalued gold wt $35/ounce where it remained until nixon ended the gold standard permanently in 1971 by withdrawing from the bretton woods agreement) but since nixon ended the gold standard permanently 54 years ago the value of gold has increased in direct proportion to the national debt going from $35 to $3400/ounce or ≈9600% compared to the national debt increasing from $400 billion to 37.3 trillion ≈9400% in the same exact time frame.
So this is why the silent generation l, boomers and most of Gen x had it so well. Why my grandfather was able to buy a house in 1955 just 5 years after coming to the usa at the age of 18 on a minimum wage salary in an Ivy League college town for less than $3000 but today federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised in going on 17 years and average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in the same city is now $3000/ month if you go outside the city its $2200-2500 depending on your standards but the reality is that it cost more to purchase and maintain enslaved people during chattel slavery some 170+ years ago than minimum wage workers anywhere in the Usa are currently paid today. We are slaves convinced of an illusory freedom. Mainly through the eradication of high education standards that were the norm after the Great Depression up until the end of the civil rights movement Fascism has creeped into sociopolitical system and taken a strong foot hold while using digital medial to effectively disburse propaganda and condition many to support ideas against their own self interest and simultaneously believe what is in the better interest of the working class is evil and foolish. Things couldn’t be more upside down than they are now.
You could just use the top .1% and not drop that figure much. The differences as you go up are huge.
Some people who don’t know any better would say that poor Jeff innovated the world into a better place by inventing Amazon, that he’s being justly rewarded by the free market.
But Amazon became so successful because it killed off all of it’s competitors - not through a better service, but using investor capital to artifically lower it’s prices, systematically targeting it’s rivals and taking them over.
Amazon is so profitable because it has killed the market and replaced it with itself, and the tech giants and uber and so on are doing exactly the same thing.
So turn it into a co-op, let it’s workers decide if they can piss on the clock or not. Give it’s sellers a say in whether they want to pay 40% markup and hidden fees to get pushed to the top of front page. Amazon abuses workers, businesses and the market - this is a great solution to a problem that everyone ought to have, regardless of politics.
Going by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis the 1% are valued at ~49 Trillion works out to be ~$145k per person. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLT01026
So that was 5 years ago. Which means he could give them all a $20,000 annual raise and still be making money.
cooperatively owned
This usually means employee, or sometimes, customer owned. You described fair taxation and UBI/freedom dividends instead.
What needs to be nationalized with 99% shareholder dillution and zero compensation in the US is oil, weapons companies on the basis of their warmongering lobbying, and other zionist first rule over America media and political funding terrorists.
UBI is first and foremost power redistribution. The wealthy stay wealthy, and through economic growth and faster money multiplier, get even richer even at higher tax rates.
Will that keep them from parking like assholes?
What was that thing about the band in ‘Restaurant at the End of the Universe’ being so so unbelievably wealthy that the accountants prove that space/time is not just curved, it is warped, please internet tell me i’m not insane?
Yup! You’re remembering that right. Also, the frontman Hotblack Desiato was temporarily dead as part of a tax avoidance scheme 😄
Oh right! Thanks!
And then the State Department starts flooding Amazon warehouses with drugs and guns to ruin the co-op and make people nostalgic for the good ol days when the Bezos junta was around to control the gangs.
Or we could just end the prohibition of drugs because it does nothing beneficial for society and destroy the black market instead of doing bullshit like “decriminalizing” which doesn’t do any good because the black market still flourishes
I’m sorry, do you think that would stop the State Department from giving all of their children fentanyl?
Besides, there’s always going to be a black market unless you want the drug trade totally unregulated. No drug standards, no age limits, no quality control, just a wild West free for all.
You’re talking about a gray market, like in legal cannabis states where prices are still high and there are ridiculous barriers preventing those who were growing cannabis illegaly before “legalization”(or rather prohibition 2.0) from entering the industry so they sell at a lower price and undercut the market. But these people are not multi million dollar cartels and in 97 cases out of 100 cartels have already moved out of the cannabis trade or they have taken steps to enter the legal trade. Im talking about a commercial environment where violence is not needed to protect the producer and their profits, the main idea behind prohibition is this enforcing of abstinence only moral Puritanism built on religious fundamentalism and racism/ white supremacy. There is definitely a way to undercut the entire black market but it is almost impossible within a capitalistic economy the leas regulated the more unfeasible it is.
Won’t the US just declare you a narco-state and sanctions you to death?
Math is beautiful.
That’s impossible. Because a bonus that much would mean there would be a lot of taxes paid, and that goes against Bezos his principles.
