Democrats want us to believe that there is some cohort of “good billionaires” who can be relied upon to fight for political progress. But as the right-wing turn of tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk suggests, this is nonsense.
Yup. Show me a billionaire who has paid their workers fairly from day one, followed every single law and regulation by the book, never spent a single dollar on lobbying Congress or contributing to political campaigns for quid pro quos, and never used underpaid contractors or foreign slave labor. You can’t, because there’s no such thing as a good billionaire.
The guy who founded Costco and was its CEO up until a few years ago is this, if not very close. A business lauded for both how it treated its workforce, and its customers. Basically no turnover unless someone retires.
And even then, if they managed to amass that kind of wealth, it had to come from somewhere, i.e. consumers paying enough for their product that it made them a billionaire, meaning all these people could have paid less and that billionaire could be a millionaire or just middle class and more people would be richer.
That is kind of true. But on the assumption that the corporation (in this case Costco) is doing more good than bad, like generating fair jobs, it would benefit most to see that business grow. If you dont generate profit because you distribute everything to your employees or customers, you will never be able to grow. So Costco will stay with 10 employees forever and only those businesses that exploit workers and customers can grow.
You could argue that there is really no need for businesses to grow as big ss many are today and I would completely agree, but that has to be regulated by law.
Non profits are a thing and they are able to grow, hell, you would expect them to grow more because less money goes to the pockets of a CEO and more goes to growing the company.
It can also make profit without billions going to the pockets of a single person, if that money was just redistributes to all employees the business would probably grow even faster because more qualified people would want to work there and would be happier working there.
Three scenarios:
The company makes 100B in revenue, pays its employees a fair wage, distributes 5B to the C-suites and makes 50B in total profit
The company makes 100B in revenues, pays its employees a fair wage, distributes 10M to the C-suites, distributes 4.99B in bonus to all employees and makes 50B in total profit
The company reduces its prices, makes 95.01B in revenues, pays its employees a fair wage, gives 10M to the c-suites, makes 50B in total profit
What’s the difference?
Hint: there’s no difference except the number of people being treated better
NPOs have CEOs as well and many earn salaries in the millions.
NPOs are the exact right example, though, but not for the reason you are talking about. Non-profit does not inherently mean lower-ranking employees get a bigger share.
The big difference is that NPOs dont have shareholders or owners, which is how billionaires become billionaires, by owning companies worth billions.
But you should know that most NPOs rely almost entirely on government grants and donations. They couldnt even survive a single year on their own revenues.
If you want to establish the NPO concept in the free market, you would need to ban private ownership of ocmpanies. It could work but there is no way it will ever be implemented.
I think you are ignoring his main question though. Are those not legitimately three different options companies have? Do they not have wildly different outcomes on the workers?
No, companies do not actually have the option to simply cut the upper managements salary by 99.8%.
And even if they could, it would simply end in all management leaving the company the next day, the company going bankrupt and all of the empolyees losing their jobs.
Im not trying to defend management salaries in the millions. It is damn unnecessary and should be taxed appropriately. But simply denying that thats how the world works right now is bs.
Funny how you ignored everything but the non profit bit. The reason they rely on donations and grants is because they’re mostly charities, there’s no reason a private company couldn’t reinvest 100% of its profits and try to adjust its prices to be closer to breaking even. Hell, life insurance for road users works exactly this way around here, prices are adjusted based on how much they need to pay for claims and we’re the place that pays the least for that type of insurance in North America, everything is paid for by car owners and it will covers anyone involved in an accident with a car, may they be in the car or riding a bike or walking on the sidewalk, it’s still cheaper than anywhere else for those who pay for it.
Tell me, from the companies’ perspective what the difference is between the three example I gave? You’re the one who said it’s not realistic to lower prices.
I think you are not familiar with how economy works. No offense, really, Im not an expert either but I dont really have the patience to go over everything in detail. Reinvesting profits is what ALL companies do. What youre suggesting was the opposite, you said profits should be distributed to employees or customers.
The difference between your examples is that 1 is a different company than 2 and 3. They are not different scenarios for the same company.
There are reasons why CEOs earn a lot and you cant change that by telling companies “but why not just give the money to your other employees, it would be better for them”. Thats not how economy works. Im not saying the way things are is good at all, but youre not offering an alternative. What youre suggesting would require that owners and shareholders would give a shit about the wellbeing of their employees and customers.
I dont know what makes you so angry, I think you are getting defensive because you cant accept that your arguments are invalid.
I havent defended billionaires in any way and I hate them just as much as anyone, I dont see how understanding the ecomony and financial motivations would be equal to defending billionaires.
As you seem so fixated on this thought experiment, lets do it. Youre suggesting a company cuts the upper managements salaries by 99.8%, thats both scenarios 2 and 3. What will happen is every single one of those people will notice they can make 500 times their salary in any other company and leave. The company will be left without management and go bankrupt within a few months.
Shareholders want to maximize growth. If there was a way to simply cut management salaries to increase profit, they would have done it ages ago.
I know you think you found the easy solution, but reality is not easy. Companies dont have ethics or a conscience. They maximize profits based on numbers. For them to change anything there needs to be an incentive, either financial gain or laws restricting them.
He disowned his granddaughter for having the temerity to appear in a Johnson&Johnson kid’s documentary about how the rich talk and act behind closed doors.
While he certainly comes across as one of the more virtuous billionaires, his company Berkshire Hathaway, has massive investments in some of the worst and most damaging industries in the world, in terms of labor exploitation and ongoing contributions to the climate disaster. For example, his company owns 6.6% of Chevron and 27.2% of Occidental Petroleum, two massive exploiters of fossil fuels. That’s no good in my book.
Gabe Newell. Costco guy. Im sure theres europeans as well.
Oh theres communist billionaires too, im sure stalin and lenin and chinese ones were wery respectful of the working class, never had a genocide where up to 20% of the population (that is one in every five. Every fifth post in this thread, gone) were killed for not being the right nationality. And they never exploited entire nations forcefully.
But its okay, fuck everyone in a certain group, dehumanize them and talk about violence against them because a few do bad things.
Surely the solution is not to use it to fuel political anti campaign to swing the pendulum hard in the other way by limiting power rich can have in the us via providing the myriad of evidence we already have.
No instead sit on internet and make literal hitler speeches where you replace the word “jews” with “rich” and wonder why everyone thinks far left and right are the same Nazis
Nope. That amount of wealth is only generated via exploitation. Exploiting workers or exploiting customers, or cutting corners and skirting regulations, failing to internalize externalities. Mostly all of the above
I love how swifties always say, “WhAt AbOuT tAyLoR?!”
And I say this as someone who loves her music.
She’s still a bad billionaire.
EVEN IF she paid everyone who works for her or her label above market rate, even if she charged her concert tickets below market value, even if she “goes green” with every CD, every piece of merchandise, the fact that she has more money than most people makes her a bad billionaire.
She could easily give half of her wealth away and still be okay.
Some people think all profit is “stolen” labor value, and thus all wage labor is exploitation. I don’t think that’s true, but it is true that all for-profit firms have an incentive to pay their workers as little as possible, while getting as much productivity from them as possible, because that will maximize profits.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to cut other costs as much as possible, to maximize profits. This is why we see things like shrinkflation, planned obsolescence, or products just getting gradually crappier over time.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to externalize certain costs, like pollution, environmental destruction, or resource depletion, to, once again, maximize profits.
Where do you think that wealth comes from? They don’t produce it. The workers create the value, which is stolen from them for the owners and shareholders.
To be fair to Taylor she is producing a show, but the wealth should be fairly distributed with the crew that make those performances possible
Where do you think that wealth comes from? They don’t produce it. The workers create the value
This is such a deeply unserious argument when used in this case. “I can’t wait to see the front of house guy!” say all the wine moms and 14-year-old girls waiting in line outside the stadium. “And the road manager too!”
Unless her financials are public, it’ll be hard to do but the general principle is that everyone’s labour is worth the same.
She’s able to get more money through manipulation, whether intending to or not, through her fans buying multiples of her merchandise, to playing her songs on Spotify non stop to boost her profits etc.
Applying this principle, she’s gaining profit from the work of her fans who aren’t getting any compensation for their labour, resulting in millions of dollars.
So the defining factor is her work, not her staff. Her staff doing the same work at another place wouldn’t generate the same profit. And if you think listening to songs on Spotify is work…
Yup. Show me a billionaire who has paid their workers fairly from day one, followed every single law and regulation by the book, never spent a single dollar on lobbying Congress or contributing to political campaigns for quid pro quos, and never used underpaid contractors or foreign slave labor. You can’t, because there’s no such thing as a good billionaire.
The guy who founded Costco and was its CEO up until a few years ago is this, if not very close. A business lauded for both how it treated its workforce, and its customers. Basically no turnover unless someone retires.
Yes, even that one
And even then, if they managed to amass that kind of wealth, it had to come from somewhere, i.e. consumers paying enough for their product that it made them a billionaire, meaning all these people could have paid less and that billionaire could be a millionaire or just middle class and more people would be richer.
That is kind of true. But on the assumption that the corporation (in this case Costco) is doing more good than bad, like generating fair jobs, it would benefit most to see that business grow. If you dont generate profit because you distribute everything to your employees or customers, you will never be able to grow. So Costco will stay with 10 employees forever and only those businesses that exploit workers and customers can grow.
You could argue that there is really no need for businesses to grow as big ss many are today and I would completely agree, but that has to be regulated by law.
Non profits are a thing and they are able to grow, hell, you would expect them to grow more because less money goes to the pockets of a CEO and more goes to growing the company.
It can also make profit without billions going to the pockets of a single person, if that money was just redistributes to all employees the business would probably grow even faster because more qualified people would want to work there and would be happier working there.
Three scenarios:
The company makes 100B in revenue, pays its employees a fair wage, distributes 5B to the C-suites and makes 50B in total profit
The company makes 100B in revenues, pays its employees a fair wage, distributes 10M to the C-suites, distributes 4.99B in bonus to all employees and makes 50B in total profit
The company reduces its prices, makes 95.01B in revenues, pays its employees a fair wage, gives 10M to the c-suites, makes 50B in total profit
What’s the difference?
Hint: there’s no difference except the number of people being treated better
NPOs have CEOs as well and many earn salaries in the millions. NPOs are the exact right example, though, but not for the reason you are talking about. Non-profit does not inherently mean lower-ranking employees get a bigger share.
The big difference is that NPOs dont have shareholders or owners, which is how billionaires become billionaires, by owning companies worth billions.
But you should know that most NPOs rely almost entirely on government grants and donations. They couldnt even survive a single year on their own revenues.
If you want to establish the NPO concept in the free market, you would need to ban private ownership of ocmpanies. It could work but there is no way it will ever be implemented.
I think you are ignoring his main question though. Are those not legitimately three different options companies have? Do they not have wildly different outcomes on the workers?
No, companies do not actually have the option to simply cut the upper managements salary by 99.8%. And even if they could, it would simply end in all management leaving the company the next day, the company going bankrupt and all of the empolyees losing their jobs.
Im not trying to defend management salaries in the millions. It is damn unnecessary and should be taxed appropriately. But simply denying that thats how the world works right now is bs.
Funny how you ignored everything but the non profit bit. The reason they rely on donations and grants is because they’re mostly charities, there’s no reason a private company couldn’t reinvest 100% of its profits and try to adjust its prices to be closer to breaking even. Hell, life insurance for road users works exactly this way around here, prices are adjusted based on how much they need to pay for claims and we’re the place that pays the least for that type of insurance in North America, everything is paid for by car owners and it will covers anyone involved in an accident with a car, may they be in the car or riding a bike or walking on the sidewalk, it’s still cheaper than anywhere else for those who pay for it.
Tell me, from the companies’ perspective what the difference is between the three example I gave? You’re the one who said it’s not realistic to lower prices.
I think you are not familiar with how economy works. No offense, really, Im not an expert either but I dont really have the patience to go over everything in detail. Reinvesting profits is what ALL companies do. What youre suggesting was the opposite, you said profits should be distributed to employees or customers.
The difference between your examples is that 1 is a different company than 2 and 3. They are not different scenarios for the same company.
There are reasons why CEOs earn a lot and you cant change that by telling companies “but why not just give the money to your other employees, it would be better for them”. Thats not how economy works. Im not saying the way things are is good at all, but youre not offering an alternative. What youre suggesting would require that owners and shareholders would give a shit about the wellbeing of their employees and customers.
What a nice non answer that also ignores dividends and wealth accumulation and the fact that profits = revenues - spendings including wages :)
“ThEy’Re NoT tHe SaMe CoMpAnY!”
It’s what we call a thought experiment, the end result is the same, the difference is who gets to keep more money.
I’m done with people like you defending billionaires and being unable to think about alternatives, have a good life.
I dont know what makes you so angry, I think you are getting defensive because you cant accept that your arguments are invalid.
I havent defended billionaires in any way and I hate them just as much as anyone, I dont see how understanding the ecomony and financial motivations would be equal to defending billionaires.
As you seem so fixated on this thought experiment, lets do it. Youre suggesting a company cuts the upper managements salaries by 99.8%, thats both scenarios 2 and 3. What will happen is every single one of those people will notice they can make 500 times their salary in any other company and leave. The company will be left without management and go bankrupt within a few months. Shareholders want to maximize growth. If there was a way to simply cut management salaries to increase profit, they would have done it ages ago.
I know you think you found the easy solution, but reality is not easy. Companies dont have ethics or a conscience. They maximize profits based on numbers. For them to change anything there needs to be an incentive, either financial gain or laws restricting them.
I don’t have a problem with open lobbying per se. If it’s on behalf of all of the workers and customers as well and not just their own interests.
But can anyone identify such a billionaire?
And by definition that rules out any that step on their workers like bugs…
What about Warren Buffet? Out of genuine interest.
He disowned his granddaughter for having the temerity to appear in a Johnson&Johnson kid’s documentary about how the rich talk and act behind closed doors.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HmlX3fLQrEc
While he certainly comes across as one of the more virtuous billionaires, his company Berkshire Hathaway, has massive investments in some of the worst and most damaging industries in the world, in terms of labor exploitation and ongoing contributions to the climate disaster. For example, his company owns 6.6% of Chevron and 27.2% of Occidental Petroleum, two massive exploiters of fossil fuels. That’s no good in my book.
Gabe Newell. Costco guy. Im sure theres europeans as well.
Oh theres communist billionaires too, im sure stalin and lenin and chinese ones were wery respectful of the working class, never had a genocide where up to 20% of the population (that is one in every five. Every fifth post in this thread, gone) were killed for not being the right nationality. And they never exploited entire nations forcefully.
But its okay, fuck everyone in a certain group, dehumanize them and talk about violence against them because a few do bad things. Surely the solution is not to use it to fuel political anti campaign to swing the pendulum hard in the other way by limiting power rich can have in the us via providing the myriad of evidence we already have.
No instead sit on internet and make literal hitler speeches where you replace the word “jews” with “rich” and wonder why everyone thinks far left and right are the same Nazis
Taylor Swift?
Nope. That amount of wealth is only generated via exploitation. Exploiting workers or exploiting customers, or cutting corners and skirting regulations, failing to internalize externalities. Mostly all of the above
I assume you have examples?
I love how swifties always say, “WhAt AbOuT tAyLoR?!”
And I say this as someone who loves her music.
She’s still a bad billionaire.
EVEN IF she paid everyone who works for her or her label above market rate, even if she charged her concert tickets below market value, even if she “goes green” with every CD, every piece of merchandise, the fact that she has more money than most people makes her a bad billionaire.
She could easily give half of her wealth away and still be okay.
She’s a bad billionaire.
Some people think all profit is “stolen” labor value, and thus all wage labor is exploitation. I don’t think that’s true, but it is true that all for-profit firms have an incentive to pay their workers as little as possible, while getting as much productivity from them as possible, because that will maximize profits.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to cut other costs as much as possible, to maximize profits. This is why we see things like shrinkflation, planned obsolescence, or products just getting gradually crappier over time.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to externalize certain costs, like pollution, environmental destruction, or resource depletion, to, once again, maximize profits.
Where do you think that wealth comes from? They don’t produce it. The workers create the value, which is stolen from them for the owners and shareholders.
To be fair to Taylor she is producing a show, but the wealth should be fairly distributed with the crew that make those performances possible
This is such a deeply unserious argument when used in this case. “I can’t wait to see the front of house guy!” say all the wine moms and 14-year-old girls waiting in line outside the stadium. “And the road manager too!”
Fuck it you’re right. She can lug her own shit around and set the stage and work the sound system. That’s why she earns billions!
Unless her financials are public, it’ll be hard to do but the general principle is that everyone’s labour is worth the same.
She’s able to get more money through manipulation, whether intending to or not, through her fans buying multiples of her merchandise, to playing her songs on Spotify non stop to boost her profits etc.
Applying this principle, she’s gaining profit from the work of her fans who aren’t getting any compensation for their labour, resulting in millions of dollars.
So the defining factor is her work, not her staff. Her staff doing the same work at another place wouldn’t generate the same profit. And if you think listening to songs on Spotify is work…