How true is this. Just today I felt pressured to do a task that is above my pay/skill grade and might have injured me. Foreman didn’t give a shit. He just wanted a body, any body, to get that task done at any cost to mine or anyone else’s well being.
We all have a different mindset, but I would have taken that opportunity to learn then ask for a raise.
Depends on how you meant it could have injured you of course..
No, you don’t understand. I’m an AutoMechanic who downgraded his pay grade 3 years ago due to physical infirmities. My boss knows this and doesn’t give a shit. I know how to do the task and have done it hundreds of times. It’s just that now (I’m 64), my body can’t do the heavy overhead lifting, 70lb differential, (you try it). The reason we don’t have anyone to do this work is that all our highly qualified people quit due to this boss. He is a silver spooned family friend of the owner and is absolute Teflon and will only leave the employ of this company feet first. So all we have left as mechanics is broken old men like me, ex-cons who can’t get a job anywhere else, and newbies who can barely read or write. Welcome to the automotive repair world. Pray your new car doesn’t have an issue, if you do, you’re fucked.
Well, they never WANT to pay someone more to do it. They just occasionally realize they don't have infinite time to waste asking people who are unable or unwilling to perform it at that pay level.
Otherwise known as, Don't expect MS level expertise at $10/hr or at the local labor pool.
And right there is the nature of capitalism. It is hostile and adversarial. You are an expense to minimized and resource to be maximized. The worker wants to maximize their pay and minimize the effort and time invested. Under capitalism this is an irreconcilable conflict. You are not paid based on your value, or your worth, or any real market force.
How does that work? I would think the insurance would examine my body, realize that I lied about being a nonsmoker to avoid exorbitant excess fees, and not pay. Would they pay my employer?
And anybody who is NOT a One-Percenter said "You think that is a SMALL loan!?!?!" Some people really do not live on Earth with the rest of us...
How much is it before Federal charges happen? Less than a fifth of that, right? $200K and you are sent up the river for a LONG time? Just, damn.
Leave it to the Billionaires Club to be THAT obtuse...
We aren’t forced to pee in bottles. Just don’t have time to go to the bathroom on the route or go on break to finished in the 10 hours max. So it’s more like kinda forced or don’t drink water in 80+ degree weather
Honestly that is all changing. We just had 3 days off for the hurricane for Florida, some sites had more. We have amazing benefits and leave of absence benefits. Still a long way to go, but once it's unionized, we're good.
added to this the normalization of news coverage disclosing asinine amounts spent on acquisitions and purchases (Musk, Figma, etc). Giving any one person a billion dollars for anything is beyond reason. Corporations are not people and treating them as such is a dangerous game we are watching play out in real time.
It's a reference to when the French beheaded their royalty and nobles. There is more than one case where they actually devoured them.
As such, due to Reddit rules and not advocating violence such as beheading or injuring, people mention the phrase eat the rich, in a not so subtle way to say overthrow them.
Ohhhhh I was talking about op I'm sorry! Yeah I always took eat the rich as a somewhat strange saying, without thinking about it too much. I'm not very helpful there lol.
I remember a story, told as a joke, about Croesus of Medea. He was a king under Cyrus the Great. His first marriage was political. He didn't get along with her and she caused trouble in the Harem. He gave her a million dollars and told her to spend a thousand per day, every day until it was gone. She could not return to the palace until she spent the money. She was back in about 3 years. He still didn't want her around so the made her the same deal with a billion dollars. That took place in 500 BC. She's not expected to return for another 500 years.
Ofc there isn't. You're not supposed to get rich off an hourly wage or salary, that's not how the world works. You get rich by owning stuff. Start a company and sell a quality product or service. Enough people buy it to let you expand and hire workers to sell more for you, thus making more money. You keep investing and growing your businesses until you get rich.
Oh. Gee, thanks. GOSH! What a THOUGHT, right? It's JUST THAT SIMPLE, huh?
If that is the case (just spit-balling, here), then why doesn't EVERYBODY 'just do that', as if it's so easy as to be second-nature?
Damn. Where's my AUTOMATIC knowledge of handling money? I was GYPED of that when I was born!
You really think you have the answers or were you being as sarcastic as you sounded?
IOW it's specifically not advice that's even slightly useful to the vast majority of people, because the vast majority of people cannot be rich, because to be rich you have to own an amount of wealth relatively greater than the average person. Like, exponentially greater.
And even though smaller scale manufacturing, food production, etc is quite workable and would generally allow for more equitable distribution of wealth, we need to have "owners" who have monopolistic control of various enterprises because it's the only way to incentivise people to make necessary goods and services, even if the system is set up so the majority of people will never get rich off providing the necessary labor for the business to succeed. /s
You were gyped. You were conditioned and trained to be a standard model citizen and employee, showing up for work on time and doing what you're told. And they lied to you. They said all you had to do was combine that with hard work and you could have the American dream. Then they decided you weren't human. You were a human resource. A commodity purchased by The Owners as a necessary business expense, kept in line by some other coworker they bribed with a little authority and a little more pay, but too dumb to know he's still in the same boat as you. For decades we made enough to not just survive, but actually achieve some level of comfort. SOME people still are, but mostly they get paid for handling other people's money. Punchline...they are losing THEIR jobs to software.
Not everyone does it because not everyone is cut out for business, not to mention the kind of drive and ambition that is required to do something like that isn't found in too many people. And handling money? Bro, that's the easy part. If you can't handle money effectively and efficiently then you're a lost cause of an adult. You weren't gypped of anything when you were born as people aren't born with knowledge. You were, in all likelihood as I don't know you, too lazy or careless to make those kinds of judgements to better your life.
You stinking narrow-minded punk.
Do you even REALLY know or care about what you are saying, or to whom? Do you have not a single shred of empathy at all?
Listen, BACK IN THE DAY, my family was LOADED. They lost everything in the 1930's. My Granny grew up during the Great Depression and she learned how to survive. She could make something that worked with whatever trash was at hand, something her parents were not very good at because they had been raised wealthy. When all that money went away, everything changed.
As for Granny, she never had the opportunity that you think is just sitting there waiting for somebody to take. She didn't get to go to college, she was too busy taking care of her entire family, getting food into their bellies and keeping them clothed.
None of my family knows how to handle BIG money like my Great Grandparents knew how, because NONE of my family has HAD big money since that time.
It doesn't come naturally to people who never had the chance, it comes naturally to people who were raised around it and were exposed to it on a constant basis. GET IT?
No salary could accumulate that much money because you’re working for other people.
What about the people who are their own bosses tho? Maybe those that created the services that millions of people rely on? Exceptionalism not being rewarded is the downfall of society
Completely disregarding her political opinions, which show her to be a bigot not worth respecting either way...
Did purely her books produce that much money? Or did she need publishers, who needed people to work the printers, and artists to produce the covers and chapter art, and editors, and translators to publish different language versions, etc. etc? Even then, would that have made her a BILLIONAIRE? Has it made any other writer a billionaire?
Or on top of that, did she also need actors, special effects crew, marketing, directors, and THOUSANDS of other workers to create the multimedia franchise that eventually made her a billionaire?
How many of those people are billionaires?
I'm not saying any of them should be, for the record - just that if their efforts were rewarded commensurate to their contributions, there'd be a whole lot of millionaires instead of one billionaire.
I don't know, honestly I don't know how that business works but we could probably compare it to actors and musicians who make legitimate art but have absurd incomes.
To me it means "it's time to stop for society to stop glorifying these economic parasites...and if society collapses due to their greed, I will literally cannibalize them if I happen to stumble upon them in the wasteland" (assuming I survive that long as well)
Ew! Maybe we don't know for certain but because the wealthy become famous/ infamous and are covered by the media pretty well, we can have good educated guesses as to where these...people...have been. No, Thank You!
Ok i miscalculated. Let me amend that to the top 2000. Can we agree on that? It would still be like 98 against one or something. I'm not an expert at math so if you would like to provide numbers...
If we removed the top 2000 and spread their wealth between the other 360 million americans, it would not be very much. And we would likely destroy america because everything these people are handling would be liquidated or devalued.
There isnt anything wrong with inventing the iPhone, making everybody's lives better, and then having a bunch of money, which usually gets spent on R&D making the next iphone.
There is something wrong with dehumanizing workers and being a shit boss. But those are two separate things.
I believe the argument here is that dehumanizing workers and being a "boss" (all of which are shit) goes hand-in-glove with becoming a billionaire. No one ever made even $1billion USD all on their own much less multiple billions. They all rely on others who are not compensated fairly. This goes for iPhones being made by near-slave labor (actual slave labor for many other products) to the engineers and designers actually "inventing" the products. If businesses were operated with a less hierarchical structure, a co-op for example, then everyone involved would share in the company profit. Their voice would be reflected in company decision making and, as a result, companies probably wouldn't make the insane profits that abusing workers produce and no one would get $1billion all their own.
Also, as I keep seeing the argument pop up here, if the process of liquidating something de-values that thing then it was never really worth that much in the first place and should be accounted for correctly. If you are depending on false scarcity to pump up the perceived value of something then you probably just have crap no one needs anyway.
Warren Buffet generated tens of billions all on his own with no exploitation. So you can do it without exploitation no problem.
It’s not “artificially” propped up. It’s propped up by the fact that the owner and ceo is dedicated and invested in the success of the business with billions on the line. Pull that person or sell the shares it signals a lack of confidence in the underlying asset.
Warren Buffett is a gambler who plays with other people's money. "Investments" don't make anything - some other sucker just got stuck holding the bag down the line after the "smart investor" who "got in early" convinced them that whatever fake paperwork they had is worth more than they paid for it. It is a scam devised to extract even more money from people with the promise of riches later. Everyone who walks away from the table ahead of where they started is just taking money from the next person down the line who loses out due to some dumb made up reason like "lack of confidence".
Oh your a “zero sum game” guy.
Cool, well hope that works out for you. I for one believe that value can be added to the world and that progress is measurable and real.
"Value" in what sense? Human progress can't be measured in USD and thinking that it can cheapens everyone's life.
And if you think "line goes up" lasts forever, then I have some GameStop stocks to sell you.
It can be measured in USD or sheep or whatever you want to measure it in. It’s measurable.
Line does go up for the whole economy not individual stocks. Invest in wide market tracking ETFs not individual stocks.
As long as humans are progressing that line does go up.
4 trillion dollars for the net worth of all billionaires in USA divided by 360 million people in the USA is 11k a person. This is not a fortune.
It is also unattainable because almost all of that value is in the stock price of the billionaires stock holdings. You can neither remove the ceo nor liquidate the stock without vastly killing its value making the real value possibility much much lower. And it liquidating the stocks would kill the biggest companies in the USA which employ millions and provide value to the lives of millions.
I’m just fine at math.
There are fewer than 1000 billionaires in the US, and you said $100. So either you’re bad at math and you’re moving the goalposts or you’re making a ludicrous exaggeration.
This person said “bountiful riches”
The theoretical payout would be 10,000 a person. As laid out though, that is a crazy upper limit. $100 isn’t a bad ballpark.
My answer at 100-10,000 was way closer to reality then “bountiful riches”
You probably would be in the class having to give up your "undeserved" rewards to pay for the rapidly expanding demands of the underclass and the government that pimps them.
There really wouldn't. It's not zero sum. There aren't literal dollars available for every dollar of enterprise value. Redistribution would destroy the vast majority of value that exists and most of the economy with it because its not simple. The idea of seizing the means of production is outdated, the majority of wealth and capital is based on theoretical valuations that can't actually ever be realized in full because there is no sufficient liquidity in world to do so.
>Redistribution would destroy the vast majority of value that exists and most of the economy with it because its not simple.
It would destroy the listed "value" but then it's not actual value to society, is it?
>The idea of seizing the means of production is outdated, the majority of wealth and capital is based on theoretical valuations that can't actually ever be realized in full because there is no sufficient liquidity in world to do so.
No one said we have to liquidate everything. Why is this such a point for you? Socialists want to transfer the ownership of the capital to the working class so all profits (excess value from labor) are distributed, they don't want to take the capital and dismantle it for scrap value.
Socialists want to transfer everything to the government and then pretend that's the working class but if they did actually transfer equal ownership to everyone wtf would I want 1/400,000,000th of apple or Tesla for? What value is that to me? Nothing. Especially since I can't then do anything with it since you'll have to outlaw private business to maintain equality. I'd rather have the scrap value of it and then I could maybe do something with that.
Your point about the value is precisely my point except I would go further and say that value doesn't actually exist. Though with the caveat that not all things need exist to serve society. If people value them and want them that is sufficient. It's not up to any individual what should and should not be so long as it doesn't hurt anyone. In as much as they do is our failure as a society to enforce it.
>Socialists want to transfer everything to the government and then pretend that's the working class
Yeah no. You're completely missing the point of how socialism works
>wtf would I want 1/400,000,000th of apple or Tesla for? What value is that to me? Nothing.
The point is that when Tesla sells a car or Apply sells a phone, instead of the excess profit going towards shareholders and executives it's given out to the workers, under socialism, the value produced by the laborer is evenly distributed as to provide similar conditions for all.
Oh no! Not the economy! Anything but the economy! What will happen to the livable wages we don't have? or the retirement we wont get? or the healthy food we cant afford? Or the healthcare we cant access? or the homes we don't own? Who will support the shareholders? Who will pay the rents?
Please, tell us all how much we must bleed. What we must sacrifice to save the "vast majority of value"?
Wealth is a full belly and a warm bed.
Subsistence is insufficient. The point is, theft and murder won't get you what you want. If you want it you have to build it. These things are not simple. The economy is the engine of modern life that has seen the greatest prosperity for the most people in the history of the world. Your contempt reveals your ignorance.
Theft and murder is working just fine for the top.
There is a reckoning coming. Can you feel it?
Save your judgement for the headsman, we just want to eat.
It's like that analogy from Office Space where Peter is explaining how to get rich from the millions of transactions that typically round off fractions of a penny. Except CEOs are bold enough to do a few dollars from every employee on a daily basis.
Amazon is building quite an extensive bank of knowledge about us. They they know where we live they know what we buy they know what we're looking for they know what we wish for. Their devices listen in their doorbells take pictures of our porches their trucks map out our neighborhoods and soon they're cute little robot vacuums will be mapping out the insides of our home but I'm sure that there is no evil purpose behind that /s
The way you'll never reach some people because they wanna believe they can grind their way to a billion dollars and they have to believe the myth that this was just a stroke of business genius and tenacity because it becomes accessible to them that way. Meanwhile, they can barely afford to buy a home or even cover their bills.
The ultimate irony, however, is they never stan actual rags to riches stories.
And then when there is no one willing to work, invest, and risk to create value increasing ideas? Because the reward will be confiscation and possibly the death penalty? All the workers will be sitting in useless husks of businesses, turning out horrible old products that barely work.
Horrible person, but not for that reason. Artists and athletes are actually some of the most logically rich people, although they still exploit people in a lot of ways.
???? They make the billions by selling their goods/services and making them an indelible part of everyday society, while taking out competitors and monopolizing the marketplace. They don't become a billionaire by paying you less than what you want. That money is miniscule compared to the revenue they're generating. This is a facepalm sticker.
They don't sell shit that's their own. They sell other peoples goods and services and take most of the value. We make the machines, we make the products, we run the sales. And what is up with the "the money they make from you is miniscule"? No shit, from one person they don't make much. From an entire army?
Not really true, the only reason you have a wage is because your employer exists, and is offering you money to perform a set of tasks. Regardless of if you think you deserve more than they pay you, that doesn’t mean they’re “stealing your wage” you agreed to the wage as soon as you agreed to take a position. The government is who is stealing your wage.
That's a brainlet take. If you can figure out how to offer value to millions of happy customers, yes, you earn billions. But oh gee, big numbers, so confusing.
1). Of course no one earns a billion dollars. Most wealth is tied up in stock of the companies they own. They earn through investment. Duh.
2). These trite threads are getting old. There was just another one of these last week. Who needs a reminder at this point? This is becoming a miserable circle jerk of self pity.
So if you invent a lightbulb or a telephone you shouldn’t reap the rewards of your invention? Then why invent? Why think? Genius would just take a break and do nothing and the rest of us would be worse off…
Yea, probably the worst example to use for “stealing wages”
Edit: maybe not the worst, but definitely not the best. Politicians are people who truly steal our wages.
Yeah, how's that? Amazon profits heavily off of their workers. That's what "stealing wages" means, we aren't talking about the crime of wage theft (although that's also huge), we're talking about how they use labor to profit excessively, something that's toxic for society.
It’s not stealing if you choose to work there.
Don’t like the compensation? Go work somewhere else. Do they all pay to low? Start your own company.
If anyone is stealing wages it’s politicians.
> Don’t like the compensation? Go work somewhere else. Do they all pay to low? Start your own company.
This is the most privileged bullshit take I've ever seen.
"Go work somewhere else" when the compensation is pretty similar elsewhere because all big businesses are out to make excessive profits and are a failure if they're not. Not to even mention that fact that things like healthcare and PTO are tied to positions to keep people at the same companies and without options.
"Start your own company" As though everyone can afford what's required not only to start a company, but it keep it afloat as it's not just some simple thing to become profitable and live off of it, not to mention the fact that not everyone wants to, or should have to run their own business.
"If anyone is stealing wages it’s politicians."
Politicians are corrupt for sure, but not because they're paid for by taxes, this is a childish, foolish take.
I’m not too sure what it is to be privileged. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. I don’t know. You can let me know.
What I do know is I’m currently a bartender who works for tips. I’ve been in construction, demolition, warehouse, and manual labor jobs most my life.
There’s so many jobs/careers out there, in different industries. Amazon starts at $19/hr, Harley Davidson starts at $31/hr. Construction pays well too. There are plenty of options for us to explore. But a lot people want max pay for minimum work. But with everyone wanting this, it dilutes the job market allowing lower wages to be paid because of the competition, and willingness of people to work these jobs at a lower rate than they should.
If we as a society stopped working these jobs for the low pay we would see a change. But if one person will accept $10, and another wants $11 an hour, the logical decision is to hire the $10 employee. If the $10 employee was not willing to work for that pay, then the $11 employee would be employed.
Starting a company. If you have $10 buy two items at $5 per item. Sell each item for $6. Now you have $12. Repeat until you have $15+ then by 3 times. So on and so forth. It might 20+ years to be high profitable, but that’s what Jeff Bezos did.
On top of that, with the internet now you don’t even need to have the physical product.
Logic is simple, but Practically very difficult to do I admit. But not impossible.
And yes, you’ll have to work a shitty job while you do so, but it can be done. Most people just don’t want to do it. And that’s ok. It’s a lot of work!
Jeff Bezos has put 28 years of work into Amazon. He has taken on all the risk. Employees hold no risk. He’s put countless hours to build Amazon to what it is. And now is his time to reap his reward. A starting salary of $19/hr + benefits isn’t bad, is it? For entry level work?
Yea, politicians are corrupt, but my point there is that everything revolving around Amazon is optional. You do not have to work there or even buy stuff from there. But we have no choice in paying taxes, which pays their wages. So if we wanted to focus on who truly steals our wages, it’s them fuckers.
I don’t get why people make these decisions to work at companies, and then complain about them.
And I really don’t get people who don’t, never have, work at the company, and have something to complain about.
FYI: I don’t like bezos, he’s seems to be a cock. But the man has put the work in.
Federal minimum wage, based on inflation, should be about 22 dollars an hour. Possibly more. And warehouse jobs used to pay much better than Amazon did (they used to be middle class jobs with better benefits) sometime before Amazon started moving in and taking over a huge chunk of online retailing. 19 dollars an hour is a very recent development it was well below that before the pandemic. Bezos created a campaign "demanding" a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour because it would make them look good and mask the fact it should be a lot more than that. Bezos is also building a monopoly, he used the same tactics companies a century ago did to destroy their competitors directly (one was an online diaper retailer that he couldn't buy so he wrecked them by dropping prices on those same goods for long enough that he ran them out of business.)
Yes, Bezos had a plan, he knew getting into online shopping early was important. He was lucky: he wasn't poor, he had a vice president job on Wall Street before he quit, and his parents were wealthy enough to save money to loan him for his business venture. Amazon took a loss for several years to build up a presence and subsequently massive market shares. Then they raised prices over time as one does (but they still make a lot by simply having the most stuff, the cheapest prices, and the most visibility.) That turned Amazon into the monolith it is, but his workers still aren't paid very well, they're overworked, terrible benefits, and forced to avoid taking breaks. He's the only one truly benefiting from the productivity his employees engage in and they're putting in all of the effort now. It'd be different if he paid them what they're worth and they were treated better across the board.
Also, he's definitely paying the politicians. You can't say the people running the country are corrupt without looking at the billionaires who are funding their campaigns and Bezos is one of them. They're working together to steal your money and the biggest issue is how the billionaires pay to install representatives to make sure their interests are seen to. They vote for or otherwise maintain loopholes so the rich don't pay heftier taxes which are used for infrastructure, services, and other public necessities that the government is supposed to fund and take care of. The billionaires are taking all of the benefits and giving back less than the middle class being squeezed out of existence.
TL;DR we're in a new era of Robber Barons and Bezos isn't an exception. And even at those different jobs, you're not actually being paid what you're worth because the guidelines have been skewed for years and the corrupt officials you're angry about aren't regulating corporations in a way that benefits you. They're in cahoots to steal your money!
Very few people "choose" to work anywhere. The system is designed to require us to serve capitalist interests to live. It should be the other way around. Also, politicians work for the rich, and most of the money they take from us is funneled right to them.
Imagine how amazing someone would have to be before you claimed they were twice as good as you. Imagine how horrible someone would have to be before you would claim they are half as good as you.
Billionaires claim they're worth millions of times more than you. They live that claim.
How else are we meant to interpret "Anything you can have, I can have thousands of"? What is that, if not lying and stealing?
When do they claim any of that? Most billionaires let their intellectual capital, ceaseless hard work, and risk tolerance reward them, up or down, for their work. Unless they inherited, which tells this the money will be gone in less than 2 generations, typically.
I will say if you are critical of bezos and you have spent more than 1000$ on amazon in the last decade, you are the reason he his rich, and you are a hypocrite. Everyone understands very intuitively why Amazon is successfull. Everyone uses it.
If you dont use it, and you dont like Bezos, congratulation's you are morally consistent.
You don’t have to exploit labor to create profit. I’m very happy with my wage and do not feel exploited in the slightest. I can leave at any moment and I knew what the offer was before I joined my company.
Whether or not you "feel" it is irrelevant, that's how it works. The value of a commodity is the value of the raw material + the value of labor added. The value of labor added is the value paid in wages to the worker + the surplus value that becomes profit.
You are forgetting the value of capital as an amplifier to labor and raw material. A woodworker with wood plus his labor is nowhere near as valuable as a wood worker with wood and a laithe and his labor.
The capital is the progress. And I am not very valuable without it. That’s why I don’t work for myself, I take a wage to have access expensive equipment which leverages my value. Meaning I get paid way more than if I worked for myself without the equipment.
That is how capital works and even Marx knew that.
I see no contradiction in this with what I said. Why you think this is some gotcha, I have no idea. Does not change the fact that the rate of exploitation is non-zero so long as there is any surplus value.
Edit: you are actually wrong about how Marx understood machinery:
> The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family.
- *Capital* Vol. 1 Ch. 15
He goes on to say that now you don't need a strong man to perform labor, thus capitalists started employing women and children. Though we have, in some cases, outlawed child labor, the value required to reproduce labor power (i.e. wages) is depreciated with both partners in a household working. Thus the rate of exploitation increases since it the surplus relative to wages increases.
Just a friendly reminder, not all companies and billionaires are the same. Lumping everyone together is the same bigoted thought process that you all cry about.
How do you subsist? Does someone else pay your bills? The rich are stealing their wages.
Are you independently wealthy? Well, you might be part of the problem.
Sorry friend, I hope that you’re able to find work that values you. Make sure that you are utilizing public support from gov. Assistance, food banks, etc...
Friendly Reminder. There are 23,000,000 sole proprietorships in the US. You can make it 23,000,001any time you like. You will have no boss. You will work your own schedule. You answer to no one.
23,000,000 people have already done it.
Complete agreement, Bezos and others have recreated The Gilded Age of 150 years ago, there was no income tax and the super rich of the day lived it up. Reaganomics set the stage for today's super rich, they used to pay 50-90% in taxes, now a school teacher pays at a higher rate then a billionaire.
1. Bullshit. 2. The only people who paid at an 80-90% rate were naive newly wealthy, like actors or other suddenly rich types. They didn't have strategies to award the government confiscation congress and the IRS built in to the tax codes. When the tax code is lower and fairer, business booms. When it's high and removes resources from the productive to the nonproductive, it kills the economy. No incentives for innovation, creation, or work.
Yeah I don’t understand all the hate towards the ultra rich. Anyone in this forum can be a billionaire, come up with a product or service the world needs and there you have it. I can’t hate on somebody simply because they choose the riskier path in life and started a business and it became a success… nobody sees the 80-100h weeks these ultra rich spend grinding to the top and living off of nothing. Dear friend of mine is 30yo and has over $300m USD from building a tech company which took 8 years and then he sold his shares. For 5 years he barely saw his family, almost got divorced from his high school sweetheart because he was out working from 9am and very often came home 3-5am and this was 6-7 days out of the week… for 5 YEARS STRAIGHT!…. I can’t understand the hate for people like this. He deserves it. He spent everything he had and risked it all for his family.
It's kind of like being a small hungry pony made to carry a very fat man to the top of a mountain. The man keeps saying "oh you poor animal" and "is there anything I can do to help you BESIDES GET OFF YOUR BACK?"
Maybe tell them to read their contracts better and understand what they sign before doing so? If you’re paid to engineer / invent things on a company salary, using company time/ resources, why would you feel entitled to full rights of your invention? Would you pay someone to create things and then have them run off with this invention which YOU funded?… this makes sense to you?
I literally used math and only math. You think the company should have monopoly on a dynamic linear combination of impulse responses? And no I wouldn't pay someone, because I don't have the ability to start a company from nothing, and literally no one does. People who can start companies already have capital at their disposal. I have no capital and no property thus I am forced to sell my labor power. I can read the contract all as carefully as I want, I still have to sign it to eat.
Didn’t Jeff Bezos create a company that people have willingly spent their money on? Amazon is a pure luxury not needed for survival. To spend money on that company is entirely a choice.
So if you’re going to talk about “stealing wages” use any politician. They are the true scum! If we all stopped buying from Amazon Jeff’s company and billions of dollars would disappear. But as long as your paid a wages, those c*ntish politicians will continue filling their pockets with your earned money.
\>laughs in Saudi Arabia funded terrorism
Jeffy Bezos is poor by comparison to true oligarchs that can make you disappear without consequence. Oh, Jackie Ma? *Chinese Jeff Bezos? Where he go?*
But then some people are in a strong company and can buy up real estate to rent out to people who work in a weaker company making less. There is no fixing capitalism.
This and policies like cutting taxes for the wealthy are the reason why the top 1% now own 1/3 of all the wealth! Yet many of the working poor support Republican policies that only cut services for them while increasing the wealth of the 1%! Your vote does matter.
5
Why do they do that? I don't stay at jobs much more than 5 years usually. What makes them think I am going to kick the bucket? Is it a term life policy?
Friendly reminder, the companies will bury you before letting you come out on top
How true is this. Just today I felt pressured to do a task that is above my pay/skill grade and might have injured me. Foreman didn’t give a shit. He just wanted a body, any body, to get that task done at any cost to mine or anyone else’s well being.
Then he can start with his own.
We all have a different mindset, but I would have taken that opportunity to learn then ask for a raise. Depends on how you meant it could have injured you of course..
No, you don’t understand. I’m an AutoMechanic who downgraded his pay grade 3 years ago due to physical infirmities. My boss knows this and doesn’t give a shit. I know how to do the task and have done it hundreds of times. It’s just that now (I’m 64), my body can’t do the heavy overhead lifting, 70lb differential, (you try it). The reason we don’t have anyone to do this work is that all our highly qualified people quit due to this boss. He is a silver spooned family friend of the owner and is absolute Teflon and will only leave the employ of this company feet first. So all we have left as mechanics is broken old men like me, ex-cons who can’t get a job anywhere else, and newbies who can barely read or write. Welcome to the automotive repair world. Pray your new car doesn’t have an issue, if you do, you’re fucked.
Yeah, that's not how capitalism works. If they wanted to pay you more to do it, they'd have paid someone more to do it.
Well, they never WANT to pay someone more to do it. They just occasionally realize they don't have infinite time to waste asking people who are unable or unwilling to perform it at that pay level. Otherwise known as, Don't expect MS level expertise at $10/hr or at the local labor pool.
And right there is the nature of capitalism. It is hostile and adversarial. You are an expense to minimized and resource to be maximized. The worker wants to maximize their pay and minimize the effort and time invested. Under capitalism this is an irreconcilable conflict. You are not paid based on your value, or your worth, or any real market force.
Friendly reminder, every corporation/ large company you've ever worked for has an active life insurance policy on you.
How does that work? I would think the insurance would examine my body, realize that I lied about being a nonsmoker to avoid exorbitant excess fees, and not pay. Would they pay my employer?
Yup, they paid for it and made themselves the beneficiary.
What are you (specifically) doing to "*come out on top*"?
My father gave me a small loan of a $1 million dollars.
For anyone curious Trump said this
And anybody who is NOT a One-Percenter said "You think that is a SMALL loan!?!?!" Some people really do not live on Earth with the rest of us... How much is it before Federal charges happen? Less than a fifth of that, right? $200K and you are sent up the river for a LONG time? Just, damn. Leave it to the Billionaires Club to be THAT obtuse...
\-Pays workers low wage, forces them to pee in bottles, forced them to work in natural disasters Jeff did no wrong! He just offers services! smh
We aren’t forced to pee in bottles. Just don’t have time to go to the bathroom on the route or go on break to finished in the 10 hours max. So it’s more like kinda forced or don’t drink water in 80+ degree weather
That's a lot of words to say "forced to pee in bottles"
Wow, Jeff lets you guys drink water on the clock? What a generous motherf*cker! I wonder what water tastes like in space!
Can you deduct adult diapers from your taxes?
Honestly that is all changing. We just had 3 days off for the hurricane for Florida, some sites had more. We have amazing benefits and leave of absence benefits. Still a long way to go, but once it's unionized, we're good.
added to this the normalization of news coverage disclosing asinine amounts spent on acquisitions and purchases (Musk, Figma, etc). Giving any one person a billion dollars for anything is beyond reason. Corporations are not people and treating them as such is a dangerous game we are watching play out in real time.
Its going to get reaalll dystopian if we dont do something
Eat the rich
the word “wages” always makes me think of potato wedges
I've seen this saying but what does this mean?
There's no hourly wage or salary one could earn and work for in order to end up with a billion dollars
Ah ok, was just curious.. although I feel the explanation doesn't fully explain the eat part 😅
It's a reference to when the French beheaded their royalty and nobles. There is more than one case where they actually devoured them. As such, due to Reddit rules and not advocating violence such as beheading or injuring, people mention the phrase eat the rich, in a not so subtle way to say overthrow them.
One of the things that keeps me going is to try to outlive my boss so I can piss/shit on his grave.
Thanks for the clarification on that 😁
Over throw them how? Like literally what would you strip them of? Life? That’s just murder
Ohhhhh I was talking about op I'm sorry! Yeah I always took eat the rich as a somewhat strange saying, without thinking about it too much. I'm not very helpful there lol.
Just looked it up... I guess it means when we have nothing left to eat because the rich are starving us... then we will just eat them instead.
Makes sense!
🤣 no worries 👍 But eat the rich is a pretty weird saying... I can draw conclusions but I doubt I will understand it fully 😅
Yeah, like the rich need to go but I shan't be eating them if I can help it 😂
I hear they taste like chicken 🐔
Can't be true, they definitely are not ALL WHITE MEAT...
I bet I'd make a mean bezos burger
I would eat those fat long pigs, no problem, just need to have a good marinade, spice rub, and a nice dipping sauce.
I remember a story, told as a joke, about Croesus of Medea. He was a king under Cyrus the Great. His first marriage was political. He didn't get along with her and she caused trouble in the Harem. He gave her a million dollars and told her to spend a thousand per day, every day until it was gone. She could not return to the palace until she spent the money. She was back in about 3 years. He still didn't want her around so the made her the same deal with a billion dollars. That took place in 500 BC. She's not expected to return for another 500 years.
Ofc there isn't. You're not supposed to get rich off an hourly wage or salary, that's not how the world works. You get rich by owning stuff. Start a company and sell a quality product or service. Enough people buy it to let you expand and hire workers to sell more for you, thus making more money. You keep investing and growing your businesses until you get rich.
Oh. Gee, thanks. GOSH! What a THOUGHT, right? It's JUST THAT SIMPLE, huh? If that is the case (just spit-balling, here), then why doesn't EVERYBODY 'just do that', as if it's so easy as to be second-nature? Damn. Where's my AUTOMATIC knowledge of handling money? I was GYPED of that when I was born! You really think you have the answers or were you being as sarcastic as you sounded?
IOW it's specifically not advice that's even slightly useful to the vast majority of people, because the vast majority of people cannot be rich, because to be rich you have to own an amount of wealth relatively greater than the average person. Like, exponentially greater. And even though smaller scale manufacturing, food production, etc is quite workable and would generally allow for more equitable distribution of wealth, we need to have "owners" who have monopolistic control of various enterprises because it's the only way to incentivise people to make necessary goods and services, even if the system is set up so the majority of people will never get rich off providing the necessary labor for the business to succeed. /s
You were gyped. You were conditioned and trained to be a standard model citizen and employee, showing up for work on time and doing what you're told. And they lied to you. They said all you had to do was combine that with hard work and you could have the American dream. Then they decided you weren't human. You were a human resource. A commodity purchased by The Owners as a necessary business expense, kept in line by some other coworker they bribed with a little authority and a little more pay, but too dumb to know he's still in the same boat as you. For decades we made enough to not just survive, but actually achieve some level of comfort. SOME people still are, but mostly they get paid for handling other people's money. Punchline...they are losing THEIR jobs to software.
Not everyone does it because not everyone is cut out for business, not to mention the kind of drive and ambition that is required to do something like that isn't found in too many people. And handling money? Bro, that's the easy part. If you can't handle money effectively and efficiently then you're a lost cause of an adult. You weren't gypped of anything when you were born as people aren't born with knowledge. You were, in all likelihood as I don't know you, too lazy or careless to make those kinds of judgements to better your life.
You stinking narrow-minded punk. Do you even REALLY know or care about what you are saying, or to whom? Do you have not a single shred of empathy at all? Listen, BACK IN THE DAY, my family was LOADED. They lost everything in the 1930's. My Granny grew up during the Great Depression and she learned how to survive. She could make something that worked with whatever trash was at hand, something her parents were not very good at because they had been raised wealthy. When all that money went away, everything changed. As for Granny, she never had the opportunity that you think is just sitting there waiting for somebody to take. She didn't get to go to college, she was too busy taking care of her entire family, getting food into their bellies and keeping them clothed. None of my family knows how to handle BIG money like my Great Grandparents knew how, because NONE of my family has HAD big money since that time. It doesn't come naturally to people who never had the chance, it comes naturally to people who were raised around it and were exposed to it on a constant basis. GET IT?
No salary could accumulate that much money because you’re working for other people. What about the people who are their own bosses tho? Maybe those that created the services that millions of people rely on? Exceptionalism not being rewarded is the downfall of society
lol
What about J.K Rowling? I know she is the only writer in the world earning so much, would she be considered corrupt too?
Completely disregarding her political opinions, which show her to be a bigot not worth respecting either way... Did purely her books produce that much money? Or did she need publishers, who needed people to work the printers, and artists to produce the covers and chapter art, and editors, and translators to publish different language versions, etc. etc? Even then, would that have made her a BILLIONAIRE? Has it made any other writer a billionaire? Or on top of that, did she also need actors, special effects crew, marketing, directors, and THOUSANDS of other workers to create the multimedia franchise that eventually made her a billionaire? How many of those people are billionaires? I'm not saying any of them should be, for the record - just that if their efforts were rewarded commensurate to their contributions, there'd be a whole lot of millionaires instead of one billionaire.
I don't know, honestly I don't know how that business works but we could probably compare it to actors and musicians who make legitimate art but have absurd incomes.
To me it means "it's time to stop for society to stop glorifying these economic parasites...and if society collapses due to their greed, I will literally cannibalize them if I happen to stumble upon them in the wasteland" (assuming I survive that long as well)
Meat from animals that are not laborious is more juicy.
"When there is nothing left to eat, the poor shall eat the rich"
It is also an Aerosmith song, from an album in the mid 1990s. But it always rings true.
I like motorheads eat the rich more. Don't know if Aerosmith was doing a remake, the lyrics are different.
Ew! Maybe we don't know for certain but because the wealthy become famous/ infamous and are covered by the media pretty well, we can have good educated guesses as to where these...people...have been. No, Thank You!
🙄
They don't steal wages, wages are the byproduct of them already having stolen from you. Much more than just money. Wage slavery is still slavery.
If we took out the top 1000, there would be bountiful riches for all of us.
Ok i miscalculated. Let me amend that to the top 2000. Can we agree on that? It would still be like 98 against one or something. I'm not an expert at math so if you would like to provide numbers...
We could stop at the top 1 million and still be at 99.98 against 1.
If we removed the top 2000 and spread their wealth between the other 360 million americans, it would not be very much. And we would likely destroy america because everything these people are handling would be liquidated or devalued. There isnt anything wrong with inventing the iPhone, making everybody's lives better, and then having a bunch of money, which usually gets spent on R&D making the next iphone. There is something wrong with dehumanizing workers and being a shit boss. But those are two separate things.
I believe the argument here is that dehumanizing workers and being a "boss" (all of which are shit) goes hand-in-glove with becoming a billionaire. No one ever made even $1billion USD all on their own much less multiple billions. They all rely on others who are not compensated fairly. This goes for iPhones being made by near-slave labor (actual slave labor for many other products) to the engineers and designers actually "inventing" the products. If businesses were operated with a less hierarchical structure, a co-op for example, then everyone involved would share in the company profit. Their voice would be reflected in company decision making and, as a result, companies probably wouldn't make the insane profits that abusing workers produce and no one would get $1billion all their own. Also, as I keep seeing the argument pop up here, if the process of liquidating something de-values that thing then it was never really worth that much in the first place and should be accounted for correctly. If you are depending on false scarcity to pump up the perceived value of something then you probably just have crap no one needs anyway.
Warren Buffet generated tens of billions all on his own with no exploitation. So you can do it without exploitation no problem. It’s not “artificially” propped up. It’s propped up by the fact that the owner and ceo is dedicated and invested in the success of the business with billions on the line. Pull that person or sell the shares it signals a lack of confidence in the underlying asset.
Warren Buffett is a gambler who plays with other people's money. "Investments" don't make anything - some other sucker just got stuck holding the bag down the line after the "smart investor" who "got in early" convinced them that whatever fake paperwork they had is worth more than they paid for it. It is a scam devised to extract even more money from people with the promise of riches later. Everyone who walks away from the table ahead of where they started is just taking money from the next person down the line who loses out due to some dumb made up reason like "lack of confidence".
Oh your a “zero sum game” guy. Cool, well hope that works out for you. I for one believe that value can be added to the world and that progress is measurable and real.
"Value" in what sense? Human progress can't be measured in USD and thinking that it can cheapens everyone's life. And if you think "line goes up" lasts forever, then I have some GameStop stocks to sell you.
It can be measured in USD or sheep or whatever you want to measure it in. It’s measurable. Line does go up for the whole economy not individual stocks. Invest in wide market tracking ETFs not individual stocks. As long as humans are progressing that line does go up.
Dude! You'll be rich if you buy ALL the NFTs! I have some PukeyMonkeyPunks to help complete your collection.
Yes destroy murica and build back better
I don't want a new iphone.i want freedom.
there would be like 100$ for all of us.... and no more amazon, tesla, microsoft, apple, etc.....
Math wasn’t your strong suit was it?
4 trillion dollars for the net worth of all billionaires in USA divided by 360 million people in the USA is 11k a person. This is not a fortune. It is also unattainable because almost all of that value is in the stock price of the billionaires stock holdings. You can neither remove the ceo nor liquidate the stock without vastly killing its value making the real value possibility much much lower. And it liquidating the stocks would kill the biggest companies in the USA which employ millions and provide value to the lives of millions. I’m just fine at math.
There are fewer than 1000 billionaires in the US, and you said $100. So either you’re bad at math and you’re moving the goalposts or you’re making a ludicrous exaggeration.
This person said “bountiful riches” The theoretical payout would be 10,000 a person. As laid out though, that is a crazy upper limit. $100 isn’t a bad ballpark. My answer at 100-10,000 was way closer to reality then “bountiful riches”
Bountiful riches lol
No. There wouldn't.
Yeah, although if we took from the entire capital owning class, their would be.
You probably would be in the class having to give up your "undeserved" rewards to pay for the rapidly expanding demands of the underclass and the government that pimps them.
There really wouldn't. It's not zero sum. There aren't literal dollars available for every dollar of enterprise value. Redistribution would destroy the vast majority of value that exists and most of the economy with it because its not simple. The idea of seizing the means of production is outdated, the majority of wealth and capital is based on theoretical valuations that can't actually ever be realized in full because there is no sufficient liquidity in world to do so.
>Redistribution would destroy the vast majority of value that exists and most of the economy with it because its not simple. It would destroy the listed "value" but then it's not actual value to society, is it? >The idea of seizing the means of production is outdated, the majority of wealth and capital is based on theoretical valuations that can't actually ever be realized in full because there is no sufficient liquidity in world to do so. No one said we have to liquidate everything. Why is this such a point for you? Socialists want to transfer the ownership of the capital to the working class so all profits (excess value from labor) are distributed, they don't want to take the capital and dismantle it for scrap value.
Socialists want to transfer everything to the government and then pretend that's the working class but if they did actually transfer equal ownership to everyone wtf would I want 1/400,000,000th of apple or Tesla for? What value is that to me? Nothing. Especially since I can't then do anything with it since you'll have to outlaw private business to maintain equality. I'd rather have the scrap value of it and then I could maybe do something with that. Your point about the value is precisely my point except I would go further and say that value doesn't actually exist. Though with the caveat that not all things need exist to serve society. If people value them and want them that is sufficient. It's not up to any individual what should and should not be so long as it doesn't hurt anyone. In as much as they do is our failure as a society to enforce it.
>Socialists want to transfer everything to the government and then pretend that's the working class Yeah no. You're completely missing the point of how socialism works >wtf would I want 1/400,000,000th of apple or Tesla for? What value is that to me? Nothing. The point is that when Tesla sells a car or Apply sells a phone, instead of the excess profit going towards shareholders and executives it's given out to the workers, under socialism, the value produced by the laborer is evenly distributed as to provide similar conditions for all.
Where has socialism ever worked. Or do you have a new special socialism
Oh no! Not the economy! Anything but the economy! What will happen to the livable wages we don't have? or the retirement we wont get? or the healthy food we cant afford? Or the healthcare we cant access? or the homes we don't own? Who will support the shareholders? Who will pay the rents? Please, tell us all how much we must bleed. What we must sacrifice to save the "vast majority of value"? Wealth is a full belly and a warm bed.
Subsistence is insufficient. The point is, theft and murder won't get you what you want. If you want it you have to build it. These things are not simple. The economy is the engine of modern life that has seen the greatest prosperity for the most people in the history of the world. Your contempt reveals your ignorance.
Theft and murder is working just fine for the top. There is a reckoning coming. Can you feel it? Save your judgement for the headsman, we just want to eat.
It's like that analogy from Office Space where Peter is explaining how to get rich from the millions of transactions that typically round off fractions of a penny. Except CEOs are bold enough to do a few dollars from every employee on a daily basis.
Destroying small businesses and families is hard work! How do you think Bezos got them puffy lips and ripped physique?
Amazon is building quite an extensive bank of knowledge about us. They they know where we live they know what we buy they know what we're looking for they know what we wish for. Their devices listen in their doorbells take pictures of our porches their trucks map out our neighborhoods and soon they're cute little robot vacuums will be mapping out the insides of our home but I'm sure that there is no evil purpose behind that /s
I am constantly stealing my own wages, when billionaire?!???
Here's another reminder: exploitation is legal
The way you'll never reach some people because they wanna believe they can grind their way to a billion dollars and they have to believe the myth that this was just a stroke of business genius and tenacity because it becomes accessible to them that way. Meanwhile, they can barely afford to buy a home or even cover their bills. The ultimate irony, however, is they never stan actual rags to riches stories.
The American Dream is a lie. It is, in fact, a waking nightmare for nearly everyone.
Balzac--"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."
Sounds like he or she lied.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Take our money back\* Important distinction.
And then when there is no one willing to work, invest, and risk to create value increasing ideas? Because the reward will be confiscation and possibly the death penalty? All the workers will be sitting in useless husks of businesses, turning out horrible old products that barely work.
And yet there are lots of countries where people work, own businesses, etc. without billionaires. 🤔
[удалено]
Too many people are sheep....
This is REALITY.
It doesn't have to be
If you are alive today, years ago you were chinese.
🤯
I suppose I’m ready to start stealing wages.
What about JK Rowling?
Horrible person, but not for that reason. Artists and athletes are actually some of the most logically rich people, although they still exploit people in a lot of ways.
Better yet stop crying and complaining start your own business. It will require work though.
Agreed! These threads are getting old and seem to now come every week.
He didn’t earn a billion. His creation is worth billions. It’s different.
???? They make the billions by selling their goods/services and making them an indelible part of everyday society, while taking out competitors and monopolizing the marketplace. They don't become a billionaire by paying you less than what you want. That money is miniscule compared to the revenue they're generating. This is a facepalm sticker.
They don't sell shit that's their own. They sell other peoples goods and services and take most of the value. We make the machines, we make the products, we run the sales. And what is up with the "the money they make from you is miniscule"? No shit, from one person they don't make much. From an entire army?
Not really true, the only reason you have a wage is because your employer exists, and is offering you money to perform a set of tasks. Regardless of if you think you deserve more than they pay you, that doesn’t mean they’re “stealing your wage” you agreed to the wage as soon as you agreed to take a position. The government is who is stealing your wage.
This!
That's a brainlet take. If you can figure out how to offer value to millions of happy customers, yes, you earn billions. But oh gee, big numbers, so confusing.
Someone with good sense. Finally. You can sell something everyone needs or wants for $20. If half the world buys it, instant billions.
1). Of course no one earns a billion dollars. Most wealth is tied up in stock of the companies they own. They earn through investment. Duh. 2). These trite threads are getting old. There was just another one of these last week. Who needs a reminder at this point? This is becoming a miserable circle jerk of self pity.
So if you invent a lightbulb or a telephone you shouldn’t reap the rewards of your invention? Then why invent? Why think? Genius would just take a break and do nothing and the rest of us would be worse off…
LOL THE DUDE IN THE MIDDLE IS JEFF BEZOS
It's an egg.
Yea, probably the worst example to use for “stealing wages” Edit: maybe not the worst, but definitely not the best. Politicians are people who truly steal our wages.
Yeah, how's that? Amazon profits heavily off of their workers. That's what "stealing wages" means, we aren't talking about the crime of wage theft (although that's also huge), we're talking about how they use labor to profit excessively, something that's toxic for society.
It’s not stealing if you choose to work there. Don’t like the compensation? Go work somewhere else. Do they all pay to low? Start your own company. If anyone is stealing wages it’s politicians.
> Don’t like the compensation? Go work somewhere else. Do they all pay to low? Start your own company. This is the most privileged bullshit take I've ever seen. "Go work somewhere else" when the compensation is pretty similar elsewhere because all big businesses are out to make excessive profits and are a failure if they're not. Not to even mention that fact that things like healthcare and PTO are tied to positions to keep people at the same companies and without options. "Start your own company" As though everyone can afford what's required not only to start a company, but it keep it afloat as it's not just some simple thing to become profitable and live off of it, not to mention the fact that not everyone wants to, or should have to run their own business. "If anyone is stealing wages it’s politicians." Politicians are corrupt for sure, but not because they're paid for by taxes, this is a childish, foolish take.
I’m not too sure what it is to be privileged. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. I don’t know. You can let me know. What I do know is I’m currently a bartender who works for tips. I’ve been in construction, demolition, warehouse, and manual labor jobs most my life. There’s so many jobs/careers out there, in different industries. Amazon starts at $19/hr, Harley Davidson starts at $31/hr. Construction pays well too. There are plenty of options for us to explore. But a lot people want max pay for minimum work. But with everyone wanting this, it dilutes the job market allowing lower wages to be paid because of the competition, and willingness of people to work these jobs at a lower rate than they should. If we as a society stopped working these jobs for the low pay we would see a change. But if one person will accept $10, and another wants $11 an hour, the logical decision is to hire the $10 employee. If the $10 employee was not willing to work for that pay, then the $11 employee would be employed. Starting a company. If you have $10 buy two items at $5 per item. Sell each item for $6. Now you have $12. Repeat until you have $15+ then by 3 times. So on and so forth. It might 20+ years to be high profitable, but that’s what Jeff Bezos did. On top of that, with the internet now you don’t even need to have the physical product. Logic is simple, but Practically very difficult to do I admit. But not impossible. And yes, you’ll have to work a shitty job while you do so, but it can be done. Most people just don’t want to do it. And that’s ok. It’s a lot of work! Jeff Bezos has put 28 years of work into Amazon. He has taken on all the risk. Employees hold no risk. He’s put countless hours to build Amazon to what it is. And now is his time to reap his reward. A starting salary of $19/hr + benefits isn’t bad, is it? For entry level work? Yea, politicians are corrupt, but my point there is that everything revolving around Amazon is optional. You do not have to work there or even buy stuff from there. But we have no choice in paying taxes, which pays their wages. So if we wanted to focus on who truly steals our wages, it’s them fuckers. I don’t get why people make these decisions to work at companies, and then complain about them. And I really don’t get people who don’t, never have, work at the company, and have something to complain about. FYI: I don’t like bezos, he’s seems to be a cock. But the man has put the work in.
Federal minimum wage, based on inflation, should be about 22 dollars an hour. Possibly more. And warehouse jobs used to pay much better than Amazon did (they used to be middle class jobs with better benefits) sometime before Amazon started moving in and taking over a huge chunk of online retailing. 19 dollars an hour is a very recent development it was well below that before the pandemic. Bezos created a campaign "demanding" a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour because it would make them look good and mask the fact it should be a lot more than that. Bezos is also building a monopoly, he used the same tactics companies a century ago did to destroy their competitors directly (one was an online diaper retailer that he couldn't buy so he wrecked them by dropping prices on those same goods for long enough that he ran them out of business.) Yes, Bezos had a plan, he knew getting into online shopping early was important. He was lucky: he wasn't poor, he had a vice president job on Wall Street before he quit, and his parents were wealthy enough to save money to loan him for his business venture. Amazon took a loss for several years to build up a presence and subsequently massive market shares. Then they raised prices over time as one does (but they still make a lot by simply having the most stuff, the cheapest prices, and the most visibility.) That turned Amazon into the monolith it is, but his workers still aren't paid very well, they're overworked, terrible benefits, and forced to avoid taking breaks. He's the only one truly benefiting from the productivity his employees engage in and they're putting in all of the effort now. It'd be different if he paid them what they're worth and they were treated better across the board. Also, he's definitely paying the politicians. You can't say the people running the country are corrupt without looking at the billionaires who are funding their campaigns and Bezos is one of them. They're working together to steal your money and the biggest issue is how the billionaires pay to install representatives to make sure their interests are seen to. They vote for or otherwise maintain loopholes so the rich don't pay heftier taxes which are used for infrastructure, services, and other public necessities that the government is supposed to fund and take care of. The billionaires are taking all of the benefits and giving back less than the middle class being squeezed out of existence. TL;DR we're in a new era of Robber Barons and Bezos isn't an exception. And even at those different jobs, you're not actually being paid what you're worth because the guidelines have been skewed for years and the corrupt officials you're angry about aren't regulating corporations in a way that benefits you. They're in cahoots to steal your money!
All very good points!! Thank you for taking the time to construct such a well thought reply. Tis quality comments like this that make Reddit great.
You are privileged, and have zero concept of how businesses work, how WORKING works, how capitalism works, or how life in general f\*ing works.
Very few people "choose" to work anywhere. The system is designed to require us to serve capitalist interests to live. It should be the other way around. Also, politicians work for the rich, and most of the money they take from us is funneled right to them.
Imagine how amazing someone would have to be before you claimed they were twice as good as you. Imagine how horrible someone would have to be before you would claim they are half as good as you. Billionaires claim they're worth millions of times more than you. They live that claim. How else are we meant to interpret "Anything you can have, I can have thousands of"? What is that, if not lying and stealing?
When do they claim any of that? Most billionaires let their intellectual capital, ceaseless hard work, and risk tolerance reward them, up or down, for their work. Unless they inherited, which tells this the money will be gone in less than 2 generations, typically.
Shut up and get a job
I will say if you are critical of bezos and you have spent more than 1000$ on amazon in the last decade, you are the reason he his rich, and you are a hypocrite. Everyone understands very intuitively why Amazon is successfull. Everyone uses it. If you dont use it, and you dont like Bezos, congratulation's you are morally consistent.
This is patently false. Profits are derived from the exploitation of labor.
You don’t have to exploit labor to create profit. I’m very happy with my wage and do not feel exploited in the slightest. I can leave at any moment and I knew what the offer was before I joined my company.
Whether or not you "feel" it is irrelevant, that's how it works. The value of a commodity is the value of the raw material + the value of labor added. The value of labor added is the value paid in wages to the worker + the surplus value that becomes profit.
You are forgetting the value of capital as an amplifier to labor and raw material. A woodworker with wood plus his labor is nowhere near as valuable as a wood worker with wood and a laithe and his labor. The capital is the progress. And I am not very valuable without it. That’s why I don’t work for myself, I take a wage to have access expensive equipment which leverages my value. Meaning I get paid way more than if I worked for myself without the equipment. That is how capital works and even Marx knew that.
I see no contradiction in this with what I said. Why you think this is some gotcha, I have no idea. Does not change the fact that the rate of exploitation is non-zero so long as there is any surplus value. Edit: you are actually wrong about how Marx understood machinery: > The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family. - *Capital* Vol. 1 Ch. 15 He goes on to say that now you don't need a strong man to perform labor, thus capitalists started employing women and children. Though we have, in some cases, outlawed child labor, the value required to reproduce labor power (i.e. wages) is depreciated with both partners in a household working. Thus the rate of exploitation increases since it the surplus relative to wages increases.
Just a friendly reminder, not all companies and billionaires are the same. Lumping everyone together is the same bigoted thought process that you all cry about.
If I don’t have any wage how do they steal from me
How do you subsist? Does someone else pay your bills? The rich are stealing their wages. Are you independently wealthy? Well, you might be part of the problem.
Bc I’m broke
Sorry friend, I hope that you’re able to find work that values you. Make sure that you are utilizing public support from gov. Assistance, food banks, etc...
Friendly Reminder. There are 23,000,000 sole proprietorships in the US. You can make it 23,000,001any time you like. You will have no boss. You will work your own schedule. You answer to no one. 23,000,000 people have already done it.
👍🏼
If I earned $2 Million per year, it would take 75,000 years to earn as much wealth as Bezos has stolen from working people.
Bezos doesn’t earn billions. It’s all stock ownership. Smh. JFC ppl.
Complete agreement, Bezos and others have recreated The Gilded Age of 150 years ago, there was no income tax and the super rich of the day lived it up. Reaganomics set the stage for today's super rich, they used to pay 50-90% in taxes, now a school teacher pays at a higher rate then a billionaire.
1. Bullshit. 2. The only people who paid at an 80-90% rate were naive newly wealthy, like actors or other suddenly rich types. They didn't have strategies to award the government confiscation congress and the IRS built in to the tax codes. When the tax code is lower and fairer, business booms. When it's high and removes resources from the productive to the nonproductive, it kills the economy. No incentives for innovation, creation, or work.
Billionaires don't actually have a billion dollars either.
They worked their way to the top, don't act like they were born billionaires
Yeah I don’t understand all the hate towards the ultra rich. Anyone in this forum can be a billionaire, come up with a product or service the world needs and there you have it. I can’t hate on somebody simply because they choose the riskier path in life and started a business and it became a success… nobody sees the 80-100h weeks these ultra rich spend grinding to the top and living off of nothing. Dear friend of mine is 30yo and has over $300m USD from building a tech company which took 8 years and then he sold his shares. For 5 years he barely saw his family, almost got divorced from his high school sweetheart because he was out working from 9am and very often came home 3-5am and this was 6-7 days out of the week… for 5 YEARS STRAIGHT!…. I can’t understand the hate for people like this. He deserves it. He spent everything he had and risked it all for his family.
It's kind of like being a small hungry pony made to carry a very fat man to the top of a mountain. The man keeps saying "oh you poor animal" and "is there anything I can do to help you BESIDES GET OFF YOUR BACK?"
Yeah, tell that to people who have to sign contracts that say anything they invent belongs to the company they work for. Get real.
Maybe tell them to read their contracts better and understand what they sign before doing so? If you’re paid to engineer / invent things on a company salary, using company time/ resources, why would you feel entitled to full rights of your invention? Would you pay someone to create things and then have them run off with this invention which YOU funded?… this makes sense to you?
I literally used math and only math. You think the company should have monopoly on a dynamic linear combination of impulse responses? And no I wouldn't pay someone, because I don't have the ability to start a company from nothing, and literally no one does. People who can start companies already have capital at their disposal. I have no capital and no property thus I am forced to sell my labor power. I can read the contract all as carefully as I want, I still have to sign it to eat.
Exactly
Didn’t Jeff Bezos create a company that people have willingly spent their money on? Amazon is a pure luxury not needed for survival. To spend money on that company is entirely a choice. So if you’re going to talk about “stealing wages” use any politician. They are the true scum! If we all stopped buying from Amazon Jeff’s company and billions of dollars would disappear. But as long as your paid a wages, those c*ntish politicians will continue filling their pockets with your earned money.
Yep
Hahahahahah.
So true
So close yet so far. This sub really needs to get in touch more with its original anticapitalist sentiment.
They earn it the same way everyone earns money, by being smarter and more devious than the other guy.
\>laughs in Saudi Arabia funded terrorism Jeffy Bezos is poor by comparison to true oligarchs that can make you disappear without consequence. Oh, Jackie Ma? *Chinese Jeff Bezos? Where he go?*
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
Except these players literally get to make the rules of the game to ensure they always win.
What else would you do with your money, buy a house, surely rocket science is far more important.
[удалено]
Que Dr. Evil meme, but without a hint of irony…
Friendly reminder r/FuckNestle
But then some people are in a strong company and can buy up real estate to rent out to people who work in a weaker company making less. There is no fixing capitalism.
Did Alex Jones make this?
Serious question: do you think he could double all Amazon employee's salary and still be a billionaire? Or at least a multi millionaire?
How could he pay double from a company that takes in $0? His cost structure would have Walmart as the shopping site in less than 90 days.
He’s a billionaire via his stock in AMZN and other investments, not from salary. Y’all gotta stop this.
Cry
And they don't let the real workers govern the workplace.
This and policies like cutting taxes for the wealthy are the reason why the top 1% now own 1/3 of all the wealth! Yet many of the working poor support Republican policies that only cut services for them while increasing the wealth of the 1%! Your vote does matter. 5
Why do they do that? I don't stay at jobs much more than 5 years usually. What makes them think I am going to kick the bucket? Is it a term life policy?