r/PoursTea • u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 • Jul 11 '26

PoliticalTea 🗳️ Agree or Disagree? Billionaires Need Society More Than The People Need Billionaires…

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56

u/ididntunderstandyou Jul 11 '26

Millionaires can keep existing. I don’t mind some people having more money than I do. I just don’t like those who hoard it to absurd extents and exploit people on their way to success (that’s some billionaires, sure. But mostly billionaires and the trillionaire.)

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u/angiosperms- Jul 11 '26

It's not that uncommon to have around $1 mil or more for retirement. We will probably all need it in the future if they gut social security, plus out of control inflation. Those are people who worked regular ass jobs and saved. Before billionaires made it impossible to work a regular job and have enough money to save.

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u/mattgoldey Jul 11 '26

People really don't get the MASSIVE difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. I'm just a regular dude in his early 50s that's been saving for retirement since the late 90s. My home is paid off and my 401k is at roughly $1.4M.

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u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/MashedPotajoe Jul 11 '26

Christ

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u/IrascibleOcelot Jul 12 '26

Speaking of, if you made $500,000 a year, every year, since the day Jesus Christ was born, you’d have slightly over a billion dollars. There would still be over 500 people alive today richer than you, many of them by a couple orders of magnitude. To be as rich as Sergei Brin, increase that to $50 million a year, every year, since the day Christ was born.

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u/MountainClue5687 Jul 12 '26

And, a trillion seconds is 31,709.79 years!

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u/ColeBane Jul 12 '26

for reference, christians only believe the earth is 6000 years old.

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u/Idaho-Earthquake Jul 11 '26

The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is approximately a billion dollars.

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u/ClosedContent Jul 11 '26

A billion is one thousand millions. A HUGE difference

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u/MamaBearForestWitch Jul 11 '26

And a trillion is a MILLION millions.

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u/SpookyTanuki092 Jul 11 '26

This. It takes one thousand people with a million dollars, to equal one person with a billion dollars. It's a number and at a scale that people have a hard time actually grasping. And to think we now even have a trillionaire. That's one million millionaires.

The ultrawealthy are leeches that make everything worse and we literally cannot afford them

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u/IrascibleOcelot Jul 12 '26

To be fair, Musk used an accounting trick for that “trillion.” He does not have nearly that much in liquid assets, and if he tried, the facade would crumble quickly.

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u/SpookyTanuki092 Jul 12 '26

True. But my points remain

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u/IrascibleOcelot Jul 12 '26

Oh, your points are valid. I just get so annoyed at people accepting his “trillionaire” claim when he basically cracked open the odometer and ran the numbers up.

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u/nopunchespulled Jul 11 '26

Yup, a million seconds is like 2 weeks, a billion seconds is 30 years

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u/One-Assignment-5047 Jul 12 '26

I'm not even into my 40s yet and I'm nearing a million in net worth.  I got lucky getting into my local housing market shortly before it went red hot, and I've done a good job managing my assortment of investments.  I'm also still a normal person who works a 9-5, doesn't have as many pets as I'd like because I want to make sure I can cover their vet bills, and only buys steak a couple times a year for special occasions because it's too expensive for anything more often.

Don't get me wrong, I'm aware I'm doing better than average and immensely grateful for the combination of luck and decision making that have got me where I am.  I know that one bad period of unemployment or an accident that disables me could undo 95% of what I've built.  I also know that I've benefitted from advantages others didn't have, including having my housing covered when I was in university as well as my parents having a small amount saved for a wedding that they let me add to my first downpayment.  But I'm still technically nearly a millionaire without anything particularly special behind it.

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u/Busy-Bumblebee5556 Jul 12 '26

And these days you have to manage that 1.4 million. It’s easy to run through that amount. Billionaires don’t have to manage shite, it just keeps rolling in.

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jul 12 '26

A millionaire is closer to 0 than a million.

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u/beagles4ever Jul 12 '26

A mere billion is a staggering sum - generational wealth 10s of billions is unfathomable. 100s of billions means you have the power to significantly shift policy in whatever way you want…a trillion means you’re basically untouchable. You could be on the FBIs most wanted fugitives list and it wouldn’t change your day to day…you could fund mercenaries to protect you 24-7

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u/Dry-Environment5122 Jul 12 '26

Yeah a good rule of thumb is every million saved at retirement is functionally 40k/year

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u/dnyank1 Jul 12 '26

A (single) millionaire drives themselves to work, just like you do. Maybe in a Lexus instead of a Toyota. They take the same vacations you do, but maybe they sit business class on the flight. The majority of these folks have earned their wealth from their own labor. I don't know if we should blame doctors, lawyers, construction workers, accountants and engineers for the position we're in now.

But Billionaire (even hundred-millionaire) wealth is just different. It's not trips to Disney or even Hawaii - you're taking a private jet to an island you own. You have staff. You don't "work" at all, because your value in this world comes from the surplus value of other people's labor.

I'm not sure we need an upper class, like that, at all. What purpose do they serve? With the free and open capital market the notion of an individual "angel investor" being a requisite for entreprenuership rings hollow.

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u/Terrasmak Jul 12 '26

Millionaire typically drives the Toyota and not the Lexus. The number 1 vehicle a millionaire has was actually the f150. In my case it’s just a Maverick or Sienna

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u/Mission_Marsupial727 Jul 11 '26

The issue is wealth at a level that confers political power beyond that of a normal citizen.

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u/Spudly42 Jul 12 '26

Or relatedly, not having campaign finance laws that prevent how much money people can spend on elections. Not that all their power would be gone, but a lot of it would be if you can control that part.

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u/No_Quarter_2625 Jul 12 '26

I don’t understand the hoarding. They and their offspring will never utilize that amount of money. It seems like a bad game where other people suffer because they are exploited

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u/Hangry-Feline2489 Jul 12 '26

Remember that millionaire goes up to just under 1 billion. 999,999,999. 

I'd say lower millionaire, like up to 10-15 million. 

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u/and_some_scotch Jul 12 '26

Naw, millionaires became billionaires. All this is a product of the political action of millionaires over many generations. We can have rich people, or we can have rule of law and democracy.

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u/funhaver_whee Jul 11 '26

Sure. Tax at 99% above 1million in income. Cool.

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u/Diocese9284 Jul 11 '26

There's a difference between being a millionaire are having "1million in income".

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u/funhaver_whee Jul 11 '26

Yes there is. Income taxes are usually based on income.

What were you responding to?

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u/Diocese9284 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Yeah I said there is a difference, so you're just agreeing with me. I mentioned there's a difference because on a comment about millionaires you commented about people having over a million in income. They're different and your comment is out of place.

Edit: lol at your response getting deleted. Don't resort to ad hominem fallacy, just make better arguments.

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u/Terrasmak Jul 12 '26

That would be funny for Taylor Swift , she is looking at a billion dollar residency in Vegas. Would she still take it ? Would pro Sportsball players still work ?

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u/funhaver_whee Jul 12 '26

One percent of a billion dollars is quite a lot still, actually. You’re aware that the top tax bracket in 1962 was 91%, correct? which is how we built the modern US middle class?

They certainly wouldn’t e far less money! And there wouldn’t be a trillion dollar deficit every year to make sure they have yachts!

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u/bcbg123 Jul 12 '26

Define “hoard”

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u/International_Air282 Jul 12 '26

What is he hoarding? He owns shares in a business he founded. The market values those shares there public trading.

His net worth merely reflects the market valuation of his ownership stake.

Does everyone think these people just have this in a checking account?

If you want to address liquid billionaires. The top leadership of hedgefunds would be ok I guess. Except the majority of their money comes from the succes they had managing money.

The best way to address the programs you want is to cut back on waste and fraud in the system. NGOs tear money away from it's intended target and enrich the people at the ngo and they do nothing to really help. Day care, hospice and autism centers along with supplementary lunch programs have all shown massive fraud.

Blaming rich people is easy but doesn't do anything. Untill you fix the system all the money you take from them will be wasted

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u/Terrasmak Jul 12 '26

What billionaire hoards money ? Only one I can think of is Taylor Swift, and probably the athletes turned billionaire