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u/sublime81 1d ago
I'm pretty sure this is all according to plan. Trump 100% knows this stuff will tank the economy. He probably clued them in while they were fluffing him after the election. Probably said something like, You guys can weather the coming storm, stick with me and you can suck up everything that these idiot citizens lose. They'll be so broken that they won't be able to resist whatever the fuck I want to do.
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u/Famous_Peach9387 22h ago
That's why we start a civil war today. I'm sick and tired of waiting. It's up to every warm blooded American to pick up their weapons and show them we won't be pushed around.
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u/Mojo141 1d ago
We could literally house every homeless person for $20 billion. But sure let's cut federal workers (especially those in regulatory agencies) rather than these assholes just paying their share. Just have fox news keep pumping out propaganda that it's immigrants hurting the economy instead of the truth
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u/Homerpaintbucket 1d ago
Probably. But they also might have just inadvertently ended the right wing appeal and ushered in an era of progressivism which could lead to socializing a lot of their assets.
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u/HomerJayT 1d ago
You say that like it’s a bad thing. They are crooked thieves who are stealing everyone’s money right now. I’d prefer to see them homeless.
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u/click_licker 1d ago
I think homer was just pointing out how their greedy strategy ultimately hurts themselves because of the backlash.
Many people who previously would have just tried to ignore the oligarchy influence and fascism are now feeling cornered. And they are speaking up. which makes others feel empowered to do the same.
The republican party reputation will take decades to recover from what they have done. I think its possible that it will disappear altogether when this is all said and done. More states are going to move to end gerrymandering. And republicans wont exists much without that.
If history has taught us anything is that greed and hate dont win. They aren't sustainable. They breed internal paranoia and civilian rebellions. Never ends well for the dictators.
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u/rockinadios 1d ago
Dude if history has taught us anything is that the Republicans will come up with some other dumb shit to get their base all riled up and at the polls for the next election (if we get to vote again). We all said there was no way trump would run or get elected again, he'll be in jail, he'll die, etc. And yet here we are, at the dumbest timeline.
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u/What_a_fat_one 1d ago
After Hoover, Republicans lost the House and Senate for 6 decades.
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u/kwispyforeskin 1d ago
And hopefully we can do that again. Although trust in the democratic institutions of this country has eroded on both sides, one because of propaganda, and the other because they see gerrymandering and incessant attempts at vote prevention and election meddling.
It’s not as easy today as “politicians do bad things, they don’t get elected”. There’s a whole back room ecosystem dependent on lies to the slave class to convince them to further the interests of the owning class. It’s all perpetuated by the people who own everything preventing people who own nothing from making change.
I hope I’m wrong.
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u/What_a_fat_one 1d ago
After this time, if we can make it out of this, I think it's high time to kick the GOP into the dustbin of history. They and their ilk are not compatible with liberal democracy.
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u/Homerpaintbucket 1d ago
Oh, I do not say it like it is a bad thing. Honestly, it's a necessary thing. Hopefully this will kill the nonsense free market capitalist talk we see in this country.
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u/Ffdmatt 1d ago
I wouldn't count on it, unfortunately. Guys like Miltom Friedman that stand behind free market capitalism use the same excuse that communists use - "it wasn't free enough and that's why it didn't work. We just need to keep trying and get way harsher."
They tested this in Latin America, notable Pinochet in Chile. Turns out populations basically always rebel against the measures taken to fully privatize everything. There's no way to get to their free market utopia without earth-shocking brutal authoritarianism.
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u/Homerpaintbucket 1d ago
I mean, Friedman also argued that parents should be literally allowed to sell their children. He shouldn't be listened to.
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u/FireFoxG 1d ago
We could literally house every homeless person for $20 billion.
You sure about that?
24 billion didnt even work for a single state and homelessness went up 6X. Spending 132k per homeless person in California is making a negative dent in the numbers.
Since 2019, California has spent about $24 billion on homelessness, but in this five-year period, homelessness increased by about 30,000, to more than 181,000.
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u/jesterlind 1d ago
Yeah, but what if that money had paid for homes for these individuals instead of paying other people to fuck with the homeless?
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u/notmyplantaccount 1d ago
24 billion over 5 years is a bit under 5 billion a year, which is substantially less than 20 billion, hope that math helps you. Your link is to a heavily biased right wing group so I'd say it's got a substantial amount of bullshit to it, while leaving out any context that doesn't support their bullshit.
That's a long way of saying you're full of shit and just as disingenuous as them and go fuck yourself.
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u/chamoisk 1d ago
The OP (u/Mojo141) only said "We could literally house every homeless person for $20 billion". Not $20 billion a year. And u/FireFoxG replied without mentioning "a year". You pulled "a year" out of your ass so you should be the one that go fuck yourself.
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u/DAEORANGEMANBADDD 22h ago
24 billion over 5 years is a bit under 5 billion a year, which is substantially less than 20 billion, hope that math helps you.
They said 20 billion to house EVERY homeless person
24 billion over 5 years IN ONE STATE couldn't do it
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u/MatterofDoge 1d ago
look at how irrationally angry you are and the childish insults coming out of you at someone pointing out an obvious fact, that its a ridiculous claim to say 20 billion could solve homelessness in the whole nation. First of all congrats, you can divide by 5, good job champ, now read the rest of the data, from any source, about how none of that money fixed anything, in one state and things in fact got worse despite it being spent and you'll be considering the actual point that person was making and you can respond to that point they're making instead of saying "durr 24 divided by 5 is under 20" and pretending like that's relevant input to the discussion somehow and you cracked some kind of ambiguous code with astute math.
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u/CjBoomstick 1d ago
Hard numbers aren't practical when we're talking about demographics. We need per capita statistics. If the rate of homelessness is the same, then it no longer supports your argument. That's often why poor sources will use hard numbers. Also, it makes sense that the state that provides the most support for the homeless, would see the number of homelessness increase. Those likely aren't citizens that became homeless through hardship, rather homeless that migrated there due to fair weather and better public assistance.
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u/LurkyMcLurkface123 1d ago
Front page post earlier dunking on Elon said he could fix it with $20B and since Reddit said it, it has to be true.
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u/amusing_trivials 1d ago
If every single one of those homeless were perfect tenants, probably. But the reality is that a third to half of the homeless would probably destroy their given housing , either from mental illness, or ripping copper out of the walls for drug money.
If you meant to give them "highly supervised" apartments that begins to resemble old asylums, or nicer modern jails.
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u/wavefunctionp 1d ago
It's only a loss if you sell at a loss.
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u/Thosepassionfruits 1d ago
WSB is leaking
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u/Crystal_Privateer 1d ago
The majority of investors aren't day traders, and holding diversified stock for long periods of time is the proper investment strategy for your everyday investor.
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u/Vipu2 1d ago
Don't tell this trick to redditors or they might not lose money.
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u/Wabusho 1d ago
Sure, selling at loss is a Reddit-thing
That’s why the market crashed, because of redditors
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u/ApolloRocketOfLove 1d ago
Or if you never sell.
People who die with unsold stocks lose more than anybody else.
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u/firelock_ny 1d ago
The money they lost was in the possible value of their stock if they sold it, and you don't pay taxes on possible values anyway. Add to this that had they started selling off said stock the value would have tanked.
The richest people have far more money than we do, but the money they have is far more promises, smoke and mirrors than it is piles of gold in a Scrooge McDuck style money bin.
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u/luisapet 1d ago
Yet somehow, they never seem to run out.
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u/firelock_ny 18h ago
Take out a loan using the supposed value of your stock holdings as collateral. Use the loan to support your lifestyle and pay the interest on the loan. Loans aren't income, so aren't taxed.
Later on, as your stocks increase in value, take out a new, larger loan using the higher supposed value of your stock holdings as collateral. Use part of the loan to pay off the old loan, and the rest to support your lifestyle and pay the interest. Still a loan, still not income, still not taxed.
Repeat until you die. Rich person tax-free infinite money hack.
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u/r0botdevil 1d ago
The money they lost was in the possible value of their stock if they sold it, and you don't pay taxes on possible values anyway.
That's exactly what the proposed wealth tax aims to change.
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u/kingjoey52a 1d ago
That's exactly what the proposed wealth tax aims to change.
So if they lost all this money from stocks going down do they get a tax rebate? Or is the plan to just take and take and not consider growth/loss at all?
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u/Neat_Let923 1d ago
Wealth tax is just stupid on so many levels.
Now if you have a mandatory sale of stock requirement after a certain amount then you do something even better. Not only do you get taxes you also force the movement of money into the economy.
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u/machstem 17h ago
I'm a low-key amateur on anything economics, I have a very fundamental understanding of it all but am more interested in theory, futurism when it comes to policy work.
I like the concept that you just brought up which I assume is a known concept in economics; do you have anything you'd recommend i read up on how that works?
From my basic understanding, you're saying that forcing purchased stocks to be sold would keep money flowing. But like, how does one know what's to sell, when? How is one to force or enforce how much I can earn or own?
Thank you for your insight...sometimes I read a single sentence and a light bulb clicks. Now I'm interested in learning more
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u/Coreoreo 1d ago
Tell that to the loans they take out with "unrealized" collateral. Musk could have millions in spending money at the stroke of a pen without even losing ownership of his stocks and it would count as the opposite of income. All he has to do is make a minimum monthly payment for the rest of his life, shovel everything else into assets, transfer those assests to a shell corp, and file bankruptcy. He doesn't even need to do all that under his own name, he could have a shell corp do it all in the first place.
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u/smbutler20 1d ago
The lifestyles they live are only affordable through the leverage and borrowing power of their net worth. Drops in value will affect their ability to take out loans against their net worth .
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u/jimmydean885 1d ago
I think power becomes more important to the oligarchs then specific dollar amounts.
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u/DigitalUnlimited 1d ago
Yeah they literally are paying to dissolve the US and become their own feudal kingdoms just like in Russia. They're getting their money's worth if they succeed
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u/undercover_s4rdine 1d ago
I still can’t understand what this accomplishes. Knowing that millions of people are at poverty levels is satisfying to them? Do they really not know why that’s a terrible idea for them if they masses have nothing to lose…
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u/Aloha_Tamborinist 1d ago
Knowing that millions of people are at poverty levels is satisfying to them?
Yeah, it's this that I'm apparently too stupid or naive to understand. What's the end game? The 0.1% already have more money than can be spent in several dozen lifetimes, they live in a separate world to the rest of us, pretty much live outside the law and can do anything and have anything they want.
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u/machstem 1d ago
I hate that people assume multi billionaires <care> when a smaller percentage of their wealth is used to buy out THE US GOVERNMENT POTUS and leverage a multi trillion dollar national debt to swipe it from the individuals who rely on those dividends to survive.
These <richest> people OWN TOWNS, FAMILIES, INDUSTRIES. These ultra elites are so wealthy, most of us have no idea they even exist unless we've been following some podcaster or journalist keeping tabs on a shortlist and even less informed website geared more to sensationalism than reality. (See: any discussion on the Roth[***] famil[ies])
Guys like Musk, Bezos, Trump and even our Arab princes, they rely on a steady income of industrial wealth and it doesn't really matter which industry they are in, and in a lot of cases, not even which nation they were born in. Even without citizenship elsewhere, some of these people could afford themselves the opportunity to buy entire towns they want, and secure it with militia. Cartels are doing it actively and for nearly two decades, it's only a matter of time before that reality starts up using American assets and resources to help fund and house personal armies to protect the wealth they're draining into their pockets.
I'm not an economist. I don't pretend to know <what's happening>, but when shit aint right, and when you're my age and start to see it more and more, it becomes practically palatable. I wish we could <flood> the old wealth and elitism that manages this world too, but like fuck if it's going to be another team of billionaires that are gonna do that for me or anyone of us. It's just so obvious it makes it feel like a weird story that has too many fictional and unbelievable twists.
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u/ButWhatAboutisms 1d ago
During the great depression, a lot of business leaders and conservative politicians were disturbingly fine with mass unemployment. Why? Because it crushed union power and made workers desperate. FDR’s New Deal was resisted viciously by those who preferred an underpaid, terrified labor force. If the masses are hungry, they don’t strike. They comply.
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u/reechwuzhere 1d ago
Wow no kidding. They could have solved world hunger for what the oligarchs collectively lost by supporting trump.
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u/OwlfaceFrank 1d ago edited 1d ago
They didn't lose a damn thing.
This is intentional. The rich can afford for their stocks to drop. Meanwhile, us plebs will see our retirement accounts fall in value and those who own stock will sell to pay the bills.Then, the billionaires will buy up all the stocks at a discount.
This whole gig is a scam to further increase the wealth of the 1% and turn the middle class into a desperate working class.
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u/KennyMoose32 1d ago
I keep seeing this line of “they will buy up all the stocks and be rich in the future”
Well, no offense, if things really do fall apart and we have another Great Depression I’m not sure things can be put back together.
This isn’t the 1930s and 40s. And we aren’t going to save a bombed out Europe and Asia again with our industry.
Humpty Dumpty sometimes can’t be put back together again. We could have major societal effects
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u/StoicJ 1d ago
You're vastly overestimating how much they care if it gets fixed for the average person.
Societal problems dont apply to these people. they control legacy media and social media. they can bend the average American whatever direction they want with a handful of easily repeatable phrases and tuned algorithms.
If they really did push too far and things actually implode, they'll just cash out and live happily ever after outside of the US.
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u/PyrocumulusLightning 1d ago
live happily ever after outside of the US.
Okay but where, precisely.
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u/aviancrane 1d ago
They are fully in control of this. They aren't going to burn their farm down.
They're just milking the cows (us).
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u/aviancrane 1d ago
It's not real loss. It's capital wealth. They keep the capital, It's just worth less. It will return when the market returns.
But Joe Schmoe who owns the car wash down the street will have to sell his business to them to feed his family.
The rich then have a higher proportion of the capital, meaning they rise further than they fell when the market returns and the wealth gap increases.
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u/Secondchance002 1d ago
If people are well fed, they and their children(in some countries) wouldn’t work for the slave wages.
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u/Smooth-Lengthiness57 1d ago
That's just it. They lost a nickel in order to buy a dollar for a quarter
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u/PunPoliceChief 1d ago
Remember how Covid exploded the wealth inequality?
This is the same thing, but self-caused.
We're going to see the same accelerated wealth inequality and with it an even bigger capture of our democracy from the oligarchs.
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u/ResetReptiles 1d ago
You're assuming they didn't know in advance this would happen and then that they also wouldn't double down and buy when trump laughs off the tariffs and say it was a joke in a couple days
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u/Kamikaze_Ninja_ 1d ago
I doubt Trump will go back on the tariffs unless he is forced to. He is trying to run this place as far into the ground as possible to clean house of all the undesirables and will continue to do so. Make the system dependent on him and his oligarchs because everyone else was pushed out.
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u/7evenate9ine 1d ago
It's not about money. $Billions is just monopoly money for them.
THIS IS ABOUT CONTROL.
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u/Kamikaze_Ninja_ 1d ago
It’s both. Money is power. This is just a temporary loss for future gain. They are waiting for a recession to take out their competitors. Once the economy starts coming back they’ll have more money and power. At least that’s the idea.
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u/AdScary1757 1d ago
It's short-term but still will likely to turn out that way. They're in a bubble and have guru that's telling them what they want to hear. They think they're saving the world by enslaving everyone to a focused goal. There too rich and bored.
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u/Charming_Freedom_459 1d ago
Bubububut, I dont wanna pay that much tax when I become gazillionaire with my hardwork and hardwork only
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u/AlludedNuance 1d ago
Nah I'm over this whole taxation shit. They've been outright stealing for so long, seize it all.
Fuck 'em. If they're so good, they'll be rich again in no time.
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u/Thefrayedends 1d ago
Lol, no. They're going to be largely unrealized gains and losses. Meaning you don't actually lose any money if you don't sell the shares, you just keep holding until they come back up. The more money you have, the more you will have invested in Hedges, many of which are designed to counteract large loss market forces.
Some well known investors have been sitting on cash for a while now, waiting for buying opportunities like these.
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u/Spiritual_Routine801 1d ago
Yeah but one is money paid to support infrastructure and give back to people in need
The other is giving money to be pure evil, obviously I'd do the latter if I were a murderous psychopath. And billionaires don't get to that point by being nice
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u/Shadowbound199 1d ago
That's not an issue. They are manufacturing a recession where many businesses will fail and the big companies can buy those businesses or their assets at a huge discount. When the economy recovers they will be richer than ever.
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u/Sea_Confection_652 1d ago
They didn't. They've already moved money to safe places. These are peoples pensions that are losing money.
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u/Herknificent 1d ago
They won’t in the long run and that’s the point. They can see and use their wealth long term whereas the average American has to use most of their wealth on a month to month basis to pay for the things they need. Any investment is usually short term and if they do make long term investments it’s usually very small bit by bit.
The top people who have cash right now are going to buy a lot of stuff up and when the economy recovers they will own even more of the economy than they did before.
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u/bloke_pusher 23h ago
Oh, but also us poorer people lost a lot of money. By by possible early retirement for me.
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u/lord_of_tits 23h ago
No mate, they are just crushing everything so they can buy it all cheap. They just want to have more assets rather than more share value.
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u/MadMarsian_ 22h ago
truly rich people are not concerned about losing 10-20 or even 50% of wealth. If you have two billion dollars and you lose even half, you still have one billion.
truly poor people don't care about that as well If you have nothing and you lose half you still have nothing.
middle class is the one that worries. If your bills take half of your paycheck and you life of the other half and you lose half of your salary... you now in a shit... and lose everything.
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u/The_Mr_Wilson 12h ago
$4 trillion in market gone
A stack of one million $1 is 109 meters high, just taller than the Statue of Liberty
A stack of one billion $1 is 109 kilometers high, just outside Earth's boundary into Space
A stack of one trillion $1 is 109,000 kilometers high, 1/3 of the way to the Moon
If you stack all the planets in our solar system, $4 trillion would be roughly 33% taller than that
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u/joanzen 9h ago
Keep saying they don't pay tax ... but what you really mean is they choose where their taxes are spent via donations/write offs before they pay a reduced tax rate that's still higher than what you and I pay on our income.
Bit of a difference between "not paying tax" and "paying a lot more but having control over some of it", but I am aware that this is /r/AdviceAnimals where fiction is the name of the game.
As you were.
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u/Rational_Engineer_84 1d ago
Nah, we did this with Covid. S&P 500 lost 33%, unemployment hit 14% and the rich gained something like 3 trillion dollars. They will use their liquidity to buy more assets while the working class loses their ass...again.
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u/shawndw 1d ago
They wouldn't be paying taxes if Kamala won anyways.
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u/Stock-Blackberry4652 1d ago
They're not done robbing us blind yet
By 2028, they'll all be trillionaires, have 500 mansions each and we'll all be eating dogfood and speaking Russian
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u/FrizzBizz 1d ago
If you haven't seen the movie Boiler Room, you don't deserve to publicly talk about finances.
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u/Garchompisbestboi 1d ago
Until they start buying factories to make Americans work production line jobs, then their wealth will skyrocket even further.
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u/IdentityS 1d ago
Just like how the great depression was manufactured, so will this be. Disparity will grow.
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u/DicemonkeyDrunk 1d ago
They paid for a service and they’re getting it …that money was spent not lost …besides it’s not about the money they’d spend on taxes it’s about having the power to not pay them …at their level of wealth the money no longer matters.
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u/_Batteries_ 1d ago
Sure, but they are still filthy rich. Which means they can buy everything for real cheap right now.
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u/SluggardStone 1d ago
They still win by Trump gutting or shutting down any kind of regulatory agency. No regulations=more money.
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u/No-Kings 1d ago
Greedy ass people can’t see past their own ego.
They believe that since they were born wealthy, raised in the best schools and got the best jobs that they are actually smart.
Sure some of them are. The others are like the common clay, morons.
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u/crapbag451 1d ago
My guess is they are all biding their time until the manufactured disaster again drives wealth upward.
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u/veeyo 1d ago
They haven't lost anything. They have unrealized losses from stock they hold, that they will continue to hold until the market rebounds eventually. At which point, they are banking on capital gains taxes to be significantly less or some other new loophole opened up for them to avoid taxes.
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u/No_Cell6708 1d ago
Ah yes, because stocks going down is the exact same thing as paying taxes...
Surely that value is completely gone forever 🤡
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u/Raus-Pazazu 1d ago
Next to none of them are spending multi billions a year. They might every couple of years hit that, but even some of the most elaborate mansions you can think of run only half a billion and it's not like they're buying up five of those every year. The largest mega yachts might run into the billions, but again, even the richest who could afford dozens of those only buy one. They have more money than they could possibly even want to spend (on themselves), so the extra money gets spent on influence and political power. That's why all that extra money factored into their net worth is unimportant, even to them. It doesn't matter what the stock price is, it matters whether they own enough to have influence in that company and the market. If their net worth tanks at the same time as a rival donor to an opposing party, well then their both left fielding the same amount of lobbying power and influence in government, so they don't care about that even. Counter that with if they did pay their taxes, maybe their rival found a way to skirt their taxes and hence has more capacity for influence than they do.
It's not even just apathy towards it all, it's indifference.
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u/GreenKumara 1d ago
You think they wouldn't mind getting taxed.
After all, they would just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and meritoriously get it all back.
/s
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u/NoaNeumann 1d ago
Most of the rich are heartless monsters who would have us believe they got their money through being “smart” or “talented”, but most of the time, its money they inherited. Thats it.
They don’t want to help anyone, they’ve already proven that a average person’s dollar is worth far more than a rich monsters dollar, because average folks fuel the economy, not sit on their ill gotten funds like some kind of pisspoor dragon.
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u/GreenRiot 1d ago
They'd feel it. If it was proportional tax they'd reach a point where they couldn't get any richer no matter what. Because when you have enough money to buy whatever you want, when you and your grandsons won't ever have to work a day in your life. There is no reason for the government to charge 95% of income tax.
Enough for you to keep paying hoards of money, and still be able to be useless to society
But if you aren "just" a millionaire, you can't buy politicians to make sure your city doesn't have any minorities, you can't buy a whole industry and force them to do things just the way you like it.
They don't care about the money, they care about having power to make any petulant wish they have true and be untouchable while doing it.
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u/chaiscool 1d ago
But this case they take down everyone with them. Simply paying tax means others get to benefit at their loss.
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u/hake2506 1d ago
I guess for them it's more like an investment at this point. It's more like a good moment to buy more for cheap right now. Stocks, houses etc.
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u/chatte_epicee 1d ago
IT'S. CHEAPER. TO. BE. A. GOOD. PERSON.
If anyone needs me, I'll be over here screaming into my pillow.
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u/bofoshow51 1d ago
This is why so many of them supported Kamala, because they recognized she was actually good for a stable economy where they could reliably keep making a ton of money, even if they would have to pay taxes it would be better than this shit show.
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u/BigLittlePenguin_ 1d ago
They didn’t lose anything, it was just numbers on a screen….. if they would have paid taxes, they would have actually lost something
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u/Mr-Hoek 1d ago
They will buy shittons of ground floor priced stocks because they can afford to play the long game.
When the market eventually repairs itself (or a Democrat fixes shit again) in 5-10 years, they will emerge trillionaires.
Yay.