Venture capitalist Bradley Tusk told LBC: “If Elon Musk says he needs a trillion dollars because he’s going to solve global hunger or something like that, great, have at it. But I don’t know what you could possibly buy with a trillion dollars that you couldn’t buy with a hundred billion, or probably even $10 billion.”
Well at least he’s aware of how much money a trillion dollars is and how easy it would be to solve world hunger.
He once said that if there was a concrete plan to solve world hunger he would do it. Then a representative of an actual plan to solve world hunger showed up on his Twitter feed and provided him with information and he was like ‘nah’.
And the plan would only cost a small amount of his fortune. He bought Twitter for much, much more.
I think it was only like 6 billion, right?
A huge number on its own, but in this context it’s nothing.
He paid 44 billion for Twitter and it took him a few days to raise that much money. He could have been the man to write the cheque to end world hunger and be honored by millions for generations to come (despite all his other bullshit), but he chose not to.
The world starves not because we cannot feed the hungry, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
He isn’t wrong. All it takes is the right amount of people to be pissed and revolution explodes. If the oligarchs think they have it rough now, wait until they are being lynched in the street by people who haven’t eaten a decent meal in recent memory. Look up 1918 Russia if you don’t believe me.
I somehow feel things have changed. Maybe it’s the internet, lack of education, consumerism, whatever. I hate to say this, bit I feel like a lot of people, when they get hungry, would steal from their neighbours. Far too many folk don’t understand that the wealthy are the author of their suffering and won’t know where to target their anger. Not to mention that oligarchs are hard to catch, whereas your neighbour with a slightly newer car is right there, and may be of a different race. People don’t understand who they should be angry with.
If there is still food to be stolen from your neighbours then things haven’t reached the point of revolt.
If there is still enough energy to be expended on hating your neighbor, then you haven’t reached the true point of revolt
When things are truly at their worst, your neighbor has no food to take. Your neighbor has no goods worth stealing. Harming them brings you no food, no money and less energy.
When things have reached that point, that is when the only option left is revolt and it does not matter what consumerism what gifts are given what lies are said. The only thing left to do is revolt or die. And no group of people will simply choose to die.
A repeat of the French Revolution is the real reason behind the bunkers of the ultra wealthy.
I hope they enjoy staying in that bunker forever instead of the surface world
Somewhere, somehow, those bunkers will need air intakes. Some potatoes to plug tubes, or mustard gas packets down the hatches … the problem is, bunkers make excellent prisons and/or tombs.
The ultra wealthy also don’t do shit in their own and will be expecting at least a small team of other people to cater to them while they weather the storm. There is no future where the ultra wealthy get to keep all the things they have collected.
Sure seems like the rich are doing everything they can to see what they can get away with before it pops off.
Millionaire CEO? Who is this broke bitch?
I know right he only has an estimated 1/10th of a billion.
Not even close to that third comma, amateur.
Lmao I’m thinking the same! Like damn he’s struggling with us normal folks in the trenches!
I mean the millionaire class is a grey area between those who are so rich they are completely out of touch with working class realities, and those who were working class who got a break and played a good hand right.
Personally I don’t really have a problem with millionaires, that’s an amount you can make playing by the rules and not bending them to your own will.
It’s also just not a huge wealth disparity. Like having 5-10x more than the average is more tolerable than having 10,000x more than the average. if someone drove a car that was worth 10x more than mine, it would be a new Honda. If they had a house 5x larger it would be a large family home. This actually adjusts to the needs of society.
Plus it just means “homeowner” in way too many cities.
The US govt shutdown is a distraction. The real story is the generals being fired by Hegseth. When they are replaced by Trump loyalists, the real civil war will begin. The goal of Project 2025 is to install a white supremacist evangelical ruling class in power. They have already published everything they want to do, all you have to do is look.
Nothing is just a distraction. They’re all just similarly evil parts of the plan, that they have fully documented, and that people just kinda keep ignoring.
The goal of Project 2025 is to install a white supremacist evangelical ruling class in power.
Pretty sure that’s Project 1776.
For there to be any kind of real “civil war” there would need to be a very clear distinction between sides and goals alongside states declaring their intent for sovereignty, as well and would need some form of oppositional army with organization.
The USA is far, far from a real civil war. We’re talking a generation or more and that’s in the worst case timeline.
The terms people need to recognize and understand are “militarized police state” and “civil unrest.”
These conditions may lead to a civil war at some point, but so far the bickering between states that don’t want Trump to do this and that are nothing remotely close to the conditions that start a civil war.
I get it, we want something to happen. We want retribution and justice and some kind of satisfying pushback. But I don’t think it’s helpful for any of us to “Tim Pool” the situation and try to pound the war-drums so we normalize violence. The current situation can and most likely will start facing mitigation during the mid-terms if there’s no authoritarian takeover. Right now, even if that happens, you would see rioting and possibly even a coup long, LONG before you would see a civil war.
For there to be any kind of real “civil war” there would need to be a very clear distinction between sides and goals alongside states declaring
That’s how the US Civil War happened, but frequently a national Civil War does not have such clear boundaries and sides. See Syria for a very messy conflict where about the only thing defining one ‘side’ was ‘not Assad’ and very little agreement other than that.
Civil war would be the worst possible outcome to be sure, but a messy situation can just as easily feed a civil war.
Lets hope he is right.
No shit. This is my retirement plan.
Millionaire? Wow, Newsweek is really slumming it these days.
10 years from now: Homeowner CEO says …
I paid my rent AMA
The more the money, the more the genious.
Author of the article could have picked a punchier subject line. Not that I disagree with the premise, but “millionaire” is pretty common these days. Like 20% of the population. Journalism is in the toilet these days.
Please.
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The crazy thing is millionaires have more on common with us normal workers than they do with billionaires.
Hasan Piker was listing all kinds of "a million _____ is _____ but a BILLION ______ is [some ufathomably larger thing].
People don’t understand multiplication very well…
The difference between a million and a billion is about a billion.
You’re 99.99% correct.
edit: I can’t do math for shit.
99.9%. The difference is 999 million, or 0.999 billion.
But also, at that point, less than a tenth of a percent isn’t a significant difference any more. Point is, a million is nothing to a billionaire. Let alone a multi-billionaire. Let alone a double digits billionaire, and it gets worse from there.
If you were to count 1 second, every second, until you reached one million. It will have taken you roughly 11 days.
If you were to count 1 second, every second, until you reached one billion. It will have taken you over 33 years.
The crazy thing is millionaires have more on common with us normal workers than they do with billionaires.
I get what you’re saying, that they are millionaires are closer to being broke than to being a billionaire, but they still have more in common with billionaires than normal workers. Once you reach the mid to high single digit millionaire you can pretty much choose your own adventure.
Lemmy is seriously underestimating the number of comfortable millionaires. Got $1M? You can retire and live modestly. Got $3M? That’s a new way of life, not radical, but much better. Got $10M? You’re well set for whatever happens.
In the US, 1 million is not enough to retire comfortably unless you are already retirement age and can collect social security and Medicare. It’s not like you can retire early on 1 million dollars. That doesn’t even buy you a house where I live.
I have a friend who made it big young (well earned IMO, they started working at 15) and they have about 2M in investments.
They make 4k/month after taxes just from the stock dividends every year.
That’s well enough for a comfortable life over here, as their house and cars are paid for - and the money keeps growing in investments.
1 million is ‘not enough’ when you want a passive income that is higher than what half of working people earn.
That’s literally the definition of retirement though. The ability to live without working. And no, $1 million is really not enough to retire on. You’re vastly overestimating the amount of passive income that can safely be earned on $1 million.
You know what a million is worth? $30,000 a year. That’s based on the 3% rule. That really is the safest amount you can rely on in a stock market account while still factoring in the risk of market drops. In retirement planning, that is a number you can use if you want to be reasonably sure you will not outlive your retirement savings. If you do a whole bunch of math on historic returns, inflation rates, and market bubbles and crashes, historically a 3% withdraw rate would be safe to keep your principal constant over time.
Can you live on $30,000 a year? Maybe, but the median household income in the US is $80,000. Half of households earn more than $80k, half less. Some couples do survive on $30k/year. But not many people would be willing to retire on that lifestyle. A couple with a million in retirement savings can safely earn $30k/year from that investment. That’s it. And this is investing in the stock market. If you invest in inflation-indexed treasury bonds, your safe annual income would be more like $10k per year on a $1 million asset.
In 2025, if you want to retire with retirement income (w/o considering social security) equal to the median US household income? Using the 3% rule, that would require approximately $2.7 million in an investment portfolio.
I know this because this is how we’re handling our own retirement planning. We’re probably going to need $2.5-$3 million in retirement assets. We’re lucky enough that unless things go catastrophically wrong in the US economy, we’ll be able to do it. And our wants aren’t incredible. We would like to have a retirement income right around where the average US household income is. And that will take $2.5-$3 million in retirement savings.
So a few things. Since we’re in the weeds at this point I want to remind us both that the original point was that a millionaire and a billionaire both have the same general relationship to living and labor which is ‘they don’t have to worry about selling their labor to have their basic needs met’. This is still true. I was also talking in terms of individual wealth not household wealth but the figures aren’t really that different because housing is such a large share of expenses.
The retirement scenario you’re describing is a very comfortable one. 3% is a conservative drawdown, 3.5% is considered safe, and higher is typical if you can be flexible in spending. Retired households do not have the expenses associated with commuting and most do not have the expenses of childcare. Being able to afford living near employment centers is a luxury for a retired household, not a need. So a retired household with the income of a median working age household is doing quite well.
That’s fine to want to retire moderately well off but once your income is based on rents from capital your class interests are not aligned with the working class.
The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
To a billionaire, a mere millionaire is as much a pauper as any homeless person. When the Psychopathic Oligarchs demand a reduction in population, being a millionaire won’t save them.
In fact, the Psychopathic Oligarch’s Capital Hoarding OCD will kick in even bigger over a millionaire, because he actually has the money that they covet so badly. The rest are just drains on society, but a millionaire has something that the mentally-ill financial hoarders actually want - more wealth.
It will be for different reasons, but they’re going to kill the millionaires, too.
It will be for different reasons, but they’re going to kill the millionaires, too.
I want to try to imagine what that actually looks like.
The billionaires have been raiding the federal budget and debt. Eventually we will hit a wall, and then it will be time for some good old-fashioned crisis austerity! And the president will get on the podium and somberly tell the American people. (Imagine this as someone (of either party) after Trump or feel free to translate this to Trump drivel.):
My fellow Americans. After generations of reckless spending, we have finally reached the end. We have tried to balance the budget, but the opposition party has spent years bleeding the budget dry. You know all they have done. Ultimately this is their fault. But unfortunately, we now are incapable of borrowing the amount of money we need to keep the light on, and tough choices have to be made. We will all need to tighten our belts. Taxes will go up, and reforms will be made to retirement programs…
And then out of nowhere a “must pass” reform package will appear. It will be a thousand pages long. Despite the crisis only appearing this week, the bill have clearly taken years to write. They clearly had this thing written beforehand. And the part that will hit the millionaires the hardest? Severe restrictions on the tax-advantaged provisions of IRAs, 401ks, and home ownership. That’s how ordinary people who amass a few million of their working careers usually manage to do it. That and home equity is where most of the wealth of single digit millionaires is kept.
For 401ks and IRAs, look to see that minimum withdraw range rise higher. Make it so you have to be age 70 to access the funds in your 401k without an early withdrawal penalty. Or apply penalties to social security benefits for those with large 401k and IRA balances. If they were really cynical, the billionaires might even cynically sell this as “taxing the millionaires.”
Look for curtailments to the tax advantages to home ownership. It’s very rare for ordinary people to pay capital gains taxes on any increase in their home’s value when they sell it. When a couples sells a home, they are exempt from the first $500k of home appreciation. Plus there’s the mortgage increase and property tax income tax deductions. Etc.
This is how you effectively steal what remains of the wealth of the middle class. The billionaires use both parties to raid the nation’s credit until it is maxed out. Then they keep the grift going by removing all the tax advantages the middle class has earned for itself over the generations. Then at some point, when that is not enough, taxes will simply be raised, but in forms that fall lightest on the wealthy. There is a reason these guys love tariffs.
Damn, I wonder if anyone else has noticed this. 😳
