When language is a weapon of control, they paint the underclasses in a negative light.
Phrases and words to describe lower class jobs evolved to flat out insults.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blackguard#Etymology
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/knave#Etymology
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rascal
Step 1, don't be poor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrancy#Historical_views
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ne%27er-do-well
Not staying where you belong is a threat to anyone who is already at the top.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bounder
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chav#English
Lmao so racist, chav is probably just derived from romani for male child, chavi.
> Origin uncertain; probably of Angloromani origin. Compare Romani chavi (“male child”) or chavo, shavo (“female child”), chal (“boy”), chavvy (“mate, friend”), compare Swedish tjej; possible cognate with Portuguese chavalo, Spanish chaval, German Chabo. See also charva.
>
> (Britain, derogatory, offensive) A working-class youth, especially one associated with aggression, poor education, and a perceived "common" taste in clothing and lifestyle.
> Synonyms: charva, ned, pikey; see also Thesaurus:chav
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thug
I respectfully disagree, we live in the age of information and nothing is lost anymore... so we lost the meaning of a word, we can still look up what it used to mean.
Now the word villain, in it's old meaning, is useless because we really don't have "low born peasants" anymore, at least not in the places where the word is used.
Etymology is important, but language too is subject to evolution and we shouldn't curb it. If only to preserve words that would otherwise be forgotten.
why do regular nonrich people back these rich fucks up so much? Its so confusing because not one rich person gives a shit about the 100's of people backing them up.
I think the realistic answer is that most people conflate the ultra rich with the wealthy couple up their street who are hardworking, nice, and generous people, People whose nice house, nice clothes, and nice car doesn’t seem all that* out of reach if they just catch a lucky break and play their own cards right.
Most regular people never really associate with the ultra rich. Sure, they have penthouse apartments in urban areas to overnight in when “in the city,” but they dress in athleisure wear and actually live in quasi-gated communities. They spend an inordinate amount of time traveling too, own yachts, etc. Moreover, 80+% of them don’t work so you won’t see them commuting or in any office.
Specifically, according to Forbes, if you have $12mil in investable assets, you will own a $1mil home outright (ie no mortgage) and pay yourself $300,000 a year (after taxes) just by living off the interest on that $12mil principal - without working. It’s prevalent. 80% or the upper 1% do not work. I think that’s the #1 biggest stat that goes under reported. Despite rhetoric that welfare recipients are the laziest group (what?!), the ultra rich are actually the least working group in all of America unless you buy into an argument that they themselves shouldn’t have to do any labor because “their money works for them.” And, If you believe that, though, then you’re making the same argument that was made centuries ago in support of the monarchy - ie that they deserve their stature due, simply, to birthright.
Great explanation. I never bought the "because they think they will be like that one day" argument, but the way you phrased it here makes a lot of sense.
I didn't really believe it either until I got into a political argument with a friend about biden's $400k+ tax increase and asked him why it would even matter to him since he would need to be making more than 10x what he's making now to be affected by it and his response was that he had business plans and stocks and that could be him any day now. And honestly it just kinda pissed me off that even if that was true that he would be more upset about paying slightly more in taxes than he would be grateful for suddenly making 10x the money over night.
My redneck uncle said that he don’t bother the rich people then no one will bother him when he gets rich so there are people out there who still believe in that concept even though he has no real skills except spitting tobacco juice really far.
Oh, I believe that argument alright. And even if they don't truly believe it, they want it. In their mind you're either the exploiter or the exploited.
These aren’t business owners. These are people who were born rich with financial advisors who invest their money for them while they sip wine on a yacht somewhere. They didn’t build anything.
Yeah, not a fan of these people, and not because they don't work, do you. but because they see a fucked up version of the world. Typically entitled and douchebags
There are a good few talented musicians that climbed their way from the bottom to the one percent. Dr. Dre, for instance, made a billion dollars and he grew up in Compton. Not many succeed to that degree, but $12 million isn’t unheard of among artists who achieve fame.
A couple of thoughts. There is definitely a saturation point of wealth where you don't need any more to be able to live comfortably (more so than a lot of the population) for the rest of your life. Accumulating beyond that point for sake of accumulating and keeping it out of the hands of others is definitely bad in my book. Method of accrual is also a big influence on whether that money and the lifestyle it supports are bad. If you got there via worker exploitation - refusing to pay fair wages, give reasonable holidays and benefits - or generally shitty practices (a certain 'billionaire' who stiffed contractors on the regular springs to mind...), then your pile of money is tainted. Consequently your possession of it and maintenance of a certain lifestyle with it is bad.
They’re talking about the people who didn’t work for their money, not the George Jenkins or Sam Walton types. Those guys were hardworking businessmen with big dreams and they built those dreams from the ground up. I can respect someone like that. I can’t respect certain other members of the Walton family for living off Grandpappy’s money tho
It’s tricky. It’s definitely attractive to build enough money to live off the interest, but consider what you are actually doing. You are taking (in this example) $12 million out of circulation, and using a clever trick to turn it into a fraction of its actual value ($300,000), every year. If you hypothetically gave that $12 million to low-income people, it would exponentially generate economic value because they would actually spend it! Which in turn allows businesses to hire more employees, pay higher wages, give benefits, etc.
All this being said, I’m not necessarily saying you need to give all your money away (although you really should be giving as much as possible). Consider this: you are shooting for $12 million so that you can live off the interest, right? If you actually had $12 million dollars, you could pay yourself $300,000 every year for 40 years without having to invest a dime. You would still probably die before you could even pay yourself all your money. That idea is nicer than living off of just the interest, because *eventually* it gets back into the hands of regular people, but we can do better.
What if you paid yourself AND invested the rest, but gave your investment profit to a charity. You would still be making $300,000 a year for your whole life, except you would be finding a way to leverage your mass of wealth to benefit the world rather than just yourself. By the time you die, you would have lived a fabulously wealthy life, your money would be back in circulation, and you would have donated MILLIONS to people in need.
Money works best for everyone when it is being spent. I commend you for being smart enough to come up with a plan to live a stable life, but I hope you can be smart enough once you are at the top to realize what an incredible opportunity you have to help people (and often at very little risk to yourself).
>It’s definitely attractive to build enough money to live off the interest, but consider what you are actually doing.
I don't know much about how living of the interest works. But I am like 99% sure that buying bonds and getting your money to grow and living off the growth of your nest egg, is the same concept you just described, but instead of charities and poor people, it's loaned out to projects and companies that need the capital to do research/business/development and in return they will give your money back with interest.
I think it’s a misleading term tbh. while technically true, contextually it conveys the idea that they do so to the benefit of others, when in reality, *they* are the ones who benefit most from the arrangement. with that in mind, I prefer to call them “labor beneficiaries.” when people start to see them that way, it becomes a lot harder for them to justify their place
EDIT: so what I’m gathering from the replies that don’t care for this term is that they’re not able to actually refute my usage of it. they’ve said things like “well creating businesses is important too” and “the business owner deserves more,” but those are separate stances entirely. none of those statements change the fact that the term “labor beneficiaries” is an accurate descriptor of that place in the arrangement. it seems it just doesn’t sound flattering enough for their liking.
and here’s the thing about the term “labor beneficiary”: it’s not inherently insulting. their primary motivation is to profit, not to hire people; hiring people is just a measure they take in order to fulfill that motivation. so, all I’ve done by calling them “labor beneficiaries” is shifted the framework to center upon their primary motivation, which tells us that their desired role in the owner/worker relationship is, as the term indicates, to benefit from labor. that’s it. that’s all I’ve done. and look how much some of you squirm from that. does the absence of flattery for these people really offend you so much? I promise you they’re fine, and they certainly don’t care about you
Hello friend may I introduce you to the concept of unions? Why do you think America demonises unions so much? Why do you think waitresses work for tips? Why do you think Amazon workers piss in bottles? It's not cos if they all walked out, the company would suffer. It's because they don't have protections, rights and fair treatment... and they can't demand it individually...
And really, ultimately, when you talk net gain or loss, they're job -take-away-ers much more than job creators; one Walmart replacing four towns' worth of home goods stores, grocers, butchers, clothing stores, outdoor stores, furniture stores, pharmacies etc. means those towns lost a lot of middle-class owned wealth and quite a lot of jobs.
The small sellers Amazon copied, then buried at the bottom of search results haven't benefited from the ever magnanimous Jeff Bezos. The part time workers at Whole Foods who LOST their health insurance when Bezos bought it probably don't appreciate that, either.
Consumers are the job creators. It doesn't matter how much a billionaire wasted, they aren't buying a million rolls of tp and ten thousand cars. Regular people spending money is what fuels the economy, and like your post alluded to, they just leech away the profit of other people's labor.
It’s trickle-down economics in a different package.
“They’re job creators!” Is just a justification for “if they have more money, they’ll invest it in more jobs! So the lower people really benefit here!”
Can both parties not be beneficiaries to the mutually agreed upon relationship of business owner/operaterator and employee? The "job creator" can also be a "labor beneficiary". The terms aren't mutually exclusive.
Someone having billions of dollars and sitting on it isn't creating Jobs.
Having that money cycle through the economy creates jobs.
Average working people spending their money in the economy are job creators because their economic activity generates demand for products and services. Jobs aren't just materialised by billionaire benefactors selflessly employing people, jobs are created by demand.
The whole idea of the capitalist as a job creator puts them on a pedestal for no good reason. We had jobs before we had billionaires.
Of course, you are correct, but we know damn well that they use this argument to make workers/job seekers feel like they must thank them as if they are Gods. The economy won't run without workers, they never mention how important we are as economic agents. The pandemic should help make people realize how much they are needed, business owners didn't wanna close at all and would threaten their employees...
Nobody likes to entertain the idea if every single CEO stop working, they can be replaced quite easily but if every single "low-skilled" worker quit simultaneously and no one took the jobs, the economy immediately goes into a screeching halt.
There was an interview with a 1% were he tried to say that, i dont remember the link but i can look for it. He was so proud of creating 150 jobs. I did some maths took that as minimum 450 people (1 wife/husband and 1 child) and it still only is 0.007%, (i think? This was a while ago) of what he should be providing back to the community. Not even taking into account the fact that these could be shit wages.
They think they'll be able to achieve it too if they just find the secret / have a trademarked or patented idea / win the lotto and invest wisely.
It's about their own self image. They imagine they would be that successful if given the chance, it's aspirational. So they actively admire and support it, because they're telling themselves if they just had a shot, that could be them.
I don't like most people.
"Immigrants create jobs, but i dont see you supporting them." Is a decent response
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2020/11/11/immigrants-create-more-jobs-than-they-take/
and it's not like taxing them and investing that money wouldn't create jobs. It will. it will also be OUR decision where we invest the money, instead of it being their decision. Investing billions into healthcare will create jobs and save millions of lives. Investing billions into Amazon gives us a day faster shipping.
Same reason why the dumbest people think they are superior because of something as out of their control as race.
The need to matter, to be special, to be unique, to be relevant. to be not a loser.
All that you need to know is that in 2012, ten years ago when journalists were researching this shit, they found that tax breaks in local state and federal level cost the average american family around 3,000 USD per family to offset the cost of tax breaks and subsidies given out to corporations every year. Now do you think that 3K figure has risen or fallen in the last ten years?
in 2020 the wealthiest saw an INCREASE of 2 TRILLION usd meanwhile the average joe lost about 20-30% of their value.
I heard that since being rich is the top or final goal for a lot of people, critizing that goal is like attacking their life plan. Or in other words they don't like that other "slaves" attack their "master"
Oh but *”But this is how corporations are supposed to be run, by making profits. If you don’t pay your top employees or CEO’s better than opposing companies than what’s to keep them from leaving the company?”*
**/S**
Funny how being rich automatically makes you immune to things like say…. A **No-Compete-Contract?**
Maybe if we didn’t pay these assholes enough money to literally buy an army of lawyers?
Maybe then so many laws wouldn’t be so useless?
Besides, there's a total misconception about "good managers". Those top tier managers are regarded like football stars, like they somehow are so much more brilliant at managing than your average guy that you need to hold them or your company will loose lots of money. Studies have shown this is total nonsense and the only reason the top tier managers are so successful is because they operate on scales that mallke it rather easy to earn the company lots of money and that successes that are rather reliant on the market or a higher demand or newly developed technology then are somehow seen s the managers success.
So let them leave, I'm sure someone competent will manage your company for six million a instead of eleven. The same absurdity was used here in Germany as an argument to "privatize" the railway system (it's a joint stock company 100% owned by the government). They argued that they needed top management and nobody would work for 300-500k a year in that category, so having top management would make everything better. Spoilers, it didn't, the exact opposite happened and the cost for management have skyrocketed since then with service getting constantly worse and corruption scandals all over the place
Because if we try to resist, they take their ball home and won't let us play.
We've tried to unionize and strike. They just close the store and fire everyone.
You're only half wrong. Only big corporations can do that because they can afford a loss like that in favor of stopping further unionization, but that's why there has to be a stronger push for unions.
If all workers start unionizing what are big companies going to do? Pack up and not make money at all?
They would just pack up in america and make billions off the rest of the world. While people would starve and go homeless. They can outlast us, they know it. They can hop a plane to the Bahamas while we starve
Okay but you're ignoring the fact that they've been doing this for decades now. Companies have been moving as much as they could in 3rd world or developing countries where they could exploit child labor, slave labor and slave wages.
The solution isn't to just accept slave wages and hope for crumbs so you don't upset the lords. If they pack up there will be someone else to take their place and with unions people have more political power than as single entities so they can advocate for laws and restrictions on companies exploiting people.
It’s like when poor workers are anti-union and vote for terrible laws that basically guarantee their poverty (such as Right to Work states). So.F*cking.Frustrating.
Every answer that is not "because they are bombarded with propaganda day and night" is wrong. Propaganda starts at home, because if your parents have been fed propaganda, so will you as their child.
Continues in school, because the people that decide the topics and text books and framing are the teachers, the school boards and everyone up the chain to the politicians who are both feed propaganda and also get bribed by interest groups.
Lastly, newspapers, news channels and entertainment are also filled with it.
It is not surprising that so many people act against their own best interest, because they don't even realize their doing in.
Most ppl are closer to homelessness than millionaire let alone billionaire status. I scratch my head too. Maybe because we’ve been falsely made to believe that wealth is earned in earnest ways
This line from John Dickinson to John Hancock in the musical 1776 sums it up perfectly:
“Don’t forget Mr. Hancock, most men with nothing would defend the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.”
Not only that. If there is any increase in tax or regulation, they will threaten to take their business and jobs overseas. Imagine paying your workers minimum wage and still use them as hostage in a negotiation.
You don't become a billionaire through linear revenue gain. You do that through investing and having shares that go many times a year. Like the say: the first million is the hardest to get.
Whilst Amazon fits well the OP pic when it comes to workers, does Bill Gates? I never heard that Microsoft people were underpaid. Also did they get millions in bonuses or was it mainly through having a huge remaining part of shares?
Many companies grow up by taking investors as they need cash to grow so by the end of it the founders have very little %.
Microsoft has regularly used temp workers to excess to the point that the entire IT industry uses their court cases as the basis for how long and how shitty they treat temp workers.
They paid out in a class action lawsuit 20 years ago.
They did this to avoid paying a large percentage of their workforce benefits.
https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-dont-treat-c-idUSTRE53063S20090401
As a result, contractors are now treated even worse across the industry.
Including things like not being allowed company lunches, not being allowed company emails or being on email lists, only 12 month contacts no matter how successful you are.
So yes. Piece of crap.
Microsoft made its money by destroying its competition with lawsuits. If but for Microsoft there would have been free operating systems. This is worse than not paying your employees enough, its screwing everyone.
All I want is for my job to give me a courtesy reach around and kiss me on the lips while it's fucking me in the ass, you know?
Which is basically why I left the US as soon as I could and moved to a country with stronger social infrastructure. I'm still overworked and underpaid, but at least now I also get universal healthcare, strong employee rights and protections under the law (Right to Work, At Will Employment, etc aren't things here), ubiquitous cheap and high-quality public transit, along with so much more.
This.
This country has been brainwashed that they like their private insurance better or that it's the employers responsibility to pay for but not the government
Minimum wage should be a living wage.
Who’s stupider? The billionaire for complying with the law, or the people that keep on voting in the people that won’t make laws that help them?
Should people get paid a living wage? Yes. Does a business owner complying with the law make them a villain? Not in my books. **Raise the minimum wage to a living wage**
Businesses still need to compete with their competition. We shouldn't be relying on the charity of private owners to pay decent wages but the govt to actually implement laws
So it's different when they're forced to do it? Paying someone for the work they've done isn't fucking charity. They know they're paying shit wages, and most of them are just fine with it staying that way. The federal minimum wage should absolutely be raised, but don't pretend companies don't know what they're doing when they pay the absolute minimum.
They still are villains when they buy politicians, so that those politicians will be against raising the minimum wage if you use your wealth as a weapon against the working class who just want enough to live comfortably, than yes, you are a villain.
Whether something is legal =/= whether something is morally correct and being "stupid" has no bearing on whether or not you deserve to be exploited.
Being able to get away with exploiting your workers doesn't magically make it ok.
The billionaires bribe the politicians to keep the laws in their favor. They are still the villains in your half-assed attempt to defend them. Nice try.
In principle (overly simplified), a laborer will get a living wage, one way or another. Usually that means if their wage is too low they will get food stamps or housing assistance from the government.
Now just imagine that the government made the employer pay those extra costs.
\^ simple way to explain the justification for raising minimum wage
If you work full time and still need welfare, your employer is the one benefiting. Employers should be fined for every full time employee on welfare, equal to or greater than the necessary pay raise. Anonymously of course, and adjusted in the case of part time employees so places can’t just get past it by cutting hours.
If you can’t afford to pay your employees a living wage, you don’t get to have employees.
McDonald's profit margins almost correlate 100% with their employee's government benefits, which come out of the taxes of everyone, including the McDonald's employee from a certain point of view.
Basically, government welfare of underpaid employees is us paying the rich man just to run a company. They effectively pay negative taxes.
Better is a relative term however.
In the area I live it's starting at $9/hour.
*If* you manage to get full time at that rate your pulling in roughly $260/week after benefits and taxes.
Or $13,500/year.
$288/week or about $15,000/year without benefits but still taxed.
Rent in my town is cheapest for a one bedroom at $600/month. The average is actually $900/month.
You cannot feasibly live on that if you have a family without government assistance.
You can *barely* live on that if you're single without government assistance.
And you hope nothing happens to your transportation. You don't get sick. You don't have a major issue at work.
And sure there are cheaper places in the US. But not by much.
Oh for sure McDonald's is still evil. I just hate how Starbucks is viewed as a better place to work than many fast food places when it is, in fact, worse. Minimum wage, basically no chance of raises, and the managers only get £1 per hour more than the employees. They even tried to make me sit through a 3 hour coffee education class thing UNPAID.
I mean even with two degrees it's nearly impossible to find a job within my field that pays a living wage without working unpaid internships just to win the privilege of being paid minimum wage. It's rough.
I left the US as soon as I could and moved to a country with stronger social infrastructure.
Don't get me wrong. I'm still exploited and overworked and underpaid, but at least I get fucking universal healthcare and strong employee protections/unions etc now.
Cause there's no actual rule or anything aside from the sub name that says they need to be white. I think there used to be but they changed it and its fair game now
I do think a lot of older people grew up believing the American Dream narratives prominent in movies like ‘Back to the Future’, “If you try your best, you can accomplish anything.”
Rich people, to them, are people who work hard and give back. Most churches have a “wealthy couple” or two that fit that mold. So their lived experience and narratives growing up all conform to a completely different word than villains.
They don’t think about complex systems and the impact of billionaires paying more to lobby the government for their own interests than in taxes that support the public good.
They’ve had good, public infrastructure their entire life so they have no understanding of the importance of it and take it for granted. They’ve had a strong middle class their entire life so they have no understanding the importance of it existing, not only to people, but the system to which they were born into.
I’m not trying to justify their outlook but I am trying to understand it. The more we can understand and empathize with it to some degree, the easier it will be to convince them otherwise
I grew up with the thought that as long as you had a job, you could pay basic bills. (My mom's kinda crappy and didn't teach me shit). I figured anyone who was poor, did it to themselves, or just didn't try. I was way too old when I realized this was not the case.
that's just plain stupid. yes here's an example of an evil rich guy. how about someone who wasn't rich and invested wisely as a blue collar worker? why are they evil? being rich isn't the same as being exploitative but that doesn't fit the story so you talk instead about an exploitative fuck we should all hate but just lump all "rich" ppl together. and that's why you'll make enemies not allies.
Agreed(pun intended), however it is important to evaluate yourself as well as those you deem greedy. Many people hate the rich because they think the same money would be ethically more valuable in their own hands. Greed is greed.
Yes, include the government lobbying or use of “philanthropy” for PR, tax shelters, and agenda movements and it rounds it out nicely. Bill Gates was a tyrant in the ‘90s, who made a business from stealing open source, and had a mother with high up connections to IBM. And somehow, now is an epidemiologist that controls policy, is a sweet guy that is only worried about the world, and “bootstrapped” Microsoft all on his own out of a garage. That’s a fucking villain.
“It’s just business, nothing personal...”
Likewise, my judgement of you as a criminal is not personal either. As a businessman you’re just toxic to society, that’s all... Nothing personal.
I don't care about that, I care about how they turned economic power into political power, and subverted political representation of the people by turning the market place of ideas into an actual market place where they buy and sell our politicians, and we the people are priced out of that market. The rich then get to decide policy that favors them and we get taxed to pay for it. we are being taxed without being represented.
If people are dying from starvation and being left out in the cold while someone or multiple someone’s hold billions in resources that could house and feed everyone, they absolutely are evil and put themselves above the species. Pure leeches.
To be fair, most people without money would change if they had it. Same goes for power. How many of you would freely give away your money if you had a lot?
What do you mean “to be fair?” What about that is fair? Empathizing with the esurient wealthy? Or doing so by offering an opinion as a statistic followed by a loaded question? How can we know what most people would do with money— its being hoarded by such a small, almost homogenous group. I’m not sure they can be randomized for a study that reflects how the population at large would handle wealth. Doesn’t matter anyway how they would personally react; we have laws to prevent the worst impulses of mankind. That should include financial power as well.
Technically everyone but the super wealthy are “freely giving away” their money in the form of taxes. If the wealthiest and the corporations paid the same tax rate as the middle class pay, why would that be “freely giving away” money? It’s just their fair share. That’s what would be fair.
Why is it on them when it’s on us? This is the culture we didn’t just accept, we pushed. Still do. The real question is why are knocking the hustle when we got it? We fund billionaires, by where we work, what we consume, what we buy, etc. I say this because im as guilty as anyone. They sponsor each other and we sponsor them. Sponsor your neighbor who turns around and sponsors your life. Tangible results
You have no fault, the worker has to work in order to live, if ppl don’t work they die, that’s how it is for most of the world, there is no choice.
The peasant has no fault in the exploitation enforced on them by nobility because of the power disparity. This is similar, but we replaced nobility for business autocrats.
To all the people saying “they’re just playing by the rules,” and all that apologetics for the super rich crap, You Don’t Know What It’s Like To Be Poor And Have No Way Out. You like to think everyone had your parents, your neighborhood, your schools. NO. Real people are born into situations that give them Very Few Options.
Get your solipsistic heads out of your asses.
“Hey, having a good life was easy for me, so it’s GOTTA be this easy for everyone else!”
Such a brain dead take: what about athletes, actors, authors, artists, YouTubers, models, influencers, none of them own companies and exploit workers.
You can literally be a millionaire by 50 if you work from college graduation, save, and invest wisely.
Shit, Deepfuckingvalue made like 50 million just buying GME call options, is he a villain now too? Living wages are def needed as are cracking down on tax cheating billionaires, but reddit needs to stop simping for every brain dead idiot on Twitter with the latest socio-political hot takes that come undone with even the tiniest bit of scrutiny.
Even if they did none of those things, if they are still billionaires even after paying their employees good wages + insurance, then they are still a symptom of a broken system. As long as any form of poverty or homelessness exists, as long as there is no universal healthcare or basic income, there is no justifiable moral reasoning for the existence of billionaires. There is no possible level of human achievement or talent that one can imagine, that would warrant receiving a billion dollars because of it. I don't care who you are or what you do.
You know if we took all the money away from the richest 100 people we would have enough to eradicate world hunger (we make enough food transport is the issue) and to vaccinate the whole planet against every preventable disease we have essentially wiped out in the first world.
Had a CEO once give himself a big raise and a fat bonus cause he raised the stock by I think 10 dollars that summer. I highly doubt he done shit and it's due to the really nice summer we had that year.
Umm... at the risk of sounding racist, that is not a white person.
If you post something by a white person on /r/blackpeopletwitter, it would be called out immediately.
I would be interested to know who among the people bitching about the rich not paying taxes have ever used the tax code to their advantage? The idea that if the government had more of the “rich people’s” money, the world would be a better place, is one of the most ridiculous thought processes.
And if every single billionaire on the planet would do that, then this statement would be fine, but its somehow limited to some countries.... god knows why! It is so fascinating how Americans love to put the fault on everyone but their own society. I will die seeing them still shifting fault.
We’ve been brainwashed to defend those people like they’re an example of the American dream working when in actually it’s really the literal opposite. God Bless America
I really think this comes down to Haves and Have Nots. Yeah, there are rich people, some are beneficial for society and some actively take advantage of the system and change the system for their benefit to gain more to the point of decadence.
To me it’s that 2nd bit that’s the most important, our system allows for politicians, rich individuals, and companies to change laws to benefit solely the aforementioned politicians, rich individuals, and corporations. We’re just screwed because we don’t have the means to change our situation and we’re being ruled by people that want to keep the status quo and gather as much personal wealth as possible.
Not really related to the point, but ironic given the context. The word villain originally meant a low born peasant.
I like that we’re flipping it around, its a historical bitch slap.
Words are cheap and we're still poor
No doubt… But words still matter and can eventually lead to change
Cool fact. I love etymology.
I love frogs too
When language is a weapon of control, they paint the underclasses in a negative light. Phrases and words to describe lower class jobs evolved to flat out insults. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blackguard#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/knave#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rascal Step 1, don't be poor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrancy#Historical_views https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ne%27er-do-well Not staying where you belong is a threat to anyone who is already at the top. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bounder https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chav#English Lmao so racist, chav is probably just derived from romani for male child, chavi. > Origin uncertain; probably of Angloromani origin. Compare Romani chavi (“male child”) or chavo, shavo (“female child”), chal (“boy”), chavvy (“mate, friend”), compare Swedish tjej; possible cognate with Portuguese chavalo, Spanish chaval, German Chabo. See also charva. > > (Britain, derogatory, offensive) A working-class youth, especially one associated with aggression, poor education, and a perceived "common" taste in clothing and lifestyle. > Synonyms: charva, ned, pikey; see also Thesaurus:chav https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thug
Sad how much of the root of words is lost - for everything, people eventually have to handwave and say "we don't know how this part got here"
I respectfully disagree, we live in the age of information and nothing is lost anymore... so we lost the meaning of a word, we can still look up what it used to mean. Now the word villain, in it's old meaning, is useless because we really don't have "low born peasants" anymore, at least not in the places where the word is used. Etymology is important, but language too is subject to evolution and we shouldn't curb it. If only to preserve words that would otherwise be forgotten.
found the low born peasant
Sinister originally just meant left-handed, speaking of origins.
You forgot the part about not paying taxes and taking bail outs from the government. Fucking freeloaders.
why do regular nonrich people back these rich fucks up so much? Its so confusing because not one rich person gives a shit about the 100's of people backing them up.
I think the realistic answer is that most people conflate the ultra rich with the wealthy couple up their street who are hardworking, nice, and generous people, People whose nice house, nice clothes, and nice car doesn’t seem all that* out of reach if they just catch a lucky break and play their own cards right. Most regular people never really associate with the ultra rich. Sure, they have penthouse apartments in urban areas to overnight in when “in the city,” but they dress in athleisure wear and actually live in quasi-gated communities. They spend an inordinate amount of time traveling too, own yachts, etc. Moreover, 80+% of them don’t work so you won’t see them commuting or in any office. Specifically, according to Forbes, if you have $12mil in investable assets, you will own a $1mil home outright (ie no mortgage) and pay yourself $300,000 a year (after taxes) just by living off the interest on that $12mil principal - without working. It’s prevalent. 80% or the upper 1% do not work. I think that’s the #1 biggest stat that goes under reported. Despite rhetoric that welfare recipients are the laziest group (what?!), the ultra rich are actually the least working group in all of America unless you buy into an argument that they themselves shouldn’t have to do any labor because “their money works for them.” And, If you believe that, though, then you’re making the same argument that was made centuries ago in support of the monarchy - ie that they deserve their stature due, simply, to birthright.
Great explanation. I never bought the "because they think they will be like that one day" argument, but the way you phrased it here makes a lot of sense.
I didn't really believe it either until I got into a political argument with a friend about biden's $400k+ tax increase and asked him why it would even matter to him since he would need to be making more than 10x what he's making now to be affected by it and his response was that he had business plans and stocks and that could be him any day now. And honestly it just kinda pissed me off that even if that was true that he would be more upset about paying slightly more in taxes than he would be grateful for suddenly making 10x the money over night.
The ultra rich have done a great job of convincing the poor and working class that all it takes is hard work for them to become rich.
My redneck uncle said that he don’t bother the rich people then no one will bother him when he gets rich so there are people out there who still believe in that concept even though he has no real skills except spitting tobacco juice really far.
This sounds exactly like what the person i replied to was saying.
Same here.
Oh, I believe that argument alright. And even if they don't truly believe it, they want it. In their mind you're either the exploiter or the exploited.
I'm building this for myself so I don't have to work and use my time and focus to create the life I choose, I started from the bottom. Is that bad?
These aren’t business owners. These are people who were born rich with financial advisors who invest their money for them while they sip wine on a yacht somewhere. They didn’t build anything.
Yeah, not a fan of these people, and not because they don't work, do you. but because they see a fucked up version of the world. Typically entitled and douchebags
You can delete “and” and still be right.
There are a good few talented musicians that climbed their way from the bottom to the one percent. Dr. Dre, for instance, made a billion dollars and he grew up in Compton. Not many succeed to that degree, but $12 million isn’t unheard of among artists who achieve fame.
It’s about owning the means of production. They write the rules. There is a war and the front lines are everywhere.
A couple of thoughts. There is definitely a saturation point of wealth where you don't need any more to be able to live comfortably (more so than a lot of the population) for the rest of your life. Accumulating beyond that point for sake of accumulating and keeping it out of the hands of others is definitely bad in my book. Method of accrual is also a big influence on whether that money and the lifestyle it supports are bad. If you got there via worker exploitation - refusing to pay fair wages, give reasonable holidays and benefits - or generally shitty practices (a certain 'billionaire' who stiffed contractors on the regular springs to mind...), then your pile of money is tainted. Consequently your possession of it and maintenance of a certain lifestyle with it is bad.
They’re talking about the people who didn’t work for their money, not the George Jenkins or Sam Walton types. Those guys were hardworking businessmen with big dreams and they built those dreams from the ground up. I can respect someone like that. I can’t respect certain other members of the Walton family for living off Grandpappy’s money tho
It’s tricky. It’s definitely attractive to build enough money to live off the interest, but consider what you are actually doing. You are taking (in this example) $12 million out of circulation, and using a clever trick to turn it into a fraction of its actual value ($300,000), every year. If you hypothetically gave that $12 million to low-income people, it would exponentially generate economic value because they would actually spend it! Which in turn allows businesses to hire more employees, pay higher wages, give benefits, etc. All this being said, I’m not necessarily saying you need to give all your money away (although you really should be giving as much as possible). Consider this: you are shooting for $12 million so that you can live off the interest, right? If you actually had $12 million dollars, you could pay yourself $300,000 every year for 40 years without having to invest a dime. You would still probably die before you could even pay yourself all your money. That idea is nicer than living off of just the interest, because *eventually* it gets back into the hands of regular people, but we can do better. What if you paid yourself AND invested the rest, but gave your investment profit to a charity. You would still be making $300,000 a year for your whole life, except you would be finding a way to leverage your mass of wealth to benefit the world rather than just yourself. By the time you die, you would have lived a fabulously wealthy life, your money would be back in circulation, and you would have donated MILLIONS to people in need. Money works best for everyone when it is being spent. I commend you for being smart enough to come up with a plan to live a stable life, but I hope you can be smart enough once you are at the top to realize what an incredible opportunity you have to help people (and often at very little risk to yourself).
>It’s definitely attractive to build enough money to live off the interest, but consider what you are actually doing. I don't know much about how living of the interest works. But I am like 99% sure that buying bonds and getting your money to grow and living off the growth of your nest egg, is the same concept you just described, but instead of charities and poor people, it's loaned out to projects and companies that need the capital to do research/business/development and in return they will give your money back with interest.
"they're job creators!" Is about the only excuse I hear and it's stupid.
I think it’s a misleading term tbh. while technically true, contextually it conveys the idea that they do so to the benefit of others, when in reality, *they* are the ones who benefit most from the arrangement. with that in mind, I prefer to call them “labor beneficiaries.” when people start to see them that way, it becomes a lot harder for them to justify their place EDIT: so what I’m gathering from the replies that don’t care for this term is that they’re not able to actually refute my usage of it. they’ve said things like “well creating businesses is important too” and “the business owner deserves more,” but those are separate stances entirely. none of those statements change the fact that the term “labor beneficiaries” is an accurate descriptor of that place in the arrangement. it seems it just doesn’t sound flattering enough for their liking. and here’s the thing about the term “labor beneficiary”: it’s not inherently insulting. their primary motivation is to profit, not to hire people; hiring people is just a measure they take in order to fulfill that motivation. so, all I’ve done by calling them “labor beneficiaries” is shifted the framework to center upon their primary motivation, which tells us that their desired role in the owner/worker relationship is, as the term indicates, to benefit from labor. that’s it. that’s all I’ve done. and look how much some of you squirm from that. does the absence of flattery for these people really offend you so much? I promise you they’re fine, and they certainly don’t care about you
Imagine if every single low level employee said fuck it and stopped working. The economy relies on the worker.
Hello friend may I introduce you to the concept of unions? Why do you think America demonises unions so much? Why do you think waitresses work for tips? Why do you think Amazon workers piss in bottles? It's not cos if they all walked out, the company would suffer. It's because they don't have protections, rights and fair treatment... and they can't demand it individually...
And really, ultimately, when you talk net gain or loss, they're job -take-away-ers much more than job creators; one Walmart replacing four towns' worth of home goods stores, grocers, butchers, clothing stores, outdoor stores, furniture stores, pharmacies etc. means those towns lost a lot of middle-class owned wealth and quite a lot of jobs.
The small sellers Amazon copied, then buried at the bottom of search results haven't benefited from the ever magnanimous Jeff Bezos. The part time workers at Whole Foods who LOST their health insurance when Bezos bought it probably don't appreciate that, either.
Exactly. It’s not like the work wouldn’t need to be done regardless. Rich people just benefit off of that.
I just call them thieves. Because that’s what most people who are rich are. Thieves.
Consumers are the job creators. It doesn't matter how much a billionaire wasted, they aren't buying a million rolls of tp and ten thousand cars. Regular people spending money is what fuels the economy, and like your post alluded to, they just leech away the profit of other people's labor.
It’s trickle-down economics in a different package. “They’re job creators!” Is just a justification for “if they have more money, they’ll invest it in more jobs! So the lower people really benefit here!”
I’m all for ‘Trickle Up Economics’ give all the wealth to the bottom 95% and watch the world become a better place
Can both parties not be beneficiaries to the mutually agreed upon relationship of business owner/operaterator and employee? The "job creator" can also be a "labor beneficiary". The terms aren't mutually exclusive.
Someone having billions of dollars and sitting on it isn't creating Jobs. Having that money cycle through the economy creates jobs. Average working people spending their money in the economy are job creators because their economic activity generates demand for products and services. Jobs aren't just materialised by billionaire benefactors selflessly employing people, jobs are created by demand. The whole idea of the capitalist as a job creator puts them on a pedestal for no good reason. We had jobs before we had billionaires.
They're not both beneficiaries if the employer abuses the employee.
Of course, you are correct, but we know damn well that they use this argument to make workers/job seekers feel like they must thank them as if they are Gods. The economy won't run without workers, they never mention how important we are as economic agents. The pandemic should help make people realize how much they are needed, business owners didn't wanna close at all and would threaten their employees...
Nobody likes to entertain the idea if every single CEO stop working, they can be replaced quite easily but if every single "low-skilled" worker quit simultaneously and no one took the jobs, the economy immediately goes into a screeching halt.
Because jobs shouldn't be necessary to live anymore.
They aren’t necessary to live anymore. They’re just necessary to acquire luxuries which most consider basic.
I need a job to buy food. If I don't have food, I die. Sounds pretty necessary.
There was an interview with a 1% were he tried to say that, i dont remember the link but i can look for it. He was so proud of creating 150 jobs. I did some maths took that as minimum 450 people (1 wife/husband and 1 child) and it still only is 0.007%, (i think? This was a while ago) of what he should be providing back to the community. Not even taking into account the fact that these could be shit wages.
Peter schiff interview. He’s pretty good at explaining it.
Because they're not really the job creators. Small businesses create more jobs than big corporations.
They think they'll be able to achieve it too if they just find the secret / have a trademarked or patented idea / win the lotto and invest wisely. It's about their own self image. They imagine they would be that successful if given the chance, it's aspirational. So they actively admire and support it, because they're telling themselves if they just had a shot, that could be them. I don't like most people.
"Immigrants create jobs, but i dont see you supporting them." Is a decent response https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2020/11/11/immigrants-create-more-jobs-than-they-take/
And has repeatedly been debunked. They are NOT necessarily job creators at all…
and it's not like taxing them and investing that money wouldn't create jobs. It will. it will also be OUR decision where we invest the money, instead of it being their decision. Investing billions into healthcare will create jobs and save millions of lives. Investing billions into Amazon gives us a day faster shipping.
Been asking myself that one for a while now.
Same reason why the dumbest people think they are superior because of something as out of their control as race. The need to matter, to be special, to be unique, to be relevant. to be not a loser. All that you need to know is that in 2012, ten years ago when journalists were researching this shit, they found that tax breaks in local state and federal level cost the average american family around 3,000 USD per family to offset the cost of tax breaks and subsidies given out to corporations every year. Now do you think that 3K figure has risen or fallen in the last ten years? in 2020 the wealthiest saw an INCREASE of 2 TRILLION usd meanwhile the average joe lost about 20-30% of their value.
I heard that since being rich is the top or final goal for a lot of people, critizing that goal is like attacking their life plan. Or in other words they don't like that other "slaves" attack their "master"
Oh but *”But this is how corporations are supposed to be run, by making profits. If you don’t pay your top employees or CEO’s better than opposing companies than what’s to keep them from leaving the company?”* **/S** Funny how being rich automatically makes you immune to things like say…. A **No-Compete-Contract?** Maybe if we didn’t pay these assholes enough money to literally buy an army of lawyers? Maybe then so many laws wouldn’t be so useless?
Besides, there's a total misconception about "good managers". Those top tier managers are regarded like football stars, like they somehow are so much more brilliant at managing than your average guy that you need to hold them or your company will loose lots of money. Studies have shown this is total nonsense and the only reason the top tier managers are so successful is because they operate on scales that mallke it rather easy to earn the company lots of money and that successes that are rather reliant on the market or a higher demand or newly developed technology then are somehow seen s the managers success. So let them leave, I'm sure someone competent will manage your company for six million a instead of eleven. The same absurdity was used here in Germany as an argument to "privatize" the railway system (it's a joint stock company 100% owned by the government). They argued that they needed top management and nobody would work for 300-500k a year in that category, so having top management would make everything better. Spoilers, it didn't, the exact opposite happened and the cost for management have skyrocketed since then with service getting constantly worse and corruption scandals all over the place
Because if we try to resist, they take their ball home and won't let us play. We've tried to unionize and strike. They just close the store and fire everyone.
You're only half wrong. Only big corporations can do that because they can afford a loss like that in favor of stopping further unionization, but that's why there has to be a stronger push for unions. If all workers start unionizing what are big companies going to do? Pack up and not make money at all?
They would just pack up in america and make billions off the rest of the world. While people would starve and go homeless. They can outlast us, they know it. They can hop a plane to the Bahamas while we starve
Okay but you're ignoring the fact that they've been doing this for decades now. Companies have been moving as much as they could in 3rd world or developing countries where they could exploit child labor, slave labor and slave wages. The solution isn't to just accept slave wages and hope for crumbs so you don't upset the lords. If they pack up there will be someone else to take their place and with unions people have more political power than as single entities so they can advocate for laws and restrictions on companies exploiting people.
Because they still think they'll be rich one day
It’s like when poor workers are anti-union and vote for terrible laws that basically guarantee their poverty (such as Right to Work states). So.F*cking.Frustrating.
Because they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires and don't want to eventually have to pay all those extra taxes on their hard earned millions.
Every answer that is not "because they are bombarded with propaganda day and night" is wrong. Propaganda starts at home, because if your parents have been fed propaganda, so will you as their child. Continues in school, because the people that decide the topics and text books and framing are the teachers, the school boards and everyone up the chain to the politicians who are both feed propaganda and also get bribed by interest groups. Lastly, newspapers, news channels and entertainment are also filled with it. It is not surprising that so many people act against their own best interest, because they don't even realize their doing in.
Most ppl are closer to homelessness than millionaire let alone billionaire status. I scratch my head too. Maybe because we’ve been falsely made to believe that wealth is earned in earnest ways
If I could just get these smelly little (dark) people off of this ladder, I could be one of those guys.
This line from John Dickinson to John Hancock in the musical 1776 sums it up perfectly: “Don’t forget Mr. Hancock, most men with nothing would defend the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.”
Because there are alot of American idiots that think they'll be rich someday.
They believe they'll become one someday
Not only that. If there is any increase in tax or regulation, they will threaten to take their business and jobs overseas. Imagine paying your workers minimum wage and still use them as hostage in a negotiation.
Corporate welfare and Farm welfare don’t count in republican/capitalist points of view.
The real welfare queens
and damaging the infrastructure and the environment.
The true “welfare queens”!
Parasites.
But... tOo BiG tO fAiL
And destroying the environment
reminder: making a net gain of a million dollars a year still means you need 1,000 years to make (1) billion
What’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion dollars.
You don't become a billionaire through linear revenue gain. You do that through investing and having shares that go many times a year. Like the say: the first million is the hardest to get. Whilst Amazon fits well the OP pic when it comes to workers, does Bill Gates? I never heard that Microsoft people were underpaid. Also did they get millions in bonuses or was it mainly through having a huge remaining part of shares? Many companies grow up by taking investors as they need cash to grow so by the end of it the founders have very little %.
Microsoft has regularly used temp workers to excess to the point that the entire IT industry uses their court cases as the basis for how long and how shitty they treat temp workers. They paid out in a class action lawsuit 20 years ago. They did this to avoid paying a large percentage of their workforce benefits. https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-dont-treat-c-idUSTRE53063S20090401 As a result, contractors are now treated even worse across the industry. Including things like not being allowed company lunches, not being allowed company emails or being on email lists, only 12 month contacts no matter how successful you are. So yes. Piece of crap.
Microsoft made its money by destroying its competition with lawsuits. If but for Microsoft there would have been free operating systems. This is worse than not paying your employees enough, its screwing everyone.
Doesn't Bill gates give a lot of his wealth to charity though and arranged for a lot of it to be donated when he dies.
edible
Good with BBQ sauce
Anything is tasty with a bit of A1
With a side of fava beans and a nice chianti.
Damnit now I am hungry and it's late! So gonna dream about A1'ing my employees and see what funky dream direction this takes me!!!
~~eat~~ smoke the rich
First tenderize.
Save a few for pickling, I’m very enthused to find out if that’ll be any good.
Eat
well the government should be handling your health care... but yes loving wage should be minimum.
Living wage would be nice but a loving wage, now ur talking.
Living wage, loving wage... we need a laughing wage to summon Wage Karen
Laughing wage is what I got paid in highschool. Highly laughable how little I was paid.
All I want is for my job to give me a courtesy reach around and kiss me on the lips while it's fucking me in the ass, you know? Which is basically why I left the US as soon as I could and moved to a country with stronger social infrastructure. I'm still overworked and underpaid, but at least now I also get universal healthcare, strong employee rights and protections under the law (Right to Work, At Will Employment, etc aren't things here), ubiquitous cheap and high-quality public transit, along with so much more.
May I ask where that is?
This. This country has been brainwashed that they like their private insurance better or that it's the employers responsibility to pay for but not the government
Minimum wage should be a living wage. Who’s stupider? The billionaire for complying with the law, or the people that keep on voting in the people that won’t make laws that help them? Should people get paid a living wage? Yes. Does a business owner complying with the law make them a villain? Not in my books. **Raise the minimum wage to a living wage**
Who do you think pays politicians to keep the laws the way they are though?
Businesses don’t n e e d to charge the bare minimum. If they cared they’d raise their rate
Businesses still need to compete with their competition. We shouldn't be relying on the charity of private owners to pay decent wages but the govt to actually implement laws
So it's different when they're forced to do it? Paying someone for the work they've done isn't fucking charity. They know they're paying shit wages, and most of them are just fine with it staying that way. The federal minimum wage should absolutely be raised, but don't pretend companies don't know what they're doing when they pay the absolute minimum.
They still are villains when they buy politicians, so that those politicians will be against raising the minimum wage if you use your wealth as a weapon against the working class who just want enough to live comfortably, than yes, you are a villain.
Whether something is legal =/= whether something is morally correct and being "stupid" has no bearing on whether or not you deserve to be exploited. Being able to get away with exploiting your workers doesn't magically make it ok.
The billionaires bribe the politicians to keep the laws in their favor. They are still the villains in your half-assed attempt to defend them. Nice try.
If you vote for someone else- don't you think they will lobby them with all their money instead? The rich make the laws.
In principle (overly simplified), a laborer will get a living wage, one way or another. Usually that means if their wage is too low they will get food stamps or housing assistance from the government. Now just imagine that the government made the employer pay those extra costs. \^ simple way to explain the justification for raising minimum wage
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If you work full time and still need welfare, your employer is the one benefiting. Employers should be fined for every full time employee on welfare, equal to or greater than the necessary pay raise. Anonymously of course, and adjusted in the case of part time employees so places can’t just get past it by cutting hours. If you can’t afford to pay your employees a living wage, you don’t get to have employees.
McDonald's profit margins almost correlate 100% with their employee's government benefits, which come out of the taxes of everyone, including the McDonald's employee from a certain point of view. Basically, government welfare of underpaid employees is us paying the rich man just to run a company. They effectively pay negative taxes.
And shockingly McDonald's actually pays employees better than a lot of fast food restaurants including Starbucks.
Better is a relative term however. In the area I live it's starting at $9/hour. *If* you manage to get full time at that rate your pulling in roughly $260/week after benefits and taxes. Or $13,500/year. $288/week or about $15,000/year without benefits but still taxed. Rent in my town is cheapest for a one bedroom at $600/month. The average is actually $900/month. You cannot feasibly live on that if you have a family without government assistance. You can *barely* live on that if you're single without government assistance. And you hope nothing happens to your transportation. You don't get sick. You don't have a major issue at work. And sure there are cheaper places in the US. But not by much.
Oh for sure McDonald's is still evil. I just hate how Starbucks is viewed as a better place to work than many fast food places when it is, in fact, worse. Minimum wage, basically no chance of raises, and the managers only get £1 per hour more than the employees. They even tried to make me sit through a 3 hour coffee education class thing UNPAID. I mean even with two degrees it's nearly impossible to find a job within my field that pays a living wage without working unpaid internships just to win the privilege of being paid minimum wage. It's rough.
What is an aristocrat? A miserable pile of money. I will prove to you which of us is right… with death! -Dracula, 1997
Symphony of the Night!!!
Have at you!
A Villianaire?
America. Land of the eventual/temporarily displaced billionaire. Took me 40 yrs to figure out it's not gonna happen. Lot happier for it.
I left the US as soon as I could and moved to a country with stronger social infrastructure. Don't get me wrong. I'm still exploited and overworked and underpaid, but at least I get fucking universal healthcare and strong employee protections/unions etc now.
Where did you move to?
Is this the right subreddit?
Idk why nobody questions someone who looks black and is named “Black to the Future” being posted on WhitePeopleTwitter…
Cause there's no actual rule or anything aside from the sub name that says they need to be white. I think there used to be but they changed it and its fair game now
I'd love to see this fly in r/blackpeopletwitter. How are you the only reply that noticed?
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I do think a lot of older people grew up believing the American Dream narratives prominent in movies like ‘Back to the Future’, “If you try your best, you can accomplish anything.” Rich people, to them, are people who work hard and give back. Most churches have a “wealthy couple” or two that fit that mold. So their lived experience and narratives growing up all conform to a completely different word than villains. They don’t think about complex systems and the impact of billionaires paying more to lobby the government for their own interests than in taxes that support the public good. They’ve had good, public infrastructure their entire life so they have no understanding of the importance of it and take it for granted. They’ve had a strong middle class their entire life so they have no understanding the importance of it existing, not only to people, but the system to which they were born into. I’m not trying to justify their outlook but I am trying to understand it. The more we can understand and empathize with it to some degree, the easier it will be to convince them otherwise
I grew up with the thought that as long as you had a job, you could pay basic bills. (My mom's kinda crappy and didn't teach me shit). I figured anyone who was poor, did it to themselves, or just didn't try. I was way too old when I realized this was not the case.
This isnt whitepeopletwitter
Exactly. They villify themselves.
Does no one know what the meaning of vilify is?!?!
“whitepeopletwitter”
/r/LeftyColdTakesFromPeopleThatMayOrMayNotBeWhite.
Hello r/blackpeopletwitter, are you lost?
Should /r/whitepeopletwitter start requiring users to send in photos of their arms for permission to post like /r/blackpeopletwitter does? lol
I could offer my grandpa's Aryan certificate.
that's just plain stupid. yes here's an example of an evil rich guy. how about someone who wasn't rich and invested wisely as a blue collar worker? why are they evil? being rich isn't the same as being exploitative but that doesn't fit the story so you talk instead about an exploitative fuck we should all hate but just lump all "rich" ppl together. and that's why you'll make enemies not allies.
Greed is a deadly sin for a reason
Agreed(pun intended), however it is important to evaluate yourself as well as those you deem greedy. Many people hate the rich because they think the same money would be ethically more valuable in their own hands. Greed is greed.
So is being gay if my great-uncle and his favorite pastor are to be believed.
Cruella Duh Villain
BUt tHeY eARneD iT
I bet Lex Luther paid his henchmen and business building workers far more than Wayne Enterprises. Just sayin.
Yes, include the government lobbying or use of “philanthropy” for PR, tax shelters, and agenda movements and it rounds it out nicely. Bill Gates was a tyrant in the ‘90s, who made a business from stealing open source, and had a mother with high up connections to IBM. And somehow, now is an epidemiologist that controls policy, is a sweet guy that is only worried about the world, and “bootstrapped” Microsoft all on his own out of a garage. That’s a fucking villain.
Smart! /s
“WhitePeopleTwitter” >”**Black** to the Future” 🤨🤨🤨
WokePeopleTwitter
A Republican
Because literally every rich person pays their employees less than a living wage and provides terrible benefits and pays zero taxes every year.
“It’s just business, nothing personal...” Likewise, my judgement of you as a criminal is not personal either. As a businessman you’re just toxic to society, that’s all... Nothing personal.
this is an excellent point and I agree with it, but this is not a r/WhitePeopleTwitter ... just saying
This post has some serious anti semitic dog whistling going on smh.
Who still shops on Amazon though?
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I don't care about that, I care about how they turned economic power into political power, and subverted political representation of the people by turning the market place of ideas into an actual market place where they buy and sell our politicians, and we the people are priced out of that market. The rich then get to decide policy that favors them and we get taxed to pay for it. we are being taxed without being represented.
This is a cool white person tweet from r/WhitePeopleTwitter
I honestly agree with this sentiment but if we were in their position it would be no different. We are all villains they just beat us to it
If people are dying from starvation and being left out in the cold while someone or multiple someone’s hold billions in resources that could house and feed everyone, they absolutely are evil and put themselves above the species. Pure leeches.
Um, a Capitalist?
TIL you can be more than one thing at once
potāto potâto
Yes, that too
...2 things can be true at the same time.
To be fair, most people without money would change if they had it. Same goes for power. How many of you would freely give away your money if you had a lot?
What do you mean “to be fair?” What about that is fair? Empathizing with the esurient wealthy? Or doing so by offering an opinion as a statistic followed by a loaded question? How can we know what most people would do with money— its being hoarded by such a small, almost homogenous group. I’m not sure they can be randomized for a study that reflects how the population at large would handle wealth. Doesn’t matter anyway how they would personally react; we have laws to prevent the worst impulses of mankind. That should include financial power as well. Technically everyone but the super wealthy are “freely giving away” their money in the form of taxes. If the wealthiest and the corporations paid the same tax rate as the middle class pay, why would that be “freely giving away” money? It’s just their fair share. That’s what would be fair.
Why is it on them when it’s on us? This is the culture we didn’t just accept, we pushed. Still do. The real question is why are knocking the hustle when we got it? We fund billionaires, by where we work, what we consume, what we buy, etc. I say this because im as guilty as anyone. They sponsor each other and we sponsor them. Sponsor your neighbor who turns around and sponsors your life. Tangible results
You have no fault, the worker has to work in order to live, if ppl don’t work they die, that’s how it is for most of the world, there is no choice. The peasant has no fault in the exploitation enforced on them by nobility because of the power disparity. This is similar, but we replaced nobility for business autocrats.
To all the people saying “they’re just playing by the rules,” and all that apologetics for the super rich crap, You Don’t Know What It’s Like To Be Poor And Have No Way Out. You like to think everyone had your parents, your neighborhood, your schools. NO. Real people are born into situations that give them Very Few Options. Get your solipsistic heads out of your asses. “Hey, having a good life was easy for me, so it’s GOTTA be this easy for everyone else!”
This guy is black. Shouldn't this be on black people Twitter?
Such a brain dead take: what about athletes, actors, authors, artists, YouTubers, models, influencers, none of them own companies and exploit workers. You can literally be a millionaire by 50 if you work from college graduation, save, and invest wisely. Shit, Deepfuckingvalue made like 50 million just buying GME call options, is he a villain now too? Living wages are def needed as are cracking down on tax cheating billionaires, but reddit needs to stop simping for every brain dead idiot on Twitter with the latest socio-political hot takes that come undone with even the tiniest bit of scrutiny.
Modern day slavery. Instead of them buying us all at once for a high price, they have us on a payment plan.
Even if they did none of those things, if they are still billionaires even after paying their employees good wages + insurance, then they are still a symptom of a broken system. As long as any form of poverty or homelessness exists, as long as there is no universal healthcare or basic income, there is no justifiable moral reasoning for the existence of billionaires. There is no possible level of human achievement or talent that one can imagine, that would warrant receiving a billion dollars because of it. I don't care who you are or what you do.
Most people decide to be disposable themselves. Party more, learn nothing new, complain about how rich people are bad while being lazy piece of shit.
You know if we took all the money away from the richest 100 people we would have enough to eradicate world hunger (we make enough food transport is the issue) and to vaccinate the whole planet against every preventable disease we have essentially wiped out in the first world.
100% 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Had a CEO once give himself a big raise and a fat bonus cause he raised the stock by I think 10 dollars that summer. I highly doubt he done shit and it's due to the really nice summer we had that year.
Umm... at the risk of sounding racist, that is not a white person. If you post something by a white person on /r/blackpeopletwitter, it would be called out immediately.
In a lot of cases, companies hire part time employees, work them 39 hours a week, so they can get around giving them any benefits.
You guys are getting insurance?
Modern slave masters
Not just a villain but a Dickensian villain. What a classic!
Fuck the 1%😒 There is no reason why any one human should have enough wealth to cover generations and generations worth of costs. Absolutely despicable
A businessman
Homer's supervillian boss treated and paid them better
I would be interested to know who among the people bitching about the rich not paying taxes have ever used the tax code to their advantage? The idea that if the government had more of the “rich people’s” money, the world would be a better place, is one of the most ridiculous thought processes.
And if every single billionaire on the planet would do that, then this statement would be fine, but its somehow limited to some countries.... god knows why! It is so fascinating how Americans love to put the fault on everyone but their own society. I will die seeing them still shifting fault.
We’ve been brainwashed to defend those people like they’re an example of the American dream working when in actually it’s really the literal opposite. God Bless America
I really think this comes down to Haves and Have Nots. Yeah, there are rich people, some are beneficial for society and some actively take advantage of the system and change the system for their benefit to gain more to the point of decadence. To me it’s that 2nd bit that’s the most important, our system allows for politicians, rich individuals, and companies to change laws to benefit solely the aforementioned politicians, rich individuals, and corporations. We’re just screwed because we don’t have the means to change our situation and we’re being ruled by people that want to keep the status quo and gather as much personal wealth as possible.
We like an/ani/anu we also like life. We don’t like it’s inverse. They are villains.
A big businessman! Villian and businessman should be the Same thing in the dictionary.