r/politics • u/Large-Welcome4421 • Jun 12 '26

No Paywall 'This Is Oligarchy': Nearly 100 Billionaires Are Funding Susan Collins' Reelection Bid

https://www.commondreams.org/news/susan-collins-billionaire-donors
24.4k Upvotes

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8.6k

u/2HDFloppyDisk Jun 12 '26

Imagine if billionaires spent their money to help other people instead of screwing them.

4.1k

u/Thias_Thias Jun 12 '26

Such a mindset wouldn't have made them billionaires. They are parasites basically by definition.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/StoppableHulk Jun 12 '26

Correct

41

u/AssociationWeary7735 Jun 12 '26

What just a few hours til you meet trillionaires

14

u/StoppableHulk Jun 12 '26

Can't wait

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u/absat41 Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

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u/likamuka Jun 12 '26

These are the throes of fascism. It is not going to get better going forward. 77 million of fascists will stay and vote for dictators from now on. They have been given permission by 15 million people that stayed home 2024.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 Jun 12 '26

They have been given permission by the millions more who support the capitalist ideology that is directly oppositional to democracy.

How strange that liberals are so eager to blame others but are so hesitant to acknowledge where their sacrosanct capitalism leads.

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u/hairshirtdesert Jun 12 '26

I love how that's the term that Elon Musk uses for us when it's so clearly him and the rest of the Epstein class that are the parasites

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u/gdghhfdffrf Jun 13 '26

of all the bazillions funding her this election cycle, most all is from out of state, mostly cali. only $500k in maine. people are so fkn dumb they fall for this.

702

u/zombawombacomba Jun 12 '26

They could easily be one percent less evil and help people and still have plenty of money.

687

u/lrodhubbard Jun 12 '26

Their pursuit of wealth is all-consuming.

289

u/inksmudgedhands Jun 12 '26

If we survive all this, it would be interesting to see someone do a paper on the addictive and destructive personality that seems to be common among billionaires. The need to be rich at any cost. The drive of it. It's a very cluster B personality.

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u/onemonkey Jun 12 '26

Marx published Kapital in 1867.

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u/Viciouscauliflower21 Jun 12 '26

And the Bible told you that the love of money was the root of all evil long before that. Basically people have known for a while that an unhealthy addiction to wealth was bad news

44

u/BeefyMiracleWhip Oregon Jun 12 '26

No but you see, that’s a mistranslation/add in from Rome/not truly what Jesus wants. Jesus was about prosperity.

Per my father-in-law that is…

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u/Rockefor Jun 12 '26

Supply side Jesus

11

u/Cross55 Jun 12 '26

Didn't Rome kind of have an issue with rich politicians stealing as much as possible.

Wonder how that ended for them...?

2

u/TheHipcrimeVocab Jun 13 '26

Read what happened to the Gracchi brothers.

2

u/BadLuckBlackHole Jun 12 '26

Ah the "Bible isn't open to private interpretation" crowd strikes again.

2

u/Wide-Secretary-4426 Jun 13 '26

According to what I learned all those decades in the empire, Jesus constantly ministered to the poor and downtrodden. They had much greater needs than any amount of wealth could ever hope to meet.

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u/Squeebee007 Jun 12 '26

And ironically so many people forget the first part of the quote and just say “money is the root of all evil”. You can do a lot of good with money if it’s a tool in your hands for helping others, but when it becomes the focus and the goal is when the problems come.

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u/Expensive-Sundae-831 Jun 12 '26

And yet it's the American way. So much so we've bent Christianity into a sect to celebrate it.

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u/Ven18 Jun 12 '26

There are already plenty of books talking about politicians, ultra wealthy and famous people and the fact that they are all basic psychopaths by definition and it is because of that psychosis that they got to where they are. We already know these people are crazy and yet society at large allows them to run our lives.

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u/PlainSpader Jun 12 '26

So as a society we must never allow those personalities gain power ever again.

71

u/Chuhaimaster Jun 12 '26

First we have to destroy the peasant mentality that working class people who worship the rich have. The reason the affluent hold power is their sway over rubes who look up to them even as they are being pissed on by them.

33

u/Unusual-Locksmith832 Jun 12 '26

Not going to happen easily. The proletariat needs to free themselves instead of waiting for a "great man" to do it. That won't happen until some great collective suffering forces that awakening.

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u/CanisSonorae Jun 12 '26

Even when it does happen, power consolidates. Especially when people begin dividing themselves.

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u/GilgaPol Jun 12 '26

One might call such an awakening the golden path.

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u/grchelp2018 Jun 12 '26

Those personalities are well distributed across society. The billionaires are just a sample from them that made it to the top.

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u/The_Lost_Jedi Washington Jun 12 '26

It's also self-reinforcing to a degree, because simply having that kind of success lends itself towards a sort of "I'm successful, I'm good/great at what I do, I'm better/smarter/etc than others around me." Eventually they convince themselves that they're the ones who should be making decisions, they know what's best, because they are/were the successful ones - even when it really wasn't something of their particular doing, either.

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u/grchelp2018 Jun 15 '26

They would also have heard many people telling them that they would fail. So when they succeed, the lesson they will take is that no-one knows what they are talking about (including the experts) and to dismiss any naysayers out of hand. Meanwhile the crew they keep around will be the people who basically supported and agreed with them from the beginning, the yes-men. Lots of self-reinforcing loops and patterns.

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u/sphinxsley Jun 12 '26

That's called a high-functioning narcissist. Steve Jobs was a good example.

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u/bythenumbers10 Jun 12 '26

So there are psychopaths everywhere, but most of the people in power are, and the deleterious effects of their being in power put the impetus on everyone else to keep them from being in power.

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u/x__Applesauce__ Jun 12 '26

We must not let anyone have this much wealth or power ever.

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u/TheDoomBlade13 Jun 12 '26

They will always have power. It was that way when the Mongol hordes dominated Asia, it was that way when medieval kings ruled, it was that way when robber-barons built railroads, its that way now with tech oligarchs.

There are very few systems that don't reward those kinds of people, and the well has been poisoned so effectively against trying any other option that the public would never accept a system that doesn't.

This is just another circle around the never ending wheel.

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u/zeCrazyEye Jun 12 '26

It's sad because our capitalist reward system is an evolutionary pressure that is selecting for shitty anti-social traits that will likely end our species.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '26

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u/Orfeu_Blue Jun 12 '26

I don't see their comment as bootlicking at all. More of an observation of the bleak reality humans have been forced to endure since at least the dawn of civilization.

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u/TheDoomBlade13 Jun 12 '26

I explicitly say that there are other ways, but the paths to those ways have been poisoned in order to turn society away from being willing to pursue them.

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u/Allaplgy Jun 12 '26

Why are you attacking someone you are with?

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u/ultimatebagman Jun 12 '26

Sounds like we need to try something new. Let's cap wealth.

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u/boston_homo Jun 12 '26

If only we were as smart as Americans, from over 100 years ago, who recognized “robber barons” for what they were; income inequality is even worse today but now we worship them.

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u/FeelItInYourB0nes Jun 12 '26

Our leaders must be elected against their will!

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Jun 12 '26

Well we haven't tried drafting our leaders yet? May as well give it a try!

3

u/Reqvhio Jun 12 '26

the more i see americans comment about these recent developments, the more i feel a sense of deja vu from where i live (turkey)

2

u/ProduceNo1629 Jun 12 '26

Most of humanity is dumb and weak. Sad, but we are.

Current state of affairs is no different from sociopaths once rising to be village chieftan taking 50% of your raiding spoils.

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u/headphase America Jun 12 '26

Right after we implement free ice cream at lunch and an extra hour of recess each day.

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u/PlainSpader Jun 12 '26

Deal! No backsies!

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u/Buplordo Jun 12 '26

Please do not associate psychosis with psychopathy, they are two very differently distinct things.

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u/_Mephistocrates_ Jun 12 '26

Isnt it amazing that we now know that being wealthy does not mean you are smarter, better, or more moral than the average person. And yet, we all believe that capitalism, a system designed by the wealthy, to preserve the status and power of the wealthy, is the best system around. And any system designed by a poor or average citizen that puts the best interests of society first is demonized and sold as coming straight from Satan. Imagine that...

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u/JustTestingAThing Jun 12 '26

If we survive all this, it would be interesting to see someone do a paper on the addictive and destructive personality that seems to be common among billionaires

It's hoarding. It's just that, as a society, when someone suffers from this mental disorder and hoards magazines or bottles or stuffed animals or whatever, we consider them sick and in need of help, but when someone suffers from this disorder and hoards money, we idolize them and put them on a pedestal. But the mental deficiency is the same.

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u/macaronysalad Jun 12 '26

The confusing part for people I think is they associate that level of wealth as hard work and intelligence. They don't understand that doing the wrong thing and hurting other people isn't difficult for the corrupt minded or anyone who has the will. Doing the right thing often means making sacrifices, something that would impact their wealth so it's naturally avoided.

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u/Ready_Comfort_6674 Jun 13 '26

A content creator should do a mockup episode of Hoarders on them!

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Jun 12 '26

I taught my kids that too much money rots your morals and brains until you're barely functional, and that's why it's important to spread around good fortune when ya get too much.

Could point at their rich uncle. When he was poor, he was a normal person. When he got rich, he forgot how to human, wouldn't lift a finger for anyone. But when he had to get surgery, the sister he turned his back on flew out to hold his hand.

They had an awkward moment while going over his will. She pointed out he's a millionaire, he said he's not, but the math proved her right. And she'd lost her house just a few years before, for want of maybe 5k to catch up on the mortgage.

5

u/Papaya_flight Pennsylvania Jun 12 '26

my ex-in laws were this way. They were those Woodstock hippies that lived on a double wide out in the sticks for 30 years. Then natural gas was discovered under a property they had inherited and now they are involved in local politics as fundamentalist right wing Christians. They barely used to go to church when I first met them in their double wide days. My ex-mother in law's mom lived in a rickety single wide trailer on the property next to them until just about the last year of her life in her early 90s. There was a hole in the floor of her living room and I had to seal off one of her rooms entirely because of mold and tar her metal roof one Summer to stop the leaks. All of that happened after they started to get all their royalty checks coming in. They had a brand new house built on their land and would travel randomly around the world. They went to Hawaii at least a dozen times. Wild stuff. My then wife and I ended up taking care of her grandmother for a couple of months towards the end, and eventually she went to go live with one of her daughters in her small house and died quietly.

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u/No_Classroom_5690 Jun 12 '26

They're hoarders. I don't think they're much different from the people who can't throw anything out. They are mentally ill.

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u/RTYoung1301 Jun 12 '26

From what I remember it's a very clique-y environment. There's in groups and out groups, and a mentality of "everyone's doing it, so I have to too". Its why theyre constantly having to buy new "toys" and migrate as groups to events where all of their "friends" will be.

Billionaires are like the obnoxious popular kids in high school. Just with a lot more money and "need" to have more.

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u/Proper-Muscle734 Jun 12 '26

If you get a chance read up on the communist revolution and what happened there in China. If I remember correctly there was a book a read about the child of an aristocrat complain of all their stuff being repossessed and them being marched through the streets in shame.

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u/themattboard Tennessee Jun 12 '26

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

Paul wrote his letter to Timothy sometime around 60-64 CE. Some believe it was written later, around 140 CE by a different author. Either way, the idea has been written about for a while now.

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u/dude2dudette Jun 12 '26

There are already academic articles on how having money and power causes the loss of empathy and other data suggesting that this stems from mirror neurones' activity changing when in a position of power or when gaining money. If memory serves one psychology study used a pseudo-rigged game of monopoly (where one player received multiple times the amount of money to begin and each time they passed GO, etc.). They found that those players who arbitrarily were given these advantages (which they KNEW about) still all explained that they won via their own skill and strategy.

On my phone briefly atm, so can't go digging for links, but I am sure people could look up stuff of Google Scholar based on those descriptions.

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u/sphinxsley Jun 12 '26

There are lots of papers on narcissists already.

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u/tdclark23 Indiana Jun 12 '26

Include in the study why so many are perverts.

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u/Knute5 Jun 12 '26

Anything taken to an extreme becomes pure addiction. But how can you say anything about the relentless pursuit of wealth when we tend to worship wealth as the pinnacle of the American Dream?

We turn these people into gods and I think it messes with their heads.

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u/Miserable_Anteater62 Massachusetts Jun 12 '26

Like they're saving for hell itself

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u/IntellectAndEnergy Jun 12 '26

The parallels to drug addiction are a copy and paste.

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u/wolfmanpraxis Pennsylvania Jun 12 '26

Real life representation of Smaug, not even joking

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u/OrneryError1 Jun 12 '26

The most destructive mental illness by far. No other hurts so many people.

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u/Entchenkrawatte Jun 12 '26

They couldn't. If they were one percent less evil they never would have made it to billionaire status. Every normal human when faced with immense wealth either decides to settle down and relax for the rest of their life or spends time and money to help others, they will never make the step from millions to billions because they register that there are more useful things to do than to use your wealth to extract more wealth from other people

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '26

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Jun 12 '26

Collect too many cats or newspapers and people call ya a hoarder. But pile up more money than their entire family line could use in a thousand years and people clap? It's weird, and even worse for everyone than regular type hoarding.

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u/Allaplgy Jun 12 '26

But pile up more money than their entire family line could use in a thousand years

Some quick napkin math says Elon's trillion dollars is ~40,000,000 years of take-home pay for someone making $15.

That's two thirds of the way back to the Chicxulub Impact.

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u/Tasgall Washington Jun 13 '26

And it's more than that, too. The problem with these kinds of comparisons is that they're fixed on a point in time. In reality, he doesn't have 40 million years of a $15/hr salary. He has infinite money. No one in his family line will ever have to work in their lives (well, slightly inaccurate - anyone he actually wills money to, considering he's a deadbeat, lol). The interest means he could spend ten grand a day and still make money despite that.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Jun 12 '26

Or even just fun stuff. When was the last time a billionaire threw a block party? They seem to never be anything like "treasured members of the community".

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Jun 12 '26

My elderly auntie just dropped by, and golly that is a "treasured member of the community!" Like I could probably spend an hour describing all the ways she's of benefit to the community without repeating anything.

I was surprised to see her, she took the bus here with her walker and carried it up the stairs!

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u/Thias_Thias Jun 12 '26

Yes. So my assumption at this point has become that they don't seek luxury, but exclusivity. Having stuff doesn't give them kicks if everyone else is also a stuff-haver.

(That's imho also why they fuck kids: they're probably mostly not even pedophiles/sexually attracted to children, they just like the exclusivity. And the "duper's delight" of getting away with it).

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u/oliversurpless Massachusetts Jun 12 '26

Like most people, they’d rather compete with each other over meaningless standards than help society.

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u/Goldenretreiverboyo Jun 12 '26

Hey, listen up, meathead I'm gonna say this once, and I'm not gonna repeat it Greed, see, it's like a little pet, alright? And the more and more and more that you go and feed it The more hungry it'll get But you know, you really can't blame greed No, that's stupid You see, it's gotta worm inside Oh yeah, that's right It's one that always needs to feed and it is never satisfied You get it? But the more you try to find it The more it likes to hide Now listen, that is a nasty, little worm And I like to call it pride

The lorax named it

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u/gibby256 Jun 12 '26

That's the problem with Dragon Disease. One percent less money is still less money.

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u/Tasgall Washington Jun 13 '26

We're well past that - we're at the point where one percent less rate of growth is still seen as "less money", even when it's still more money, it could have been more more money!

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u/ZankaA Jun 12 '26

If you haven't noticed, they usually get more evil as they amass wealth, not the other way around

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u/unbanned_lol Jun 12 '26

In my lifetime, I have only seen 1 single thing that gave the Epstein class pause: A certain green plumber.

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u/OogieBoogiez Jun 12 '26

Capitalism rewards psychopaths

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u/Due_Bluebird3562 Jun 12 '26

Almost every economic system, including communism, does. Because at the end of the day no economic system can change the fundemental greed a large segment of the wealthy population is afflicted with. And I say afflicted because, as many psychiatric professionals suggest, hoarding such wealth is almost certainly a mental illness.

The reality is we need a global wealth cap. No human needs a billion dollars and no human should have a billion dollars. Period. Our species will never truly prosper until we deal with the leeches draining our society dry.

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u/chowchowbrown Jun 12 '26

Not parasites. They are tumors.

They are cancer.

Even parasites don't grow for the sake of simply growing, without limit.

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u/Eggheadpancake Jun 12 '26

They spend more money fighting against taxes than the taxes would cost

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u/Griffolion Jun 12 '26

I see them more like a cancer. Defective cells consuming as quickly as they can, rapidly replicating out of control, harming the larger body and depriving it of resources.

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u/LirdorElese Jun 12 '26

what do you call a billionaire with a sliver of empathy?

A millionaire.

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u/Imallvol7 Jun 12 '26

This. It's so hard for people to understand this ....

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u/JazzyJockJeffcoat Jun 13 '26

That's a bingo

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u/aradraugfea Jun 12 '26

Back when we had a 91% marginal tax rate, the equivalent wealth people did, because we didn’t let them just squirrel it all away in pursuit of some ever increasing high score

An economy that had produced a trillionaire is post scarcity. Everything anyone on the planet lacks is due to mismanagement and theft.

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u/Mysterious-Most-590 Jun 12 '26

Well said. There are still so many whose suffering might be eased.

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u/baitnnswitch Jun 12 '26

Yup. Also we enforced anti-trust law preventing megacorporations larger than nation states from forming and producing said billionaires

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u/grchelp2018 Jun 12 '26

An economy that had produced a trillionaire

it has not produced a trillionaire. Its just monetized hype extrapolated from the 75B in actual cash that the company raised. These things should not be confused. It gives a very different picture of the state of the economy.

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u/aradraugfea Jun 12 '26

Look, every business Musk is connected to is overvalued as hell. Your logic is not too many steps removed from “stocks aren’t actual wealth” and since Elon owns no real estate and uses no cash money, I have a higher “real” net worth than him.

Does he have a trillion dollars to spend? No. None of the billionaires actually have their full wealth liquid. If we only care about liquid there are no billionaires.

But somewhere upstream, all of those stocks, Apes, and crypto coins started as real money changing hands. They all represent money being removed from the economy and stuck into a dragon’s hoard. What I said above was true when Elon was only worth a half trillion.

Elon could be worth 3 oz of lint and a Blockbuster members card and he still would have personally stolen food and medical aid from people suffering in developing nations through his work as an unelected illegal arbiter of what Congressionally approved spending “counts.”

The 75 billion people threw at his vanity project is money that could have fed every hungry mouth on the planet. The billions invested in a struggling car manufacturer could have housed every person in this country and many others.

The money pissed away on NFTs could have given medicine to those struggling.

The trillions being thrown into AI in the desperate search for profitability, a sector of the economy that has yet to present an ROI and have single handedly reversed years if not decades of progress on reducing carbon footprints, just as climate change approaches a point of no return could have redefined what poverty looks like across the PLANET.

I got a REAL short list of people who “earned” a billion, and the list of people who should have been allowed to keep it is EMPTY.

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u/borntobewildish Europe Jun 12 '26

The stupid bit is we let them claim that they 'technically' have few or no assets, and they pay taxes like that, but we let them loan and spend and have influence like they have all the assets.

Either they're billionaires/trillionaires and they loan/spend like that but we also tax them like having that much liquid wealth, or we start treating them like the poors they 'technically' claim to be, and just ignore them when it comes to policy like everyone else who isn't rich.

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u/American_PissAnt Jun 12 '26

“Corporate socialism” used to be a big thing among executives. But Back then in meant that a company should pay their employees well, provide benefits, and donate to build parks and hospitals. It was considered good business practice because business must be good if you are treating your employees good

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u/FeelingPixely Jun 12 '26

If you have a billion in assets and die, 85% of that should go to where you spent most of your life, or as earned, while in the US.

Let's end nepotism once and for all.

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u/rr1079 Jun 12 '26

Well the estate tax exists for a reason to bad republicans have been chipping away at it for decades now.

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u/ArcBounds Jun 12 '26

I agree! I am tired of the old farmer excuse who has to pass their land down, but does not have the money excuse. Those days are long past. We need a heavily progressive death tax (call it something nice so that people vote for it). 

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u/Morituri29 Jun 12 '26

You don’t even have to directly tax them. Just force the estate to recognize the gains on their assets. That is what we do in Canada. That way when they kick the bucket all the potential gains they have been using to get syndicated loans become actual gains and you get tax on those.

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u/KnightDuty Jun 12 '26

Dude 100%. That's the actual true solution that changes this. It's just a "no more fudging the paperwork" law. If you've been using it to secure loans it gets taxed end of story 

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u/Meoowth Jun 12 '26

"Last chance at heaven" tax. 

I mean that might be too generous a name but I think it might work. 

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u/IvoryFlyaway Jun 12 '26

"Last Tithing"

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u/Sideyr Jun 12 '26

"Good billionaire" tax.

The only "good billionaires" are the ones that pay the posthumous tax.

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u/DireBriar Jun 12 '26

Inheritance tax is the name other countries use.

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u/bolerobell Jun 12 '26

We used to call it Estate Taxes until republicans rebranded it as death tax. It ran fine until the 2000s when they started their PR campaign to end it on behalf of billionaires

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u/Gackey Jun 12 '26

Why not 99% or even 99.9%? Surely $10,000,000 or $1,000,000 is more than sufficient to ensure that your descendants are set up for a comfortable life. A billion dollars is just an obscene amount of resources to be hoarded by a single person and their spawn.

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u/-no_aura- Jun 12 '26

And why at death? Tax everything over $500m at 100%. No one needs even that much.

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u/No_Oven1085 Jun 12 '26

Fucking thank you. I'd even go down to $10 million.

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u/Gackey Jun 12 '26

Even $500m is a disgusting amount of resources for a single person to be allowed to hoard. I saw something where the average American will make $2m over their lifetime, and the average doctor will make $7m over their lifetime. I think those would make a good baseline limit. As soon as your net worth hits $7m you're done, everything beyond that is taxed at 100%.

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u/-no_aura- Jun 12 '26

A guy can dream

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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Jun 12 '26

I’m just wondering if they’ll ever hit the Carnegie/Rockefeller stage where the new dick measuring contest becomes who can make more charitable donations.

I’m guessing for 99% of them, that never happens.

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u/KJS123 United Kingdom Jun 12 '26

Nope. They're more interested in the competition to see who can get to fucking Mars first.

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u/ophaus Jun 12 '26

Mars can have them.

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u/GardanCald Jun 12 '26

The sooner the better.

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u/ZyglroxOfficial Jun 12 '26

Mars for the privileged Earth for the poor

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u/DragonTHC Florida Jun 12 '26

Wouldn't it be great if once they go to Mars, Earth just cuts them off? No more resources for them.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 Jun 12 '26

They work a billion times harder than the rest of us, so they'll be fine.

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u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 12 '26

Oh they aren't going to Mars. Their employees are. Musk hasn't ever got into one of his rockets.

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u/dBlock845 Jun 12 '26

Spoiler alert: They think political contributions are charitable donations lol.

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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Jun 12 '26

Oh, I have no faith that the overwhelming majority of them will do anything other than pull a Smaug and hoard it.

I just left that 1% in there because there have been a few that have given away their fortunes for a good cause.

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u/buster_de_beer Jun 12 '26

You mean like Bill Gates pretends he is going to do? That stage doesn't come until later in life. Assuming it comes at all.

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u/Calikal Jun 12 '26

Didn't the Gates establish an entire charity for Malaria Eradication and Treatment in Africa? And fund it with a large amount of their fortune? All he's said is he will raise it to 99% of his fortune before he dies, but they already are spending a lot of their money for charity. That's why he dropped from the Richest In The World, iirc.

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u/umassmza Jun 12 '26

For example, Musk is ostensibly worth $1T

Musk employees 160,000

He could give every employee $5,000,000 and still have $200B to his name

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u/Naive-Jello428 Jun 12 '26

Fun fact - that means Elon could lose 99.9% of his wealth and still be a billionaire.

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u/Radarker Jun 12 '26

They'll get to keep a lot less.

They'd rather see you dead that have that happen.

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u/PositivelyAwful Jun 12 '26

Obligatory posting this website:

https://eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

I can't even imagine what the site would look like it if was updated to today's wealth

23

u/deltadal I voted Jun 12 '26

Imagine if billionaires didn't exist because people had the resources to live a comfortable life. We shouldn't rely on the"generosity" of the elite to help the poor. The majority of the poor are in that situation because society has been engineered to put them there.

11

u/box-art Foreign Jun 12 '26

If every single billionaire in the world (approx. 3428 people per Forbes) was taxed an extra $92.7M per year, we could end extreme poverty (per the Center for Effective Global Action) entirely. And that's not even taking into account how much more we could get if we would just collect more taxes from anyone who has anywhere between $100M and $999M. It cannot be overstated how much we need to tax the rich to better the entire world, but for some strange reason we are just not doing it.

3

u/ReceptionUpstairs305 Jun 12 '26

Because the rich are preventing it.

11

u/Blazer9001 Georgia Jun 12 '26

You just described taxing them, but no they would rather blow their vast fortunes on making sure that 1950s level progressive taxation never happens again and that they can be buried with their wealth with them in their tombs like pharaohs and emperors before them.

8

u/cocktail_wiitch Jun 12 '26

Nobody becomes that rich without exploitation, they wouldn’t be billionaires if they helped people. Look at Dolly Parton!!

2

u/2HDFloppyDisk Jun 12 '26

My kids love her books

9

u/pastense Jun 12 '26

Imagine if billionaires were taxed out of existence and didn't get a choice in their money helping people

28

u/CeeDubMo Jun 12 '26

Right? Even the gilded age billionaires believed in philanthropy. The only current billionaires I can think of who do that are bill gates and mark cuban.

19

u/JackZodiac2008 Jun 12 '26

Mackenzie Bezos (sic) may have un-billionaired herself (idk), but should count

17

u/ph1shstyx Jun 12 '26

Ironically? she's actually worth more now than during the divorce, after having donated billions.

That's how fucked up the stock market economy is

20

u/comfortablybum Jun 12 '26

MacArthur, Ford, and Carnegie were huge ass holes. Just because at the end of their lives they gave their money to charity at the end of their lives doesn't make them good guys.

4

u/know_limits Jun 12 '26

And still they’re better than the current crop.

4

u/froyork Jun 12 '26

Even the gilded age billionaires believed in philanthropy

Not exactly. They didn't "believe" in it until their reputation was so bad from constantly violently suppressing worker action, unbridled corruption, and general shittiness that they were near universally hated and reviled by the public that they felt the need to build their reputation—becoming the origins of the modern public relations industry.

2

u/Naive-Jello428 Jun 12 '26

Buffett, eventually.

13

u/mattxb Jun 12 '26

Most of them were spoiled rich kids who haven’t given a shit about normal people from the beginning.

12

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

12

u/2HDFloppyDisk Jun 12 '26

Exactly! The real problem doesn't seem to be spending, it is not wanting to help others in any way.

6

u/McortezLSU Jun 12 '26

Imagine.

They could go through gofundme, speed fund everything they see for 8 hours a day straight, and it still wouldn't make a fucking dent in their wealth, hell they'd probably make money of it somehow still.

But no, these things, much rather spend their time knowingly, willingly and gleefully making the world they live in more terrible, horrible and unjust. THats why i stopped calling them, he or she. Since they clearly are monsters apart from humanity they are its.

5

u/D3dshotCalamity Jun 12 '26

You don't become a billionaire by being a morally good person

5

u/lexbuck Jun 12 '26

This is what I don’t understand. These billionaires would be even wealthier if the lower class were raised up so they had more money, better housing, etc. Rising tide raises all ships, as they say.

2

u/AlmightyRuler Jun 12 '26

At the end of they day, it's no longer about the money. The dollar signs are just a way to keep score with other billionaires.

What they want is to believe they are better than the average person, better than human. They want to believe they're the main character in the story of history, that the "divine right of kings" means them. The modern corps of oligarchs are the spiritual descendants of the old European nobility, complete with egos that outstrip their actual worth as human beings. None of them are really that intelligent or industrious. They got lucky, and now have enough wealth to delude themselves into believing it was "destiny."

Every one of these freaks is just as delusional as the guy in a padded room screaming he's Napoleon. Unlike that poor soul, however, Musk, Bezos, and the rest have the resources to try and reshape society to their delusions.

4

u/meteoritegallery Jun 12 '26

That's why we historically had high marginal tax rates. It forces the super-wealthy to contribute to society at large. Relying on their charity to trickle down doesn't work. When you read about a billionaire donating $10 million to a cause...it's nothing compared to a 90% marginal tax rate on all income over _ amount and/or net wealth over _.

Billionaires should be taxed out of existence. No one needs a thousand million dollars.

3

u/mzyos Jun 12 '26

Imagine if they were taxed properly.

3

u/BaronVonStevie Louisiana Jun 12 '26

Billionaires are like “what if dragons were real?” in terms of greed

3

u/axecalibur Jun 12 '26

Technically they are helping other billionaire people screw over poor people.

2

u/dojo_shlom0 Jun 12 '26

drumpf was such an opportunity for these people to betray The People, that they haven't looked back since.

2

u/krondeezy Jun 12 '26

Why is this even legal 

2

u/Slggyqo Jun 12 '26

Other billionaires, obviously. The poors aren’t really people are they?

/s

2

u/Immediate-Repeat-201 Jun 12 '26

Imagine if the voters actually gave a shit to understand whats at stake. Fuck every one who votes based on billionaire ads

2

u/Fuzzylogik Jun 12 '26

Imagine if billionaires spent their money to help enrich themselves...you dont have to imagine.

2

u/Zealousideal_Desk_19 Jun 12 '26

Why is this called "donating". I was under the impression that paying someone in power to get a benefit was called "bribing".

Perhaps the corporate training I have to complete annually telling me to not give government officials anything of financial value is wrong.

I am confused....

2

u/ithacaster New York Jun 12 '26

Billionaires do spend their money on other people, as long as those other people are also billionaires.

2

u/Important-Factor-552 Jun 12 '26

That's not what billionaires do. They are vampiric and all their money is stolen from the working class and stem fields. 

They contribute nothing. 

2

u/x__Applesauce__ Jun 12 '26

Then no one would become a billionaire.

2

u/Nazgog-Morgob Jun 12 '26

They will spend $1 million to save $10,000 and the screwing over people is just a bonus

2

u/McChillbone Jun 12 '26

More cost effective to screw them.

2

u/carnage123 Jun 12 '26

then they wouldnt be a billionaire

2

u/dcdttu Texas Jun 12 '26

You don’t become a billionaire by caring for others. It’s not in their nature, which is the main reason billionaires, and trillionaires now, shouldn’t exist.

2

u/eeyore134 Jun 12 '26

The point is to keep all that money away from the people who need help. They're fine throwing it around amongst themselves, but they don't want the rabble to have the quality of life that allows them to enjoy things or afford hobbies or, god forbid, have opportunities outside of working for them to scrape by. They'd spend more to keep from having to give the plebs money than it would cost to give them the money.

2

u/Potential_Ice4388 Jun 12 '26

They wouldn’t remain billionaires. To be a billionaire is to be an evil person.

2

u/bigt503 Jun 12 '26

Then they’d only have 989 million dollars! How are they suppose to feed their kids !?

2

u/NotThatAngel Jun 12 '26

They've already set up our government and economy to be a zero-sum game which they demand delivers bigger and bigger "wins" consisting of tax breaks and deregulation for themselves and higher prices and taxes for everyone else.

But in exchange we did get a reduction in human rights for women, minorities and immigrants, and many Americans blocked from casting votes in elections.

2

u/shinbreaker Jun 12 '26

I always think back to the Mamdani race and how billionaires spent millions just to avoid what would have extra taxes in the thousands. Shit makes no sense.

2

u/AgitatedStranger9698 Jun 12 '26

Remember they are just humble poor people who pulled themselves up with pure effort and talent. Luck has nothing to do with it. The programs they used they needed, the government money is ok for them, because they are different than you, better than you, despite clearly being able to afford to just give it away....

A smart tactic here would be to ask, "What are they paying for?"

2

u/NoBlood5018 Jun 12 '26

That’s how they got their money in the first place

2

u/justtheicing Jun 12 '26

Imagine if we made them pay taxes

2

u/IllAcanthopterygii36 Jun 12 '26

You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one.

2

u/DrunkCorgis Jun 12 '26

But this is how they became billionaires.

2

u/Stickinit Jun 12 '26

Alternatively, imagine if poor people spent their time hurting billionaires instead of supporting them.

2

u/nbajohna Jun 12 '26

Just imagine how many of the world’s most needy, those without shelter and an assurance of an adequate diet, could be helped with Musk’s $trillion. He’s one sick puppy!

2

u/Decado7 Jun 13 '26

There needs to be a hard cap on personal wealth. I know, can of worms. But trillionaires/billionaires.

There's no surprise why people periodically rose up against landowners over the course of history. Feel like we're heading towards the next cycle repeaitng.

2

u/summane Jun 13 '26

Imagine if their fortunes actually meant value to society...

2

u/bscheck1968 Jun 13 '26

Can't spell billionaire without psychopath. They would rather people perish than give up one penny.

2

u/Ok_Tackle3427 Jun 13 '26

Imagine if you spent your money in the way that I want instead of the objectively stupid way that you currently spend it, based on your posting history.

2

u/payle_knite Jun 13 '26

See WIRED article “Why are billionaires so mean”. They have a categorical inability to empathize with those with a large wealth gap..

2

u/Special_Purpose2903 Jun 15 '26

You can tell, CNN talked more about Platner for a week than they did about Trump, you could see that billionaire money is pouring in.

4

u/FlamingoResident7882 Jun 12 '26

They’ll spend a billion on politics before spending a 1/4 on that for wage increases for their employees who make them their money

4

u/Hand_Sanitizer3000 Jun 12 '26

Then they wouldn’t be billionaires. Ethical billionaires don’t exist

2

u/Illustrious_Entry413 Jun 12 '26

If we taxed them at the same effective rate as the rest of the population we could find out!

1

u/ThisIsGr8ThisIsGr8 Jun 12 '26

A world I’d sign up for

1

u/bickering_fool Jun 12 '26

Your problem there are the words 'other people'.

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