We should have more billionaires

https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1942992514954224025

by hliyan • 1 year ago

10 17 1 year ago

quantified2• 1 year ago

Existing multibillionaires can share their billions with others. Make me a billionaire, Gary! Collecting more billions from hoi polloi: no way. All they do is scratch their own backs and circulate in the plutonomy.

toomuchtodo• 1 year ago

60 percent of Americans can’t afford a minimum quality of life Gary, I think we should give the Democratic Socialist a chance. Billionaires had their chance, and less than a handful are decent humans (and the best ones are giving it away as fast as they can; Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires

(“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”)

fuzzfactor4• 1 year ago

Been there. Got the T-shirt.

I guess that's where it ends for me.

Can't read any following twitter thread (if there is one).

Is there any indication what he thinks more billionaires should be doing that they are not already doing?

hliyan• 1 year ago

He's making the the following argument: "...innovators keep just 2.2 % of the value they create. Every $1 in billionaire profit delivers ≈ $45 to workers + consumers"

Onecounter-framing is that entepreneurs keep 2.2% of the value that their workers create.

https://x.com/garrytan/status/1943106501494833549

fuzzfactor4• 1 year ago

Thanks for that. Looks like he is starting with realistic data.

I would have to say that his resulting 45:1 ratio would be the maximum upside, and only achievable if every billionaire dollar was earned through innovative creation of value.

As we know, very few things are 100% efficient, plus unfortunately sometimes financial efforts can balance more toward innovative destruction of value, so that does need to be taken into consideration.

I like his optimism though.

quantified2• 1 year ago

His is a silly argument. They are concentrators. The same bs that gives rise to effective altruism and trickle-down: give us all the money and we'll use it wisely on your behalf. Total bs. It's not like they need to be billionaires to deliver value to others, do they? Even if the pie grows, they take a disproportionate share, and as that share compounds, they end up owning everything of value. You can fibbert on your phone and order stuff from Amazon while they actually have privacy, security, passive/tax-evading income schemes, and access to government policymakers. That $45 per worker and consumer is illusory, real wages are far lower than 30 years ago when we had fewer billionaires.

They capture far more value from their employees than any of their employees do. If you have 5 ticks on your leg, which one skeeves you the most? The one that's sucked the most blood.

BillyTheMage2• 1 year ago

They sit on their ass all day and can afford yachts and vacations, meanwhile the people doing the real work can't afford basic life necessities if they miss more than 0.5 days of work per year. They provide negative value. Anyone can make math say anything.

goku122• 1 year ago

I have a question for the economists here. It might sound stupid and unrelated to this submission. But it is in some ways.

So assume a hypothetical case where there is a runaway inflation. Everyday things start costing thousands of dollars and buying stuff need cash to be shoved around on wheel barrows (this has actually happened in many places). Wages also inflate similarly.

What if the government decides to create a larger value currency denomination - say a 'Mega dollar' - and declare it (ie, a 'mega') as the new base denomination? Why wouldn't this work? (I presume it doesn't work, because I haven't seen it applied in practice.)

dlcarrier• 1 year ago

They do that too. When I first went to Mexico as a kid in the 90's, the pesos had an 'N' before the '$' to show that they were new pesos (nuevo in Spanish) which were worth 1,000 of the old peso value.

goku122• 1 year ago

So it works? No downsides?

joegibbs• 1 year ago

I'm not so sure that if we were to take all the wealth of the ultra-rich and redistribute it, that it would make that much of a direct positive impact on the rest of society. For one, most of their wealth is tied up in intangible assets like stocks - does it impact the economy if it just sits there and does nothing?

If you redistributed Bill Gates' Microsoft stock across the population, wouldn't that cause a commensurate rise in inflation as everyone uses their portion on things that they need? (Bill Gates has 500,000 times the median US net worth, but doesn't eat 500,000 times more bread or wear 500,000 times more kilograms of cotton than the average person).

In terms of actual physical things the ultra-rich don't really have that much comparatively than the regular person. Maybe they have a few mansions, yachts, helicopters - but given that there are many, many more poor and middle-income people than the rich, only a small percentage of the population could benefit (how many people can actually fit on Bezos' yacht, how many apartments could those mansions be easily converted into?).

There's probably an economic benefit from redirecting labour from things that the rich like but again, we're not quite at Ancient Egypt levels of large portions of the population building useless things for the super-rich, if you're a billionaire your workforce is probably working on something that makes money from people poorer than you. If you make the firms that build mansions pivot to building normal houses for ordinary people, I don't think that would result in all that many more houses being built.

That's not to say that there wouldn't be other benefits like removing their ability to influence public opinion through their money (although even without rich people there would still be individuals with disproportionate media influence), but wealth redistribution isn't the panacea that people claim it to be.

BillyTheMage2• 1 year ago

I think the focus on [any]aires and certain amounts of money and redistribution causes people to gloss over the real issue. The existence of billionaires is only possible through exploitation. They make the world a horrible place for their personal benefit, treat us all like machinery. Who cares the exact dollar amount they have? A parasite with $100 is still worthy of being exterminated.

rvz• 1 year ago

Totally agree. He should do one of the following:

1. Give 99% of his billions to everyone.

2. Let anyone invest with VCs in private deals (remove the accreditation requirement)

He won't do any of that.

moby• 1 year ago

What Garry actually wants is a lot of billionaires as long as he is a trillionaire.

We should have more billionaires

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