The world’s wealthiest eight men control net wealth of $426 billion, based on estimates from Forbes.
Took me until this sentence to realize this article was from 2017. Muskrat is getting close to that all by himself - I saw something the other day that had him around $350 billion.
I’m sure the numbers are much much worse than they were 8 years ago.
Top 3 today are just shy of 1 trillion dollars…
Elon musk has between $470B-$500B to his name, according to bloomberg and forbes. That would make him richer than the world’s wealthiest 8 men in 2017.
I am totally on board this is my pre face.
That is not cash though. That is accumulated paper assets. I know people with million dollar net worths on paper that are broke in reality. As in unable to pay their bills. Assets and liquidity are separate things.
While I understand the point of rampant enshittification and capitalism, I thought that needs some clarity.
Can’t those assets be sold for theoretically the amount of money they’re worth?
Not necessarily. I mean sort of. Yeah. However there arent always buyers, especially who will pay total asking price and or close to it. Some situation call for much lower pricing. It’s all about what the asset is and timing. It’s more of a theoretical value more so than anything. He could leverage credit against the asset amount but it’s dependent on a lot of factors.
Yes. Yes they are.
This list doesn’t include hidden wealth does it? Like Putin for example.
And by killing those 8, the wealth would be distributed such that 8 people would own the same wealth as half the world.
then don’t stop. just keep going.
this must be what Reagan meant by “trickle down economics”
Trickle down
“It’s a trickle…of blood!!” *da-dum!*
Where do you draw the line for inherited wealth without qualifying for execution, what is the grace period, and how do you enforce it unilaterally without exceptions?
Or is the plan that you and your friends make the decisions case by case and are yourselves also exceptions?
No exceptions. It’s not hard to become less wealthy. The only allowance I’d offer is a warning 90 days in advance that continued retention of their obscene wealth will become a capital offense. They can unload their excess in that time frame and keep their heads.
The most important question is “how do you enforce it?” Does the roaming mob meet up daily to check everybody’s bank records? Or do you pass a law about it democratically, and if it’s that then why did you ever need to execute anybody in the first place?
How is it enforced? A bounty system would work. 10% of any funds collected or forfeited.
No body will be executed. They’ll all figure out how to pry open their wallets and portfolios within the 90-day amnesty window.
I tell you what, when you legalize such a bounty system on all tangible wealth over a billion then I will admit it might work.
But if you could do that, why would you not just tax the rich?
We gather the top 8 and tell them #9 is being promoted to #1, either through a wealth tax, or a head tax.
Repeat at least annually.
So a return to monarchy.
At that point we should just utilize democracy to tax them.
EDIT: I misread that as the #9 getting the wealth of the previous 8.
How about the highest number gets to do the deed. Lowman gets to take out highman.
Edit: *Lowman on the totem
I mean, Musk has how many kids? That definitely dilutes things. If you include the mothers, none of them would make it to 1 billion if evenly distributed.
Yeah I hate the 1% but you have to be extremely naive to think that just killing them is the answer when all of the mechanisms that led to their existence are intact.
Even if you killed the top 10 richest people every month you’d still have insane wealth consolidation, just with different family members on the chopping block each month.
The French revolution ended in utter chaos because they had no plan beyond killing the crown.
Yeah I hate the 1% but you have to be extremely naive to think that just killing them is the answer when all of the mechanisms that led to their existence are intact.
Ah, but who paid for those mechanisms to exist?
It’s not a perfect fix, but it’s a fix of some kind.
Worked out for the French eventually, and one could say Napoleon was mostly bad for the rest of Europe rather than all of France.
I wouldn’t call the reign of terror, the Thermidorian Reaction or ultimate rise of capitalism “working out”.
The entire system we have now came into place because they had no plan and just let the merchan class become the new royals.
As opposed to what they had? They could be the UK right now.
just killing them is the answer
No, but very satisfying.
I guarantee Musk has an estate planned by very expensive lawyers and bankers. The vast majority of his loved ones won’t recieve jack squat.
They have to have more than one heir at any time though right? So like that can’t be true unless they own enough wealth that even when split and taxed their primary heir’s still have too much.
In that case I agree, rinse and repeat. No one should own more than something like 20 million in wealth.
Theres this thing called estate planning where you decide how and when your wealth gets used after you die.
It doesn’t automagically get dispersed, it’s given to a chosen heir or select few at most.
I’m familiar with estates. I’d love to see or read any data you have on “a chosen heir or select few at most” being the only possible (or even overwhelming majority) outcome. That doesn’t make any logical sense and isn’t how it’s historically worked in the past from my knowledge.
I have no doubt the majority of cases show wealth being paid out to more than one heir on average and that the dilution, although obviously not enough to combat wealth inequality, is still some amount of dilution.
Yeah, it’s not enough to simply kill the wealthy.
Sure, it will upset the market. Certain people in certain positions may change their mind about certain things. Perhaps some will rightfully fear the masses. But ultimately it’s all temporary so long as the system that allows for such individuals to appear still exists.
Step 1: Kill billionaires and Trump to prevent them from stopping a new system being established.
Step 2: Establish the new system.
“and in that system I will be the billionaire”
Planning to make a plan is not a plan, really.
Scare them like we scared the last power-mad authoritarians. Publically and painfully parade the suffering of the oppressor, condemn them to death, and then pointedly scan the crowd for any more that want to express their undying loyalty to the fuher.
Worked for 80yrs last time. Bet if we record a few select billionaires getting drawn and quartered by their own delivery vans and electric vehicles might push it to a century.
I would argue killing them was always an unnecessary extra step that we could just skip over.
Shucks, I thought the blood coming out would magically irrigate every bank account and solve all unfairness.
In the words of some CEOs… “Execution is everything”
It’s just a matter of time before all that wealth flows down and everyone gets rich. Trust the system, it’s working as intended.
They don’t call it a “golden shower” for nothing!
Oh it’s supposed to be candy? I have a call to make.
Ohh let me see what flower that is…
… They’re all in one room?
A guillotine is unnecessarily complicated.
… and also too humane.
Panels are in the wrong order. It should either be 3, 1, 2, 4 or 3, 2, 1, 4. These orders offer different feelings to the progression. Either way, you have to set the stage for the joke with 3.
If something like this ever did happen IRL, the vast majority of the world would cheer.
I mean, one got shot and killed, and there was celebration.
And the guy wasn’t even anywhere near being a billionaire.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
In deed. At some point, say 100 million for arguments sake. Once you accumulate that much wealth, you are taxed at 100%. You may not own, or make, anything above that number through any means. Forced retirement would also be something to think about. Giving younger generations a chance to make a life for themselves as well.
Society as a whole, would flourish.
🌎 I vote BennyBoy for President! 🇺🇸
User name checks out ;)
Calling it “financial obesity” makes it sound innocuous or even good. Wealth hoarding is treason.
This is either slop from a refried prompt, or an act of Olympic calibre mental gymnastics.
Obesity is always a threat to the health of any system where the term is invoked. Its tolerance and normalisation is functionally suicidal.
You deserve the exact same fate as the billionaires in this comic.
“Someday I’ll be one of those 8”
trickle down economics. amirite?
Those dumb cunts ruining my life and I hate it
You mean waking up in the morning being scared nr 9 will overtake you?
If that happens then they’ll have to sell all their cars with gullwing/scissor doors and buy a car with regular doors.
#8 Michael Bloomberg: $40 billion
#7 Larry Ellison: $43.6 billion
#6 Mark Zuckerberg: $44.6 billion
#5 Jeff Bezos: $45.2 billion
#4 Carlos Slim Helu: $50 billion
#3 Warren Buffett: $60.8 billion
#2 Amancio Ortega: $67 billion
#1 Bill Gates: $75 billion
I don’t even buy these are the richest men bc I’m sure the richest men in the world would: A. never be named in a magazine list like this without suing, B. Likely have more wealth and assets that are unreported than they do reported. Also, didn’t Peter Thiel recently become a trillionaire?
Regardless, I do just want to point out what most of the richest men in the world have in common, is a strong belief in natural heirarchies and social darwinism.
This list is supposed to exemplify survival of the fittest, or those “chosen by God” to rule over the rest of us…? I can’t even imagine how sickly the men on the real list would look.
The masses wouldn’t be able to function without them guiding the way and making the rules…
Does this look like a list of men put together by God or nature? As in, survival of the fittest rules where nature allowed this or God considered every human being on earth before selecting who he ordained worthy of steering the reigns of society, and this list was the final result?
#1 Bill Gates: $75 billion
musk just reached 500B - is this list from the 90s?
It seems to leave out autocratic leaders of countries with equivalent wealth and greater power, such as Prince Bonesaw and Vlad Putler.
Also, both allegedly religious men presumably chosen by God to lead their people. Sawing people apart or poisoning their tea when they speak against you is just God’s will.
I guess when the argument is convenient, it pivots to their brute strength and willingness to do things most people find unspeakable being what allowed them to gain/maintain power. Putin at least got his his hands dirty for the KGB before he came into power, and grew up poor. But, if it came down to him actually maintaining power in a battle that relied only on brute strength would he actually be the victor?
I kinda doubt he or the Saudi royal prince would last 5 minutes if either had to face the general public, in order to defend their titles, without intervention of loyalists rushing to protect and defend them.
I wonder how much the loon that runs Turkmenistan has just in gold toilets?
Ortega, Blomberg, Ellison, Slim and Buffett are all going to croak within 20 years and I’m being very generous there. They are all in their 80’s.
That leaves Zuckass, Bezos, and Gates. Bezos has a good 40 years left and Gates 30 years…again being generous by hitting 100 years old. That leaves us with the one and only Zuckass. All hail the ruler!
And yet it isn’t enough, they still want more more more.
Soon a single person will have as much as the bottom 50% and it still won’t be enough
when will it be enough that we stop this?
Net wealth MIST be capped. Taxes could be a great tool for this, after a max level, everything above goes 100% to taxes. I don’t know at what level that cap should be, but it’s definitely less than billion, definitely less than 100 million, definitely less than 25 million.
There is no right to a crazy high net worth, and the only reason that people can is because we don’t cap it. So, cap it. World wide. There is no reason to have a netwoth of over 25 million. Have it all go to taxes so that governments get a huge monetary boost that can be used for free healthcare, free education, free infrastructure, hell, maybe even universal income
With that we also take the power away. No longer will we have to deal with absolute lucky idiots like Sam Altman or Elmo Musk whose sole reasons for being this shit ass rich are being lucky and a loooong list of lies.
But then we’d get back to authoritarian society where some random representative would have resources to usurp. Taxes will solve nothing. No, we’ve got to dismantle the whole concept of superpowers, accumulation, and capitalism. We have enough just to feed everyone and educate all who want to be educated.
But then we’d get back to authoritarian society where some random representative would have resources to usurp.
How does that follow yet dismantling all current systems wouldn’t cause the same problem?
The answer is taxes. It’s simple and effective without any revolution that would likely result in an authoritarian regime. It’s a lack of taxes which allows authoritarians to flourish because the money they centralize is power. Distribute the money and you distribute the power.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” - Benito Mussolini
A private equity business owner just became willingly elected as prime minister of Canada. Mussolini and Hitler have been resurrected.
Only because the beady-eyed weaselly fuck on the other side is worse.
Help. I can’t unsee Loss.
I don’t care about the heads.
I just want to repurpose the assets.
It’s symbolic.
Why limit it to 8? Why not just take the most recent Forbes rich list as a list of undesirables
Because
- Forbes doesn’t even list everyone
- There are rare cases of absurdly rich who don’t deserve harsh punishment (but deserve their fortune to be taken away and fairly distributed, of course)
- Taking info from a private company to do so would be… questionable.
There are no ethical billionaires. All of them got their wealth by exploiting people. The ones that seem like nice people still got there by causing untold harm to thousands or millions of people, and they continue to exploit people and personally benefit no matter what ideals they pay lipservice to.
Didn’t say “ethical billionaire” anywhere, that’s a nonsensical word combination. Just wanted to point out there are differences in what should be done with an Elon Musk, Peter Thiel or Rupert Murdoch (who use their power, time and wealth to make the whole damn world a worse place for everyone for their own gain) compared to a Gabe Newell or George Soros.
