The owners own the company. They can do what they want. You don't have to buy shit if they are acting like assholes. That's the free market. They're selling i phones and fast food, not oxygen.
BTW, the largest "owner" of stock is union pension plans and retirement accounts.
Don't like the behavior, don't buy it. "Greed" won't survive without sales. You don't need socialism, just the simple restraint to do without that latte or concert ticket.
Hard to do that when there’s basically six corporations that make just about everything there is and it’s almost impossible to know what companies are owned by which corporation.
It's worse than that, most companies just create distance/plausible deniability from the most unethical practices. It's not like Nestle directly enslaves children themself, they just work with the cheapest vendors who work with the cheapest contractors who will eslave children to offer cheap rates
Which makes u/PutnamPete's take so naive. If you're using a computer, you're a consumer of rare earth minerals, and there's almost no way to know if you supported slavery or not
They're selling i phones and fast food, not oxygen.
If you want to go down that line of thinking, it could be easily be argued that they absolutely are selling us the quality of air that we breathe. Gas emissions, rayon production, fracking, burning coal (when much better alternatives exit) all contribute to negative health effects. And most of the government has them in their pockets.
Most boards are well paid yes men who "rubber stamp" the executive's decisions. Executives cherry-pick their boards and rarely are there disagreements.
Yep. Met a guy who was a board member for a bank near me. He told me he is on two boards, and that he made about 6 salaries or so to work for two days a week, two hours a week.
Guy puts in 4 hours to earn 6 peoples livelihoods for himself. And it's like that or worse, with all of them. They are the fakest of fake employment.
Yeah but Elon‘s net worth is not his liquidity. His net worth are stocks. And if you look at the performance of his company‘s stocks it‘ll explain a lot. I don‘t get it how so many people don‘t understand this concept. This is also why „tax the rich bc they have so much money“ isn‘t feasible in the way that most people think. Think about what would happen if most billionnaires suddenly would have to sell lots of their stocks, this would directly impact the market, the amount of stocks that suddenly appear on the market generate downward pressure, which in consequence would devalue the market as a whole. So everyones pension funds etc. would bleed too. Also if for example Elon decides to sell every TSLA stock he owns, he would technically give up immense control over the company. The problem imho lies within how the markets have been behaving for the last few decades and the power allocation that comes with an individuals grasp on the market, the corruption within governments etc.
He is powerful because he is rich beyond imagination and because of the decision rights in his companies. Take that away and you just have a disgusting human left
Everyone knows the rich arent properly taxed and we all understand just how obscenely rich he is, youre the one missing the point that its ridiculous to downplay his wealth in any way whatsoever
Yeah you’re right we must be nice to the rich and work extra hard to ensure they have more wealth to buy more stocks so that I can retire someday. Wonderful economic system we have today… wonder who designed it
That’s only if you never invested any of it, which would be stupid. If you invested it into the S&P 500 with its historical average 10% annual yield you would get to a billion in about 34 years.
That's not the point. The point is to contextualize, even somewhat, what a billion dollars really looks like. $1,000 A DAY for 270yrs. Not yearly. Daily. NOBODY is worth billions or has contributed enough to make that a sane amount of money to posses. No matter how much they actually have in cash outright.
And it's not like these people are out here makin hospitals n shit. Nobody would be upset if they were actually making miracles a reality and fuckin helpin people.
They don’t make billions. They make a few million a year and then own companies. Those are not the same thing. While I agree that it’s not a good thing, at least don’t be disingenuous about the argument.
First of all that's $10,000 a day, not $1,000. Second, billionaires didn't get to be billionaires because of their paychecks, that's not how that works, and I don't believe it is immoral to own a company that you founded.
It only looks self-sustaining because they extract resources from other countries and export their waste to developing countries to be processed without investing in any infrastructure leading to local environmental destruction on a massive scale.
Its all built on exploited labour and genocide. On top of that the USA govt has staged so many coups across the world to loot their resources anyone who wished for self determination was completely ruined or isolated.
USA has all the means available to move to green energy but because capitalism chases profit big lobbies will not let it happen. On the other hand many governments around the world have started moving to green energy some have done a wonderful job like china and uruguay.
The entire planet suffers because the current system favours mindless consumerism. If removing some individuals and prioritising sustainable growth means a better more ethical world for everyone my choice is very clear.
People love to mention how cruel the commies were but completely ignore the historical context. Before the Bolshevik revolution many people were dying of famine they went from a feudal agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse all within a couple of decades.
Similarly famines in china were very common PLA and CPC liberated china and instead of giving into colonial political borders (unlike india) united different provinces. They were extremely feudal at the time Mao's wealth redistribution uplifted generations, great cultural leap was a mistake but at the time they didn't expect such consequences. There was violence involved but it was against the oppressor class. Deng's reforms and international aid ensured steady growth for china and paved the way for today's mixed state capitalism.
Historically socialist countries have had good labour laws, healthcare and social safety nets. USSR, china, cuba, DPRK, burkina faso pretty much all of them had 6-8 hour work day, 6 days a week and social support like free child care centers, good education, east germany is a good example, female labourers had maternal leaves and good child care system as a result women in east Germany were more independent, educated and career focused.
Socialism is very adaptable you can always optimize it based on material conditions. Capitalism has already created many industries from here a shift to sustainable growth can be really smooth.
I am 64 years old. I have seen everything from French and English tepid socialism of the 60s and 70s to Soviet economics to Shining Path Maoism. None of it works, ever.
I don't mind if they also spend much of their income. The problem is they keep their money in their savings like Smaug which prevents other people's from having income.
No unelected individual should have that much power anyways. Its impossible to force the extremely rich to use their money for whatever it should be used for. People with such absurd amounts of money are just a liability for everyone else.
You ever play an idle game like cookie clicker and instead of letting the game play out you min-max everything and stack as many buffs as you can as to get decades worth of cookies in just a few seconds. Thats basically what these people are doing
When there are 6 companies owning most of everything, do you really have a choice? dumbasses keep saying "omg just don't buy it from that company, you can get it another one.". okay... so what happens when that other company gets bought up? it's a never-ending cycle of despair and stupidity.
Do they actually make that money tho? When someone's asset is worth millions it doesn't mean they have millions in their bank account... its the company that is worth millions.
You’re assuming “being fired” is the downside for every CEO. That’s only true for late-stage, hired execs.
For founders, non-illegal risks routinely mean losing personal savings, years of unpaid work, reputation, investor trust, and future opportunities. Most startups fail and their CEOs don’t get parachutes,they get nothing and disappear.
You only notice the ones who succeeded. That survivorship bias is exactly why the payout looks obscene in hindsight.
Bro what? The pay gap shows scale, not absence of risk.
CEO pay has risen mostly because compensation is equity-based and companies operate at a far larger scale than 30 years ago. When performance drops, stock value, bonuses, and often the CEO’s career take the hit. That’s a different kind of risk than layoffs, not a lack of one.
Workers lose jobs, CEOs lose capital, reputation, and future leadership opportunities. Different risks, different rewards.
Bro what? The pay gap shows scale, not absence of risk.
Bro didnt even read the Meme.
When performance drops, stock value, bonuses, and often the CEO’s career take the hit. That’s a different kind of risk than layoffs, not a lack of one.
As i said thats is not the Case. Its thr Workers that have to somehow make that difference back. Like layoffs or money cuts from wage or like exzra pay for cjristmas for example.
CEOs lose capital, reputation, and future leadership opportunities. Different risks, different rewards.
That aswell isnt true, there are CEO's that burn a Company, makes people lose their Job, and in 6 month they are in a high position in a different Company, due to Connections in those fields of work.
The meme claims CEOs earn that much only because they’re insulated from downside. That’s what I’m disagreeing with.
Sure workers often pay first through layoffs or wage freezes. That doesn’t mean CEOs face no downside. Equity compensation gets wiped when performance drops, and for every high-profile “fails upward” case, there are many executives who never get another top role. You’re focusing on visible survivors, not the full distribution.
Connections helping some CEOs rebound doesn’t negate risk any more than networking helping workers find new jobs negates job loss. Outliers don’t define the systm
No amount of hard work is worth billions of dollars bro.
I can see someone contributing enough to earn millions, but someone who made a billion is getting overpaid
You’re framing it as payment for hard work, which isn’t what’s happening.
Billionaires aren’t paid wages. They own assets. When a founder’s decisions scale across millions of users and billions in capital, the upside scales too. Most people who take the same risks and work just as hard end up with zero, not millions.
The outcome looks unfair only if you ignore ownership, leverage, and survivorship bias, not because the system is paying someone per hour worked.
Billionaires aren’t paid wages. They own assets. When a founder’s decisions scale across millions of users and billions in capital, the upside scales too. Most people who take the same risks and work just as hard end up with zero, not millions.
You haven't said anything outright incorrect here but I am struggling to see what your point exactly is? Owning billions in assets still means that you own billions, you just have to jump through more hoops is you want to spend large parts of it.
The outcome looks unfair only if you ignore ownership, leverage, and survivorship bias, not because the system is paying someone per hour worked.
The outcome is unfair because the the general idea is that the system should reward for hard work (this is the general culture around working), but this happens.
The point is that the system doesn’t reward hard work alone, it rewards ownership and scale.Hard work is common. Millions of people work just as hard and earn little because their work doesn’t scale. When someone owns something that impacts millions, the value compounds, and so does the payoff.
Its unfair if you assume effort should map directly to income. In reality, income tracks leverage and outcomes, not hours worked
The point is that the system doesn’t reward hard work alone, it rewards ownership and scale.Hard work is common. Millions of people work just as hard and earn little because their work doesn’t scale. When someone owns something that impacts millions, the value compounds, and so does the payoff.
That is fully correct, and also exactly why its generally considered unfair.
If you think they are the big shot, wait until you learn the concept of a BOARD.
There is where the real greed is.
It’s the owners who hold the real greed. It’s just that they’re usually on the board too, because they decide who’s on the board.
The owners own the company. They can do what they want. You don't have to buy shit if they are acting like assholes. That's the free market. They're selling i phones and fast food, not oxygen.
BTW, the largest "owner" of stock is union pension plans and retirement accounts.
You don’t have to buy shit if the board or CEO are assholes either, what’s your point?
Don't like the behavior, don't buy it. "Greed" won't survive without sales. You don't need socialism, just the simple restraint to do without that latte or concert ticket.
Hard to do that when there’s basically six corporations that make just about everything there is and it’s almost impossible to know what companies are owned by which corporation.
The fact that it's almost impossible to make a clear line of companies hierarchies sounds and feels illegal. Jeez...
It's worse than that, most companies just create distance/plausible deniability from the most unethical practices. It's not like Nestle directly enslaves children themself, they just work with the cheapest vendors who work with the cheapest contractors who will eslave children to offer cheap rates
Which makes u/PutnamPete's take so naive. If you're using a computer, you're a consumer of rare earth minerals, and there's almost no way to know if you supported slavery or not
It's never meant to be a genuine response. These types of people think that if you don't like capitalism you can just choose not to participate.
Like bro where am I going to grow my own food without buying land and seeds and tools.
We have such a free market that if you criticize it, you get labelled as a terrorist according to the NSPM-7.
Are you saying you do it knowingly? What the fuck? You're not using a quill pen, Einstein.
The point is that it's impossible to know.
Okay, so you’re too stupid to function. I see. 🙂
Better dead than red amirite fellow reaganite?
If you want to go down that line of thinking, it could be easily be argued that they absolutely are selling us the quality of air that we breathe. Gas emissions, rayon production, fracking, burning coal (when much better alternatives exit) all contribute to negative health effects. And most of the government has them in their pockets.
How is this a "free" market?
Most boards are well paid yes men who "rubber stamp" the executive's decisions. Executives cherry-pick their boards and rarely are there disagreements.
Executives don't pick the board members unless they have a large stake in the company. The board usually appoint the ceo not the other way round.
Like you see with Bob Iger from Disney. The guy was already retired but the board called him back to make them more money.
I mean granted Chapek was fucking everything up during his short tenure.
I don’t like Iger, but he’s arguably the best CEO the Mouse has had in the past 30 years.
In a perfect world, yes. But if you have a Musk or a Gates or a Tim Cook no board member is gonna do anything but say "Yes."
That's because musk and gates own massive stakes in their companies.
How much does Tim Cook own? How much does Jamie Dimon own? No boardmember is touching them.
Yep. Met a guy who was a board member for a bank near me. He told me he is on two boards, and that he made about 6 salaries or so to work for two days a week, two hours a week.
Guy puts in 4 hours to earn 6 peoples livelihoods for himself. And it's like that or worse, with all of them. They are the fakest of fake employment.
yep
CEO's are well paid
but they don't always own the company they run
Labour is up 0.1%, clearly the peons have not bled enough for us yet
Even if u made $10000 everyday, it would still take you 270 years to make 1 billion.
And elon musk net worth is 460 billion.
So 124200 years gaining 10k everyday to catch up.
125000 years ago was the dawn of humanity. Let put that into perspective.
Yeah but Elon‘s net worth is not his liquidity. His net worth are stocks. And if you look at the performance of his company‘s stocks it‘ll explain a lot. I don‘t get it how so many people don‘t understand this concept. This is also why „tax the rich bc they have so much money“ isn‘t feasible in the way that most people think. Think about what would happen if most billionnaires suddenly would have to sell lots of their stocks, this would directly impact the market, the amount of stocks that suddenly appear on the market generate downward pressure, which in consequence would devalue the market as a whole. So everyones pension funds etc. would bleed too. Also if for example Elon decides to sell every TSLA stock he owns, he would technically give up immense control over the company. The problem imho lies within how the markets have been behaving for the last few decades and the power allocation that comes with an individuals grasp on the market, the corruption within governments etc.
yeah he's basically poor
[deleted]
He is powerful because he is rich beyond imagination and because of the decision rights in his companies. Take that away and you just have a disgusting human left
yeah so weird to say that the problem is he is powerful as though his power doesn't come from his money
Everyone knows the rich arent properly taxed and we all understand just how obscenely rich he is, youre the one missing the point that its ridiculous to downplay his wealth in any way whatsoever
The French has ideas about taxing power 🤷♂️
Thank you! english isn‘t my mothertongue
Yeah you’re right we must be nice to the rich and work extra hard to ensure they have more wealth to buy more stocks so that I can retire someday. Wonderful economic system we have today… wonder who designed it
So he doesnt actually have the money, but he also had $45 billion to spend willy nilly on twitter?
Stocks are not real money, but they are real enough for banks to give real money with stocks as collateral.
Edit : grammar
That’s only if you never invested any of it, which would be stupid. If you invested it into the S&P 500 with its historical average 10% annual yield you would get to a billion in about 34 years.
That's not the point. The point is to contextualize, even somewhat, what a billion dollars really looks like. $1,000 A DAY for 270yrs. Not yearly. Daily. NOBODY is worth billions or has contributed enough to make that a sane amount of money to posses. No matter how much they actually have in cash outright.
And it's not like these people are out here makin hospitals n shit. Nobody would be upset if they were actually making miracles a reality and fuckin helpin people.
They don’t make billions. They make a few million a year and then own companies. Those are not the same thing. While I agree that it’s not a good thing, at least don’t be disingenuous about the argument.
First of all that's $10,000 a day, not $1,000. Second, billionaires didn't get to be billionaires because of their paychecks, that's not how that works, and I don't believe it is immoral to own a company that you founded.
Out of all the groups and communities in need you could be defending.. tell me, why do you choose billionaires ?
This isn’t a defense. Explaining how a wildfire starts is not defending the wildfire.
those sums are not about being earned through work. It's money you got being invested. You are not supposed to keep your money under your mattress
https://preview.redd.it/y5v4e9xmry6g1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=7494098804a64dba3110817738e7e0f04bca5cd1
Are we targeting ceo's? And their cronies who are destroying the forests?
Politicians and capitalist apologists too
There is more forest land in the US than at any time in the last 150 years.
Because its being destroyed everywhere else
Strange how the rest of the world isn't doing this. /s
It's almost like capitalism isn't compatible with us or the nature
Well Socialism/Communism tends to result in mass executions, forced labor, starvation and massive ecological disaster.
Secondly the US has been pretty self-sustaining with forestry products so whoever is cutting your fucking trees, it ain't us.
This is gonna be long:
It only looks self-sustaining because they extract resources from other countries and export their waste to developing countries to be processed without investing in any infrastructure leading to local environmental destruction on a massive scale.
Its all built on exploited labour and genocide. On top of that the USA govt has staged so many coups across the world to loot their resources anyone who wished for self determination was completely ruined or isolated.
USA has all the means available to move to green energy but because capitalism chases profit big lobbies will not let it happen. On the other hand many governments around the world have started moving to green energy some have done a wonderful job like china and uruguay.
The entire planet suffers because the current system favours mindless consumerism. If removing some individuals and prioritising sustainable growth means a better more ethical world for everyone my choice is very clear.
People love to mention how cruel the commies were but completely ignore the historical context. Before the Bolshevik revolution many people were dying of famine they went from a feudal agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse all within a couple of decades.
Similarly famines in china were very common PLA and CPC liberated china and instead of giving into colonial political borders (unlike india) united different provinces. They were extremely feudal at the time Mao's wealth redistribution uplifted generations, great cultural leap was a mistake but at the time they didn't expect such consequences. There was violence involved but it was against the oppressor class. Deng's reforms and international aid ensured steady growth for china and paved the way for today's mixed state capitalism.
Historically socialist countries have had good labour laws, healthcare and social safety nets. USSR, china, cuba, DPRK, burkina faso pretty much all of them had 6-8 hour work day, 6 days a week and social support like free child care centers, good education, east germany is a good example, female labourers had maternal leaves and good child care system as a result women in east Germany were more independent, educated and career focused.
Socialism is very adaptable you can always optimize it based on material conditions. Capitalism has already created many industries from here a shift to sustainable growth can be really smooth.
There isn't only liberal capitalism or stalinism...
I am 64 years old. I have seen everything from French and English tepid socialism of the 60s and 70s to Soviet economics to Shining Path Maoism. None of it works, ever.
I don't mind if they also spend much of their income. The problem is they keep their money in their savings like Smaug which prevents other people's from having income.
No rich person keeps all their money in “savings”
My point is they should spend much more than they currently spend.
No unelected individual should have that much power anyways. Its impossible to force the extremely rich to use their money for whatever it should be used for. People with such absurd amounts of money are just a liability for everyone else.
Fair point!
Investing circulates the money too
Same CEO later explaining how they're firing 10k employees to replace them with AI
I wouldn't say they earn it. I would say they are paid it.
Anyone who has that much money can only find joy in life by getting more money. It’s pathetic.
Guess why they have so much money in the first place. Its crazy that we let people like this be so powerful
Not Ryan Cohen
🗣️🦍🦍
Hard to be a shittier human being than a billionaire these days
3.65 billion dollars is what that adds up to.
But they work reallllllly hard.
Yeah, most ceo's are like that but not all 💀
You ever play an idle game like cookie clicker and instead of letting the game play out you min-max everything and stack as many buffs as you can as to get decades worth of cookies in just a few seconds. Thats basically what these people are doing
When there are 6 companies owning most of everything, do you really have a choice? dumbasses keep saying "omg just don't buy it from that company, you can get it another one.". okay... so what happens when that other company gets bought up? it's a never-ending cycle of despair and stupidity.
Lol
I’m having trouble understanding the language to be honest
Do they actually make that money tho? When someone's asset is worth millions it doesn't mean they have millions in their bank account... its the company that is worth millions.
Go simp for billionaires somewhere else. All my homies hate robber barons.
He's asking a question, he must be licking their ass!
Yes, they do. They can take out loans against their assets, which means they get the money to spend, without spending any capital gains tax
Funny how its not real money for owing taxes but they magically have plenty of cash for a new 300' yacht.
It's not about cash, it's about power and influence on a political level
Conveniently forgetting the amount of effort, hardwork, risk all taken by that ceo
Edit - lmao. People here have zero sense of how companies actually works 😂😂
Can you name a CEO where taking a (non-illegal) risk resulted in an outcome worse than being fired?
You’re assuming “being fired” is the downside for every CEO. That’s only true for late-stage, hired execs.
For founders, non-illegal risks routinely mean losing personal savings, years of unpaid work, reputation, investor trust, and future opportunities. Most startups fail and their CEOs don’t get parachutes,they get nothing and disappear.
You only notice the ones who succeeded. That survivorship bias is exactly why the payout looks obscene in hindsight.
CEO pay increase over the past 30 Years vs. Workers pay increase over the past 30 years, says something else.
Also what risk are they taking? I only ever see everywhere that Workers get cut when the Business isnt running as well as before.
Bro what? The pay gap shows scale, not absence of risk.
CEO pay has risen mostly because compensation is equity-based and companies operate at a far larger scale than 30 years ago. When performance drops, stock value, bonuses, and often the CEO’s career take the hit. That’s a different kind of risk than layoffs, not a lack of one.
Workers lose jobs, CEOs lose capital, reputation, and future leadership opportunities. Different risks, different rewards.
Bro didnt even read the Meme.
As i said thats is not the Case. Its thr Workers that have to somehow make that difference back. Like layoffs or money cuts from wage or like exzra pay for cjristmas for example.
That aswell isnt true, there are CEO's that burn a Company, makes people lose their Job, and in 6 month they are in a high position in a different Company, due to Connections in those fields of work.
The meme claims CEOs earn that much only because they’re insulated from downside. That’s what I’m disagreeing with.
Sure workers often pay first through layoffs or wage freezes. That doesn’t mean CEOs face no downside. Equity compensation gets wiped when performance drops, and for every high-profile “fails upward” case, there are many executives who never get another top role. You’re focusing on visible survivors, not the full distribution.
Connections helping some CEOs rebound doesn’t negate risk any more than networking helping workers find new jobs negates job loss. Outliers don’t define the systm
The risks and hard work were put in before becoming CEO
No amount of hard work is worth billions of dollars bro. I can see someone contributing enough to earn millions, but someone who made a billion is getting overpaid
That doesn't make any sense.
You’re framing it as payment for hard work, which isn’t what’s happening.
Billionaires aren’t paid wages. They own assets. When a founder’s decisions scale across millions of users and billions in capital, the upside scales too. Most people who take the same risks and work just as hard end up with zero, not millions.
The outcome looks unfair only if you ignore ownership, leverage, and survivorship bias, not because the system is paying someone per hour worked.
You haven't said anything outright incorrect here but I am struggling to see what your point exactly is? Owning billions in assets still means that you own billions, you just have to jump through more hoops is you want to spend large parts of it.
The outcome is unfair because the the general idea is that the system should reward for hard work (this is the general culture around working), but this happens.
The point is that the system doesn’t reward hard work alone, it rewards ownership and scale.Hard work is common. Millions of people work just as hard and earn little because their work doesn’t scale. When someone owns something that impacts millions, the value compounds, and so does the payoff.
Its unfair if you assume effort should map directly to income. In reality, income tracks leverage and outcomes, not hours worked
That is fully correct, and also exactly why its generally considered unfair.