this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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Not sure I understand why America no longer encourages and celebrates folks being commercially successful. Instead folks are just jealous and complain all the time.
Do not feed the trolls.
Do you understand how wealth is made?
Just think about it for half a second.
You have resources, like money, stuff and time. That is your wealth. Now, how do you earn more wealth? Maybe by working? Let's say 1 hour of your time is $100 worth, if you work 1 hr and get $100, You just change 1 resource for another. So if you trade your time for money, you didn't earn wealth. But what if you don't actually work a full hr but get paid $100 anyway, then you increased your wealth, but you also stole wealth from your employer after all, they paid you for 1 hr of work. Alternatively, you can work 1 hr but get paid $110, then you could argue that you don't cheat your employer as they agreed to the deal but they still lose wealth as they get less than what it cost them. Let's say, you don't sell your time but your work. Well your time is still worth something but you don't sell it anymore. Your time might still be $100 per hr but you sell your e.g. Software, not your time. To have that software, you have to get it first. So you write it. But writing software is a trade too, basically another time for stuff trade, juat with yourself. So if you don't want to lose wealth, we need to calculate the cost of getting the software and sell it appropriately. Let's say the software was 1200 hrs of work. So if you want to exchange the software for money now, you need to charge $120.000 otherwise you lost wealth. So you can sell the software for more but then you again took someone else's wealth as they would be paying more for what it is worth. Selling stuff in general has that issue. Using money to buy stuff and selling more expensive included.
For you to earn wealth, someone needs to lose it.
So when a single person has a ridiculous amount of wealth, the question is "is their time worth that much?"
Elon musk is roughly 28,382,400 minutes old. Forbes estimated his wealth to 838 billions. For his wealth to be justifiable, 1 minute of his time would need to be worth $29.525.
A heart surgeon in the us earns roughly $1.200.000, they work 60-80hrs per week. A year has 52 weeks. So 52*60, 3210 hrs for $1.200.000, or 192,600 minutes. That means a heart surgeon times is worth $6,23 per minutes. 0.02% of what elon's time would need to be worth.
4,724 heart surgeons working 1 minute would be worth the same as Elon work 1 minute.
And we are ignoring that Elon wasn't working when he was 2 seconds after he was born. We are including the time Elon spend shitting his pants as a baby, and minutes of his day even when he is not working, and excluding all the time that the surgeon is not working, like when they see their family or when they were studying or a baby. So the surgeon time is much less worth and Elon's time is more worth if we would bother to make the perfect comparison.
So do you honestly and sincerely believe that elon's time is worth the same as 4724 heart surgeons even in this poor comparison that is simple wealth divided by lifetime vs salary divided by working hours?
Or.... is his wealth based on wealth that he took from others?
There is a difference of being successful and allowing the rich to create loopholes concentrating all the wealth into a few hands.
They pay a lower percentage of their income as taxes than the average middle class American. Absolutely nobody mentioned not being filthy fucking rich still. It's boneheaded to rely on the generosity and humanitarianism of an individual who's demonstrated they're greedy as fuck.
Tax the rich, invest in infrastructure so China stops pulling away.
Americans love bashing on the EU for not having that many uber rich dudes. You know why? Because - in general - the EU people who would've become uber rich tend to invest more back into the market and local communities, whereas the US uber-rich just hoard money.
For example: a tech millionaire in an EU country would be heavily investing in a local tech university to ensure they train people on the latest hardware and software. A US tech spends the same money to buy out competition increasing his own wealth.
US loves to bash the EU for its heavy regulations. It's true. These are the regulations that prevent overrich to get richer faster by ruining the environment, treating workers like slaves, etc.
US also loves to bash the EU for its heavy taxes, but this tax money funds public services, and limit the trickling up of wealth.
But there are still wealth hoarding billionaires in the EU, and they're getting richer faster these last years, because neo-liberalism has the same result everywhere.
Is this evidence based, or feels based?
That's what higher taxes do. And that's pretty evident, taxes in EU are generally higher and it's harder to loophole out of paying them.
Higher taxes cause people to tend to give back to their communities instead of hoarding wealth?
I thought higher taxes forced them to give money to the government, who may or may not do that.
Taxes is how people give back to their communities, their wants have nothing to do with that. That's kind of the only way, rich people will never voluntarily give money away otherwise, that's why they're rich in the first place.
In a democracy, the government is "the people".
No shit. Why are you here telling me that?
Are you just here agreeing with me in a way that makes it feel like you are arguing?
You don’t understand for a very simple reason, you are really fucking stupid and oblivious.
Why so angry and rude?
Go home Elon, you're drunk
Commercially successful for the individual, but what at cost for everyone else? No one becomes this wealthy without shortcuts. And those shortcuts affect us all, whether you care to look at it or not.
You really believe that successful people who work their ass off to make something of their lives are all assholes who take short cuts?
The root of the argument here is that billionaires are not a sign of economic success, even for the individual. It's an enormous shortcoming, failure, and monument to greed.
Oh I completely agree. I should have put "commercially successful" in quotes.
Because America got WOKE. WOKE VIRRUS CAUSES Trump derangement syndrome which is often associated with hating all kinds of benevolent and successful CHRISTIANS like Elon Musk.
I can’t tell if this is a joke…
Left so many HINTS for you, but you can't count to 3
Property is theft.
Wut?
Without property, there is no theft. The two are intertwined, like how shadows cannot exist without light.