merc

Gee, what effect could a trillionaire, who frequently meddles in politics, in a country where money=speech, and therefore political spending is unlimited, possibly have on my life?

As someone from the exact opposite of the planet

Are you from space? Space in some ways is the opposite of a planet. Or maybe a black hole?

When I first graduated, I worked for a series of small start-up companies. Most of them ended up failing, which is normal for a small company. But, at least when I was working hard there I was given stock options so if the company had done well, I could have shared in the success.

I've always wondered why that isn't more common. I guess the answer is that some people are willing to work really hard even if they're not given a slice of the ownership of the company. I never understood that. If I own part of this startup, I'll work hard to make sure it succeeds because then I'll get rich too. If you're just paying me a salary, I'm fulfilling the terms of my contract and that's it.

Here's where it's really dangerous. The spending in the 2020 election cycle in the US was the highest in history. The $18 billion spent was more than twice as much as the $8.5 billion in 2016 and even more than the $14.8 billion from 2024.

If Elon Musk wanted to go dollar-for-dollar with every ad dollar spent in the US, on every congressional race, mayor's race, and, of course, every presidential candidate from the moment they're just considering running to the day of the election, he could do it without even noticing. Even if he converted all his shares to cash and put them in an ultra-safe savings account that only paid 5% per year, he'd be bringing in $50 billion per year. So, a $18 billion election campaign would be a small fraction of his yearly income (especially given that it only happens every 4 years). In fact, if he saved up for 4 years and had $200b to spend every time there was a presidential election, he could outspend everybody else by a ratio of 10:1 without difficulty.

Now, what do you think he's actually going to spend to make sure that there are never any laws passed that threaten his wealth? And, if he doesn't think he's going to get the results he wants with his political spending alone, what else might he do with tens of billions per year outside the political system?

Remember, this is just his "pocket money", this isn't even dipping into his wealth so much that it actually might go down year-to-year.

If you do that calculation with $1 trillion, that's $50 billion in spending money per year, or $137 million per day, $5.7m per hour, $95,000 per minute, $1,600 per second.

If you accumulated $1m per minute, or $60m per hour, guess how long it would take to reach $1 trillion? Well, $60m/hour is $1.44 billion per day, $10 billion per week, so it would be about 100 weeks or 2 full years before you hit $1 trillion. And that's assuming no investments, nothing but taking the money and throwing the cash into a vault.

$1m per minute, and it's still 2 years before you get $1 trillion.

Athletes are among the people who earn the highest salaries based on their abilities and talents. The top athletes earn more than the top Hollywood stars. The English Premier League has the highest total wage bill of any futbol / soccer league on the planet. Paying Manchester City's wage bill costs £300m per year, the club with the lowest wage bill was Burnley at only £70m/year. Sum up every team and you get £2.7 billion per year, or $3.6 billion. That's less than 1% of $1 trillion. If you took $1 trillion in cash and set it aside, never adding anything to it, you could pay the wages of all those clubs for centuries.

Or because school was actually well taught, back in the day, and Gen X learned that prior to capitalism there were other economic systems, like feudalism / manorialism, that were even worse than capitalism.

Capitalism may be bad, but it's not the origin of all those terrible things. If anything, it took baby steps towards addressing some of them.

People who say "that isn't because of capitalism" aren't necessarily defending capitalism. They're simply annoyed by the less well educated who want to believe that everything bad is because of capitalism.

The description of the vehicle is:

"Image: A four-wheeled vehicle that appears to be a cross between a bicycle, a go-cart, and a mini-truck"

There's really nothing about that vehicle that's bicycle-like. First of all, it has more than 2 wheels, so it's not a bicycle. In addition, you don't move it by pedalling. You also sit inside it, not on it.

It's really more of a cross between a golf cart and a delivery truck. It might legally get through loopholes meant for bicycles, but there's nothing about it that looks bicycle-like.

Trikes and quads might share characteristics with bicycles, but they're not bicycles because they don't have two wheels.

"a vehicle with two wheels tandem"

"a two-wheeled vehicle that you sit on"

"a vehicle with two wheels in tandem"

"Bicycle is a two-wheeled vehicle powered by the rider"

"bicycle, two-wheeled steerable machine that is pedaled by the rider’s feet"

"a bicycle, a bike: a two-wheeled vehicle moved by pressing down on pedals with your feet"

Sometimes you could argue that there's a grey area between a moped and a bicycle, or an e-bike and a bicycle. But, the two wheels is a key part of the definition. As soon as it's more (or less) than two permanently attached wheels, it's no longer a bicycle. That's why we have words like unicycle, tricycle, etc.

I wonder if there were Nazis that in 1944 said something like "ok, that's the last straw, I'm going to have to quit the Nazi party."

Jobs paid enough so one person could stay home is how it worked

That's a fantasy. In the 1800s and before there was so much at-home work to be done that it was a full time job for someone (virtually always the wife). She had to do the baking, cooking, mending clothes, cleaning, etc. all without any electrical appliances. That included no refrigerator or freezer, so shopping had to be done a lot more often. There were also no cars, so people either had to walk to do their shopping, or they used a horse. But, if they used a horse, then there was extra work related to keeping the horse alive and in good shape. Clothes were also a lot more expensive, so a lot more time was spent either making clothes at home and mending clothes that had holes, worn spots, etc. It wasn't "to do chores and whatnot", it was a full-time job involving more work than a typical a typical job from modern days.

Then there was WWI, then the "roaring 20s", which is when electrical appliances first started appearing, and then the stock market crashed and the great depression hit. During the great depression, if either the wife or the husband could find work, they were lucky, and probably had to support the whole family. During the great depression, a lot of worker protections were put in place through the New Deal. But, the jobs weren't there.

Then WWII hit, and for a while the US was manufacturing things for the rest of the world without being in the war itself. That helped the economy get going again. When the US joined the war, the economy was really going, but there was rationing in place so the workers who were earning money weren't able to spend it. When the war ended, the US was in an incredibly strong position. Workers had savings to spend once rationing was removed. Every other country had had its industrial base smashed by the war. As a result, the US manufacturing was in high demand all over the world. For contrast, even though the UK was also one of the "winners" of WWII, rationing was in place until 1954.

So, high demand for industrial workers, worker protections left over from the New Deal era, labour-saving electrical appliances being available for the first time, cars everywhere... it was a unique set of circumstances that meant for maybe the first time in history a man could work a blue collar job and have a wife who stayed at home and just did "chores and whatnot". That lasted a few decades. People blame Reagan for a lot of it, but really by the time he was elected that golden period for blue collar workers was already ending.

Also, keep in mind that strong protections for workers didn't just happen. The government didn't just decide that it would be nice to workers. Workers had to fight hard for those rights. The 8 hour day is the result of fights that were very violent. Bombs were thrown at cops. Supposed ringleaders were hanged by the government after show trials. FDR pushed for laws to protect workers because the alternative was rioting. If today's workers want to share in the wealth, they need to riot, they need to be prepared to die. Nothing's going to change if it's just complaining that "this isn't how it should be".

Zen is a reskinned Firefox. Firefox depends on Google's funding to stay afloat.

Everything else, other than Safari on Mac is either chrome-based or firefox-based.