Now I need to do the math on space karen/ henery ford 2.0 aka Mr my autism makes me prone to outbursts of fascist apologia.
I got into an argument years ago with someone who appeared to start on the conclusion that co-operatives must be bad and tried to work backwards from there.
There was this notion that it was somehow unfair for one delivery driver to earn $1,000,000 and another to earn $10,000 just because they worked for different companies, since it was mostly the efforts of other people in the company that gave it its value. He wasn’t able to then take the tiny extra step required to apply the same logic to CEOs and shareholders.
I realized there’s a kind of proximity bias; billionaires are so far removed from our lives that we just accept their existence as part of how the world works, whereas if a regular employee like us is getting something we’re not then the jealousy becomes palpable. It’s the same thing that drives hatred towards minorities and immigrants.
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
He’d have to give them this as equity in the company, he’s not liquid for that amount. None of the “richest Americans” have near the amount of wealth they appear to have.
This is what people mean when they say workers should own the means of production tho
ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Musk paid $44 billion in cash for Twitter. Billionaires only have wealth on paper until they want to buy a company, then magically they have the cash.
dohpaz42@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s my understanding that Musk borrowed heavily from investors for that cash.
oppy1984@lemdro.id 3 weeks ago
It’s called leveraged borrowing, it’s how the billionaire class pays for things. The banks typically give them super low rates and generous terms on these types of loans.
So what Elon did was took a loan against his assets, Tesla stock, at a low APR with very loose repayment terms, then paired that with money pledged by a few other minority investors and that’s how he was able to quickly come up with 44 billion to buy Twitter.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Yeah and a lot of that came from other investors
Other investors that will be coming to look for their investment money
DogWater@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
youtube.com/shorts/J3UVMlDUFkc
youtu.be/J3UVMlDUFkc
youtu.be/LpgNHaCuu44
You need this guy on YouTube. He’s excellent at shedding light on this stuff. He has stuff for lobbying, aipac, billionaires, rfk, private equity, and more
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Musk paid very little for twitter. He paid $0 in real money. He traded (iirc) like $13b of Tesla stock. The rest was filled by Saudi investors and western banks, who were greatly encouraged to own and control one of the primary modalities of communication in the 21st century. Either way very little actual cash transferred hands
Peculiaris@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
IIRC they basically use some of their shares like a credit card, since the value of their shares keeps appreciating the interest is much easily paid off
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Who gives a fuck? Wealth is wealth and his equity is his security for the low to zero interest loans from where all his spending money comes.
Again, yes they do. Illiquid wealth is still wealth and is the basis of rich people getting to spend as much as they want with little to no risk compared to people who DON’T have a dragon’s hoard in stock for the above infinite money exploit to work.
Nah, when people say that workers should own the means of production, they’re talking about ACTUAL ownership, not bonuses from the owner.
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
No, they’re saying they should own the means of production. Which in the modern context means equity in the company. All 876,000 employees could be given a 105,000 bonus in terms of stock and then they’d own Amazon equity, done
Cethin@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
That’s not really how that works. Sure, it isn’t liquid, but you can still borrow against it, and you don’t pay tax in this like you would if you sell. That’s how the wealthy can still buy things without having to pay any reasonable amount of tax.
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
And if amazon gave their employees stock options (like they did at one point) the employees could also borrow against it. But amazon stopped doing that once they reached a point where their employees were impacting their bottom line. They now rob their employees of that option to entrench wealth amongst the elite