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[lemon10]

Wait! So Musk, Gates or Bezos dont have a huge pool of cash and golden coins like a cartoon duck that they could use to pay the teachers... that's disapointing. My world foundations are gone.

Hey thanks!  That helped give me the words to clarify my point:

Most of the wealth of the uber-rich is in capital, not cash.  What I was aiming for is that you can't really pay teachers (or anyone, really) in capital: you need to pay them with the returns from capital*.

The Gates Foundation is an example of using returns to fund things - foundations like that (including, for example, large university endowments) don't sell their capital to fund their activities, they either use dividends or leverage their capital to fund their activities.

*After all, a factory or piece of land cannot generate wealth unless the factory or land is producing something.  Don't confusing "buy low sell high" with generate wealth either: generating wealth is actually creating goods and services, not merely getting more money in your pocketbook.  "Buy low sell high" merely moves wealth around - and it can and does incentivize the creation of more wealth - but does not create wealth itself.

A bit late on responding from my end, and while the point is technically true, its also very much not at the same time. Honestly to me the whole thing seems to be intentionally misleading billionaire propaganda aimed at pretending that billionaires are actually cash poor and that Bezos can't just get a hundred million dollars in a loan from someone the next day if he wanted.

Its like a dude that owns a million dollar house. Sure he might not have any liquid cash and if a dude came up to him and demanded a million dollars or he would shoot him the house owner would totally die, but if you give him a few months he can sell that house and then would have a million dollars.

The same is true for mega billionaires. Sure, its true that their capital can't be instantly and directly be converted into cash, but if you gave them a few months they could probably have like 50% of it. If you gave them a few years they could probably get like 90% of it.

So while "Billionaires could pay for [massive amount of stuff] instantly" is wrong, "Individual Billionaires could pay for [slightly less massive amount of stuff still comparable to entire national GDP's] in a month or two" is completely correct.

[Lord Shonus]

None of that means you can instantly convert their cash into tax revenue. They could get 50% of their value once if they decided that they needed it. They can get big loans with their stock value as collateral once until they manage to pay it back. Which means that even if you put in a 100% tax rate and treated their stock jumps as simple income and shot anyone who tried to help them reduce the burden you would not get the "all our programs are paid for" benefits that all these "so and so could instantly solve the problem" claims argue for. You'd get a big jump when you first put the policy in, then it would trail to only a slight boost because they would not have the continuing ability to pay the tax. And most of the stuff you want that money for has to be paid for continuously.

[Random_Dragon]

Dang, y'all got the Ukraine invasion thread locked it seems. Not sure if we should create a second one and insist people maybe try to be civil in it or... :/

On the other hand, I already handled the first thread and we reached the point where the war itself seems to be settling into a routine where the only new developments are yet more atrocities, so not sure what else there'd be to add nor who (if anyone) should revive it this time.

[nenjin]

Careful with your generalizing. The thread was fine until people let their emotions take over for their brains and started doing the usual "generalizing" with heinous statements attached.

[JoshuaFH]

Yeah, there's heinous things happening, and that gets to people's heads, but its hard to justify the kind of hate that was solidifying in that thread. Toady is right to lock it for now.

[dragdeler]

Spoiler: And I was like weird the last two pages don't seem worse than the rest of the thread... (click to show/hide)

But then I realized it must have been purged allready.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sirus]

Honestly surprised it wasn't locked earlier, there were some real Nasty Opinions getting tossed around. Wouldn't be surprised to see a mute or a ban come out of it.

[Random_Dragon]

All I wanted was a WWIII thread dangit ;~;

[Starver]

It doesn't help that I have sympathy for the circumstances of someone calling for genocide upon the genociders. Not that I agreed but, given their (apparent) local situation, I can understand the strong feelings involved.

And then we have at least one actual Russian (a good guy (or, rather, gal), in my estimation), which probably made the resulting Loyalty Cascade that bit more intense. It'd have been easier to deal with a more obvious troll (and/or counter-troll).

But I could see it was going to get reported, though I know I didn't do that[1], and could even get to the banhammer stage. Hopefully a "Cool it!" message or two will suffice, but I'm leaving that to the person who already has to make such a decision (and those who may have to abide by that). Maybe it has already reached maximum escalation, one way or another, but I'm not so ghoulish as to check profile details to find out any clues on that.



The big question is when and where the "WWIIIvII (be cool, electric boogaloo)" thread will be ready for continuation of the less heated journalising. Maybe it's already there, now. Better than risking the sanity of (mostly) unrelated threads if lessons don't get learnt for at least another resurgence.


[1] ...putting me into the "good men who do nothing" camp, ironically.

[brewer bob]

Honestly surprised it wasn't locked earlier, there were some real Nasty Opinions getting tossed around. Wouldn't be surprised to see a mute or a ban come out of it.

It was locked at least once earlier (a week ago?) and some posts were cleared before re-opening. Don't know if the same will happen this time or if it'll remain locked for good.

[The_Explorer]

I was sadly a part of it, I got overly angry with what is going on and it clouded my better judgement and I posted some pretty terrible things. I did apologize, but it is still not right what I posted as there are still people inside russia (I'd hope most of them) that don't support it.

Its sad too because I always thought as an example, north koreans have nothing to do with the terrible things their nation does, its their leadership. I always believed the people (for most part) are innocent, its the leadership at fault.

Didn't help I haven't heard from my best (online) friend in two weeks from ukraine I'm hoping for the best but he said wanted to defend his nation...but its still not right what I posted. Again very sorry.

[MrRoboto75]

All I wanted was a WWIII thread dangit ;~;

You can't fight in here, this is the war room!

[Micro102]

Wait a minute.... Hmmmm.

[Dunamisdeos]

I feel like this belongs here, since Amazon is so tightly would around our economy and political lobbying engine. Amazon apparently had a doc leak showing its plans to ban specific words and phrases internally to it's employees. Here's a list!

This sounds like a joke from a dystopian scifi starring Sylvester Stallone, but it is not. Naturally no major news outlet is covering it at present.

Spoiler: Bad Words include "pay raise" and "accessibility" (click to show/hide)

Their official response is "lol we weren't really going to".

[Svarte Troner]

plantation, slave, slave labor, master

A bit yikesy there Mr. Bezos