Yeah no shit. Because it’s essentially impossible to acquire that much wealth in that short a period of time. Even the number of millionaires under 30 that didn’t inherit their wealth is tiny.
And those millionaires typically won some sort of fame “lottery” (which has its own issues) like Pop Stars or something.
Or they got incredibly lucky and happened to be in just the right place at the right time to have a ridiculously successful business. See E.G. Bill Gates who was pretty middle of the road at just about everything, but lucked into being at just the right place at the right time and managed to be just cunning enough in his business deals. Lots of other far more talented and far smarter people never even got a fraction of the success he did, but he was just super lucky. That’s pretty much how it always goes though.
The biggest lie the US propagates is that wealth is correlated to talent, effort, or both. It isn’t, it’s about 90% luck, 8% ruthlessness, and 2% effort (and that 2% doesn’t even apply to those that inherit their wealth).
Kids these days are lazy shits. All you have to do to earn $1,000,000,000 by 30 is drop out of school at 15 and work full time 40 hrs/wk with no vacation days. It’s tough, but it’s possible.
Oh forgot one part: hourly pay needs to average out to $32,051/hr and have exactly zero expenses for 15 years.
No shit. And 99% of all older billionaires got substantial money from family as well.
Maybe we should get rid of trusts over a certain dollar amount.
Nah, just tax them to hell.
They still do, but there are ways to either distribute the funds or set up grantor trusts that bring the rates back down to an acceptable billionaire rate. You know, next to nothing.
They used to have a high tax rate. Used to.
They still do,
Actually, they don’t. (Thats a really interesting and informative link to look at.)
They used to deal with ~70%+ tax rates. Now its at ~10%, and that’s before the shenanigans that you mentioned …
but there are ways to either distribute the funds or set up grantor trusts that bring the rates back down
We’re having the same conversation but about two different things. I thought we were discussing tax rates that trusts themselves pay. Not individual tax rates.
One thing I’ll correct myself on is that I just looked up trust tax rates and they’re paying only 20% on capital gains now. Pretty sure that was higher before the Cheeto took over.
I used to do a whole lot of trust returns, but I’m admittedly rusty on them today.
We’re having the same conversation but about two different things.
Yeah I was speaking about the income tax rate.
I think that’s what they meant. Anything over a certain amount should go to the state.
Nah just get rid of them and the whole capitalist garbage. We’ve given it a try and it’s clearly a failed experiment.
Anytime someone worth over 100m dies, their wealth is evenly distribtluted to all citizens
The crazy part is you could say everything after 100m gets distributed, their family still has $100m in the bank, but that wouldn’t be good enough, gotta keep it all because they “earned it,” whatever that means.
I personally am okay with wealth. I think millionaires are fine, especially now that everything is expensive. I want to see lines drawn at 10m, and 100m. There should be no b.
but what if i, as a feudal lord, wish for my dynasty to continue unto the eons?
Removed by mod
Correct.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
1st. Pass a law separating company ownership from stock ownership.
2nd. 100% tax on anything over one million dollars per inheritor. With some exemptions, such as the family home.
For serious, if an individual can’t get by on $10m (a number I pulled out of thin air) they don’t have what it takes to be in the world.
Did anybody think otherwise? 30 years is not enough time to become a billionaire from scratch.
Well no shit… If you’re 30 years old and you EARNED, legit EARNED a billion dollars, you would have to have made $1,056.99 EVERY SECOND of your entire life from birth to 30.
I don’t think your math is correct. There are 946,728,000 seconds in 30 years. That would mean they made just over a dollar per second, which is still pretty insane.
I think there is confusion over the long- and short scale naming system for numbers.
Long Billion: 1012
Short Billion: 109
Huh, never heard of that before. I’ve literally only ever heard of 1 billion as 1,000,000,000.
Yeah, it could be confusing, except what individual on earth has a trillion (long-form billion) dollars? It’ll happen in our lifetimes, sure, but not right now
Also, look up lakh and crore if you want to think you’re having a stroke
WTF? Oh wow. TIL.
My math may be off as I am completely high on drugs. :) Long story.
That, and a billion dollars is not earned unless you count your money managers earning their own pay by investing your money well.
They just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps while still in the womb.
They just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps while still in the womb.
Okay, this one made me laugh. Well done.
Didn’t we already do this one?
Right. Because it is literally impossible to earn that much money legally by the time you’re 30.
Hell I’d wager that most of the time it takes more than a single lifetime to accumulate that wealth and that’s not including the lifetimes of all the workers that are ruthlessly exploited in the process.
Some people dont know how many millions are in a billion. … and it shows!
Let’s disinherit them
Bullshit. They can only say this because the guy who invented Ethereum just turned 30, and there are probably all sorts of other Crypto nerds who are worth that much but we’ll never know it.
So you’re saying these crypto nerds don’t pay taxes?
Crypto is a capital asset in the US, so they don’t owe the taxes until they sell. And many of them don’t live in the US, on purpose. They figured out where they can go and buy citizenship so their tax burden is much lower.
So you’re saying crypto is not worth anything until you sell it? Sounds like they aren’t billionaires except on paper.
That’s typically what it means, yes. Having large amounts of cash is generally a bad idea, because over time inflation makes it worth less.
Assets other than cash have value. Land, for example.
Sounds like they aren’t billionaires except on paper.
That seems like the norm actually, and not the exception.
Yup, same as TSLA
