I want enough money to go on a trip and visit a friend without having to scrimp and save to do it, not enough money to buy an airline and demand people pay me $40 if they want to sit with their spouse
Yeah "rich" starts at way less than a billion dollars. Someone with a paltry 10 million in the bank is already absolutely loaded, and has won the game.
Most of us would be more than happy with 100k in the bank, honestly, as long as our society is stable and structured to care for “nonproductives”. Nobody really needs a lot, we just need long-term stability.
When we say “the billionaires,” Americans think that means anyone who’s ever been on a TV show or maybe Steve from church who has a boat and a vacation home.
If I had a billion dollars I wouldn't work another fucking day in my life.
Billionaires have more money than they could ever spend, and spend so much time and effort trying to increase the size of the hoard and make sure they don't have to pay an extra fraction of it in taxes. It's a sickness.
You don't become a billionaire without being mentally ill, and for some reason we think the mentally ill are the most fit to run corporations.
Hell, you can give away 990 million of it, buy a house, put what's left in a high yield savings account, and live comfortably on the interest alone for the rest of your life.
I want everyone to have something that's higher than what a living wage would be. I want strong worker's unions that people are added to by default when they join the workforce of a business. I want the profit that a business makes to be divided equally among all the workers....with owner-operated businesses being the exception to that rule, but only if the operating owner only owns the one business they're operating
I want the necessity of charity to be a thing of the past, I want every american citizen to be able to own a house with a yard in a town that's designed well and I want policiticans to be afraid of pissing off their constituents. I want communities to be tight-knit and friendly with each other.
There is a reason you never hear of normal working people coming into a lot of money and turning it into billions. It takes some serious mental illness that usually is hereditary to have the drive to exploit soo many people for so long. Billionaires are special alright. But they are the kind of special the world could do without.
I'm utterly convinced that whatever is going on mentally with people who have a hoarding problem is the same thing billionaires have as well except with money. It's literally a mental illness.
I have had this conversation with my semi wealthy friends ... one friend in particular who probably has million or two in wealth. Not super wealthy but wealthy enough.
I've debated with him that there should be a wealth cap in society to not allow any one person to have such obscene amounts of wealth and that society should impose a wealth cap. He argued that this is a terrible idea because it would remove the incentive for everyone to want to achieve higher amounts of wealth ... it would demotivate people from wanting to achieve business and development. But he justified it by saying that he didn't like the idea and that it wasn't just about the money, it was the idea.
I'm beginning to think that many or most people are just preprogrammed to believe or want to believe in Gods and God Kings. That many or most people believe in the idea that there should be haves and have nots and that there is no solution that they could imagine to solve that situation.
This narrative keeps being peddled by capitalists, but it is false.
Humans are often intrinsically motivated. People dont get more money by working at a soup kitchen. They dont get financial rewards for looking after their grandchildren....
Capitalists need to instill this idea that everything needs to be motivated by money and every interaction between humans needs to be commodified. Otherwise the greedy hoarders would be exposed as such at the system would collapse as people help each other just because it is the right thing to do.
Networks of mutual aid and care are politically dangerous To capitalism as it means resilient people who value life over money. These need to be crushed for capitalism to prevail.
I don't want to be rich, I want to have enough money to have the following:
Hobbies
A garden (even if it's a shared garden)
Food on my table
A home
Maybe a vacation every couple of years
I currently have enough money for all of those except the garden because I can only afford a flat and my freeholders don't allow you to do any gardening.
The rest of my money can go to things I also want but not directly, like:
A well educated population
No homeless people
No crime
Healthcare for all
Good parks and public services
I don't need any more money than what will get me that! I'll even take out the garden if I means I only have to work four days a week. If I had a billion dollars, what would I even do with it? That's far too much money!
I have been considering at what point is accumulation immortal.
Clearly, location matters. I think certainly by $100 million, one is immoral ($4 million to safety spend each year.) Perhaps $10 million is immoral. I am fairly certain $5 million ($200K to spend in a year) is okay. I am confident that $1 million is fine ($40K per year.)
My idea is to implement a wealth tax rate of 3% on everything above an exempt amount of $10 million, that is to be paid annually.
This way, there is no hard limit. You can have more money without going to jail, but you have to help the community.
The rule would work something like this:
the rule applies to all citizens of the United States
calculate the total wealth of the person:
items such as money on bank accounts, shares in companies, real estate, and other valuables are estimated and added
debts and other negative value can be deducted
if the amount is less than $10 million, no taxes are paid
otherwise, subtract $10 million from the total net worth, then multiply by 0.03, that is the value that you have to pay
this procedure is to be repeated annually
to prevent people from giving up their US citizenship and taking on the citizenship of some other country, which may not have a wealth tax, there needs to be a way to make sure the US citizenship remains attractive to people. for example, if you do not have US citizenship, you're not allowed to possess more than $10 million in total wealth inside the US, i.e. in real estate, company shares and bank accounts.
My idea is to implement a wealth tax rate of 3% on everything above an exempt amount of $10 million, that is to be paid annually.
Not enough. Their fortunes need to actually shrink when above a certain amount. 7%+ is where we need to be to even counter their annual growth.
Accumulating that much wealth isn't just bad because it's unfair, it's bad because it gives them so much influence in politics, economy and society which damages Democracy and markets.
You put the finger in the wound with that ruleset though - first the negative of what you've said:
if you don't allow debt to be calculated against you fuck Up people who literally want to invest in their future (buying machinery for their dream job for example).
If you do allow debt dedication then you get the status quo: oh I do owe a yacht but I have w huge debt on that - sure I have a collateral against that debt but here is clever accounting and suddenly the net worth of the billionaire is negative on paper.
I really like what you've described, I only lack the fantasy on how to avoid this banking exploitation by peiple who are smarter and more ruthless than me. :(
my first assumption is being more wealthy than 95% of the population is immoral
But if hypothetically if everyone had 5 million and you have 5 million + one, I wouldn't say having $1 more is immoral.
idk, that's an interesting question. That's gonna be in my head for a while lol
4% interest is an odd assumption, but the amounts makes some sense considering that 100K per year is an amount someone can reasonably live off of with a house.
4% is widely used as a safe withdrawal rate. It's based on modelling with historical data of market returns and achieving a near 100% probability of not drawing down your principle over the long term.
I’ve calculated that I could retire right now on $3 million USD, and be able to maintain my current salary, with cost of living increases each year until I die.
One tweek you may consider. As you won't be saving for retirement in retirement, focusing on matching current spending not salary may produce a more enjoyable number. Otherwise a salary raise will push back the retirement date.
I want $50,000,000 so I can park it in the bank and live off 2-3% interest for the rest of my life. Anything else I'll just donate or whatever while I volunteer or work a low paying job that's fun and rewarding.
2-3 Million € would be enough to comfortably live off and be at or close to 0 when I kick the bucket. If I somehow won that much, I'd not work a day in my life ever again.
Are you in the US? Move to a country which actually respects bikes (and weed) like the Netherlands and it might tbh.
Disclaimer: I'm not from there but I am from a nearby European country, and I know there's always a shortage of bike mechanics, enough so that the courses get subsidised.