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I want to both upvote and downvote this at the same time. So I will do neither, I will just state my opinion…
This is not a shitpost, this is fact.
Here. Take a booby prize
Van accelerator?
Van gas
P.s. I’m not American.
I dunno who the face is on the accelerator pedal, but it looks like someone loved riding their clutch…
Van Clutch
Van Stop
Van Gogh (famous 19th century artist)
…but I’m guessing you know who spongebob is?
Isn’t he that dude that wears square pants?
Fuck I dunno, I smoked too many sponges today…
Agreed.
Billionaires should pay everyone for stolen time, potential contributions to better world living. They currently pay only toxicity, diminish quality of life on Earth.
Billionaires should not exist at all. I saw a post saying that once you earn $999.999.999 dollars you get a trophy saying “I won capitalism” and everything else you earn goes to taxes. We should absolutely do that
This except we should expand it by saying something like $1b net worth, $100m cash, or $10m income—whichever comes first.
It’s literally not a fact. Net worth is a price tag, not an amount of cash.
Actually, I’d be happy to keep working if it means that everybody on earth gets a decent standard of living.
Absolutely agree. I don’t have any urge to stop working. But 40 h / 5 days a week is too much. Life is too fucking short especially given how productivity has skyrocketed yet wages have barely kept up.
Obligatory fuck Ronald Reagan and the Republican party.
Sure. We can do both. Make sure everybody has a bearable workload and make sure everybody has enough.
I’m with you on this.
If we can meet the housing, food, and medical needs of everyone, then that would be sufficient.
BUT THINK OF THE BILLIONAIRES COMPETING AGAINST EACH OTHER TO BUILD BIGGER MEGA YACHTS. THINK OF THE YACHTS.
I think they compete in Space cock
It’s not time stolen from you as the work needs to be done either way, but it’s money stolen from you as you’re either underpaid or paying too much for what you’re buying.
Very often the work does not need to get done, the work uses up a poorly paid employee’s entire work day to squeeze out an extra fraction of a percent of profit.
You’re right about money, and employers are often stealing time as well.
See also: bullshit Jobs
See exactly: bullshit jobs
I believe it was Marx who first observed that superfluous jobs, as well as unemployment, are inextricably linked to capitalism.
EDIT: Found a relevant Marx quote in Grundrisse:
Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary.
See also Marcuse, 1969:
The absorption [i.e. disappearance] of unemployment and the maintenance of an adequate rate of profit would […] require the stimulation of demand on an ever larger scale, thereby stimulating the rat race of the competitive struggle for existence through the multiplication of waste, planned obsolescence, parasitic and stupid jobs and services.
Great quote. I’m sure people have been spying out bullshit jobs before the industrial revolution, too.
On call standing in the corner to present candied dates or wave palm fronds over the emperor was necessary only for the emperor to fool himself into thinking he was inherently more important than anyone else.
I can’t imagine nobody noticed.
It’s time stolen from you if you have to commute to your job.
It’s time stolen from you if a lot of your job is pointless busywork.
it impairs the economy. More folks could hire people to do things. Remember there were milkmen and tv repair men at one point in time. You could hire someone to clean your house and they could hire someone to do their taxes. its amazing how an economy works when people have money to spend rather than hoard.
There were also icemen at one point. Then we invented refrigerators. Nobody seems to miss having a giant block of ice delivered to their house to keep the food we buy at the stores cold. But one thing I think a lot of people miss is appliances that didn’t need to be thrown away.
Fam, at my last job they had roughly 23h of activity for me per week. 17h of nothing to do and still having to stick around because i needed every penny to be able to pay my bills.
Anecdotal, plenty of jobs where downtime doesn’t exist.
For many jobs it is indeed stolen time https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=4042
Oh wow, a comic!
well if you got more money per hours of work or things were cheaper, you would probably work less
How many hours of work are necessary to build car? Does it suddenly take less just because the employees are paid more? No.
If a client wants an employee’s help for 15 minutes, will they suddenly want their help for 10 minutes just because the employee is paid more? No.
There are bullshit jobs around, but most of them aren’t, the work needed to accomplish the tasks will still be the same.
no but people may work in shifts still getting the same total man hours in a company.
Unemployment is pretty low right now, where will you find the staff for that?
For once companies could downsize not because they want to fire people but because there is an excess of jobs. There are many many businesses that produce in excess (take the clothing sector for instance) or others that have already hired beyond sustainability (software and tech). Many governments also have programs to hire in excess for non-required roles to reduce unemployment. There is so much room for optimization but realistically with other effects like average number of kids per family decreasing some degree of automatization beyond what we have now and some change in people’s lifestyles will be required too.
Suddenly everyone has a shit ton more money and you think demand wouldn’t go up?
Production would actually have to increase.
some may fall into rampant consumerism even more, but some (hopefully many) will come out of it because they have money and time for decent hobbies actually. so instead of buying tons of easily consumable crap stuff of every kind to pass whatever little time they have, instead they will focus on buying less but more decent of the stuff they are really interested in.
Fucking yes. We need to be having economic conversations on the basis of time.
I’m not opposed to being rich, or really even being filthy rich, I think the fair chance of being able to live lavishly is a great motivator for folks to shoot for their best ideas.
What I am opposed to is being so obscenely rich that it would take several generations of chronic mismanagement for your descendants to manage to blow through the funds within a time limit of “by the end of the 22nd century.”
Most generational wealth has reduced to being a small supplement for the recipient to supplement still having to work for their living with by the time the original person who built it up’s grandkids have had their turn with it, maybe the great grandkids if the family makes it a point of staying grounded and using the wealth wisely.
That’s not even from blowing through it like madmen, it’s from how many people it’s getting divided among by then and how likely any one of those individuals are to just decide they don’t need to work anymore on getting access to it.
I’m fine with people having money, but there should be a hard cap.
Billionaires do not need to exist.
Agreed, but just saying “you can only have this much money” will get fought tooth and nail, IMO the way to do it is through basing the rates in tax brackets on the percentage of wealth controlled by people in those brackets.
It’s not a “hard” cap, but it does pit the rich against each other to have more than the other rich assholes while not having so much that they’re all paying an above 100% tax rate.
Might not be as delicious as frying them for ourselves, but watching the rich eat each other will be far more entertaining, and is shown to be far more effective. Take it from the once Shah of the Sasanian Empire Kavad, if any one noble is getting too powerful, the best tools to use in bringing them down is other nobles jealous of their ascendency.
But then we still live under the same corrupt system and nothing fundamentally changes except us offsetting our issues onto future generations. Continuing to find ways to prop up Capitalism and make it liveable doesn’t actually fix a ton, it just shifts the burden from us onto our children. That’s why we’re in the shit as much as we are globally right now, and our kids will be drowning in it if we don’t act.
I literally just made the owning class start a battle royale against each other and you want to argue nothing fundamentally changes? What are you worried it’s gonna be a .io game and we’re gonna end with a big fat superowner who ate everyone else?
thats just gonna create a different owning class and continue the cycle. change would be removing the idea of class altogether.
How does it just create a different owning class if they’re all at war with eachother?
You’re coming across as very "nothing but ‘just do revolution bro’ is real change!" right now ma dude.
There doesn’t even need to be any kind of cap, they just need to pay more taxes and be prohibited from buying politicians.
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Conspiracy theory: The reason we have the Chicken Tax is to keep the Hilux out of the US because it’s too effective a weapon against the military
It is so smaller more competitively priced and actually usable trucks stay out of your country
That’s too credible for me to believe
Top gear put a Hilux up against a 1984 chevy half 4x4 they found on craigslist. The old chevy won, only vehicle running at the end.
[citation needed]
That’s Top Gear America, which is very much not Top Gear. Plus they didn’t run the Hilux head-to-head. I bet none of those guys have even driven a Hilux.
Anyways, point has been made, and proven. They did run head to head. Hilux was the runner up, 2nd last to break. Watched the episode years ago. Now I know you’re thinking of what amounted to a hilux ad on the original top gear. It’s not really true to life. No 85 Chev half tons in England either.
You gotta remember hiluxes are just a quarter ton truck. Yeah they’re tough enough, so were old Datsuns. It’s never really mechanics and hard core off roaders that fanboy hiluxes, and those old chevys were fucking tough.
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It’s good that you are getting support. I do think your jokes here are a bit in bad taste though. It isn’t likely to make anyone feel good about supporting others, or about being supported.
The point of helping others isn’t to make yourself feel better
That definitely is not what I was saying. What I’m saying is that mocking and taunting people does not help social cohesion. It can cause reluctance and spite. We just don’t need that.
I was happy to pay my taxes before I needed it, and I’ll be happy to pay my taxes after I need it. This is temporary, and it’s important that people get the help they need when they need it.
Problem is that the cost vastly surpasses the taxes you paid and will pay. And since the really rich always have the means to weasle out of the system, the middle class is bleeding until it can’t any more. Countries like Germany are squished by the cost of their welfare system.
the funds sholdn’t come from the working class, but instead the rich. increase taxes on the highest earners to fund welfare.
I think for this to work you need an agreement between wealthy countries to all apply this kind of tax. This would be an attempt to stop all the accounts from just living offshore.
Not sure if the EU can apply this as a bloc style rule. I doubt the US powers that be would want to, and then other large powers I’d argue have even more questionable ruling classes anyway, but I’m open to being wrong on that last statement.
I could be wrong on my first statement too. I haven’t thought it out that much.
no, you’re right. The wealthy would do everything they can in order to avoid those taxes, up to and including moving to a new country with lax tax laws.
That is the fun stuff. They don’t. That is the lie.
If the USA and EU decides that the rich has the pay taxes then where do the rich go? They go to XYZ country, you might think but they don’t. Their business is in the US and the EU and their wealth is. They can slowly move their business and wealth… But they can’t move their market, which is where? USA and EU.
Also e.g. The old money in Germany will never leave Germany. Due to privacy laws and the safety that they live in, they remember the RAF and they are thankful for the privacy and safety.
It is a lie that they tell you. They don’t leave.
Edit: in case, someone is wondering what I think is a motivator for them. Comfort.
They don’t because they don’t have to - they are not very highly taxed (in Germany business profit is taxed at 30%, private capital gains at 26% and salaries by up to 45% - and the rich don’t have salaries).
Once you start a policy that is exclusively paid for by the actual rich, they’ll either prevent it or find a way to net profit via their contacts in legislation, or they will just change their main residence to one of their vacation homes. Plenty of German rich folks have done so already.
Or tax businesses based on where they make their profit, if they refuse to show their numbers and comply close them.
Pretty big assumption here that they won’t pay more taxes than what they get from the government. I paid $20k in tax in the first year of my first non-retail job. If they paid taxes for 7-8 years before covid they probably already paid for themselves.
Your calculation would make sense - if all of your taxes went into the welfare system. In Germany the contribution rate is only 2.6% though (paid on top of your taxes) and with that your whole career might not be enough to pay for a single year of unemployment.
Also, the payment that arrives on your account hardly is the whole cost. There are up to whole ministries of government to pay for with thousands of tax-paid employees. Every pay-as-you-go system only works if the vast majority pays and only a few get paid.
That’s fair, though we also don’t know how much this individual is getting from the welfare system. At the end of the day I’m far less annoyed by people like this than by billionaires or even just CEO-types who make tens, hundreds, or thousands of times what a normal person makes while providing arguably similar amounts of economic input.
Additionally, while this person’s comment comes across as proud, they more than likely actually need the support the welfare system gives them. There’s probably a reason they only started relying on it since covid.
You are a success story, which most people who have had hardships will be if only given a chance.
If you can work and you choose to live from benefits, you are a leech.
i think anyone should be allowed to choose whether they want to work, and if they choose not to, they should at a minimum be provided housing, food, running potable water and clothing.
On what basis? Are you asking me to support financially someone fully capable of working? Fuck that, I have my own children to support. If he can work, he should work.
Unless you are talking about universal basic income - but this is completely different idea to benefits and should be paid instead of all the other state payouts, including state pension. I am not opposed to that, that’s just basic wealth sharing.
i’m not asking you to do anything, unless of course you’re a member of the super wealthy who don’t pay a fair share in taxes. The burden should be on the wealthiest individuals who profit off our backs and keep us in this perpetual capitalist hell.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the wealthy should pay much, much more than they do. They also should work for their money rather than spending time on golf courses or wanking themselves on twitter.
That does not alleviate the basic duty of every single person, capable of working, to be able to earn his own maintenance.There is plenty of people unable to do so (or temporary unable to do so) and these should be helped.
You should read OP’s edit, cause you sound like an ass. An why the hell do you want to be a slave to work so damn bad, and think others should be forced into that mentality? You do you, but I garauntee if you were in the position of a billionaire, you would be doing the same. No one wants to work. No one needs to work 40hrs. If everyone could make enough from a 20hr work week, im willing to bet their would be a hell of a lot less “leeches” as you so unemphathetically call them.
Guess what, I don’t give a flying fuck what you think I sound like 🙄
On what basis?
On the basis that they are alive and if they didn’t get those basic amenities they wouldn’t be anymore. You know, like we do with healthcare in actually civilized countries.
Oh, but they will be alive. Alive and working like they should.
We had almost full automation for 60 years in factories, where did that money go? There are leeches in society, but OP is not among the relevant ones.
Two wrongs don’t make it right. The fact that rich people are often leeches does not change the fact that poor people can also be leeches.
Brother. This is childish thinking. The exploitation of the rich is killing the planet, literally making it uninhabitable for all things living. One guy living off welfare is not on the same level, not by a long shot. Get a grip
What the fuck are you even talking about? Justifying a leech sucking welfare system when he is fully capable of working just because there are other wealthy leeches is like justifying a thief stealing a car, because he didn’t rob a bank.
It’s more like a thief stealing a pebble from the garden in front of the bank.
Billionaires leech literally millions of times what a poor person leeches, and yet you’re here complaining about the poor person (who has likely already paid more in taxes than they have leeched).
I am not “complaining” about anything. I am calling leech “a leech” because he is a leech.
You’re still missing the point lmao. Who gives a fuck about a tiny drop of water when there’s a tidal wave coming for them.
Yeah, who gives a fuck about a guy stealing car if there is a another one just robbing a bank. Sound thinking, Sherlock 🙄
They won’t sell the Hilux in the US because it’s too easy to turn into a technical. Nobody out here with a Tacoma technical
Bunch of yeehawdists rolling around in Hiluxes would be sub-optimal
Who tf pissed on this image?
Shitpost? This is just unadulterated truth
Forget not working. It’s not even that I want to not work. I just want to not struggle to survive. I don’t want to have to work a gruelling 40 hours every goddamn week. I want to have the time to pursue other means of work, to contribute to society as a whole, not just to one, single company! Yeah, being able to have more time off would be great, but I don’t want to not work, I want to be able to contribute in my own ways too. And I can’t do that when I’m working 40 hours and still living fucking paycheck to paycheck.
Nobody seems to have mentioned the very oddly placed highlight
I don’t mind working when it’s either something I enjoy doing and would do without it being a job, or if I can see it tangibly improving something or someone by providing something other people (or myself) need.
If all I see is the boss getting richer while I am doing something I literally would only do because I am being paid to do it, fuck that job.
Is there any reason why they should keep more money than they ever can spend?
And at what cost to the climate/resources did they get this rich? Compare that to what they have done for the climate/resource.
